Chapter 693 The war begins
In the third year of Taiwu, on April 8, Taishan's army came to cover the sky.
The whole army was divided into four sides, with a total of 60,000 troops. A total of 16 troops fell in positions less than half a mile away from each gate.
In this battle, the commanders of each army set up their flags in front of the front army and unified the command of all siege battles. Before the battle, these people all spontaneously wrote military orders, vowing not to return the army until the city was breached.
Zhang Chong was so moved that he wrote a poem about the battle:
"The wind and rain in Beimang turned yellow, and millions of troops marched to Luoyang."
"China today is extremely generous and generous."
"It is better to use your remaining courage to pursue the poor bandits, not to use your reputation as an academic overlord."
"If heaven has feelings, it will also grow old, and the right path in the world will be vicissitudes of life."
After writing the poem about the three armies, the three armies were cheered up and shouted:
"If heaven has feelings, it will also grow old, and the right path in the world will be vicissitudes of life."
Thus, a new historical poem begins here.
The most grand siege battle in history finally started.
……
At the beginning of the war, the drums outside the city shook the ground, and even the countless emperors' tombs on Beiman Mountain seemed to be trembling.
Liu Bian in the Beigong was miserable and anxious.
He asked left and right what was going on, but no one answered.
Finally, he was finally willing to come out of the room and hurriedly climbed to the tall building to look out over the city.
Under the clear sky, there was no cloud in the sky. When Liu Bian climbed up and looked at it, he saw densely packed spears and spears like forest trees, spanning more than ten miles across, as far as the eye could see.
The Taishan troops were all dressed in yellow, holding high apricot flags and flying in the air. In addition, the military formations were neat and tidy, so in Liu Bian's eyes, they looked like neat wheat fields.
But this wheat field is too big and too chilling.
Seeing this, Liu Bian finally couldn't hold back his tears.
He lamented to the small yellow door next to him:
"The country of Han Dynasty will be destroyed by me today."
The fertile wheat fields that had always nourished the Han Dynasty had now all belonged to others.
In fact, the Xiao Huangmen only entered the palace to serve him recently. Those individuals around Liu Bian had already been killed by He Jin.
Even Liu Bian wouldn't have survived if it weren't for the Queen Mother begging He Jin.
But although He Jin did not kill him, he kept him in a claustrophobic palace and did not allow any contact with him. Living alone for a long time has already destroyed Liu Bian's mind.
Since He Jin's disappearance, the officials outside the palace worked together to invite Liu Bian out, but Liu Bian's mind collapsed and he couldn't make the decision at all.
There are rumors that when the ministers went to invite Liu Bian, Liu Bian sat on the pile of excrement and played with feces. He even threw feces at them when the ministers showed up.
Although the news was blocked, it was too explosive and quickly spread to the upper echelons of Kyoto.
Everyone knew that the emperor was crazy.
Some people had suspected that the emperor was pretending to be crazy, and whispered that He Jin's party had been eliminated, and now the court was waiting for His Majesty to come out and take charge of the overall situation.
But this man has eaten shit and no longer fantasizes.
After that, major events in Kyoto were mostly discussed between the ministers and Zhu Jun, and even the Queen Mother seldom participated.
So this war, which was related to the future of the Han Dynasty, had nothing to do with the Han Dynasty.
Today, for some reason, Liu Bian suddenly woke up.
He asked the Xiao Huangmen who served him to take him to the high building on the North Palace. He lamented when he saw the bandit troops purging outside the city.
……
This time, the Taishan Army learned from its previous experience in attacking Jinyong City and believed that both positive and odd methods should be used to attack the city.
They used trebuchets and ballistae to bombard the city head day and night, then blocked the connection between Luoshui River and the moat, and then moved forward with catapult trucks, and all the people and brave soldiers filled the ditch with soil.
Starting from April 8, the Taishan Army's offensive continued.
First, on the 9th, artillery carriages destroyed the northeastern corner of Kyoto.
That section is a section of the city wall on the east side of Gumen. The reason why it was not bombarded is because this section of the city wall was built later, and the Taishan Army carried out targeted attacks on this section of the city wall.
This credit must be attributed to Cai Yong. In the early years of Emperor Ling's reign, this old man once wrote to Shu that this section of the city wall was decaying and needed to be built.
But at that time, the court was not moved at all. It was not until the Yellow Turban chaos that Liu Hong hurriedly asked the craftsman to resume construction.
Due to the rush of time and insufficient funding, the quality of this section of the city wall is far inferior to that of the old section.
After this section of the city wall collapsed, the Taishan Army mobilized two armies in this direction. Then whenever the Han army wanted to repair the city wall, the Taishan Army under the city would fire with powerful crossbows.
After the Han army suffered heavy casualties, they saw that Mount Tai had no intention of attacking by force, so they gave up.
On April 9, the Taishan Army blocked the Luo River and opened the Qianjin Canal in the east of the city. Within one day, the water in the moat outside Kyoto was dredged again to Luoshui.
The moat was empty.
On April 10, the Taishan Army recruited 100,000 people from the capital and spent tens of millions of dollars a day to mobilize people to fill the gullies.
After hearing the news, responders from all over the capital gathered, helping the old and the young, carrying water and slurry to join the army.
Under the cover of the four armies of the Taishan Army, one hundred thousand civilians filled the ravines in the capital in one day.
At this point, there is a smooth road outside Kyoto.
