Liu Bei's army's siege seems a little different from what Liu Zhang had in mind.
Liu Zhang thought that when Liu Bei's army attacked the city, they should build ladders, wells, and chariots. If that didn't work, they would let soldiers attack the city and so on.
Liu Zhang is not someone who has never seen siege warfare. When Zhao Shi rebelled, the city of Chengdu was besieged. It was Liu Zhang who personally commanded and repelled the attack of Zhao Shi's army.
A siege battle is not that easy. Thirty thousand versus one hundred thousand, even if you fight hard, Liu Zhang will not necessarily lose in the end.
But what does it mean to rank dozens of chariots in a row? !
When Liu Xun saw it, his face suddenly turned pale, and he pulled Liu Zhang down from the top of the city.
What the hell kind of chariot? This is a catapult, a total of seventy or eighty catapults.
Back in Luocheng, Zhang Xi almost collapsed the south gate wall of Luocheng with thirty catapults. Now there are so many people waiting to die on the towers.
Liu Xun took his father and left quickly, staying as far away from the city tower as possible. If it were later, it would be too late.
Then, the defenders in Chengdu finally realized the power of the heavy catapults.
Seventy or eighty catapults, showing off their power together, some throwing stones, some throwing small stones, and some throwing some indescribable excrement. Okay, this is a bit immoral.
But this matter really wasn't Zhang Xi's idea. Some of the soldiers operating the trebuchets were really thinking too outside the box. When Zhang Xi found out, he quickly stopped this behavior.
It’s not that I’m afraid of being disgusted, it’s mainly because people of this era have a hard time telling whether there are any parasitic diseases or other infectious diseases in their Oriji. If there is a plague, then Zhang Xi will be the one to blame. Big.
But even so, after several days of catapults hitting the wall at the north gate of Chengdu, the shell of the city wall began to slowly crack and peel off.
The catapult is really not easy to defend against. After all, it is a means of long-range attack.
To deal with this kind of thing, you can either fight back with bed crossbows or send troops out of the city to burn it down.
It is relatively simple to knock down the bed crossbow, but the question is, who has the courage to brave the rain of stones and go up the city wall to control the bed crossbow? !
Furthermore, the bed crossbows were fixed on the city wall, so one less one would be damaged, but the catapult could be built at any time as long as there were trees, stones and time.
As for sending troops out of the city to fight in the field and burn down the catapults, you have to ask if you have the ability to break through the defensive positions set up by Zhang Fei.
Furthermore, if a catapult can hit a city wall, can't it adjust its range to hit people? !
The catapult is not impossible to break, it is just that it is difficult for the disadvantaged party to do it.
Later, the Southern Song Dynasty lost Xiangyang for almost the same reason. They couldn't defeat it outside the city, so they had to let the catapults hit them. Afterwards, the city defense and morale were gone, so all they had to do was surrender.
After three attempts to leave the city to burn down the catapults failed and resulted in the loss of troops and generals, no matter how anxious Liu Zhang was, no one was willing to leave the city again to die.
Although Liu Zhang now has nearly 30,000 garrison troops, he actually controls only 10,000 garrison troops. The other 20,000 people really obey the orders of the powerful families, and Liu Zhang cannot fully mobilize them.
When leaving the city to burn down the catapults, Liu Zhang had no intention of sending his own garrison, and sent troops from aristocratic families to take the risk.
But when Liu Zhang did this, the aristocratic family saw that since you, Liu Zhang, are so careless, then the aristocratic family would not risk their lives for the benefit of Liu Zhang.
If you don’t go, you won’t leave the city at all.
In this way, the catapults outside the north gate were still raging. After a slight pause, Liu Bei's army immediately launched an siege. This went back and forth several times. The defenders of the north gate suffered heavy losses. Four casualties were already suffered in ten days. Five thousand people.
What's even more terrible is that now, in addition to the north gate, catapults are slowly starting to appear in the other three gates.
The other three gates had seen the misery of the north gate. Now when he saw such siege equipment appearing in his own defense zone, the defender felt his scalp numb again.
