Although Ma Long is not famous and was only mentioned once in "The Romance of the Three Kingdoms", in fact, he was also a very outstanding inventor of this era.
Especially in the combined use of ordnance and tactics, he has very outstanding attainments.
Moreover, unlike Ma Jun, a technical talent who purely made inventions, Ma Long himself was also accomplished in military strategy. In the early Jin Dynasty, he guarded the border all year round, put down the Qiang and Hu rebellions, and defeated the Qiang and Hu aliens. Dare to make mistakes.
Of course, those are all things in the future. Now Ma Long is only over 20 years old and comes from a poor family. In the realm of Cao Wei, his only way to get ahead is to first become a guest of a wealthy family and then obtain Recommended by aristocratic families, looking for ways to become an official.
Ninth Grade Zhongzheng made this thing, it has good points, but it is also very unfriendly to a poor scholar like Ma Long.
At this time, Malong was working as a retainer for the Wei County family and accumulating prestige, but he happened to encounter the Northern Expedition of the Han Army. On the one hand, the family wanted to protect themselves, and on the other hand, Malong needed such an opportunity to stand out, so He was recommended to Guo Huai by the wealthy family.
Then, Ma Long presented his first plan to Guo Huai.
Use three folded wooden boards to seal the gaps in the female wall of the city wall, and open more arrow holes on the wooden boards, so that the soldiers can hide behind the wooden boards and shoot arrows through the arrow holes.
The arrow opening does not need to be too large, but there must be enough shots, from high to low, so that the soldiers can adjust the shooting range according to the position of the arrow opening.
On top of the wooden board, Malone also had people cover it with grass and pour a large amount of water and silt. This not only reduced the impact of the arrows, but also prevented the enemy's fire attack from burning the wooden board. The arrows pulled from the grass were After a little repair, it can be recycled and used to defend the city.
After such improvements in defense facilities, the power of the Zhuge Liannu No. 2 machine has been greatly weakened. Although there are still some threats, the Wei army's defenders can already start to counterattack.
After this operation by the Wei County defenders, Zhang Xi was dumbfounded. Did Zhang Xun travel through time? !
Setting up boards at the top of the city and borrowing arrows from straw men are all Zhang Xun's tricks for guarding Suiyang.
For a time, Zhang Xi, Wei Yan, and Jiang Wei all had no choice but to use conventional siege methods against Wei County.
As this attack and defense lasted for more than half a month, Ma Long continued to improve the defensive equipment. The soldiers of the Wei army became more confident as they defended, and their morale was slowly recovering. Therefore, when Sima Yi led three thousand When the soldiers retreated into Wei County, they unexpectedly discovered that the atmosphere in Wei County was much better than Sima Yi had imagined.
As Sima Yi led his troops into Wei County, the morale of the Wei County defenders immediately increased after receiving reinforcements. Zhang Xi saw that the time was not right, so he temporarily withdrew his troops and set up camp ten miles south of Wei County to take a rest.
As for attacking a city, there was no rush to do so. It was common that a city could not be conquered for several months.
In addition, Sima Yi, an old fox, showed up. It was not a big deal for Zhang Xi to suspend the siege out of caution. Even Wei Yan thought this was normal.
However, the next war may not be easy to fight.
Jiang Wei was young and had not had much contact with Sima Yi, so he took the initiative to suggest to Zhang Xi and Wei Yan that they could use more troops to mislead Sima Yi, attracting Sima Yi to take the initiative to pursue him out of the city, and defeat the Wei army in field battles. This was what Jiang Wei used at the beginning. In this way, he deceived the defenders of Neihuang County, and finally it took only one day to conquer Neihuang, seize the official seal of Neihuang County, and by the way, fake military orders to trick Guo Huai.
Now Jiang Wei planned to repeat his old tricks and deceive Sima Yi. Not to mention Zhang Xi, even Wei Yan directly rejected this strategy.
Zhang Xi and Wei Yan both know Sima Yi very well. If they know that the old turtle arrives, they will most likely choose the strategy of holding on and relying on the city defense to stall for time. It is basically impossible to deceive Sima Yi with such a simple strategy.
Jiang Wei was very disappointed.
If Zhang Xi alone opposed his strategy, he could still try his best to persuade him. After all, Jiang Wei also knew that Zhang Xi was too "cautious" in using troops. In fact, doing so was not in line with the way of using troops.
But if even Wei Yan objects, then this strategy will most likely not be feasible.
