Smelting and Exploding the Heavens

Chapter 252 Entering Bianjing

On the ninth day of September, Chongyang.

The whole Xiaojie army was mobilized, and Fan Zhuoyuan personally led an army of [-] troops from the middle road to the south, heading straight for Bianliang.

Bianliang, that is, Kaifeng Mansion, is surrounded by plains, there is no danger to defend, and it is located under the Yellow River.

Even if the city is tall and heavy, guarded by hundreds of heavy cannons, as long as you are willing to dig the Yellow River and rush the city with the river, you can break it.

Of course, this method is too harmful to the harmony of nature, and the people who are hurt are all his own people, so Fan Zhuoyuan will definitely not use it.

Now he has an army of [-], the main force of the [-] Xiaojie army can fight on foot as well as on horseback. One man has two horses, and the [-] government soldiers are all infantry, but they are also well-armored and have high morale.

The army carried as many as [-] heavy siege artillery pieces, and more than [-] field tiger squat artillery pieces.

Even within a year and a half, Fan Zhuoyuan ordered craftsmen from Bianliang to forge an arquebus troop of thousands of men, which together with the artillery was collectively called the Shenji Battalion.

These arquebus guns are not Ming Dynasty bird guns, but thick guns with shortened barrels but larger calibers, focusing on power rather than range and accuracy.

Facing the Song army with a very high armor rate, of course, the power to deal with it is the first priority.

This 1-man troop has only been trained for more than half a year. During the training, it uses fixed gunpowder technology, which can fire twice a minute. The speed is extremely slow, and it is completely inferior to the crossbowmen of this era.

However, Fan Zhuoyuan resisted all opinions and continued to develop vigorously. He knew that this was the trend of future wars.

Although the bows and crossbows of this era are powerful, they are already very limited in terms of lethality against heavy armor. To cause armor-piercing strikes at long distances, you have to use firearms.

The most important thing is that firearms troops are easy to build. As long as you have weapons, you can train a capable army in three months.

When the army set out to fight, it first fought against Zhe Keqiu's [-] Western Army on the north bank of the Yellow River. When the [-] Xiaojie Army cavalry stepped out, the [-] Western Army collapsed on the spot. Except for those who fled, most of them surrendered in public.

Zhe Keqiu himself was captured by Fan Zhuoyuan himself and temporarily imprisoned in the army.

After crossing the Yellow River by force, Zhang Shuye led [-] rebel regiments to block the fortifications. However, the fortifications were bombarded with heavy artillery by Fan Zhuoyuan's soldiers for half a day, and all the fortifications were destroyed.

The [-] Regiment Lianyi Army collapsed under several rounds of arrows and guns.

Fan Zhuoyuan urged Zhang Shuye to surrender, but Zhang Shuye committed suicide by jumping into the Yellow River.

Fan Zhuoyuan didn't say anything about this, and with one order, the whole army crossed the river, and they didn't encounter any obstacles along the way, and successfully reached the city of Bianliang.

Even though this Tokyo of the Great Song Dynasty has a large population and complete equipment, it is already in front of Fan Zhuoyuan.

Arrows were shot to convince the city to surrender, but Zongze burned him face to face to strengthen the city's will to fight.

Fan Zhuo looked far away at the famous official in history on the top of the city, and said nothing, since he was an enemy, he didn't hold back anything, and immediately ordered to set up a siege position.

The cavalry patrolled outside the city, preventing any reinforcements from coming to support, and completely blocked Bianjing, making it an isolated city.

The city of Bianjing was well-defended and strong, and if it wanted to attack by force, it would naturally cost a lot of casualties. The range and density of the more than two hundred artillery pieces were not comparable to that of the Xiaojie army.

However, attacking the city is based on attacking the heart, and it is difficult to defend the isolated city. The cavalry that appear around the city at any time, coupled with the various siege equipment that the Xiaojie army is building, all put enormous psychological pressure on the defenders in the city.

Today's Great Song Dynasty is not like the Pian'an Dynasty that crossed south in history.

In history, there were four famous generals at the beginning of the Southern Song Dynasty, but now the two most famous and powerful of the four famous generals: Yue Fei and Han Shizhong are both serving in the Xiaojie Army.

