Yelu Zongyuan couldn't wait to launch an siege, but soon, he was poured a ladle of cold water on him.
At the pre-war decision-making meeting, a huge problem was raised. That is, although the trench fire ring was broken through, the soldiers and horses could advance to the ground below the city. But the problem was that the fires in the three trenches outside the city did not
If it is extinguished, if the half-million-strong army were to launch a full-scale attack, it would cover a distance of five to six miles under the entire city. Divided by the fire trenches, it would be difficult for the soldiers and horses to launch an effective charge and attack.
The trenches were dug several miles outside the city, and the last trench was less than 500 steps away from the city wall. This made the battlefield space extremely tight. The bows and arrows of the defenders on the other side of the city had a range of more than 100 steps, and combined with the burning
It is impossible to gain a foothold within forty or fifty steps to the left of the trench. Therefore, in fact, the attacking troops can only arrange their troops within a range of about three hundred steps. This is absolutely impossible. In such a narrow area, it is necessary to allow catapults to be set up.
What will happen if it has to accommodate a large number of other siege equipment and a large number of siege troops and horses? Even if it is crowded with people, it can only accommodate more than 100,000 people at most.
An army of 500,000 attacked the city, but only 100,000 soldiers and horses could be used to attack. Wouldn't this be cutting off both arms and damaging the battle strength?
When these issues were raised by the ministers and generals, Yelv Zongyuan suddenly realized that the previous fire-fighting operations had been almost in vain. It turned out that the trenches dug by the opponent not only blocked the attack, but also played a role in blocking the attack.
It plays the role of changing the terrain, dividing the formation of attacking troops and horses, and destroying the position of the opponent's attacking troops and horses.
Originally I thought it was too simple, but I ignored these details. This is not an attack by a small group of soldiers and horses. They only have a few hundred steps of space to move around at will. An offensive and defensive battle of hundreds of thousands of soldiers and horses requires...
A vast battlefield space. What the army needs is all the venues within a dozen miles of the entire city in order to take full advantage of the superior numbers of soldiers and horses. Therefore, in this situation, it is obviously impossible to attack the city rashly.
The wisest approach is actually to wait for the fire to be completely extinguished, and then fill in all the trenches or create hundreds of passages to allow troops and horses to move in without any hindrance.
In other words, in fact, the previous days of busy work were all in vain. Not only was it useless, but it also damaged dozens of precious catapults. Because those catapults were all captured, and they were not brand-new catapults.
Every catapult has a service life. When Dazhou's catapults were attacking Jinfu, they bombarded them day and night for several days. In fact, many catapults were on the verge of being scrapped. It's been like this these past few days.
After a lot of effort, many catapults simply fell apart. Now it seems that all this is worthless.
Not to mention the anger in Yelu Zongyuan's heart, but he calmed down, made some careful weighing, and finally did
He made a wise decision to wait for the fire to be extinguished. Although this decision was frustrating, it was also a last resort. Although the time pressure for the attack was very high, as the local folk saying goes, "In mid-October, the sky is full of snow, and in the end,
As mentioned on the 23rd, there will be heavy snowfall in Liaoyang in mid-October. Therefore, we must capture the city before the heavy snowfall, but we can only take this risk and wait for the fire to extinguish. Yelv Zongyuan
I believe that good things come slowly, and as long as you are well prepared, when the war begins, you may only need two or three days, or even one day, to capture Liaoyang Mansion. This is called sharpening your sword and chopping firewood without hesitation.
On the fifth day of October, after burning for three days, the fire in the first trench finally burned out. Braving the scorching heat on the ground, the Liao army began to bulldoze and fill the trenches to prevent resurgence. At the same time, they also adjusted the terrain to allow the army to pass.
There was no obstacle. In the afternoon of the eighth day of October, the fires in the second and third trenches were extinguished one after another. The Liao army immediately advanced and filled the trenches. In the evening of that day, the company and battalion advanced to a few miles below the city, and the army set up a formation on the spot.
From the second day of October to the eighth day of October, it took 70,000 Jurchens nearly a month to dig three trenches, but the actual result was only a delay of seven days. This seems very uneconomical and not worth it, but in fact
The value of some things does not lie in the superficial effects, but in the subsequent chain reactions it brings.
Of course Yelu Zongyuan could not wait any longer. In the early morning of the ninth day of October, the horns sounded and the war drums shook the sky. In the dawn, 300,000 Liao troops launched a fierce attack on Liaoyang City from three directions: southwest, southwest and north. The Liaoyang War finally
Officially started.
