Song Dynasty Cannon Fodder Counterattack Record

Chapter 296 The Beginning of Xixia's Collapse
Zhao Zhen decreed that the military situation in Shaanxi should be reported urgently at [-] miles a day, and messengers shuttled back and forth every day, which attracted the attention of the people. The battle situation in Shaanxi naturally became the topic of discussion after dinner.At this time, some "informed people" expressed their opinions everywhere, saying that Li Jinglue had predicted that the Xixia people would come to fight for it as early as when Yongle City began to be built, and the original request was to send a team from East Road to Yulin Mansion to wait for the Xixia people. When a large-scale attack came, they rushed out from the flanks and cooperated with the Song army on Yanyan Road to attack the Xixia army. However, the two ministers and a group of members of the Privy Council deliberately delayed the sending of reinforcements on the East Road in order to prevent the third prince from making further contributions to the throne. They would rather throw Yongle City away than send reinforcements.

The people in the capital are well-informed, and they all know that the four princes are fighting fiercely for the throne. Based on the principle of preferring to believe what they have, they firmly believe that there must be a conspiracy.As a result, the fourth prince's reputation became much worse.

The emperor could not care about these things now. After receiving the report that the actual number of the Xixia army was more than 15, the Privy Council could no longer help arguing, but ordered the east road to send troops to Linfu. Slow down.Seeing that Li Buqi puts the overall situation of the country first, Zhao Zhen couldn't help but feel a little ashamed of Li Buqi in his heart.However, this was just a matter of second thought. For a cowardly emperor, the fear of capable ministers had already penetrated into his bone marrow, and it was hopeless.

Li Buqi is really calm and calm. He should eat and sleep. He looks like a Confucian general who is planning a strategy and winning a thousand miles away. Mount Tai collapses in front of him without changing his color. Not a lot.He is really very confident about the defense he has set up. Among other things, he only refers to the mature castles in Europe and the bastions after the Renaissance. The walls are designed with thousands of muskets, firecrackers, and trebuchets. It is not something the Xixia people can easily conquer.

Facts have also proved that this is true. According to the war history written by Zhao Sheng later, when the Xixia people surrounded the two cities of Yongle and Luowu, they immediately realized that these two cities were different from the Song Dynasty cities they had seen before.

Song Yongle City, the outer wall is 5.3 meters high, with more than 30 small horse faces.These horse faces are different from the square horse faces on other city walls in the Song Dynasty. They are all polygonal to ensure that the enemies who attack the horse faces will be hit by long-range weapons on the walls on both sides and have no place to hide.15 meters behind the outer wall is an inner wall wider than the outer wall.The height of the inner wall reaches 8.9 meters. Standing on the city wall, you can clearly see the situation outside the city, and there are 22 piers with a height of 11 meters. And artillery directly supported the battle on the outer walls.Zhong Gu also built a war shed with wooden boards and raw cowhide on the outer wall to protect the Xixia people's bows and crossbows. This defensive force is leveraged.

The Xixia people didn't know how powerful they were at that time, so they launched an attack hastily.As a result, the attacking Xixia people suffered heavy casualties under the three-dimensional blows of muskets, bows and arrows, muzzle guns on the outer wall, artillery and crossbows on the inner wall, and they were beaten back without even touching the city wall.

But Wuzang Yepang did not hesitate at all, and immediately mobilized tens of thousands of people to besiege him on all sides, because this time he was sent to die by driving away the tribe of his political opponents, so there was no problem of distressed casualties at all.The offensive and defensive battles continued day and night for three consecutive days, and the Xixia people were killed and injured. However, in the past, the Song army would have been exhausted. However, this time the Song army used a lot of gunpowder instead of manpower, and they were still alive and well after three days of fighting.However, at this time, Ye Pang also ordered the Poxi army to build large-scale trebuchets and a batch of siege equipment.But when Ye Pang wanted to attack Yongle City with trebuchets, the Song army's trebuchets hidden between the outer and inner walls of Yongle City suddenly showed their power.

The counterweight trebuchets in Yongle City are used to defend the city rather than attack it, so there is no need to launch heavy stone bombs that can cause serious damage to the city wall, but only need to throw mud balls and stone balls weighing more than ten kilograms to destroy the wooden siege Equipment, just kill the vital force.Because the projectiles thrown are relatively light, although these trebuchets in Yongle City are smaller in size, their range is not worse than that of Xixia's large trebuchets. After using the counterweight, they can shoot accurately. When the two 5.5 mm artillery fire together, they can always quickly destroy the Xixia trebuchet, which has a huge target and requires hundreds of people to operate together.After a burst of shooting, the several trebuchets built by the Xixia people were all smashed.

After destroying Xixia's catapults, Yongle City's counterweight catapults smashed whatever they saw, smashing Xixia people's siege vehicles, ladders and other equipment in sevens and eights.