The long-legged general Liu Guangshi had already been killed, leaving only one greedy general Zhang Jun and Zong Ze staying here.

Moreover, at the beginning of the Southern Song Dynasty in history, a large number of Hebei, Hedong, and Western armies were all reorganized and brought together. After fighting against the Jin army for many years, they gradually accumulated combat experience and became capable veterans. Fight against the Kingdom of Jin.

But now, it is unclear who is orthodox in the northern and southern dynasties. Most of the troops that would have fled to the Jianghuai region and were gradually incorporated by the southern Pian'an court now stayed behind, or simply returned to their hometowns to become farmers, and some even Among Fan Zhuoyuan's soldiers.

One ebbs and another, the Southern Dynasties in this era are much weaker than in history, and because it is a civil war, the soldiers and civilians have no fighting spirit.

Coupled with the fact that Fan Zhuoyuan's New Deal had a strong appeal to the low-level soldiers and civilians, the Song army's will to resist was even worse than the historical anti-gold and anti-Yuan.

Not only Fan Zhuoyuan and others in the Northern Dynasty knew this well, but also many scholars and bureaucrats in the Southern Dynasty.

Standing on the city wall, Zong Ze looked at the heroic army galloping past, frowning deeply, revealing a bitter look on his face.

The tall, thin and dark general next to him was Zhang Jun. He kept talking, but Zong Ze couldn't listen at all.

What the other party said was to abandon the city and flee to the south, and repeatedly stated that Bianjing could not be defended.

However, Zongze was extremely stubborn and refused to agree. He turned his head and reprimanded: "It's easy for us to escape with Qingqi, but what will happen to the hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians in the city?!"

Zhang Jun opened his mouth, and at this time another group of scattered cavalry from the Xiaojie Army galloped close to the city wall and shot a rain of arrows into the city, scaring the guards at the top of the city to scream and shrank to the corner to hide.

Zong Ze was furious, "Fire back!"

There were gunners who obeyed the order, and immediately fired more than ten cannons at the Xiaojie cavalry.

However, the cavalry was running very fast, and the heavy artillery mounted on the top of the city was inconvenient to turn. More than a dozen artillery pieces failed, and the morale of the defenders was even lower.

Zhang Jun picked up an arrow that had fallen from the ground, and wondered, "There's no arrow? Huh, there's a piece of paper wrapped around it?"

Many soldiers on the top of the city picked up these arrows without arrowheads, removed the paper, checked the content on it, and whispered to each other, creating a strange atmosphere.

Zong Ze sensed something was wrong, "What was written on the paper? Is it another demagogue to persuade you to surrender!"

After Zhang Jun read it once, he handed it to Zong Ze with some hesitation.

Zong Ze glanced at the content inside, his expression changed drastically. The content on the paper was very simple, describing the land policy of the Northern Dynasties, and said that now the land in the North is sparsely populated, as long as you are willing to join the household registration in the North, you will automatically distribute the land according to the number of people. Everyone pays taxes fairly, rich people with more land property pay more, and commoners with less land property pay less.

In addition, there are tax incentives for industry and commerce, etc., which are meaningless to rich and wealthy landlords, and even do more harm than good.

However, it is extremely attractive to low-level people such as refugees and stragglers who gather in large numbers in Bianjing.

Zong Ze grabbed a few pieces of letter paper to read, but the content was different. There were not only propaganda policies, but also various examples to show people how the lives of the people in the Yanyun area have changed under the New Deal.

The words are all written in vernacular, without any style of writing, and even the words are crooked, so you can tell at a glance that they are not written by cultural people.

However, this is very close to the people. All the defenders who have seen it will inevitably have various thoughts in their hearts.

Zong Ze immediately ordered that no one should be allowed to hide the letter of persuasion, and ordered people to take out the only money left in the treasury, and reward them in front of the army, so as to boost the morale of the soldiers.

Seeing the real money, the spirit of the defenders improved, and they barely suppressed the various psychological offensives of the Xiaojie army.

However, Zong Ze's gray hair grew a lot after one night.

After all, Bianjing was dilapidated, and after being robbed by the Jin army, there was not much gold and silver left in the treasury. He only hoped that the wealthy households in the city could raise some money to support the defense of the city.

(End of this chapter)