The Liao army was no longer a field force that only knew how to make cavalry raids. Their attack was very methodical. Two hundred and fifty steps away, hundreds of catapults suppressed the city with firepower, and overwhelming stones fell on the city.
On the top of the city, the city was suddenly shrouded in smoke, dust and mud. After that, tens of thousands of cavalry archers rushed to the edge of the moat and fired long bows and arrows at the city, further suppressing the enemy forces at the city's head and forming firepower.
After the suppression, a large number of engineers quickly arrived at the moat with carts pushing wooden deck bridges and other various pontoon-building devices, and began to build an offensive channel on the moat.
The defenders at the top of the city were a little confused at first. After all, the Jurchens were not good at defending the city. Facing the opponent's all-round suppression from heaven and earth, the defenders at the top of the city were at a loss at first. They were hit by rocks and ran away with their heads covered, causing death and injury.
Tragic. But soon, the Jurchens' counterattack began. Within a short time, the Jurchens responded. The archers in the watchtowers at the top of the city began to fight back, and hundreds of crossbows set up at the top of the city also began to fire.
.Under the leadership of Wanyan Aguda, the Jurchens at the top of the city also stabilized their position. They hid under the battlements as high as one person, braved the falling rocks from the sky and began to shoot arrows at the city to counterattack.
There was almost no delay, and this siege battle started from the beginning.
It seemed to have entered the climax at the beginning. Arrows and stones in the sky shuttled between each other like moving dark clouds, blocking the dim skylight. Up and down the city, the number of dead and wounded soldiers and horses increased linearly, without any adaptation process.
The battle situation has entered a heated stage.
The ferocity and intensity of the firepower on both sides were staggering. The Liao army deployed 130,000 cavalry archers under the city to suppress the three city walls with arrows. In each round of shooting, 130,000 feather arrows were fired at the city.
The head rushes towards the face. Even if it is shot upward, even if there are tall battlements as a shield, this kind of power is enough to make people tremble. Not to mention there are hundreds of catapults pouring countless stones from the sky. Those
They are all big rocks the size of a bowl of ocean. If they are dropped from a high altitude, if they hit a person, they will be smashed into a pile of rotten flesh. Even if they do not hit the person, they can still be destructive if they hit the battlements, towers and defensive facilities.
As you can imagine, after the battle lasted less than a quarter of an hour, the enemy towers on the two city walls had collapsed, and the heightened battlements above the city walls also began to collapse. Just like the battle of Jijin Mansion, the siege troops of the Great Zhou Dynasty
Ma initially razed everything on the top of the city of Xijin Mansion to the ground, turning it into a bare mess. This shows how powerful the catapult's fire suppression power was in the siege.
But the Jurchens also had countermeasures. Among the more than twenty watchtowers built on each city wall was a three-bow bed crossbow. This was the most ferocious among the weapons and equipment blueprints provided to the Jurchens by the Zhou Dynasty.
A kind of crossbow. As the name suggests, it is a bed crossbow made of three strong bows. The power of the three bows shoots a crossbow arrow, and its power can be imagined. It is said that the most sophisticated three-bow bed crossbow can reach a distance of 700 steps.
It can still break rocks and open mountains. However, the three-bow bed crossbow that the Jurchens hastily built during this period is not so powerful. It is rough and not that powerful. However, the measured distance is up to 350 steps, which can be reached from a high altitude.
Four hundred steps. Wanyan Agu made more than 80 of these bed crossbows and placed them on the watchtower. His intention was obvious, precisely to counter the opponent's catapults.
When the Liao catapults were wreaking havoc, the three-gong bed crossbows also began to carry out point-to-point strikes. Although the Jurchens' archery skills were not high, although the three-gong bed crossbows they made were rough and poor in accuracy, they could not compete with the Zhou Dynasty.
The iron gun-like crossbow arrows made of pure iron enhance their power, but when the thick-armed hardwood iron-tipped crossbow arrows are fired, they still carry a dull and breathtaking power that sounds like wind and thunder. Dozens of people
Less than half of the crossbow arrows hit the catapult, but as long as it hit a key location, the catapult would immediately collapse. The crossbow arrows could even break a log as thick as a bowl on the catapult.
When the Liao people's catapults brought huge casualties and destruction to the Jurchens in the city, their own numbers also decreased rapidly. The collapse of each catapult meant that the suppressive power was reduced by one point, which meant that the suppression force was reduced by one point.
At the top of the city, the Jurchens have more space to survive and fight.
