Chapter 1,334 Floating Bridge

The country is in troubled times and the death of important officials is not a good sign.

If Weiming Jingsi had died half a year ago, the two of them would only be secretly happy.

Wei Mingjingsi was the central figure who maintained the imperial party. In the later period of Bingchang's imprisonment and many domestic forces were suppressed again, Weiming Jingsi's existence was actually somewhat redundant.

However, the situation suddenly changed, and the death of Wei Ming Jingsi made Empress Dowager Liang and Liang Yimi feel extremely sad.

In four months, too many famous officials and generals of the Xia Kingdom were lost on the battlefield, and too many officials and tribesmen took refuge in the Song Dynasty.

The Xia Kingdom is a military state, and the army is the soul and life of this country.

When the army is strong, all opposition voices in the country will be suppressed through physical destruction, such as the armed parade massacre in Mobei two years ago.

And what about when the army is weak?

Precisely, what happens when the military that those in power can control is weak?

That is a violent and inevitable backlash.

This can be said to be another historical strange circle, a strange circle that militarism cannot escape.

Just like the lions on the grassland, the final fate of every lion king is to die from the challenge of the new successors.

This kind of struggle in the Xia Kingdom is basically reflected in the cycle of the imperial party using the new rear party to take power, massacre the previous rear party, and then the new rear party comes to power again, and then is massacred again by the later rear party.

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Back then, Li Jiqian made his fortune by marrying the daughters of local powerful men as his wives and concubines. As his power grew, so did his rear party.

So far in the Xia Kingdom, the rear parties that have been slaughtered include the Wei Mu clan, the Yeli clan, and the Mu Zang clan.

And Liang is now walking on this road of no return.

Just like a long wooden plank extending from a cliff, the danger increases with every step forward, and reality forces the Liang family to leave, even though everyone knows that the plank will eventually collapse because it cannot bear the load.

If it breaks, Liang will perish due to strong backlash.

After reciting the sutra, Empress Dowager Liang poured the last bottle of sesame oil on the wooden rafter tower, and Liang Yiming lit the wooden rafters.

The raging fire burned, and Xia Ren's funeral made Tian Yu, who was on the top floor of the brick tower, very curious.

After Jialiang left Xingqing Mansion, his first mission was over. Now his new mission was automatically transferred to the second one, which was to protect the madman in Muzhai.

Tian Yu thinks that the Duke is a bit redundant, what should I say? Even if he wants to arrest puppets, there are a lot of people with Wei names in Xia State, so why should he protect a madman?

What the politicians care about is really confusing to the soldiers.

In the distance outside the city, several people were riding fast horses from several directions. Immediately after, the alarm bells in the city rang, and there were some small commotions next to the blazing fire below.

Then the dignitaries began to leave, and Wei Mingjingsi's funeral ended hastily.

All the gates in Xingzhou City began to be locked, even though it was still noon.

You cannot see the Yellow River in Xingzhou. What you can see are several of the nine major canals, including the Guqin Canal, the Guhan Canal, the Xigan Canal, the Tanglai Canal, the Hanyan Canal, and the Huinong Canal.

Not long after, a huge crowd appeared on the horizon in the distance, beside the river, riding horses, driving cattle and sheep, driving cars... Countless people poured towards the capital.

There were also countless small boats on the river channel, and the boats were full of panic-stricken people, some of whom were very wealthy.

However, no one accepted them. What greeted them were cold city walls and locked gates.

Tian Yu's heart was filled with excitement, something big had happened!

…

Sixty miles downstream from Lingzhou, Linhe Town.

Sixteen huge cowhide rafts were put down here. Su You and Shen Kuo, with their engineering team, wanted to build a bridge as quickly as possible.

The records of the Chinese people building floating bridges are recorded in the Book of Songs, Daya, and Ming Dynasty.

The first pontoon bridge across the Yellow River appeared in the Spring and Autumn Period. Qin Jinggong's mother and brother Hou Zizhen built a pontoon bridge on the Yellow River near Linjin, Shanxi Province today, fearing that he would be killed by Qin Jinggong because he had stored too much property.

He fled from what is now Shaanxi to the Jin State with a wealth of "a car weighing a thousand chariots".

The first pontoon bridge connected by iron chains was the Tianjin Bridge built on Luoshui River in Luoyang, Henan Province in the first year of the Sui Dynasty. This bridge was in use until the Tang Dynasty. Li Shimin also wrote a poem: "The speed of the chariot is temporarily low, but the value of the wave is still high."

"Shocked, the water is swaying, the brocade flowers are lingering on the cable", to describe the scene when he was riding a chariot across the pontoon bridge. The hawk pattern painted on the bow of the boat and the brocade flowers on the cable were swaying on the waves of the river.