But the problem is that now the Han Dynasty has more than 80,000 troops approaching Wei County, and the total number of defenders in Wei County is about 50,000. If you want to conquer such a city, how can you defeat it without a strategy? !
How else can we break it? The old way is to build a counterweight catapult.
No matter how strong your Wei County garrison's ordnance transformation capabilities are, and no matter how many wooden planks are on the city wall, they can't withstand being hit by stones.
It is not required to build enough catapults to collapse the city wall of Wei County. It is only necessary to build the number of catapults to make Sima Yi unable to sit still and have to go out of the city to fight.
According to Zhang Xi's estimate, it would only take about ten units to be built before Sima Yi would be unable to sit still.
In this way, Zhang Xi suspended the attack and began to gather his troops to defend on the spot. He sent people to cut down trees and build counterweight catapults.
As soon as Sima Yi saw Zhang Xi's behavior, Sima Yi knew what Zhang Xi planned to do.
After all, this Zhang Yuanchang may have a lot of tricks on defense, but his ability in offense is only that "one unique move".
But the problem is, with this "one trick", Zhang Xi can really "eat it all over the world". Sima Yi clearly knows that Zhang Xi is suspending the attack now to build a counterweight catapult, but he really has nothing to do.
The Shu thieves' counterweighted catapult has a too long range and is too powerful. If it weren't for the long construction time, inconvenient operation, easy damage, and difficulty in moving with the army, I'm afraid no one would be able to stop such a killer weapon.
Sima Yi also asked Ma Long if there was any way to deal with the threat of counterweighted catapults, and Ma Long also expressed that it was quite difficult.
It’s not that Malone can’t build a catapult, he actually can.
But the problem is that Malone can't build a catapult with such a long range. Even if he is on the defensive side and can take advantage of the height of the city wall, he still can't do it.
But, this matter is not without room for solution. Ma Long said that if Sima Yi could get him a counterweight catapult and let him figure out the key internal structure of the counterweight catapult, then he would have Be sure to imitate.
Even if the range of my imitation is still not as good as the original, it shouldn't be too different. Coupled with the height advantage of the city wall, it may be possible to destroy the Shu thieves' counterweight catapult by hitting it.
Ma Long's request immediately put Sima Yi in a dilemma.
Indeed, this is a good way to destroy the Shu thieves' siege weapons, but the problem is that based on Sima Yi's understanding of Zhang Xi, the purpose of this guy's current catapult may not really be to attack the city.
It is very possible that this little fox is using the counterweighted catapult as bait to lure him into taking the initiative to lead troops out of the city to fight.
Without the protection of the city wall, the individual combat effectiveness of the Shu pirate soldiers and the crossbowmen of the Shu pirate crossbowmen, who have extremely wide coverage and extremely long shooting time, are quite risky to fight outside the city.
It’s hard to say whether they can recapture the Shu thieves’ counterweighted catapult, but the casualties among their own soldiers will definitely be huge.
If the robbery fails once, Wei County will once again fall into the crisis of insufficient defenders after several trips back and forth.
But if he didn't go out of the city, Zhang Xi would definitely go with the flow and take advantage of the situation. He built more and more counterweight catapults, and finally relied on these catapults to collapse the city wall of Wei County.
At that time, Wei County could not hold on.
It doesn’t matter if you do it, or if you don’t do it.
Sima Yi weighed it back and forth, and finally decided to go out of the city to fight.
After all, if we don’t fight, the city will definitely be destroyed, but if we fight, there is still a glimmer of hope.
However, it is not as simple as leading the troops out of the city to fight against the Shu thieves. This requires waiting for the opportunity, winning with one blow, and retrieving the counterweighted trebuchet that Malong needs.
But I can't stand this back and forth.
In addition, Sima Yi sent more reconnaissance cavalry and attacked in all directions, trying to find the nearly 100,000 soldiers of the Shu thieves who were marching into Hebei Province as soon as possible. It had been two months since they attacked Hebei. Without the grain harvesting areas, it was basically impossible.
Moreover, Sima Yi already had some guesses.
Judging from the route of the Shu bandit's Northern Expedition, the Shu bandit's grain garrison should be along the line from Neihuang to Liyang. From the perspective of convenient supply for the army, the area from Baigou to Huangze is a very suitable camp. Grain land.
As long as the scouts can detect the Shu thieves' logistics and grain storage areas and Sima Yi divides his troops to attack and set them on fire, the siege of Wei County will definitely be solved.
(End of chapter)
