From Sun Quan's reply, Zhou Yu read the true meaning of Sun Quan's message.
First, Sun Quan may not be able to come to reinforce Zhou Yu in time, because he is still in Chaisang, wrangling with the aristocratic families, asking them to send reinforcements.
Things like reinforcements should have been discussed in advance before the war, but now Sun Quan is still wrangling, which shows that the Jiangdong family has temporarily changed their minds.
This kind of thing doesn't happen often elsewhere, but in Jiangdong, it's really quite common.
Those Jiangdong aristocratic families knew how to guard their one-third of an acre of land, and they were obedient to Sun Quan. They were also very wary of people from the Huaisi Group such as Zhou Yulu Su, as if everyone went to Jiangdong to steal their food.
Therefore, if you ask this group of aristocratic families to defend their homes and fight against Shanyue, they will be very enthusiastic, but these Jiangdong aristocratic families are not interested in expanding externally.
2. Sun Quan is persuading Zhou Yu tactfully. If the advance is really not going well, let's come back. Anyway, these Jiangdong aristocratic families will not support it. But if Zhou Yu leads his army and leaves Jiangdong for too long, God knows what strange things will happen to these aristocratic families. thoughts come out.
Didn't you see Sun Quan say that organizing reinforcements encountered "some" obstacles?
If it was really just a slight obstacle, why would Sun Quan specifically write it in the letter to let himself know? !
Therefore, Zhou Yu is now considering whether to withdraw his troops.
At present, the reasons for retreating are not sufficient. Sun Quan could only hint at Zhou Yu's reasons in his letter, but did not give a direct order. Therefore, Zhou Yu cannot say that he was ordered to retreat.
Another reason is that although the siege of the city is not going smoothly, the Jiangdong Army has a numerical advantage after all and has just defeated the Jiangxia Navy. There is no reason to retreat now.
Jiangdong Army, said to be an army, is actually an army composed of private soldiers of various generals. If you want to retreat, you must give everyone a justifiable reason.
Finally, Zhou Yu also wanted to try again to see if he could conquer Echeng while reducing losses. Although this may not guarantee the capture of the entire Jiangxia county, occupying the eastern part of Jiangxia is an acceptable result.
Although it has occupied the two counties of Xiazhi and Qichun in Jiangxia, these two counties are only two counties in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River and cannot act as a barrier at all. If they are occupied today, they may be lost tomorrow.
But if we occupy Echeng and Zhu County on the other side of the Yangtze River, we will have a barrier. At the same time, we can suppress the Jiangxia Navy and lock the Jiangxia Navy in the Shaxian and Xiakou areas, which is beneficial to Jiangdong.
Of course, no matter how advantageous it is, it is not as good as taking full control of Jiangxia, but under the current situation, Zhou Yu can only settle for the next best thing.
Therefore, Zhou Yu deliberately set up a game.
Deliberately not attacking the city, and not attacking the city for three consecutive days, made the Echeng defenders think that Jiangdong Army was now disadvantaged in attacking the city, with low morale, sparse and unprepared.
Then, he created an illusion in the army that the troops were about to retreat. As long as the defenders of Echeng couldn't help but go out to test the situation, Zhou Yu could even choose to retreat for a while, causing the defenders of Echeng to think that "big things happened in Jiangdong, and the Jiangdong army has no intention of fighting." "Illusion.
In the end, they waited for the defenders of E City to come out of the city to rob the camp, set up an ambush, and try to knock out the defenders of E City in one fell swoop, so that E City could be conquered without a fight.
However, even after three days of waiting, there was no response from the Echeng defenders. Even the soldiers that Zhou Yu deliberately released, called patrolling, were actually waiting to be captured by the Echeng defenders so that they could release false information. They were all safe and sound. He was walking around outside his camp, but no one came to catch him.
Zhou Yu was also puzzled.
You want to say that the defenders of Echeng were able to keep their composure, but in the face of such an abnormal situation, they didn't even send a single spy. Isn't it a bit unreasonable? !
How can you defend the city without knowing the enemy's situation? !
But if you want to say that the Echeng defenders are too stupid, they have never thought about the possibility of Jiangdong Army retreating. This is not right. Judging from the performance of the Echeng defenders in the past few days, this Echeng defender is not that good. A brainless person.
Then the last one was left to explain his plan, and I'm afraid the city guard had already seen through it.
Zhou Yu sighed slightly and silently wrote down Zhang Xi's name in his heart.
After all, it is not impossible that this is a city defender who has tricked him once and successfully responded to the supporting troops. Now he can see through his own plan and remain unmoved at all.
Since he had been seen through, there was no need to worry about it. Anyway, he did not suffer much substantial losses. Zhou Yu decided to continue the attack on the city the next day.
If the strategy doesn't work, the only option is to attack by force.
In this way, Jiangdong launched another siege campaign after stopping the siege for three consecutive days.
Zhang Xi, who was still suspicious of Jiangdong's purpose, felt as if he had dropped a stone when he saw Jiangdong launching another attack on the city, and let out a long sigh of relief.
Jiangdong attacks the city again, so E City can continue to hold on.
And unlike the previous few days of defending the city, this time Zhang Xi already knew that the reinforcements were about to arrive, so as to encourage the soldiers who defended the city,
Knowing that they had backup, the morale of the defending soldiers improved a lot, and they became more and more calm in their defense, giving Jiangdong Army basically no chance.
Once again fighting from dawn to dusk, both sides stopped fighting.