The situation in Luowu City is similar. The Xixia army who attacked Funing City and Mizhi City also reported that the Song Army was tightly defended and had many weapons, making it difficult to capture.Now, Wuzang Yuanpang's hope of quickly winning a victory to help him rebuild his prestige has not been realized, so he can only put his hope on the surrounding points and reinforcements.But who is Zhang Kang?That was a thief from his hometown who was not at a disadvantage against Li Yuanhao, and he and Li Buqi had already set a strategy. A series of battles took place between the Xixia cavalry.In this kind of battle, because the cavalry of the Song Army were equipped with tiger squatting guns and matchlock guns, they were able to attack and defend, and took advantage of it.A few days later, the Xixia cavalry began to take the initiative to fight after encountering a similar number of Song troops.

The result is that Pang left and waited for Zhang Kang not to come, and waited for the Song army to get into his pocket, and finally waited for the news that the Song army in Linfu's large-scale cavalry crossed the Great Wall and mopped up the tribes around Yulin, the descendant of the Great Wall. The troops of the Left Wing Military Command dispatched by Eropang were worried that their family members would show signs of panic.

But Ye Pang remained unmoved, just waiting for Zhang Kang's army to die.In order to lure Zhang Kang to take the bait, he ordered to intensify the attack on Yongle City and Luowu City again. Anyway, this time he has enough cannon fodder.Under Ye Pang's strict order, the Xixia army frantically rushed towards Yongle City and Luowu City with soil bags on their backs like a tide.In some places below the city, the dead bodies and soil bags were piled up to the height of the city wall.So he was in a hurry and used the big killer-five hundred military weapons and thunders specially made for defending the city.

These thunderbolts were about the size of watermelons at the time. They were made of cast iron and contained one kilogram of gunpowder.

Thunderbolt is very powerful, but Li Buqi has repeatedly warned Zhong Gu and Gao Yongneng not to use it unless it is absolutely necessary.This is really because Li Buqi does not trust the uniformity of the burning speed of the Zhentianlei fuze. Even if the skilled craftsmen of the Military Weapons Supervision have proved to Li Daguan that their skillful skills can basically make the fuze made of gunpowder burn for the same time .

Now that the situation is critical, Zhong Gu weighed the pros and cons and decided to use Thunderbolt.When a wave of thunder was thrown down the city wall, the space under the city wall was immediately cleared ten meters, and then the Xixia people who were desperately besieging the city just now screamed and retreated.

Ye Pang's eyes are red, he has just received a report that the Song army on Huanqing Road is attacking Qinggang Gorge, the Song army on Qinfeng Road is out of the town, and Qingtang Dong Zhan is also spying on Lanzhou. not much.If he can't take down Luowu City and Yongle City as soon as possible, then this time he can only return without success and become a laughing stock, and his attempt to rebuild his prestige is completely in vain.

However, both Luowu City and Yongle City were built by the river, and because of the high groundwater level, it was impossible to dig tunnels.As for the water cut off, it was cut off a long time ago, but judging from the situation of the Song army in the city, it doesn't look like there is a lack of water.Now there are really not many methods that can be used by Lian Pang, and basically all that is left is to fill it with human life.Under the pressure of the situation, Ye Pang once again strictly ordered to attack the city with soil, and those who retreated would be beheaded.

After another day of fighting like a meat grinder, at night, Xixia people suddenly attacked the big tent.Although Yepang's guards stopped the attackers, the attackers successfully created chaos in the camp. The soldiers who were sleeping in a daze heard someone shouting "Kill Yepang, stay alive and go home", and saw the camp again. During the middle fire, there were fights everywhere, and they couldn't help being in a mess. Some tribal troops took the lead in leaving the camp and retreating to the northwest, which they thought was safe.

It wasn't just the huge camp that was in chaos. Almost all the camps experienced camp roars.By morning, Ye Pang's army had fallen to pieces, and almost all the troops of the Shenyong Army Division and Xiangyou Army Division in the left wing had fled, and most of the small food and grass had been destroyed.In this state, even if Ye Pang wanted to continue to attack the city, it would be impossible.Seeing that the situation was not good, Ye Pang quickly led his troops out of the way.However, there was a sudden change in the army of more than [-], and it was impossible to completely cover it up. Zhang Kang, who was reported two days later, led his army to cover up and chase Yinzhou, beheading nearly [-].

This time, more than [-] Xixia corpses were cleared out of Luowu City and Yongle City alone. It is estimated that the Xixia personnel lost more than [-]. This is a major defeat that has never been seen since Li Yuanhao.

When the good news spread to Tokyo, Zhao Zhen had a grinning mouth left on his entire face for a few days.Li Buqi told him that Ye Pang was unable to deal with the Song army's wheel war and had lost his prestige. The Xixia people were completely disappointed with him and rebelled before the battle. At present, there is no one in Xixia who can overwhelm Ye Pang. The next step The civil strife in Xixia will definitely intensify. As long as the continuous pressure on Xixia is maintained and the Xixia people are not allowed to slow down, the victory of the Battle of Mizhi will be the beginning of the collapse of Xixia.

Then, Li Buqi wrote this chapter, which shocked the emperor and ministers so much that their jaws dropped—Li Buqi proposed that he had devoted himself to planning the Shaanxi strategy in the past few years, and was exhausted physically and mentally, so he begged for bones and asked to be an official.

(End of this chapter)