Dense arrows were like a swarm of locusts, covering the top of the city. Their tail feathers vibrated in the air, making a strange and clear sound. The roars and shouts of soldiers from both sides filling the battlefield, as well as the sounds of swords, shields, guns and halberds clashing, could not be heard.
Cover it all up.
The battle around the Lantian City Wall lasted for more than ten days and had now entered a fever pitch.
The northern city wall was full of gaps destroyed by the Western Region stone cannons, but the defenders still persisted. Their armors were stained with blood. They still stubbornly raised their sharp knives to chop off the enemy's heads and raised their spears.
He stabbed at the enemy's chest and abdomen and tried his best to block the gap with his flesh and blood.
The setting sun cast its last splendid rays on the clear evening sky, then sank into the Western Mountains, adding a dark atmosphere between heaven and earth.
Seeing several gaps, they were unable to successfully break into the city, and the casualties were high. At this moment, the enemy army issued an order to withdraw their troops. Dozens of knights galloped around the outside of the city wall shouting orders. The enemy troops who had desperately rushed towards the gap in the city wall a moment ago were
Like a dark tide, quickly receding to the north.???????????????
The exhausted defenders stood on the incomplete city wall, watching the enemy troops retreat. Some people couldn't wait to sit against the wall. They didn't have much intention to go out of the city to fight back. They wanted to repel the enemy troops again.
lucky.
The enemy showed no signs of attacking at night, but at the tornado gun position three to four hundred paces away, the enemy was busy again.
At this time, the defenders also gradually removed the city wall and hid in the war sheds built with double-layered pine logs behind the city wall. Only a few generals were left at the top of the city to monitor the enemy's movements. The civilian men who were waiting under the city picked up baskets and
Fill the gap with a load of soil and rocks mixed with lime and grass clippings, and tamp it down with a stone roller.
The cyclone cannon, the stone cannon from the Western Regions, was activated. The stone bullets whistled in the air. The first shot hit the city wall accurately. You could feel the ground shaking slightly. The bricks and stones on the city wall were splashed, and there were cracks like that.
shocking.
The firing frequency of the more than twenty cyclone cannons outside the city is not too high. It takes about one or two sticks of incense to fire one round. However, each stone bullet weighs more than a hundred kilograms, and the already scarred city wall becomes more and more incomplete.
, the civilians who risked their lives to climb up the city wall to fill the gap also suffered heavy casualties. When stone bullets hit the city, houses and walls collapsed, causing a large number of casualties.
A school captain climbed up the city wall and walked into a dilapidated war shed.
At this time, the sky had darkened, and it was impossible to distinguish the trajectory of the stone bullets flying in the air. There were as few torches as possible at the top of the city, so that the enemy could not observe the trajectory of the stone bullets, which would reduce the accuracy of the cyclone cannon.
"The women and children have all been evacuated through Xiling fortress..."
A stone bullet fell nearby and he felt the trembling on the soles of his feet. The captain was somewhat frightened and reported to Gu Cong.
"It's been a few days since my third uncle arrived in Biyang, but you still haven't received a reply?" Gu Cong looked away from the enemy camp in the distance and turned to ask the captain.
The enemy's offensive was so fierce that Gu Cong could hardly rest for a moment these days. He felt that the time was unbearable and very long every day, but he also felt that it was a long time before his third uncle Gu Jian set off from Lantian to Biyang.
The Gu family was not unaware of the importance of Lantian and other fortresses to the enemy forces in Shaanxi, but in the past few years they had occupied the Lantian fortresses north of the Qinling Mountains and successfully repelled enemy attacks many times.
On the one hand, the vassal troops surrendered in Shaanxi and other places did not have a strong will to fight in the early days, and their siege equipment was crude. The siege capabilities of the Chihu troops were also quite weak. They abandoned tens of thousands of corpses in front of Lantian Zhucheng Walled Areas during multiple attacks.
There was no progress.
On the one hand, the Gu family has been running the fortress at the northern foot of the Qinling Mountains for several years, so the defense is tighter and stronger. The Gu family also hopes to hold the line of Lantian to ensure that the frontline penetrates from the depths of the Qinling Mountains to deter the enemy forces occupying Shaanxi, and even
One day, they will counterattack Shaanxi and push the frontline to the north of the Wei River.
Therefore, the Gu family was still very confident to hold the front line of Lantian, and also deployed a large number of elite troops to strategic locations such as Ziwu Valley and Lantian, vowing to stop the enemy's advance outside the Qinling Mountains.
However, after the enemy captured Qingyangyu, Gu Cong and other direct line military generals of the Gu family led several elite counterattacks but failed to recapture Qingyangyu. As more and more enemy troops gathered from the north of the Wei River, their equipment and fighting will were even more difficult.
When it was stronger than expected, Gu realized for the first time that Lantian might be lost.
Gu Jian, the governor of Shangzhou and the military supervisor, rushed to Biyang for help only on the fourth day after the enemy officially launched a strong attack on Lantian City.
Gu Cong said that currently the women and children in Lantian and other places have been evacuated towards Shangzhou, but in the end whether Lantian will stay or abandon it, we have to wait for the response from Biyang.
In any case, if there is a slight possibility, who is willing to easily abandon the only bridgehead north of the Qinling Mountains and move forward?
…………
…………
After hearing that Gu Jian came to meet him, Xu Huai also hurried back to Biyang from Xiangcheng.
There has just been a snowfall in Nanyang. It was not heavy. There was only some snow on the eaves, courtyard walls and treetops.
The weather was cold and cold. Xu Huai had just changed out of his armor when he returned to the house. He didn't even say a few words to Liu Qiong'er and Wang Xuan. Shi Zhen rushed over to meet them first.
