chat group for the fourth disaster

In fact, Yu Qian and the Grand Master didn't just make promises, he had two reliances.One was the 30 Seris garrison in the city, the [-] Serris immigrants who insisted on staying in Constantinople, and the [-] elites I had just brought from Serris for rotation.These are not the troops in Constantinople in its heyday, but one-third of the Seris garrison was transferred and about [-] old, weak, women and children who left were sent away.

Originally, these old and weak women and children also wanted to stay in the city and face the upcoming siege with their families, but Yu Qian asked his officers and soldiers to show them righteousness, state their pros and cons, and then use coercive means to evacuate these old and weak women and children out of Constantinople.

In addition to the old and weak women and children of Seris, Yu Qian also obtained the command of the entire Constantinople through Constantine XI.Including Constantine XI, all those who are still in the city must obey his command. (The repulsion of the imperial capital and the restoration of Yingzong were also led by him.)

The second is that Constantinople has undergone several large-scale renovations and reconstructions since it was besieged by the Crusaders in 1204 until now.What reassures Yu Qian the most is that in 1300, a Minister of the Ministry of Industry who was demoted due to the problem of standing in the team took dozens of experienced craftsmen to Constantine at the request of the then Eastern Roman Emperor. Bao presided over the reconstruction of the entire punishment and prevention system.

In other words, what the Ottoman Emperor Mehmed II, who is currently surrounded by Constantinople, is not dealing with is the decayed city in history that had only [-] defenders and was temporarily fortified in disrepair.

It is a millennium imperial capital with a total force of 11, 17 young and strong to assist in defending the city, and a thousand-year-old imperial capital that combines the advantages of eastern and western fortress cities and has complete defense equipment!

Of course, the troops mobilized by Mehmed II far exceeded history.From 20 people to 60 people with the power of the whole country, and 187 large and small ships.

However, because the navies of the Roman Empire and the Seris Empire were too powerful, Mehmed II only dared to keep his navy within the defensive range on land, and did not dare to go out to fight against the Roman Empire and the Seris Empire. Naval naval battles can only protect themselves from being carried by the marines carried by the combined fleets of the two navies from daring to attack their logistics transportation lines and storage places on a large scale.

It is precisely because of the existence of the joint fleet of the two navies that Mehmed II did not dare to play the trick of sailing on dry land.

If he dared to sail on dry land, the joint fleet of the two navies would dare to unload the marines on board and teach him a profound lesson.

Therefore, Mehmed II could only let the navy block the seaside side of Constantinople as much as possible, while launching a large army to attack the city from the front.

Already known through spies that the old, weak, women, children and valuables in the city had been removed, Mehmed II unscrupulously ordered his siege equipment troops to bombard the king with trebuchets and artillery of various calibers day and night. Constantinople.

Not only that, he also ordered his army to capture all the surrounding tribes, and let these captive nomadic tribes serve as cannon fodder.

The Ottoman military music was not his own life, and he supervised the captured tribes very hard to die.

But history has long been changed. Relying on the strategy of resistance every step of the way, the Ottoman army surrounded Constantinople in 1453.This kind of encirclement is not the kind of complete encirclement, the sea route has not been completely blocked.The joint fleet of the two navies, outside the firepower of the coastal defense forces, launched raids from time to time, sending some supplies and personnel into the city.

In addition to the siege battle, the biggest meat grinder is actually the city gate on the seaside of Constantinople.

The blood of the soldiers of the Roman Empire, the soldiers of Seris, and the soldiers of Ottoman almost shed every inch of the land outside the city.

Mehmed II naturally knew that to attack a big city like Constantinople, especially in a siege, the city must be surrounded to death, blocking all its aid channels.

However, it's not that the Ottomans don't work hard, but the enemy is too strong!

Facing the strict military orders of Emperor Mehmed II, the commander of the Ottoman navy dragged the emperor to the sea without saying a word.He asked his cronies to organize standard twelve fleets one by one, and then launched an attack on the combined fleet of the two countries.Then, the emperor watched helplessly as the combined fleets of the two countries dispatched two sailing battleships equipped with dozens of hundreds of cannons. He clearly arranged his own fleet like playing with a child, and then withdrew his strict order.

