Chapter 1029 Craveyo's Journey to the East - A Critical Situation
The second day is June 12th in the Ming calendar, December 30th in the Hijri calendar, and June 30th in the Western calendar.
After burning in the middle of the night, most of the houses in the outer city have been burned down, leaving only bricks and rubble; the roads paved with gravel have also been smoked black, and there are ashes everywhere after being burned by the fire.
Even if it rains in the middle of the night, I still feel hot.
Song Hu stood at the top of the city, using his clairvoyance to look at the soldiers of the Samarkand Kingdom who were arranging on the opposite side. He saw the old general named Jesb commanding the soldiers to clear a large area and ordering them to line up in order.
Immediately, the cannon placed at the back began to roar, and large and small cannonballs were fired at the city wall, causing pieces of earth and rocks to fly. Song Hu had to retract his body into the battlements and tighten the rope of the helmet above his head.
Shang Bing was also standing behind the battlements at this time. Together with Song Sheng, Wu Jie and others, he looked at the soldiers of the Samarkand Kingdom who were queuing up outside. He counted the number of people, and asked the guards of other city walls for the news, and said:
"A total of 50,000 people are lining up, which is already more than our soldiers guarding the city."
"It seems that Timur decided to capture the inner city as soon as possible and face the reinforcements coming from Xingxingxia." Song Sheng said.
Everyone had no objection to his judgment. Song Sheng watched for a while and saw the cannons starting to roar and the soldiers under the city starting to attack the city. He said to Shang Bing: "Your Highness, the soldiers are fierce and the battle is in danger. Please come down to the city in order to
Stay safe."
"Now the city of Yiwu is in danger, where is there any place that can be protected?" Shang Bing said this first, but then he said: "But Guhui is going to the city. But it is not to protect it, but not to let it go.
When you fight, your hands and feet are tied up."
"Thank you for your understanding, Your Highness," Song Sheng said.
Shang Bing was about to say a few more words when suddenly a cannonball hit the battlement in front of them, shattering half of the battlement and sending earth and rocks flying.
Song Sheng no longer bothered to greet Shang Bing, and shouted loudly: "Your Highness, please come down to the city quickly." and began to command the defense of the city.
Shang Bing subconsciously held the helmet on his head with both hands and wanted to say something else, but at this time the shouts from the top of the city were already loud and he could not hear anything clearly. Looking at Song Sheng who was busy, he muttered a sentence silently, turned around and walked down the city.
head.
Song Sheng turned around and saw that Shang Bing had already left the city. He breathed a sigh of relief, turned around and shouted loudly: "Soldiers, kill the enemy!" His guards also shouted at the same time, suppressing the "buzzing" sound for a while.
, resounded throughout the city.
"Kill the enemy!" everyone shouted, and then they fought with the soldiers of the Samarkand Kingdom who were attacking the city.
…
…
"My dear Majesty, I'm sorry that it took me six days to write to you again when the war situation changed so quickly."
"This is not because I am slacking off to Your Majesty. It's just that I forgot to write to Your Majesty."
"From June 29, 1404 in the year of the Lord, the situation of the war has changed so fast that it is dizzying to see."
"That day, after I wrote my last letter to His Majesty, I went with Alonso to observe the battle situation. At that time, Timur was full of confidence in capturing the outer city that day, and even felt that we could take advantage of the situation and capture the inner city together."
"In the end, the soldiers of the Timur Khanate did capture the outer city, but things did not go as smoothly as Timur imagined. Song Sheng, the chief defender of the city - after interrogating the captured Ming soldiers, it can be determined
He was the general who actually commanded the defense of the city - he played a little trick and caused Timur to lose many more soldiers, so much so that his general Jesb wanted to withdraw his troops."
"But Timur rejected the request to withdraw, and believed that the Ming army defending the city was at the end of its war effort, and wanted to scare them with a final outburst, so that they could successfully retreat to the inner city. Not only that, he also ordered several more troops to be sent.
Thousands of soldiers attacked the city."
"Facts have proved that Timur's judgment was correct. The Ming army defending the city was indeed at the end of its strength. Under the more violent offensive, they had to abandon the outer city and retreat to the inner city. However, they were well prepared for this, so
Apart from the soldiers left behind, there were no other losses."
"Then a fire broke out in the city. I still don't know the cause of this large-scale fire, but due to the rain in the second half of the night, all that was left of this fire that was originally beneficial and disadvantageous to the siege was
Good for Timur."
"Timur did not waste these benefits. Early the next morning, he ordered the most violent attack to capture the city. The battle became intense from the beginning."
"The cannons placed behind the camp kept firing until the barrels became hot and then stopped and began to cool down. After the temperature dropped, they immediately continued to fire; the soldiers who used crossbows to cover the siege continued to shoot down the cannons at the top of the city.
The arrows rushed to a distance of only thirty or forty steps from the city wall. The people in the front row raised their shields, and the people in the back row threw the arrows diagonally upward in a direction of about 60 degrees, completely ignoring that the arrows they shot were killing the Ming army.
I would have probably been shot to death before."
"But the most heroic and fearless ones are the infantrymen who attack the city. These infantrymen seem to have another body at home. After this body is broken, they can go back and replace it with another body. They rush towards the city wall without condoning their own lives.
Even if one-tenth or more of the soldiers were killed before rushing to the city, they did not stop at all."
"Of course, the reason why they charged like this has a lot to do with Timur's previous mobilization method. The Ming Dynasty in the East had the so-called 'Trinity' civilization, which was born around 500 BC nearly two thousand years ago.
The Confucianism created by a wise man is mainly Confucianism, supplemented by their native religion Taoism and Buddhism introduced from India. I will write a letter to describe in detail the civilization of the Ming Dynasty later. "
"There is no place for any other religion in this. Therefore, the founding emperor of the Ming Dynasty issued a policy of discrimination against Tianfang believers soon after he came to the throne. The new emperor did not relax at all after he came to the throne, and even intensified it."
"In this way, the Ming Dynasty was a country composed of pagans to the Timur Khanate. So Timur used a method to inspire religious fanaticism in the soldiers to mobilize them. Now it seems that the effect is very good."
"Therefore, the Ming army was passive from the beginning. On the first day when Timur ordered to attack the inner city, that is, June 30, many soldiers from the Timur Khanate rushed to the top of the city and almost destroyed the city.
The Ming army at the head of the city rushed down. The Ming army had to use their only remaining defensive equipment to defend the city so that the city head would not be captured."
"But they had very few defensive equipment and they quickly ran out of them. After that, the Ming army who defended the city had to use the lives of their soldiers to defend the city."
"But the number of Ming troops in the city is not as good as the soldiers of the Timur Khanate outside the city. In my opinion, the loss of the city is inevitable."