On July 15th, under Xiangping City.

The atmosphere of the battle situation still reached the fixed point of death.

Because the entire territory of the four counties in Liaodong, except for the remote small counties that were also located in the hands of the Goguryeo people, the rest were swept away by the Han army under Liu Bei and initially controlled. Only Zhang Chun's last stronghold in front of him, Xiangping County, where the county seat is located.

However, since Xiangping can become the largest city in Liaodong, its defense is still quite solid.

The rammed earth city wall as high as four meters (9 meters 4); the female battlements, the city towers and arrow towers are equipped with defensive facilities; and the moat formed by the water of the Liao River all tell its easy defense and difficult attack.

Three days ago, the Han army had just built a dam and cut off the connecting waterway between the moat and the Liao River, turning the moat water into stagnant water.

Today, under Liu Bei's personal supervision, the Han army launched the first operation to fill the moat with a trench bridge chariot and a wooden donkey shield chariot. They also sent 6,000 archers to suppress the friendly forces at the west gate and the south gate at the same time to cover up the operation.

(Note: The Liaohe River outside the East Gate and the North Gate, so we cannot attack from those two directions)

After a day of tentative attack, the Han army lost more than a hundred people and only dozens of rebel archers were shot to death, but at least several gaps of all sizes were filled.

After all, facing the condescending shooting of the rebels on the city wall, even if the Han army archers are several times more numerous, the defense shields are still a disadvantage, and the exchange ratio is still at a disadvantage.

For a real siege, you must be prepared for this kind of mentality.

After one day of supervision of the battle, Liu Bei returned to the camp with a expressionless face, picked up a large scoop of cold water and drank it tons, and wiped his mouth: "What does Boya think about the situation of the war?"

It was already July, and Li Su was too hot, so he waved his feather fan: "It's just a strong battle, and now there is no room for tricks. Fortunately, Zhang Chun's men were surrounded by us in the city, and we could not harass our army to control other counties. Therefore, the autumn harvest work and tax collection in the counties in the Liaohe River Basin next month should not be affected.

For some counties that avoid war and famine, brothers can also declare the court's kindness and exempt taxes from this year. Anyway, the court does not know when we will recover, and the state and the court will not pay any taxes this year. This kindness should be in the name of brothers, so that the people will be grateful and have the same heart and virtue."

After recovering the territory before the autumn harvest, he was given a great reputation. For places where taxation is difficult and even if someone offends, he cannot collect much money and grain, Liu Bei can give a reduction, but the grace of this reduction must be remembered clearly. It is the great kindness of Liu Fujun.

Liu Bei also smiled and said, "Boya said that the war has not yet been fully accomplished, so he should first comfort me with the benefits of comforting the people."

Li Su put down his feather fan and said seriously: "This is the right way. As long as the entire Liaodong area is controlled by us, Zhang Chun will die sooner or later. He will not receive a single grain of food harvested this year's autumn. Even if he keeps it for a long time, he will starve to death sooner or later.

Although our army could not really wait for him to spend so long, the principle of attacking the heart cannot be ignored. We should even send our army to decree the counties, and the order of collecting and tax payment is like a favorable news. We can shoot the city into the city with a whistle and arrow letter. Let the soldiers guarding the city understand the truth and know that they will die sooner or later with Zhang Chun.

This not only can suppress the morale of the army defending the city, but also can persuade the aristocratic families in the city to kill the powerful aristocratic families out of anxiety. The brother has not encountered resistance from local aristocratic families since the beginning of his army. This is mainly due to Zhang Ju, who plundered very quickly, and many powerful people were robbed.

But in other words, Zhang Ju and Zhang Chun's actions actually helped us control the area and clear some obstacles and did the evil people.

Especially in Liaodong County, Changli and other places were small places before, with no well-known wealthy families, and occasionally there were some, and they moved to Xiangping in advance to avoid the war, or were forcibly kidnapped by Zhang Chun. Now, facing this last lonely city, it is better to think more about how to use a knife to kill people..."

"How can the imperial court use benevolent and righteous herders to kill people with a knife! Even if the powerful families store grain hidden in the hidden households, they are saved by all generations, and they do not take all their crimes and will not die. At best, they can only deal with those powerful people and powerful people in accordance with the law. How can they rebel without distinguishing right from wrong?" Liu Bei couldn't help but interrupt.

Li Su was stunned.

Liu Bei's reaction was so intense that he didn't expect.

After thinking about it, it was understandable that the world was in chaos and Liu Bei had not seen how local aristocratic forces fought against the mobilization of the princes after the prestige of the court completely collapsed, so the hatred and hostility towards the aristocratic forces could not be compared with Liu Bei ten or twenty years later in history.

Although the selfish and concealed household registration and land mergers have lasted for at least a hundred years, before Emperor Ling passed away, in the face of the mobilization of the court, the powerful families still showed great loyalty.