The sea can't be blocked, so we can only continue to put new power into the meat grinder on the side of the sea.It can't be said that the opponent's navy is too strong, so just give up and let the opponent continue to replenish blood from here, right?

There is no way to do it at sea, so we have to find a way from land.

Every day, countless captured nomads are driven to fill the moats and trenches, and then use the defenders at the top of the city to stop them and shoot indiscriminately to consume the strength of the defenders.

Under such inhumane tactics, the Ottomans spent six months cutting off the moat of Constantinople by catching all the nomads and prisoners of war in the vicinity as cannon fodder, and opened a road on it. wide road.

'As long as they start attacking the city walls, the Romans and Seres won't last long, right?After all, we have so many soldiers, each of them can drown them with a mouthful of saliva. '

Mehmed II thought in his heart that even if the Roman Empire cities they encountered earlier had tall walls, they would be quickly breached by the Ottomans using crowd tactics.He had already begun to think about how much ransom he should ask the Seris Empire and the Roman Empire after capturing the Roman emperor and a large number of Serisians after he captured the city.

But what the Ottomans didn't know was that during the siege battle in the far east, filling up the moats and trenches was just the beginning. . .

Chapter 218 The relationship between Seris and Eastern Rome 6

Sun Tzu's Art of War says: "The first is to attack the enemy, the second is to attack the cross, the second is to attack the army, and the second is to attack the city." '

Counting the famous siege battles in the history of the Celestial Dynasty, all the besieged cities were located on the main roads, with a complete city defense system, abundant food and grass, and sharp soldiers.

To explain it in modern terms, it means that it has complete defense means and is still in a giant fortress that cannot be bypassed no matter what.

Our ancients used everything for the defense of the city.

Outside the city, there are moats, antler wood, horse pits, horse-repelling guns, and tripping ropes, etc. Conventional weapons such as rolling wood, stone beds, crossbows, artillery, etc. in the city are just gadgets, such as gold juice, ten thousand enemies, boiling oil, kerosene, etc. And so on all kinds of strange weapons are readily available.

Therefore, the various military books in ancient times all emphasize that in the face of a strong city, it is best to besiege it if it is not necessary.Cut off water and food, cut off all means of external support, and when the defenders in the city can't stand it, they will naturally surrender or attack and break the city.

Representatives include a series of representative battles such as Sima Yi's attack on Liaodong, the Battle of Songjin, and the Battle of Daling River.

In the face of a strong attack on a fortified city, basically or all but a few of them failed.Not only did they fail to achieve their tactical goals, they also suffered heavy losses.

Representatives include the Battle of Ningyuan, the Battle of Youzhou, the Battle of Diaoyu City, the Battle of Taiyuan (Song Attacks the Northern Han Dynasty) and countless other battles.

As a product that combines the wisdom of Eastern and Western craftsmen, Constantinople has added a swarm of bees, cannons, artillery, gold Juice, ten thousand enemies and other city defense weapons from the East.

In addition, the city walls of the entire city were completely overthrown and rebuilt. In order to ensure the face and quality of the heavenly kingdom, the Shangshu of the Ministry of Industry who came to build the city personally supervised. Dumping, the builders adopted different scientific methods according to the requirements of the project.

Some are built along the mountain, and the city walls and the rocks of the mountain are connected as a whole; some dig deep into the original soil, and lay huge stones on top; in low-lying areas where the original soil cannot be dug, wooden piles more than 10 meters long are laid. A well-shaped wooden raft of round logs is laid on it to achieve the effect of transferring the pressure of the city wall.Even in some defensive key points, where the wooden posts may be corroded, advanced alloy metal posts are directly used for reinforcement.

After the reconstruction of the entire city wall surrounding Constantinople is completed, the lowest point is 17 meters high and the highest point is 22 meters. Four horses can run parallel on the city wall, and defensive fulcrums such as urn city, battlements, turrets, Tibetan soldier caves, and Qianjin gates have been added. and system.

