Kong An, who had just surrendered, was appointed by Liu Yu to join the military of Dongguan County, that is, to join the army of Dongguan County. For the captain who originally commanded a hundred or ten people, it was already a step to the top.
Kong An's first task after taking office was to invite all the powerful people from Dongguan to the army for Liu Yu to watch the battle. Of course, these powerful clan leaders did not have to come, but at least they had to send their clan members.
Liu expected that even the powerful people from Dongguan County would not dare to come in person. As long as their clan members saw the Qingzhou Army's military strength and publicized it after returning, they could leave the Qingzhou Army among the powerful people. The prestige made it convenient for Liu Yu to send officials to govern Dongguan County.
However, what Liu Yu didn't expect was that wherever Kong An went, the powerful people from Dongguan County came in person, and no one could shirk their way. Although Liu Yu asked Kong An to tell these powerful people that if he didn't come, he would not come. You can send your clan members here.
When Liu foresaw a large group of powerful clan leaders from Dongguan County gathering in his military camp, he couldn't help but look at Kong An with admiration.
This Kong An is not only very smart, he is also very good at completing tasks.
Liu Yu asked Kong An what method he used to make these powerful people come obediently.
"Hey, I told them that the 30,000 troops under the general's command can break through Dongguan City in a blink of an eye. After the city is broken, they will have to deal with those powerful people who are unwilling to surrender. I will speak up for them in front of the general. , I have won this opportunity to obey orders in front of the formation, and there is no need to spend any manpower or material resources. As long as one person from each family comes to the scene and shows a sense of surrender in front of the general."
"That's all you said?" Liu Yu asked.
Kong An said with a relaxed look on his face, spreading his hands.
"Yes, General, that's all."
Liu Yu was a little speechless about this. He originally thought that the powerful people in Dongguan County could still have some integrity, but he never expected that none of these so-called famous people in the county thought about rescuing the prefect who was trapped in Dongguan City. , and they rushed to come to Liu Yuan to express their loyalty.
Well, it's all very timely.
After these powerful men from Dongguan County entered the Qingzhou Army's camp, they were suppressed by the Qingzhou soldiers wearing iron armor in the camp.
These are thousands of strong and strong warriors.
Among the tycoons in Dongguan County, the most powerful tycoon at this time has only more than a thousand disciples in its clan, and they are all miscellaneous soldiers without armor. How can they be the opponents of these Qingzhou tiger and wolf soldiers.
Sure enough, the threatening words spoken by the county soldier Qiu Kong'an were not bluffs, but the truth.
If he hadn't come to Qingzhou Army today to show his loyalty, he might have suffered the disaster of destroying his family and annihilating his family in the future.
In this way, Qiu Kong'an's face is no longer so hateful in the eyes of these Dongguan tycoons. The original contempt for Kong An, a villain who succeeds in his ambitions and a fox who pretends to be a tiger, has long since disappeared. Some powerful people even saw Kong An in Qingzhou. General Liu Yu frequently showed his face in front of him, and he had already begun to plan to fawn over Kong An later.
However, these Dongguan powerful people's fear of the Qingzhou Army has only just begun.
On the second day, this group of Dongguan heroes were arranged into the Qingzhou Army's formation, and they watched the Qingzhou Army's siege from a distance behind the front formation.
After Liu Yu besieged Dongguan City, he had already sent letters to the city, which were of course words of persuasion to surrender. However, after sending letters twice in a row, they all seemed to sink into the sea and received no response at all.
Seeing that the Qingzhou Army's breeding trebuchets had been set up, Liu Yu immediately waved his order and began bombarding the walls of Dongguan City.
Thinking of attacking the city this time, Liu Yu ordered the craftsmen who were already proficient in making trebuchets to accompany the army. Other axes, saws, mortise and tenon fittings, etc. were also carried with the army. He only needed to wait until the time to attack the city to collect some hard wood. Can be manufactured quickly.
The reason why they did not carry bronze cannons was because the bronze cannons made by Qingzhou craftsmen were basically three-pounder models.
If the artillery can knock down the rammed earth city wall, it must be at least a twelve-pounder. Otherwise, the destructive power of the too-n artillery on the city wall is not as good as that of a trebuchet.
However, with the current level and experience of Qingzhou craftsmen, the large-caliber bronze cannons produced are not only heavy in weight and very inconvenient to carry, but also have many problems with the quality of the cannons. Just boring the inner wall of the cannon bore is a hugely expensive task. .
Therefore, Liu Yu temporarily gave up the manufacture of large-caliber bronze cannons, and instead prepared some important accessories for trebuchets in advance to carry with the army, which could greatly shorten the time to manufacture trebuchets on the battlefield.