"It has been two days since Gu Jian arrived in Biyang. Dongchuan still wants to hold Lantian and Ziwu Valley at the northern foot of the Qinling Mountains at the same time. At least he hopes to hold on until the Falcon Ridge Plank Road is opened. A rough estimate is that it will take about a year -
-Actually, what should be said is that we have sent people to Jinzhou to inform Gu Jiqian a long time ago. It was Gu who avoided the situation and refused to respond. Neither family had the opportunity to sit down and seriously discuss the defense issues of Shangzhou. Gu Jian delayed
What else can you do if you come here at this time? I have already told Gu Zhizhou about Jingxiang's difficulties. If you are out of favor, you can find an excuse not to see him." Shi Zhen said about how he came forward to recruit Gu Jian in the past two days.
For details, I am not sure whether Xu Huai is willing to meet Gu Jian.
"You still have to meet people," Xu Huai stretched out his hand and asked Wang Xuan to help him tie his belt, and said, "If we are all stingy about seeing each other, all the friendship will be lost in the end..."
The second northern expedition to Yan was defeated. Xu Huai and the Chushan people guarded Xishan, Guanluishan and other places, relying to a certain extent on the support of Fuzhou; they traveled thousands of miles to attack Taiyuan. Although the Gu family did not directly send troops from Fuzhou, they
Other aspects also provide great support.
With these origins, even if Jingxiang and Dongchuan had great differences in their choice of Lantian and Shangzhou, Xu Huai would not hide from Gu Jian.
Xu Huai changed his robe and walked to the study with Shi Zhen. Soon Gu Jian came from the post house to meet him.
Gu Jian is the second-ranking figure in the Gu family after Gu Jiqian. They met in Fuzhou in their early years. Gu Jian was just in his early fifties and served as the military commander of Fuzhou. He was very high-spirited. However, these years have passed, especially with Chi Hu.
After fighting hard, Gu Jian's temples were already gray and he looked more aged.
"After seeing each other for several years, Marquis Xu's spirit is even higher than before!" After seeing the ceremony, Gu Jian sat down behind the long desk opposite Shi Zhen and started talking about the hardships and cruelties of Dongchuan soldiers and horses guarding the fortresses at the northern foot of the Qinling Mountains these days.
.
Xu Huai listened quietly and learned that even two or three years after the cyclone cannon was put into the battlefield, Dongchuan still had not let go of the old concept of "good at riding and fighting, poor at attacking cities" towards the Red Husbands. This time he suffered a lot.
suffering.
In fact, before the complete conquest of Khitan in the fifth year of Tianxuan, when the Chihu people consolidated the forces in Monan and Mobei, they built a city at the location of their royal tent, and recruited merchants and craftsmen from the Western Regions and food to mine for them.
Mines, armor, and war machinery; when making final preparations to conquer the Khitan, the Chihu people also formed a large-scale siege infantry based on the tribes that the Mobei generals had surrendered to.
In the first three or four years of the Red Husband's invasion of the south, the reason why they still gave people the impression of being incompetent in attacking cities was mainly because their cavalry troops marched from Hedong and Hebei to the Central Plains.
The speed of the advance was too fast, and the speed of the siege troops moving south lagged far behind the cavalry troops.
After that, the Chihu people gathered a large number of surrender troops in Hedong, Hebei, Shaanxi, and Hehuai. However, the main force of the siege infantry they organized in the early stage did not continue to go south. They mainly moved west to the southern foot of Yinshan Mountain to prepare for the final conquest of the entire Dangxiang territory.
Prepare.
In the past two years, not only the four to five million surrendered soldiers and horses of Chi Hu in Shaanxi, Heluo, Jingxi, Xusu and other places have completed the reorganization and reorganization of military households, captured and recruited two to three hundred thousand craftsmen from the Central Plains.
Taiyuan, Fanyang, Wanqiu, Luoyang, Xuzhou, Chang'an and other places established large-scale armor and weapons manufacturing bases. After conquering Dangxiang, the main siege infantry force formed by the surrendered tribes in the early days was also able to move south.
At this time, the military strength of the Chihu people can be said to have truly reached its peak, and there are no longer any shortcomings in terms of attacking cities and fortifying villages. How can their frontiers be easily resisted?
In fact, Xu Huai wrote to Gu Jiqian many times and mentioned many of these things, but Gu Jiqian did not respond.
This is not because the Gu family has a deep prejudice against Chushan. In fact, after the Gu family, as a member of the Dangxiang lineage, defected to Dai Viet more than a hundred years ago, the descendants of successive generations guarded the prefecture for Dai Viet. In order to avoid the suspicion of the court, they developed the habit of deliberately avoiding contact with border areas.
The tradition and family tradition of interactions between military generals.
When Emperor Jianji was around, there were not many exchanges of courtesy letters between the Gu family and Chushan. After the death of Emperor Jianji, so many things happened, and the Gu family tried their best to avoid direct contact with them.
Even though there were some overlaps in defense between Jingxiang and Dongchuan, Gu would inform the central government in advance and the Privy Council would make arrangements.
The Gu family's cautious tradition of avoiding taboos was certainly welcomed by the imperial court, but it made defense communication and coordination between Dongchuan and Jingxiang extremely slow, making it impossible for them to cooperate more effectively.
Gu's delay until this point, and Dongchuan Road, was no longer able to hold Lantian and Ziguyu at the northern foot of the Qinling Mountains at the same time. Only then did Gu Jian come to Biyang to discuss reinforcements. How could he still have time to deploy?