It can be said that the minister of the Ministry of Industry who was assigned to build the city rebuilt the city wall of Constantinople according to the defensive measures of Jinling, the former capital of the Seris Empire.

The entire project lasted 21 years, using more than 15 migrant workers and 10 slaves.After the final inspection and acceptance, the minister of the Ministry of Industry, who devoted the rest of his life to this project, passed away with a smile on his face.

. . . . . .

The Ottomans thought that they could attack the city wall directly after filling the moat, but they never expected that before they got close to the city wall, the red cannons on the city wall were educated first, and then killed thousands of people. Franchi gave him a lesson.

An army formation of ten thousand people was bombarded and defeated by large and small artillery before approaching the city wall for 500 meters.

Mehmed II was furious, and he directly ordered the ten-thousand man who led the [-]-man team to conduct the military law, and asked another [-]-man team to escort the previously retreated [-]-man team to continue the attack.

result. . .

The [-]-man team dropped another thousand corpses, and the rats rushed back.

Mehmed II immediately ordered the Ottoman standing army with a higher level of firearms to send a [-]-man team to attack. As a result, there was no result other than being closer to the city wall than the previous [-]-man team.

What can I do?

The opponent's artillery bombardment blasted away the [-]-strong team abruptly, and the other city defense methods behind it have not yet been used.

Looking at the 20-meter-high city walls of Constantinople in the distance, Mehmed II sighed.

Seeing that he could not get any advantage from the city wall, he turned his attention to the only weak point of Constantinople facing the sea.

As mentioned earlier, the Ottoman navy could not deal with the combined fleet of the Roman and Seris navies cruising in the Mediterranean.

They can only prevent the joint fleet of the two navies from launching large-scale attacks and transporting supplies to Constantinople on a large scale, but they can't do anything else.

This is not only a generational difference in military equipment, but also a difference in personnel skills, tactics and experience.

After hundreds of years of development, the Roman and Seris navies already possessed countless outstanding naval reserve personnel and world-leading naval technology and equipment.

When the Ottomans were still installing about ten medium-caliber front-loading guns on the ship, the Romans and Seres had already played sailing battleships equipped with dozens or hundreds of front-loading guns in the Age of Discovery.

But the Ottoman navy is not without advantages. It is precisely because of its small tonnage and shallow draft that after the land port was occupied and destroyed by the Ottomans, it can rely on its own advantages to compete with the giant ships of the two navies with the help of the coastal defense forces.

Due to their deep draft and large tonnage, the sail battleships of the two navies could not enter after the port was destroyed. They could only rely on their own escort medium and light ships to fight against the Ottoman navy. Large battleships could only provide cover before and after the battle. Sexual artillery support.

The boat is small and carries few people, so it can be replenished quickly.

Relying on a steady stream of supplementary troops, the Ottoman Navy, under the cover of the coastal defense forces, fought with the combined fleets of the two countries in a decent manner.

Right now, there is nothing to do about the wall of sighs on land, so they can only focus their attack on the wall facing the sea.

Under the order of Mehmed II, the Ottomans desperately built naval ships and recruited sailors, while launching continuous attacks on the city wall of Constantinople, which had long been a meat grinder.

But with such an obvious weakness, how could the minister of the Ministry of Industry, who previously presided over the reconstruction of the city defense system, not notice it?

Soon the Ottomans discovered that this was a deliberately exposed weakness, designed to lure them into the bait of throwing fresh blood into the meat grinder.

The cannons on this city wall are all Franco cannons with extremely fast loading speed, and the cannons in the turret are actually very disgustingly loaded with chain bombs specially used to destroy mast rigging and sails in naval battles!

Under the bombardment of chain bombs, large siege equipment (such as siege towers) are often damaged and collapsed after a few shots, and the soldiers inside are reimbursed on a large scale.

Chapter 219 The relationship between Seris and Eastern Rome 7

After dropping [-] troops under the wall on the seaside side of Constantinople, Mehmet II had to start thinking about whether his strategy for Constantinople was correct.

