Eight hundred and seventieth chapters Yunzhou City attacked the fortress
However, it is said that after Tian Chengsi led his army to retreat to Yunzhou City, he handed over the defense of Yunzhou to his nephew Tian Yue who was good at conquering and fighting. He went to Fanyang to meet Emperor Shi Siming and told him about the success and failure of the Taiyuan Battle. Summary
Learn from experience and avoid making the same mistakes in the future.
As soon as he returned to Fanyang from Yunzhou, Li Siye led an army to surround Yunzhou. Tian Yue lived up to his uncle's trust and patrolled the city wall in full uniform every day.
Fan Yang asked for help.
Li Siye ordered the besieging soldiers to organize troops to conduct strict investigations and interceptions. The messengers sent by Yunzhou three times were captured and imprisoned. Naturally, Tian Yue did not know about these. He confidently believed that his uncle would soon lead an army to rescue Yunzhou.
But this time Li Siye was well prepared. The 30,000 troops transferred from Guanzhong did not carry artillery battalions due to the mountainous journey, but they did carry many explosive mines and fire mines with astonishing power, which could be thrown by simple projectiles such as trebuchets and ballistae.
Weapons were thrown onto the city walls.
He also asked people to improve the drawings of the hot air balloons he had built before. Through the drawings, craftsmen can make more regular hot air balloons with better performance. They only need to use local materials, bamboo wood and grease to make them. It can be made from the ground to the ground.
A new tactical breakthrough in the air.
A common tactic used by the defenders is to block the city gates with masonry and mud tiles, so that no matter how powerful the battering ram is, they cannot break the gates open, and they can only use siege equipment to climb the city wall.
Yunzhong and Daijun were both the front lines of the Han Dynasty's attack on the Xiongnu, and became the capital of the Northern Wei Dynasty. After successive repairs, the city had already become impregnable. If Deng Jingshan hadn't ignored the situation and neglected defense when he first took office in Hedong, Shi Siming would have wanted to take it from him.
To take away Yunzhou, half of the front teeth would have to be broken off.
The defense measures on the city are extremely tight, including not only long-range crossbows, but also reusable wood. The horse faces of the city wall are cleverly constructed, like concave and convex shapes, so that the siege teams cannot support each other on the left and right.
Li Siye calculated in his mind that if he used the traditional old method to attack the city, he would lose nearly ten thousand people on the city. Such losses would be almost a disastrous defeat.
He would never allow the lives of his soldiers to be wasted in vain in a tough battle, so he had to use clever methods. Even if he spent more money on military expenditures and wasted more manpower and material resources, it would be much better than wasting lives.
For this reason, he came up with a very simple and effective stupid method, which is to use a tunnel to dig under the city gate of Yunzhou City, and then use gunpowder to blow up the tunnel and collapse it. The top gate and the masonry blocking the gate will collapse.
Go below so that you can successfully attack the city.
Facts have proved that Li Siye still wanted to keep things simple. Military strategist Xu Bin used a hot air balloon to fly into the sky to investigate the structure of Yunzhou City, and then he realized that there were barbicans on all sides of Yunzhou City. Just blowing up the gates of the outer city was not enough.
The inner city gate is the key. If Tian Yue really intends to defend, he will definitely block the inner city gate, which will infinitely increase the difficulty of the tunnel.
Moreover, in terms of anti-tunnel warfare, the ancients also had very powerful methods, such as burying jars in the soil to listen to the sound of digging underground. After knowing the specific route of the enemy's tunnel, they could dig along the route.
A large pit stores water, and water leakage will inevitably occur if the enemy digs through it.
Therefore, attacking the city must be a difficult task. He expanded the soldiers besieging the city into thirteen digging battalions, dug twenty-six tunnels into the city from four directions, and hired specialized yin-yang mathematicians to determine the direction and distance.
Half of the tunnels are used to destroy city walls and gates, while the other half will lead to remote areas in the city and be used to transport internal forces inward.
The entire tunnel operation took more than three months. During this period, Li Siye continued to send people to use trebuchets to throw explosive bombs and fire mines into the city, causing a lot of damage. Or he used hot air balloons to float over the city to attack the city.
Bombs were dropped in places with relatively dense crowds such as paramilitary camps, causing intense panic in the city. If this continued, many people would be burned alive by the flames before the enemy troops could attack the city.