During the historical Mongolian and Yuan attacks on the Southern Song Dynasty, Huihui craftsmen in the Yuan army prepared a large number of key components in advance, which were used to manufacture Huihui cannons before the battle, and could also be used to repair damaged Huihui cannons. These measures greatly shortened the huge body of the Huihui cannon. The time of return artillery erection.
As Liu Yu gave the order to attack, the ten tall counterweight trebuchets were pulled up by the many big and round Qingzhou soldiers through the winch. The long-arm throwing pole that was originally high in the air was slowly lowered to close The height of the ground.
At this time, two strong men came out from behind the trebuchet and worked together to put a spherical stone bullet into the leather bag connected to the throwing rod. The tough cowhide completely wrapped the hundred-ten-pound stone bullet in it.
The Dongguan tycoons who were watching not far away stared at everything in front of them.
The equipment set up by the Qingzhou soldiers seemed to be used for siege, but the powerful men of Dongguan County were inevitably a little doubtful about the power of these siege equipment.
After all, the stone bullets carried by two strong men weighed more than a hundred kilograms, and these siege stone cannons were so far away from Dongguan City. It seemed difficult to throw them so far.
Just when a group of Dongguan County magnates were suspicious, with a trumpet sound, the Qingzhou Army issued an order to bombard the city wall.
Behind each trebuchet, there was a strong soldier holding a sledgehammer. After hearing the order, he raised the sledgehammer high, and then slammed a lock pin on the base of the trebuchet.
After the lock pin was smashed, the rope restraint of the trebuchet's throwing rod was released. Under the sudden descent of the heavy breeding box at the other end, the long throwing rod was quickly thrown upward, and the cowhide bag located on the chassis slide rail was thrown. Under the traction of the rope, draw a beautiful arc with the tip of the throwing rod.
As the throwing pole reached its highest point in a vertical posture, the stone bullets in the leather pocket also reached their fastest speed. At the same time, the rope hanging from the top of the throwing pole also broke away from the iron hook. Without the restraint of the leather pocket, , the heavy stone bullets carried huge potential energy and flew towards Dongguan City.
Several dull loud noises sounded near the Dongguan City Wall.
This kind of breeding trebuchet is very powerful, but its accuracy is extremely unstable.
The first round of launches only achieved one out of ten hits. However, even this single hit caused huge damage to the dilapidated Dongguan City Wall.
The upper part of the city wall that was hit was not only the rammed earth crenels that were smashed and disappeared, but also the wall behind the crenellations also suffered subsequent blows.
Liu Yuneng could clearly see that there was originally a boiling cauldron on the city wall where he was hit. It should have been filled with boiling water or dung water, which was used to pour boiling water or dung water into the attacking Qingzhou Army. After the stone bullet hit, The boiling cauldron was also smashed and overturned, scalding a large area of the defenders who had no time to escape. They immediately let out huge screams and howls, and even Liu Yu could hear those screams.
The Dongguan tycoons who were watching the battle from behind also had a look of horror on their faces. In front of such a powerful stone cannon, there was no such thing as impregnability, let alone a fragile city wall of rammed earth, even a stone fort. It certainly can't withstand the continuous bombardment.
The Dongguan City Wall, which had not been repaired and maintained for several years, could not hold up for long under the bombardment of the Qingzhou Army's counterweight trebuchets.
When two gentle slopes collapsed, the Qingzhou Army soldiers who had already been in position immediately launched an siege. The defenders, who had already lost morale, either turned around and fled, or crawled on the ground and surrendered.
The Dongguan County Sheriff, Chang Shi and other officials in the city were all killed in the rebellion.
After this battle, all the powerful people in Dongguan County were frightened by the terrifying strength of the Qingzhou Army. After receiving Liu Yu's guarantee that their land and territory would remain unchanged, these powerful people all fell in front of reality.
Liu You left 500 soldiers to guard Dongguan City to stabilize the rear. After a short day of repairs and replenishments, the rest of the Qingzhou Army continued to move south.
Just a few days later, several cities in Langya County such as Dong'an and Yiqu along the way fell into the hands of the Qingzhou Army.
Later, Liu Yu led the Qingzhou Army to join the Qingzhou Army of Wu Xin who had just captured and occupied Zhongqiu City in Langya County.
After occupying Zhongqiu of Langya County, Kaiyang, the seat of Langya County, was less than fifty miles south of the Qingzhou Army.
"Although the troops in Kaiyang City are not strong in combat power, they are not large in number. They are unable to retreat, so there is nothing we can do against them for the time being."
Seeing Liu Jue, Wu Xin, the leader of the east route, started talking.