In other words, he led the army with all the power of the country and fought here for more than half a year, leaving behind more than 4 corpses and countless wounded soldiers. Is it all worth it?

Locking himself in the big tent and staring at the map for two full days, Mehmed II announced on the morning of the third day with bloodshot red eyes that the Battle of Constantine would continue, and he would never allow Osman On the territory of the empire, there are other countries that control their own transportation arteries.

When the emperor got angry, he laid down millions of corpses, blood was flowing, and every family was plain.

Mehmed II convened his military lords and ministers, and began to study the first step in the attack on Constantinople—how to get close to the city wall.

Facing the city wall with a minimum height of 17 meters, someone proposed to dig a tunnel, and then buried a huge amount of explosives in the tunnel to blow up the wall foundation, so that the city wall could collapse by its own weight.

Mehmet II took his advice and had the soldiers dig tunnels and bury the black powder.

However, what the Ottomans didn't know was that in the east, there was something called Ting Weng. . .

The listening urn is the most primitive listening device in ancient times. It was originally a jar with a big mouth and a small belly. When in use, the listening urn was buried in the ground, and a thin layer of leather was covered on the mouth of the urn. Above, 'listen' to the movement around.

Ting urn is the most amazing when dealing with the tunnel siege battle.For example, when the Hunan army led by Zeng Guoquan attacked Tianjing (now Jinling), the capital of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom in the late Qing Dynasty, the Taiping army in the city planted listening urns at the foot of the city wall to detect the movements of the enemy troops outside the city, which made the Hunan army unable to succeed for a while.

As a matter of course, the tunnel was discovered by the city defenders before it was dug to the foot of the city wall.After confirming the location of the tunnel through Ting Weng, when the Ottoman tunnel was about to be dug to the side of the moat, the city sent dead men to leave the city with black powder bags sitting on a rope hanging basket. When the Ottomans were not prepared, they lit the black powder bags and threw them into the tunnel. Hundreds of excavated Ottoman soldiers were buried in one fell swoop while blowing up the tunnel.

The Ottomans had no choice but to dig again in another place, and sent troops to guard them strictly to prevent the defenders in the city from sending dead soldiers out to destroy it again.

But can their tunnels really be dug to the foot of the city walls?

The answer is of course impossible.

When it was rebuilt, all kinds of siege methods in the Central Plains had been taken into consideration.The reason why the defenders in the city remained unmoved was to let the Ottomans relax their vigilance, and then let them taste a big surprise.

A month later, the surprise came soon.

After a month of digging, the Ottomans finally reached the moat.Just as they were about to check the water level of the moat and decide how to dig, several deafening explosions resounded over Constantinople.Immediately afterwards, a mighty tidal wave along the course of the moat hit several dams previously blocked by the Ottomans.

The Ottoman soldiers who had not waited for the riverside to check informed the people in the tunnel to evacuate. After a shock, the entrance of the tunnel spewed out a wave of sea water with exhausted momentum and several struggling soldiers.

Mehmed II sighed when he saw this.

But then a minister suggested that since the defenders repeatedly destroyed the tunnels, wouldn't this just show that this is the weakness of Constantinople?

Mehmed II was right after a second thought, so he ordered his soldiers to continue digging the tunnel.But correspondingly, in order to prevent it from being destroyed by the defenders again, he directly asked someone to fill in a long section of the moat, so that he would not be afraid of the defenders in the city repeating their old tricks and destroying the tunnel again.

Of course, in the process, the Ottomans left many corpses and added many wounded soldiers.

However, it took another month, and after digging a tunnel in fear, the Ottomans found out in despair, which devil presided over the construction of the city wall?Why is the foundation of the city wall nothing but iron plates?And the gaps in it were poured with iron juice, and they were dug down for more than ten meters without seeing the bottom?

The minister of the Ministry of Industry who was buried in Constantinople and presided over the reconstruction of the city wall would not get up from the coffin and tell the Ottomans that the outer city wall of Constantinople was nearly 50 meters deep and was made of stone and iron. What about the foundation composed of plank bedding!

