At this moment, on the north wall of Zhi County, the guard Sun Shuke was directing the battle taking place in front of him with a hoarse roar.
It has to be said that the ferocious offensive of the Wei army was completely beyond his expectation. Even though he had a high opinion of the invading Wei army because of the fall of Xiangcheng, he felt that he still underestimated the Wei army's infantry.
Wei's infantry... is so powerful? However, the Yanling Army is not just a defeated army of Chu that defected to Wei? How can it be...
Sun Shuke felt incredible.
To be fair, Chu State has actually already known the details of the three Wei armies that assisted King Lu Xi of Qi in attacking Chu State: one of them was a garrison stationed at Fenxing Fortress in the past, while the other two were They were peasant soldiers originally recruited under Xiong Tuo, the Lord of Yangcheng who had been recruited.
Peasant soldiers were common in Chu State.
Someone once jokingly said that as long as they hauled a few carts of grain to any city or village in Chu before winter, they could easily gather an army of tens of thousands of people.
This is actually not a joke.
You must know that in the Chu State with a large population, it is very simple to gather a peasant soldier. Therefore, when the Chu State launched a war with foreign countries, it was customary to bring a large number of peasant soldiers with them and use them to consume the enemy's physical strength. , as well as expendable strategic materials such as arrows and crossbow bolts.
This habit continued until King Lu Xi of Qi led his army to attack Chu for the first time.
At that time, because the Qi, Lu, and Song Allied Forces were equipped with Lu's latest war weapon, the crossbow box, hundreds of thousands of Chu's peasant soldiers who were used to consume the enemy's troops on the frontal battlefield were actually killed by the Qi, Lu, and Song Allied Forces. Nearly 70%, which does not include the regular Chu soldiers who died one after another in the battle.
It is said that in the last battle before winter, the allied forces of Qi, Lu, and Song were so bloody that they killed hundreds of thousands of Chu people in one battle, which shocked the whole world and established Qi's dominance in the Central Plains.
However, not long after the beginning of spring, when everyone in the world thought that King Lu Xi of Qi would conquer Shouying, the capital of Chu State, the allied forces of Qi, Lu and Song inexplicably chose to retreat and deployed tight defenses on the border.
At that time, everyone felt it was unbelievable. Unexpectedly, a few days later, a plague broke out on the battlefield where hundreds of thousands of Chu people were killed in each battle. This epidemic swept almost half of the eastern part of Chu, leaving hundreds of people in Chu. Tens of millions of people died suddenly due to infection.
Even Song and Lu were affected.
It turned out that in the last battle that broke out before winter, no one, whether it was the Qi, Lu, Song, or Chu troops, had any spare capacity to bury the bodies of hundreds of thousands of people in the wind and snow.
As a result, in the spring of the next year, corpse water seeped out from the rotting corpses, polluting nearby lakes and rivers, and eventually a large-scale plague broke out.
That is to say, from then on, the Chu State no longer dared to recruit peasant soldiers on a large scale to fight in the country.
Why? Because the peasant soldiers' combat effectiveness is too weak and they are purely cannon fodder on the battlefield. The Chu State does not want another plague to break out in the country.
Only during foreign wars would the Chu State recruit peasant soldiers, such as Xiong Tuo, the king of Yangcheng two years ago.
This time, in order to resist the crusade of the Qi, Lu, and Wei allied forces, King Xiong Xu of Chu recruited nearly a million peasant soldiers, but in the end he only let the latter be responsible for logistics and transportation.
Let these peasant soldiers go to the battlefield? Fight on home soil?
The Chu State, which had already suffered a blood loss, did not have the courage.
This past incident reflects how low the combat effectiveness of the peasant soldiers on the battlefield was.
However, the powerful fighting power displayed by the Yanling Army of Wei State that came to attack the city today surprised Sun Shuke.
Maybe Sun Shuke was surprised in his heart: Wasn't the predecessor of the Yanling Army of Wei State the peasant soldiers temporarily recruited by Xiong Tuo, the king of Yangcheng, in order to attack Wei State? How could it be able to defeat the main army of Chu State today?
It can only be said that Sun Shuke did not understand the essence of Wei's infantry.
The strength of Wei's infantry does not lie in the physical quality of the Wei people, but in the fact that Wei's training of infantry can be said to be the best among other countries in the Central Plains. Wei is a country that relies on infantry to conquer the world.
After the Yanling Army surrendered to the Wei State, the Ministry of War of the Wei State, under the instruction of Zhao Hongrun, provided the Yanling Army with assistance in training infantry, and provided the Yanling Army with the essentials and detailed drills for infantry training.
Of course, the same is true for the merchant navy.
Therefore, after two full years of Wei-style infantry training, even though the Yanling Army was composed of Chu people, they could actually be called Wei infantry!
After coming to the Central Plains from the distant Longxi, they destroyed Liang and Zheng in one fell swoop, then captured half of the Cai State, and made the Wei State surrender, which made all the countries in the Central Plains feel horrified, the Wei infantry!
"Sun Shuke, the guard of Zhi County, seems to have underestimated the combat effectiveness of the Yanling Army."
On the slope in the distance, Xu Yin, the general of Fenxing Army, looked at the battlefield and said to Zhao Hongrun with a slight smile.
Zhao Hongrun smiled slightly.
In fact, it was not just the Chu general Sun Shuke who underestimated the Yanling Army. Even Zhao Hongrun had never thought that the Yanling Army, which had undergone two years of hard training, would be so powerful that it could press the battle line to the wall of Qi County in one breath.