The imperial court allowed local armed forces to attack the Yellow Turbans and counterattack Zhang Ju and Zhang Chun Quxing. The powerful families also sent troops to attack. After the confrontation, although their private armed forces became stronger, they were nominally loyal and Han.

Today, Liu Bei has not yet reached the attitude of completely eliminating this aristocratic family that is "selfish but nominally loyal to the Han" one.

The reason why Li Su felt that "the forces of aristocratic families in the territory that could resist the princes should be suppressed as much as possible" was entirely because he was based on his understanding of history. He knew that the prominent families in Shu were erratic in history after Liu Bei entered Shu, and he was also well aware of the pain of Sun Quan being constrained by Gu Lu, Zhu and Zhang, the four tribes in Jiangdong.

So I felt that now that Liaodong is recovered, it is time to reorganize Liaodong’s land and hide its hidden roots, and to carry out a sacrificial settlement without any knowledge: these wealthy families fled to Xiangping City, and they used Zhang Chun’s sword to kill some, which was just right to defeat the local tyrants and divide the land...

Unfortunately, Liu Bei's cognitive level still needs to be upgraded.

Li Su had no choice but to settle for the second best first and wait for Liu Bei to adapt slowly:

"I am using any means. Since my brother is unwilling to clean up completely, at least he will kill the thief-fighting evil spirits and screen them. I remember when my brother followed Zhu Yan to fight against the Yellow Turbans, Zhu Yan once said, "Now the country is unified, only the Yellow Turbans rebel. If he is allowed to surrender, he will not be able to persuade him to be good." My brother also agreed deeply.

Therefore, since ancient times, those who suppress rebels will be rewarded by those who are the first to surrender, and those who are the last to surrender will be killed. This is a natural reason. Today, our army should also whistle the arrows to express the truth, and those who expressly say that they will reward and offer the doors seriously, and those who still fight side by side with Zhang Chun when the city is broken are severely punished. This is also to highlight the trust of the court, so brother should not resist."

This statement slightly narrowed the scope of the attack, and with the views of the three heroes of the Yellow Turbans at that time, Liu Bei couldn't refute it. After thinking about it, it was so nice to give up the spot.

"Since that's the case, Boya will deal with it by himself... there is no need to ask for instructions!" Liu Bei decided to be clean without seeing him.

Li Su smiled proudly and was about to not mention it.

...

In the following days, the moat near the West Gate and South Gate of Xiangping City was almost destroyed.

It is already a moat with a stagnant ditch, and it is easy to be filled in several sections without paying much.

The Han army successively destroyed the sheep and horse wall, suspension bridge, and heavy siege equipment. Finally, they could reach the city directly.

Or they hit the door, or they dug rammed earth to destroy the wall, or they climbed the city with flying ladders. The two sides fought back and forth, and casualties increased day by day, and the pressure on the rebels felt was getting greater and greater.

On July 20th, when the city was siege, the Han army under the city finally shot some letters from the people in the city, especially the aristocratic families, through the way of tying the books.

Ordinary people are illiterate, but some of them still fall into the hands of those wealthy families.

The Gongsun family, who have been officials in Xiangping County and Xuantu County throughout the ages, and the Tian family, a famous family member in Liaodong and western Liaoning, have received "open letters" from Li Su.

The two surnames Gongsun Hetian are also very common in the western part of Youzhou, with many branches.

The head of the Gongsun family in Xiangping is named Gongsun Zhao. He has served as the magistrate of Xiangping County and the magistrate of Gaojuli County. He has a cousin and also served as the magistrate of Xigaima. Gongsun Zhao has no relatives with Gongsun Zan, so he is considered a relatively distant branch of the Gongsun family.

The local head of the Tian family was Tian Shao, who also had very distant relatives with famous officials of the Tian family in Youzhou who were later generations.

These two people didn't know that although they escaped the Zhang Ju and Zhang Chun rebellion in history and were able to protect themselves, they were finally attacked and killed by Gongsun Du after he was appointed as the prefect of Liaodong by Dong Zhuo.

Li Su was not targeting anyone, and he did not name his letter, and he didn't even know the name of Gongsun Zhao and Tian Shao.

But as long as Li Su vaguely remembers that when Gongsun Du was the prefect of Liaodong in history, he killed a group of people and settled in the position of the prefect of Liaodong, then Li Su would not mind having a date or not, and would use Zhang Chun's hand to kill some aristocratic families to pave the way.

Gongsun Zhao and Tian Shao have the ability to control a city gate. It would be best if Xianmen came to surrender. Then leave the aristocratic family in Xianmen to be promoted and appease the "first righteousness", killing several other ignorant families to punish the "last surrender". Anyway, Li Su will not suffer any loss no matter what.

After the Arrow Book entered the city, everyone in the city was in danger.