After nearly three months of busy work, it turned out to be nothing in the end.

Mohammed II finally knew why the defenders in the city left them alone after causing them several troubles. He was so angry that he threw a sword to the minister who proposed to dig the tunnel and asked him to take his subordinates and Ten thousand cannon fodder slave soldiers consumed the defensive supplies of the Constantinople defenders.

Digging tunnels won't work, so what should we do?

At this time, someone suggested that since it is impossible to go underground, we can only find a way from the ground!

However, the three-dimensional strike without dead ends on the outer wall of Constantinople daunted any enemy who wanted to attack head-on.

This kind of thing that combines the eastern and western city defense systems in Dacheng, in addition to forcibly using human lives, can only rely on the progress of military technology to smash it with advanced weapons.

But Ottoman didn't have that many people, and the many slaves and prisoners of war captured earlier were almost consumed in the previous siege battles, so they could only find a way from military technology.

So Muhammad II recruited craftsmen from all over the country and held a reward.Do everything possible to improve Ottoman's military technology, referred to as climbing the technology tree.

. . . . . .

In the spring of 1456, outside Constantinople, which had been besieged for three years, Mehmed II held back for a year, and the technology tree he had climbed for a year finally came to fruition.

A Hungarian artillery designer, Urban, who was rejected by the Roman Empire in 1450, came to the capital of the Ottoman Empire in the autumn of 1452 after preparing enough travel and living expenses.

In the first two years, due to the siege of Constantinople by Emperor Mehmed II, this talented artillery designer did not receive enough attention.But soon after Mehmet II, who had nothing to do with the walls of Constantinople during the siege of the city, issued an order to summon craftsmen and reward them with heavy rewards, this talented artillery designer finally emerged.

After meeting and questioning the artillery engineer in detail, Mehmet II hoped that he could build a heavy artillery capable of breaking the walls of Constantinople.Urban replied affirmatively: "I have carefully studied the city walls, and I am confident that such a heavy artillery can be made-it can not only smash the walls of Constantinople, but even the legendary walls of Babylon are no match. The Wall of Sighs? It's just that the cannon isn't powerful enough." So he got the authorization from Mehmed II.

Is this the elf? .jpg

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Throughout 1455, Urban supervised the construction of the unprecedented cannon at Adrianople.The thriving Ottoman Empire provided the engineer with every source of raw material.Workers dug a huge dedicated foundry pit, melted the bronze, and began to cast this unprecedented weapon in history.When the mold was crushed, what was displayed in front of everyone was a "terrifying and extraordinary monster" - the Urban Cannon.

The gun is 17 feet long (about 5.18m), weighs 17 tons, the barrel is 8 inches thick (about 20cm, so as to withstand the huge impact when firing), and the caliber is as high as 30 inches (about 762mm), which is enough to hold For an adult, the granite shells used weighed 1500 pounds (about 680 kilograms).It was the most powerful firearm of its time.

In January 1456, Mehmet II ordered the first test firing outside the palace.The cannon was placed outside the palace gate, and it was loaded tediously but smoothly. With an earth-shaking roar, the shell sank into the 1-foot-deep mud 1 mile away.Urban fulfilled his promise and was richly rewarded, and Mehmet II finally had the weapon to break the wall of sighs that had plagued him for more than three years.

Two months later, the Ottomans spent a lot of manpower and material resources to transport the cannon and its 19 follow-up products to the city of Constantinople.

Far beyond the range of the artillery on the city wall, the Ottomans set up 20 artillery positions ranging from 500 to [-] meters.And a large number of defensive soldiers were deployed around to prevent the defenders in the city from dispatching cavalry to launch a surprise attack on the cannon and destroy the cannon.

. . . . . .

On the other side, the defenders who were besieged in the city saw that the Ottomans had come up with new tricks and quickly informed Yu Qian, who was in charge of the overall city defense.

Yu Qian hurried to the top of the city, looked at it with a telescope for a long time, and said that if the Ottomans had this ability, let them surround it for another three years.