You must know that in Zhao Hongrun's impression, not only the siege battle, but also the siege side often has to go through several rounds of charges before they can break through the blockade of the defenders' flying arrow weapons and rush to the bottom of the city wall.
And this process is the fundamental reason why the attackers suffered many times more casualties than the defenders in siege battles.
It is no exaggeration to say that in an ordinary siege battle, according to the proportion, out of a hundred soldiers on the siege side, braving the blockade of the defenders' arrows, only about 30 people could finally reach the bottom of the city wall. , and among these thirty people, ten will die from the boulders, wood, and boiling oil thrown from the city wall, and ten will die while climbing the ladder. And those who finally have the chance to climb the city wall may There are only ten people.
And these ten people still have to face the enemy's blockade on the city wall, and it is very likely that all of them will die on the enemy's wall in the end.
This ratio is exactly why siege battles are so brutal.
However, the vanguard of the 5,000-year-old Yanling Army, whose number of casualties had not exceeded 1,000, had actually pressed the battle line to the city wall of Zhi County, and had begun to launch a ferocious offensive against the city wall. This kind of powerful combat power, even Zhao Hongrun Everyone was amazed when they saw it.
However, Zhao Hongrun also saw the weaknesses of the Yanling Army.
It's not a lack of training, but a weakness in weapon configuration or troop configuration.
For example, the five thousand Yanling troops at this moment lack the ability to suppress the city walls of Zhi County. If there is a well-trained crossbow soldier to cooperate with them at this time, they can shoot the Chu soldiers on the city wall who are throwing stones and wood at the bottom of the city. Soldiers, those infantrymen who are climbing up the ladder, they can obviously feel much more relaxed.
For another example, the Jinglan chariot built under the supervision of Yan Mo clearly had a platform on the roof for people to stand on, but Yan Mo did not deploy a crossbowman here. Otherwise, how would the crossbowmen on the walls of Zhi County dare to shoot so blatantly?
The Yanling soldiers under the city?
Generally speaking, the suppression force of long-range weapons is not enough.
Of course, this cannot be blamed on Yan Mo or the Yanling Army. Instead, it was Zhao Hongrun's negligence in not letting the Smelting Bureau build corresponding long-range weapons for the Yanling Army.
However, Zhao Hongrun has no choice. After all, up to now, the Smelting Bureau and the Ordnance Casting Bureau still have a large number of orders in their hands: the Nanyan Army and the Chenggao Army have not updated their weapons and equipment, and the new general Shao Hu has
Half of the weapons and equipment of the Great Wei Military Army have not yet been delivered. In addition, there are new orders requested by Zhao Hongrun and his fourth brother, Yan Wang Hongjiang, for the Shanyang Army under his command.
All in all, with the nearly 100,000 troops in northern Xinjiang generally lacking weapons and equipment, even if Zhao Hongrun was in charge of the Smelting Bureau, it would be difficult for the Yanling Army to join the ranks.
After all, the Yanling Army still has weapons and equipment, although they are older.
Suddenly, Zhao Hongrun's heart moved and he secretly cursed himself for being stupid.
Thinking about it, even though the Lu State was in the rear, they actually chose to transport weapons and equipment from the Wei State at the expense of the nearer. The weapons and equipment manufactured under the supervision of the Lu State were obviously of better quality.
Thinking of this, Zhao Hongrun turned to Mu Qing, the Zongwei who was recording the Yanling army's performance on the battlefield, and said: "Mu Qing, write it down. In my name, I ask the King of Qi for ten thousand crossbows and ten crossbow arrows."
Ten thousand weapons, one hundred thousand shields, one hundred thousand sets of armor, fifty thousand spears, one hundred thousand swords..."
General Xu Yin heard this and gasped in shock. He thought to himself: Your Highness, King Su, are you ruthlessly killing King Qi?
Perhaps noticing Xu Yin's shocked expression, Zhao Hongrun said with a smile: "If you ask for a lot of money, you can pay it back on the spot. I also know that King Qi cannot agree to such a request, but if you talk more, you can leave more room for bargaining.
Well."
It has to be said that Zhao Hongrun also knew in his heart that the weapons and equipment developed by Lu State in recent stages, including war weapons, may have been equipped with the main army led by Qi King Lu Xi, and the rest may have been sent to General Qi.
Tian Dan's Eastern Route Army and the Lu State's arsenal may have been emptied out long ago.
But as he said, he asked for a high price and paid it back on the spot. Even if King Lu Xi of Qi only gave him five thousand crossbows and tens of thousands of crossbow arrows in the end, it would actually be enough to strengthen the long-range strike capability of the Yanling Army.
After all, in siege warfare, crossbowmen only play a supporting role, and the real main force must be infantry.
At this time, the Yanling Army's attack on the city walls on the east and west sides of Zhi County had already begun.
Compared with the regular combat method of the Yanling Army who attacked the east wall of Qi County, Zuo Xunxi and Hua Yu, who were responsible for attacking the west wall, took advantage of the west wind blowing today to launch fire arrows into the city.
It could be faintly seen that several fires had been ignited in Qi County City, and bursts of black smoke began to fill the city, and slowly drifted to the east under the blowing of the westerly wind.
If you listen carefully, you can actually vaguely hear the chaos in Zhi County. It is not difficult to estimate that the Chu soldiers in the city are struggling to put out the fire.
At this moment, Qi County is like a pot of boiling water, filled with people's voices.
Zhao Hongrun raised his head and glanced at the position of the sun in the sky to judge the time.
Although the Yanling Army's advantage is very obvious at the moment, he still has a hunch that it may be difficult for the Yanling Army to capture Qi County today. (To be continued.)