In order to avoid the bombs of the Tang army, the Yan army could only live in brick and wood buildings as much as possible, or dig cellars on the ground. When the soldiers on the city wall saw the hot air balloon floating in the sky, they quickly beat the gong to convey the message, letting everyone know
Hide and don't show your face.
As the excavated tunnels were discovered one by one by the enemy, there are only six or seven usable tunnels left. Four of them are used to blow down the outer city gates. There are also two gates leading to Wengcheng, and one leads into
Tunnels in urban houses.
Some of these tunnels shifted during the excavation process, and some were dug too far or too close. It is still unknown whether they will succeed. Li Siye ordered people to dig out several more branches based on the original tunnels, bury more and set up several more tunnels.
The explosion point can achieve the effect he imagined.
By the end of June, the sixteen newly dug passages ordered by Li Siye had reached the preset length, and they were just waiting to demonstrate their destructive power.
On the morning of the 25th, he ordered someone to use a coffin truck to carry explosive mines deep underground. In order to achieve the best collapse effect after the explosion, the internal space at the end of the tunnel was dug wide enough.
They transported the coffin to a predetermined location, leaving a long rope behind. After everyone had evacuated the tunnel, they used torches to light the fuse.
On the ground, the Hexi Army was already waiting in formation, with various ballistae and bomb-launching catapults arranged neatly. Li Siye rode his horse and waited with bated breath in front of the banner, setting up a pergola to look at the Yunzhou City Wall in the distance.
A rumbling sound sounded from underground, and the gate of Yunzhou City suddenly collapsed. Warm cheers came from the military formation. Then there were several explosions, and several city walls could be seen collapsing.
, but the effect was not ideal. There were cracks in some city walls. Although they looked precarious, they still stood firmly on the ground.
Tian Yue stood on the city wall with a pale face. He had never seen such an attack method. He once thought that the Hexi Army dug tunnels to attack the city from the ground, but unexpectedly it was used to blow down the city wall.
"Quick! Order people to clean up the ruins! Block the city gate!"
Li Siye took out the horizontal sword from his waist, held it high in his hand and ordered: "Attack the city!"
In an instant, ballistas and catapults fired simultaneously, exploding sparks on the city wall, and the city-climbing arrows gradually pierced the wall like a hedgehog's mane.
"Charge from the swing camp!"
The soldiers held up their shields and charged towards the city gate. Before the Yan army had time to block the city gate with sandbags, the Hexi Tiaodang camp had already poured into the city gate along the large hole created by the explosion.
But what they successfully entered was only the first city gate that was bombed and collapsed. The position of the inner Wengcheng gate was blown away. Although the wall collapsed and created a slope, the Yan army fought desperately from a high position, and the Hexi army did not get any compensation.
of cheap.
On another collapsed city wall, the two sides were fighting fiercely. The Yan army mobilized crossbows to the walls on both sides, and the sharp arrows fired could easily penetrate the shields. The main attacking Hedong army was temporarily suppressed and suffered heavy losses. The Yan army used
The spears kept stabbing downwards, and the corpses of Hedong Army were scattered on the slope of bricks and stones.
Dozens of hot air balloons rose into the sky. They slowly flew over the city wall. Yan Jun hurriedly propped up the crossbow and fired upward, piercing the hanging basket below. The sheepskin of one hot air balloon was shot by a crossbow arrow.
It penetrated, causing the balloon to tilt, and the flame tilted out from the copper furnace, instantly igniting the hot-air balloon into a huge fireball and slowly falling to the ground. The Hedong Army soldiers who were hit were unfortunately killed.
But there was nothing they could do about the hot air balloon that reached the top of the city wall. The crossbow held by a single soldier did not pose much of a threat to it, and the bed crossbow could not be aimed vertically. Moreover, they not only had to take care of threats in the sky, but also
Always be on guard against enemy attacks on the city walls.
The bombardier on the hot air balloon aimed at the crossbows and soldiers on the city wall, and threw the fierce thunderbolts one after another, setting off fireballs and heat waves. The grease on the violent thunderbolts stuck to the armor and burned, turning the Yan army soldiers into
One by one, the firemen frantically charged and slashed downwards, and the Hedong Army lined up to penetrate them.