Naturally, E City continues to strengthen the city defense and prepare defense equipment. There is not enough wood and stone. Zhang Xi immediately has the house demolished without hesitation. Most of the people who can live in the city these days still have their own house. Zhang Xi didn't feel any pain at all when tearing apart a wealthy family.
As for Jiangdong Army, Zhou Yu was even considering the possibility of building a trebuchet.
Of course, the trebuchet is a weapon for siege, but the only problem is that not everyone can build a trebuchet these days.
At least the kind made by Liu Ye, Cao Cao had never even seen it at the time.
Zhou Yu had read about this kind of siege machine in books, and also heard that when Yuan Cao fought in Hebei a few years ago, Cao Cao used a stone-launching chariot to defeat Yuan Shao's camp. He even asked someone to inquire about this kind of siege machine. Construction of siege engines.
However, it is easy to hear about it, but difficult to actually create it.
Zhou Yu tried to make this kind of trebuchet himself, but he didn't know why he always couldn't get it right.
It is easy to make a device for throwing stones, but the throwing distance is a big problem.
The trebuchet made by Zhou Yu had a range of less than fifty steps, and its lethality was also limited. It could not reach the three hundred steps distance mentioned in the book, let alone be able to smash the city and destroy the stronghold like Cao Jun's trebuchet.
Fifty steps, it basically means that you have to venture into the range of the enemy's bow and arrow to be effective. What use can this trebuchet have? !
But Zhou Yu thought, let’s give it a try. What if we scare the Echeng garrison? !
The next day, thirty "trebuchets" appeared in Zhou Yu's army.
Don't tell me, Zhang Xi was really frightened.
Thirty trebuchets, if they were launched together, within half a day, the city wall of E County would be riddled with holes. If they were launched continuously for three days, Zhang Xi would not dare to send people to garrison the city wall.
It's a death if you go up there. Maybe the city walls will be blown down by these trebuchets.
A fortified city like Xiangyang in the Southern Song Dynasty was eventually destroyed by trebuchets. How many days could a small E County withstand it? !
At that time, Zhang Xi was quite desperate. He cursed Zhou Yu over and over again, you bastard, you should have lit it up earlier if you had this thing. If I knew you had trebuchets, thirty of them at once, wouldn’t I have run away long ago? Well, what a spanking!
Now, the number of defenders in the city is seriously insufficient. The reinforcements have not yet arrived at Zhu County, so they cannot get through at this time. It is impossible to even leave the city and burn the trebuchets.
Zhang Xi's face was pale at that time, and he began to think in his mind whether it would be better to arrange for everyone to break out from the north gate now.
Wei Yan didn't understand Zhang Xi's behavior. Who was he trying to show off to? !
Wei Yan had never seen a trebuchet and thought Jiangdong had just made some new siege equipment.
But Wei Yan really couldn't understand the use of this siege tool.
It's not as high as a ladder, so it's definitely not used for climbing city walls. It looks about the same size as a charging car, so it's probably used for attacking city gates.
It doesn't matter. At worst, I can just take the risk and fight out.
Although it is very dangerous, the reinforcements will arrive in two or three days. At this time, what are you doing so much? All you can do is defend.
Of course, Wei Yan wouldn't care if Zhang Xi looked pale, but Kou Feng would ask, Erha cared about his brother very much.
Then Zhang Xi spoke, telling him everything he knew about the power, range, and destruction methods of the trebuchet.
Kou Feng was dumbfounded on the spot and did not say anything, while Wei Yan, who was listening in, also took a breath of air.
"The range is three hundred steps, it can throw twelve kilograms of stones, the height can be adjusted, and it can also destroy city walls?!"
Well, Wei Yan was no longer as calm as before, but looked at Jiang Dongjun with a solemn face as he slowly pushed the trebuchet forward, pushing it over a distance of three hundred steps.
Wei Yan was stunned at that time. Could it be that the closer the attack was, the more powerful and accurate it would be? !
Well, it's not impossible. After all, even at 300 steps, the range of a bed crossbow may not be able to match it. It is reasonable that the accuracy and power of the bed crossbow will be reduced if it is too far away.
Then, Wei Yan was shocked to find that Jiangdong Army continued to push the trebuchet forward, and soon exceeded the distance of 250 steps and reached the position of 200 steps.
And not only that, Jiangdong Army still seemed to have no intention of stopping and deploying trebuchets.
Wei Yan didn't understand. He looked at Zhang Xi and asked, "Zhang Duyou, does this thing really have a range of 300 steps?!"
Well, let alone Wei Yan, Zhang Xi was also wondering why he was still moving forward? !
It's already two hundred steps, and it's already within the range of the bed crossbow.
Although a lot of bed crossbows were damaged in these days of city defense battles, and the crossbow bolts were used up. But there are still two bed crossbows left in Echeng, and the bed crossbows are not only capable of firing crossbow arrows.
No matter what, Zhang Xi decided to give it a try and asked someone to move the bed crossbow to the south gate tower, load the bed crossbow with stones, and then launch it.
Although firing stones will have a shorter range than firing crossbows, when facing a trebuchet, stones are easier to use than crossbows.
Then, Zhang Xi saw that the trebuchets that had just scared him with earth-colored faces did not release the stones, but were scattered by the stones shot by the bed crossbows.
Zhang Xi was completely dumbfounded now. What is this? !
Well, now Wei Yan looks at Zhang Xi as if he were a fool.
Just this thing, just scared you like a bear? !
But before Zhang Xi could react, Wei Yan took the opportunity to shout.
"Generals, prepare to defend the city!"
After the trebuchet withdrew, Jiangdong Army's attack today began again.
(End of chapter)