According to the original idea, Wu Xin should lead his troops to march westward from Ju County, Chengyang County, capture Mouxiang and Zhongqiu along the way, and then surround Kaiyang, in order to block the route of people from Langya County escaping south. After all, if it was because of the war, It was meaningless to Liu Yu to scare away all the people in Langya County and only get an empty shell of the county.
However, Wu Xin's march was not smooth. The mountain roads and resistance encountered along the way forced him to meet Liu Yu at Zhongqiu, which was a little late in the plan.
However, after analysis by Liu Yu, Wu Xin and other ministers, they felt that this situation would not greatly affect the scheduled results.
Liu Yu has seen the strong integrity of Dongguan County. These people basically regard land and Dingkou as life.
If you flee your hometown, not only will you not be able to take the land with you, but you will also have to worry about the people who can take it with you. Not only is there the possibility of escape, but you will also have to face fatigue, disease, bandits, etc. on the way. A series of life and death issues.
Sure enough, when Liu Yu led the rendezvous Qingzhou Army and arrived at Kaiyang City, the seat of Langya County, he did not find a large number of fleeing soldiers along the way.
From this point of view, these common people and scholars in Langya County are now in a "relatively stable mood" stage.
After defeating a sneak attack by the defenders, Liu Yu ordered the Qingzhou Army to begin the siege and build siege equipment. When the time came, he would conquer Kaiyang City and occupy Langya County as soon as possible.
This Langya County is indeed a famous county in the world. The city walls of Kaiyang City are much stronger than those of Dongguan County, and the defenders of Kaiyang City are obviously more defensive in strategy.
After the Qingzhou Army used trebuchets to knock down several city walls, the defenders in the city were always able to re-block the gaps with gravel, bricks and wood as soon as possible.
As a result, Liu Yu, who was unwilling to bear too many casualties of soldiers, found it difficult to quickly conquer Kaiyang City.
There was no other way but to carry out continuous bombardment to attack the defenders.
Finally, when the defenders in the city were exhausted and began to show signs of slackness and weakness, Liu Xuan knew that the moment to launch a final all-out attack would soon come.
At this time, almost two months had passed since Liu Yu's attack on Dongguan County began.
Just when Liu Yu had just summoned his generals to supervise their subordinates and prepare to conquer Kaiyang City within two days, an unexpected visitor suddenly arrived that Liu had expected.
The emperor of Luoyang, the emperor of Jin Dynasty, Sima Chi, sent an envoy.
This envoy, riding on the carriage representing the envoy of the Emperor, followed a group of guards holding ceremonial soldiers and holding a scepter, and came to the vicinity of the Qingzhou Army.
This formation of the emperor's envoys was something that all the Qingzhou soldiers had never seen or heard of. Those gorgeous and majestic ceremonial guards of the emperor's envoys had a great impact on the soldiers of the Qingzhou army, who were known for their simplicity.
The Qingzhou scouts who were patrolling around on guard were initially wary of these strange soldiers and horses that appeared swaggeringly. After knowing that they were the emperor's messengers, they became a little more respectful and fearful.
This was clearly felt when Liu Jie saw the scout leader who reported the matter.
When Liu saw a group of dozens of so-called emperor's envoys, he even knew that many officers and soldiers in the Qingzhou Army had some instinctive fear or awe of the nominal emperor, even though many people knew the current emperor. Sima Chi is just a puppet, but he still has a feeling of awe in his heart.
After seeing the ceremonial guards of the so-called emperor's messenger, Liu Jianjuan realized that they were just some silver-like pewter nuggets, so he didn't pay much attention to them.
Thinking about it this way, the so-called emperor's envoy must have come to ask Liu Yu to withdraw his troops in the name of the emperor.
When the emperor's messenger asked Liu Yu to kneel down to receive the imperial edict, Liu Yu remained unmoved.
Because Liu Yu had already seen the awe of the emperor in the eyes of many generals and soldiers. If Liu Yu had seen an emperor's messenger who was like a cat and a dog, and simply knelt down to greet the edict, then Liu Yu's sole authority in the Qingzhou Army would be lost. It will be greatly affected.
What if one day, when Liu Yu is not in the army, the emperor's envoy, or the emperor himself, directly enters the Qingzhou army with an edict and a guard of honor, wouldn't he be able to easily replace Liu Yu.
Seeing Liu Yu's fierce expression, the emperor's envoy with a majestic face had to summon up his last courage and read the emperor's edict quickly and loudly with a trembling voice.
Finally, he pretended to be calm and shouted.
"Liu Yu, the emperor's edict is here, why don't you pay tribute to it quickly?"
After the edict was read out, the Qingzhou Army generals and soldiers present all changed their awe-inspiring attitude and became agitated.
Many Qingzhou Army generals shouted loudly one by one.
"General, this is an arbitrary order, you must not obey it!"