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The Song Dynasty also had its own large pontoon bridge. Taizu once built a pontoon bridge across the Yangtze River in Caishiji, Dangtu County, Anhui Province, which became a water channel for the Song army to march south of the Yangtze River and conquer the Southern Tang Dynasty.

When the national power increased, a larger pontoon bridge was built on the Yellow River north of Tongguan near Puzhou.

The cables of the Puzhou Floating Bridge are tied with eight iron oxen, which stand on both sides of the bank and weigh tens of thousands of kilograms each.

Later, there were stories about looking for iron oxen and floating iron oxen. Because of this, the great monk Huai Bing was recruited by Su You and participated in the discussion and decision-making of the theory of the Yellow River flowing north.

Because it is easy and fast to erect, pontoon bridges are often used in the military and have very prominent uses, so they are also called "battle bridges" today.

The construction of pontoon bridges is very particular. The style of the large pontoon bridge on the Yellow River has long been included in the "Building Style" by Su Youming and Li Jie.

In the hands of Su You and Shen Kuo, the pontoon bridge underwent many improvements.

The front of the sixteen large rafts is equipped with a large cable drum with a backstop gear, which is connected to the giant anchor. After landing, the sergeants on the raft adjust the length of the cable through the cable drum, so that the raft can be adjusted to a straight line.

The rafts are connected in series through iron chains, and then the bridge deck is laid on the iron locks to form the main body of a pontoon bridge.

The pontoon bridge can flexibly adjust the length of the cable according to the rise and fall of the water surface. The iron hook plates of the upper bridge are laid at both ends of the bridge. The place where the pontoon bridge overlaps is fixed on the steel shaft and can have a certain height.

Change redundancy.

This bridge was designed first and then constructed, using standard construction and assembly, allowing it to be built quickly and efficiently.

The only difficulty is the hooking of the iron cables.

But this didn't bother Su You. He directly used the Volu cannon, and let the Volu cannon shells carry thin ropes and be released to the other side of the river. Then he used the thin ropes to pull the thick ropes, the thick ropes pulled the thin ropes, and the thin ropes pulled the thick ropes.

, thick ropes were used to pull the iron chains, and it didn’t take long to complete the construction.

Anyway, they brought an army with more than 50,000 horses and thousands of chariots this time, and some of them had transport capacity.

In order to prevent the frightened horses from being too timid to cross the bridge, Su You also recalled the stone walls on the cliffs he saw when he entered Shaanxi on the Lychee Road. He used the carriage boards of boxcars to build high walls on both sides of the pontoon bridge.

The wooden walls were erected, and cloth was nailed to the insufficient areas to block the horses' sight.

With the scientific division of labor and work of six thousand people, the entire bridge was built in just one day and one night!

Early the next morning, war horses, military vehicles, thunderbolt artillery carriages, and ammunition supplies crossed the Yellow River and entered Jingzhou in a steady stream.

Gao Zunyu was in a very urgent mood. He was about to destroy the country. The pontoon bridge built by Su You and Shen Kuo allowed him to be armed to the teeth again and bought him five days!

Xin You, Su You and Shen Kuo led the two old armies of Dingbian and Bao'an and 20,000 Tibetan troops to Jingzhou. Gao Zunyu immediately left 3,000 cadet soldiers with Su You, and led Cao Nan and Sun Neng himself, along with Ganyi.

Dingguo, the three armies under control of He, marched towards Xingzhou to kill.

This is the most critical battle for Xia!

…

In Bianjing, at the Military Aircraft Department, Zhao Xu was wearing a new army winter uniform, sitting and waiting for reports from the front.

Sun Gu accompanied Zhao Xu, and in order to relieve Zhao Xu's nervousness, he said: "The day before yesterday, Zhuozhou, the left-behind committee member of Yanjing in the Liao Dynasty, sent me an ultimatum to Xiongzhou: The Xia Kingdom sent an envoy to say that the Southern Dynasty's troops had no name, and something unforeseen happened. Please tell everyone.

The joy between the two countries means rekindling old friendships."

Zhao Xu sneered: "Do they still have the energy to take care of this matter now?"

Sun Gu sighed: "Now the Liao Kingdom is in turmoil. After Yelu Yisun put down the Chongyuan Rebellion, he has been in power for fourteen years. Two large prisons have been built, and many court halls are empty. Nowadays, most of the Northern Dynasties are his party members. The Liao Emperor

Cleaning it up is really exhausting."

"Knowing that Dou Shunqing of Xiongzhou is not easy to get along with, he replied to Yelu Shensi and Xiao Weixin that the Lord of Daoxia was granted a title by the Song Dynasty. A border minister in the Song Dynasty said that Bingjian was often humiliated by the mother party. He ordered to change the matter and did not retaliate for the same evil.

They have led tens of thousands of troops to invade our borders, and we must attack them. Now that we have suffered repeated defeats, we have sent envoys to reveal their cunning intentions. I think they must have noticed it carefully."
Chapter completed!