Because Gongsun Zhao and Tian Shao were too hesitant, they were attacked by Zhang Chun, who was already questioning and suspicious, and launched a civil war in the city. A civil war broke out with the private soldiers of the Gongsun family and the Tian family.

The direct relatives of the Gongsun family and the Tian family, hundreds of dead soldiers, were killed by Zhang Chun, but Zhang Chun also paid the price of hundreds of casualties in the war.

After the war in the past few days, the rebels defending the city, which had only about 4,000 people, had lost the total strength of thousands of people after this wave of internal friction and killing each other, leaving only 3,000 troops to fight, and the battle situation became more and more brilliant.

Liu Bei outside the city heard that Zhang Chun had massacred and cleaned the aristocratic families because he was afraid that the aristocratic families would surrender in the city, and quickly accelerated the pace of siege.

On the third day after Gongsun Zhao was killed, when Liu Bei once again attacked the city with all his might, some of the remaining big families in the city were afraid that the city would be classified as "last surrender" after it was broken, so they finally mustered up the courage to cooperate inside and outside and launch street fighting in the city at the same time.

Although Zhang Chun was already very cautious, the city gates on all sides allowed his direct troops to defend themselves, and it was impossible to give private soldiers from small families in the city a chance to give them a chance. However, such street fighting also restrained at least half of Zhang Chun's defending troops for a while.

With only more than a thousand soldiers fighting with Liu Bei on the four walls, there were finally many loopholes.

On the evening of July 20th, it was located at a section of the city wall north of the west gate of Xiangping City.

There were two sections of the city walls before that, because Han soldiers hid in wooden donkey carts to dig rammed earth, the collapsed soil had already formed a wall slope, which was no longer as steep as before when it was intact.

Dian Wei and Zhou Tai led hundreds of Danyang soldiers and warriors, both of whom were full of energy. They replaced friendly forces that had spent most of the day before and launched a sudden charge.

Dian Wei wore a double-layer heavy armor first, while Zhou Tai changed to a steel knife shield, and used two shields to cover the arrows with both hands. He held the steel knife in his mouth and rushed up along the slope of the dug wall.

It was not until he rushed to the top of the wall to enter melee that Zhou Tai threw out a shield and smashed an enemy soldier, then put the knife in his mouth in his hand, and turned over and slashed forward.

Hundreds of Danyang soldiers charged in intensive charges, and their sharp axes and hammers flew over. They finally occupied the city wall north of the west gate and stood firm. At this point in the war, Zhang Chun's troops finally could no longer hold on and completely collapsed.

Dian Wei led his men to open the Xicheng Gate, let Guan Yu and Zhang Fei ride their horses directly into the city, and the entire battle entered a bloody street battle.

Late at night, Zhang Fei finally stabbed a person with a snail spear with a completely broken head, and came to Liu Bei excitedly to perform his merits: "Brother, Zhang Chun's head is here! You can't be wrong. My second brother and I led our troops around him and killed all the hundreds of his personal soldiers."

Liu Bei nodded with relief: "Good job! What's the situation in the city?"

Zhang Fei: "In addition to the Gongsun family, the Tian family was killed by Zhang Chun, and there were three other families with large surnames. The relatives suffered a lot of losses, but they all said that they should make contributions to help the war and asked the eldest brother to receive it.

As for the people, Zhang Chun did not kill indiscriminately, but he didn't save much food, so he was robbed by Zhang Chun. Zhang Chun still had a lot of money and food that had not been used up, and they were all hoarded in his pseudo-governor's mansion, which was the former Liaodong Prefect's Mansion."

Liu Bei bit his lip and thought for a while, patted Zhang Fei on the shoulder: "There is no need to be told to the public. Then we will provide relief to the people on our own."

Although the money was originally from the people and was stolen by the rebels, since it was to provide relief to the people who were suffering from military disasters, Liu Bei still had to do this favor, so that the people would owe him personal favor.

This is also why Liu Bei has learned bad things from Li Su recently.

Zhang Fei didn't know the twists and turns in it, but he only knew how to do what the elder brother told me, and there was no need to talk too much.

The Liaodong County Governor's county has become a piece of white paper, which is very suitable for repainting.

Liu Bei couldn't help but relax his heart:

Although Boya did not say that he wanted to kill the Gongsun family and the Tian family, Zhang Chun helped him do this after all. Moreover, looking at these land deeds, at least thousands of hectares of fertile fields on the Liaohe Plain could be used as mature fields for the imperial court and rented them to landless refugees at high prices...

With such great benefits, even if Liu Bei wants to completely uphold benevolence and righteousness, he has to be a little moved.

"Forget it, I didn't expect that if I could get so much homeless land to the people of the garrison, I would rather ask less about it in the future. As long as Boya finds an excuse and does not lose his reputation, let him do it... unless it will ruin the reputation, we will stop it."

Liu Bei thought vaguely in his heart.

——

PS: Third update! Completely pay off the debts of the reward and first booking/order!
Chapter completed!