But fortunately, the number of other three-door catapults is not as large as that of the North Gate. If you deal with it calmly, you can survive.
I just don’t know what the next battle will be like. If Liu Beijun manufactures such catapults on a large scale, no matter how strong and thick the city wall of Chengdu is, sooner or later it will be breached.
In fact, Liu Bei Group could indeed do this, but Liu Bei did not want to gain a dilapidated Chengdu city, so he did not do so.
The power of the catapult is not small, but the destructive power is great. After Chengdu is captured in the future, repairing the city wall will also be a very expensive task.
Therefore, Liu Bei concentrated his trebuchets on the north gate as much as possible, trying to use the damage of one city wall to keep the other three walls intact. If Liu Zhang could be completely smashed by the trebuchet and surrender, that would be the best.
But now Liu Zhang is still somewhat unwilling to surrender like this. He feels that he still has hope.
Cao Cao has become extremely powerful in recent years. As long as he personally leads his troops to the west, Zhang Lu will definitely not be able to stop him, and the defenders of Jiameng Pass will not be able to stop him for long.
On his side, even if the outer city wall of Chengdu was broken, there was still the Wengcheng. If the Wengcheng was broken, there was still the inner city. Liu Zhang felt that he was not at the end of his rope yet.
Therefore, Liu Zhang is indeed still persisting, insisting on the arrival of a turning point.
But in the end, Liu Zhang did not wait for the turning point he wanted to see, but instead waited for an unexpected figure-Ma Chao.
Yes, Ma Chao finally appeared in Chengdu.
Not only Liu Zhang didn't expect Ma Chao's appearance, but Zhang Xi didn't expect it either.
Zhang Xi originally thought that in this attack on Chengdu, Liu Zhang might not surrender and that he had to attack by force, so he desperately supervised the construction of catapults and even offered a plan to send Liu Xun back, which might create panic from within. But Ma Chao actually still It's really here.
Zhang Xi was wondering, why did Ma Chao come? Shouldn't he be arguing with those powerful people in Liangzhou? !
But Ma Chao did come, but not as Zhang Lu's general, but as a "one of the princes".
Because Ma Chao acted unethically in Liangzhou, he allowed surrender and then killed him when he was attacking Jicheng, which made the local powerful people in Liangzhou feel in danger, so they jointly set up a trap to trap Ma Chao.
After more than two months of struggle, Ma Chao was finally defeated. He was defeated and expelled from Liangzhou. His wife and children were all killed by the wealthy Liangzhou clan.
After the defeat, Ma Chao originally wanted to go to Hanzhong to join Zhang Lu, borrow troops from Zhang Lu, and then counterattack Liangzhou to avenge himself.
Yes, Ma Chao never really meant to take refuge with Zhang Lu. He just wanted to use Zhang Lu to deceive soldiers and horses from Zhang Lu. His purpose was to return to Liangzhou and become his prince.
But Zhang Lu's strength is really not that good at this time. If Ma Chao has a choice, he really doesn't want to join Zhang Lu.
At this time, Ma Chao heard that Liu Bei was attacking Yizhou and had even surrounded Chengdu. Ma Chao's little idea suddenly took action.
Compared to Zhang Lu, Liu Bei is a standard world hero.
Moreover, Liu Bei not only has Jingzhou in hand, but now he is about to capture Yizhou. Spanning the two states of Jingyi, Liu Bei is definitely much stronger than Zhang Lu.
If Ma Chao goes to join Zhang Lu, Zhang Lu can only lend a few thousand men to Ma Chao to counterattack Liangzhou. But if he goes to join Liu Bei, maybe Liu Bei will give him 10,000 horses.
But there is also a risk, that is, Liu Bei is harder to fool than Zhang Lu.
But now there are only two ways in front of Ma Chao, one is to seek refuge with Zhang Lu who can only defend Hanzhong, and the other is to seek refuge with the world-famous Liu Bei. Ma Chao made a decision with a little twist of his mind.
With Liu Bei's strength and ambition, he will definitely march into Liangzhou in the future, and if he goes to join him at this time, he will definitely be reused when Liu Bei conquers Liangzhou in the future.
At that time, with the support of Liu Bei, he could summon a large army in an instant if he returned to the Qiang tribe in Liangzhou and raised his arms.
With this large army, the best outcome for Ma Chao is to re-separate Liangzhou and become a prince. The worst outcome is to become a major contributor to Liu Bei's group's attack on Liangzhou. From then on, he will be granted the title of marquis and prime minister, restoring the glory of his ancestors.
No matter which angle you think about it, it's better than having nowhere to go now after losing the army.
Therefore, Ma Chao took a detour from the Qiang region in the northwest of Hanzhong and entered the northern part of Yizhou. At the same time, he wrote to Liu Bei, requesting to take him in.
As soon as Liu Bei received Ma Chao's letter, he immediately knew that the time had come to make an emergency landing in Chengdu.
On the one hand, Liu Bei asked Ma Chao not to show up for the time being, and to stop his troops and wait for a while.
On the other hand, Liu Bei sent a force of nearly ten thousand to meet Ma Chao, pretending to be Ma Chao's subordinates, and then asked Ma Chao to lead this force and appear outside the north gate of Chengdu.
What Liu Zhang saw was Ma Chao showing off his power outside the north gate.
At this time, the last luck in Liu Zhang's heart was completely shattered.
Because of the war and information delay, Liu Zhang did not know that Ma Chao came to surrender because he was defeated and out of power. According to his information, Ma Chao was still a Liangzhou warlord and a prince.
But now Ma Chao actually crossed Hanzhong and appeared under the city of Chengdu. What does this mean? !
First, Ma Chao, the Liangzhou warlord, united with Liu Bei.
In this way, if Cao Cao wants to march into Hanzhong, he must first deal with the coalition forces of Ma Chao and Liu Bei, and there will be no way to rescue him in a short time.
Second, Zhang Lu's grandson actually allowed Ma Chao to lead his troops south, which shows that Zhang Lu almost allied with Liu Bei.
Once Zhang Lu unites with Liu Bei, Hanzhong will not be so easy to fight. Even if Cao Cao comes in person, I am afraid he will not be able to easily win in front of the three coalition forces.
The third guy, Ma Chao, doesn’t have a very good character.
At the beginning of last year, Cao Cao wanted to attack Hanzhong via Guanzhong. Ma Chao and other princes in Guanzhong were afraid that Cao Cao would use the false route to destroy Guo, so they raised troops to fight and supported Han Sui as the governor.
But it is okay for others to raise an army, but it is a bit unethical for Ma Chao to raise an army. His father, Ma Teng, was still enjoying his old age in Yecheng at the time. Will his father survive Ma Chao's rebellion? !
Sure enough, although Cao Cao did not kill Ma Teng immediately, after defeating the coalition forces of Ma Chao, Han Sui and others in Guanzhong and expelling Ma Chao and Han Sui to retreat to Liangzhou, Cao Cao no longer had any worries. The first thing he did when he returned to Yecheng was to kill Ma Teng. The Ma Teng family was killed.
Ma Chao was a person that even his own father would not care about. When he appeared in Chengdu, once the city was defeated, Liu Zhang was a little afraid to think about it.
Liu Bei was a man who wanted to show some respect. Since he swore in public that he would not kill his family, Liu Zhang still believed it.
But Ma Chao didn't even care about his own father. After he turned around and captured the city, he really killed himself, and then Liu Bei took advantage of the situation and retreated 625. Anyway, it was not Liu Bei who did it himself. He pretended to cry twice. No one in the world will accuse Liu Bei of not keeping his promise.
Therefore, after Ma Chao appeared at the north gate of Chengdu, Liu Zhang struggled internally for more than ten days and finally decided to surrender to Kaicheng.
Since then, Liu Bei captured Chengdu and pacified Yizhou.
(End of chapter)