From this day on, the Taishan Army began to launch a direct attack on Kyoto.
Because the Jinyong City occupied by the Taishan Army is located in the northwest corner of Kyoto, in the first wave of attacks, the west and north of Kyoto became the main attack areas of the Taishan Army.
The first thing to be attacked was not the three gates in the west of Kyoto, but the Minato gate on the side of the ditch.
This water gate used to be connected to the ditches and moats in the countryside. During the day, boats were used to transport supplies, and they were put down at night. Generally speaking, the weakest points in city defense are these water gates.
The city gates on land all have a complex design of urn city, while the water gate only has an iron fence, and even the defensive moat has been emptied.
What's even more terrible is that the people who designed the Water Gate at that time must not have expected that the moat would be emptied one day, so the fallen iron fence did not touch the ground at all, but left a gap of two waists.
As a result, this huge loophole in city defense was exposed to the Taishan Army.
The general in charge of the Taishan Army was Xie Bi, the commander of the Wei Bo Army. He was overjoyed when he saw this loophole in the defense and hurriedly ordered the trapped general Xie Kun to lead an attack with 800 trapped soldiers.
When Xie Kun, wearing three layers of armor and jumping into the ditch with his armored soldiers holding up banners, realized something was wrong.
It turns out that the villagers only filled in the middle and front section of the ditch before, and the back section near the city wall was not filled in because it was an upward gentle slope.
The location of the water gate is a separately dug water channel. Although the water has been drained, the ditch land left behind is a wet one.
So, when Xie Kun and other trapped soldiers jumped down one after another, the heavy iron armor carried them down. At this time, Xie Kun panicked and shouted:
"Get up."
The friendly troops on the slope quickly dropped the ropes to pull these armored soldiers up.
But at this time, a wave of Han army archers emerged from both sides of Shuimen and began to shoot wildly at the Taishan Army at the mouth of Shuimen.
It turned out that Zhu Jun was aware of the weakness of Water Gate when he was laying out the city defense of Kyoto. He built breast walls on both sides of Water Gate to clamp the entire water gate ditch.
Once the enemy attempts to invade through the water gate, archers on both sides of the ditch can attack the enemy.
Therefore, when Xie Kun and others attacked, the Han army defenders on this side of the city quickly mobilized a group of crossbowmen to ambush on both sides of the ditch parapet.
At this time, there were a lot of bows and arrows from above, and the Taishan Army on the slope struggled to hold up the banners to cover the retreat of the friendly forces.
At this time, another huge boulder suddenly fell from the top of the city.
These were all rockeries in the former Gongqing's home. Later, Zhu Jun conquered the city and used them to deal with the Taishan Army.
Previously, bows and arrows had done almost no harm to Xie Kun and other armored soldiers trapped in the formation, but now a huge boulder fell from the city, killing dozens of people immediately.
The boulder blocked the entrance to the water gate, so Xie Kun and others had no choice but to withdraw.
In this test, Wei Bojun's trapped soldiers suffered more than forty casualties, which was considered a heavy loss.
However, Wei Bojun's test here was slightly frustrated, but the Feihu Army's attack in the north went extremely smoothly.
The previous Jinyong City had been left to the Shesheng Army, who controlled the commanding heights of the entire region and unleashed their firepower.
The Flying Tiger Army began to attack Xiamen and Gumen north of Kyoto.
After the whole army had a sumptuous breakfast in the morning, all the troops began to gather outside the two gates. Among them, Xiamen was the closest to Jin Yong in the northwest corner, so it was taken care of by Xu Huang.
So not long after the war started, General Xiamen asked Zhu Jun for help.
At that time, Zhu Jun was lying on Hu's bed and knew that Xia Clan was in a tight situation. He immediately ordered Zhou Ang to lead a team of military sharpshooters to support Xia Clan and focus on shooting enemy officers.
Zhou Ang did not dare to neglect, and rushed to Xiamen with a hundred sharpshooters. Fortunately, Xiamen was not far from the high-rise building where Zhu Jun rested, so after more than a mile, the reinforcements had arrived at Xiamen.
At this time, countless carriages and carts were arranged under Xiamen City, and countless officials held banners and rammed the gates, or shot at the exposed Han troops on the top of the city.
Then more than ten ladders were hung on the top of the city. Amid the roars of the friendly troops, groups of Flying Tiger infantry rushed towards the top of the city.
Not far away, the Shesheng Army on Jinyong City also silently shot and killed the Han troops on the city.
On the one hand, the Han army on Xiamen had to carry the banners to resist the arrows of the Shesheng army, and on the other hand, they also used long poles and halberds to push the cloud chariot hanging on the top of the city.
The few who dared to throw logs and gold juice into the city were shot dead by Taishan's army.
At this time, the city was filled with the smell of excrement, water, and blood, and everyone was crowded together, helpless.
When Zhou Ang rushed over, he heard screams and wails on the Xia Gate. He was nervous when he suddenly saw a bunch of heads being thrown on the city.
At first, Zhou Ang thought he was killing the Taishan army on the top of the city, but once people recognized it, it turned out that the ones who died were the Han troops on the top of the city.
At this time, Zhou Ang realized that something was wrong.
At this moment, there must be chaos on top of the city, and people are starting to kill indiscriminately. At this stage, it is often a precursor to the collapse of an army.
At this time, Zhou Ang's mind was changing rapidly, and finally he thought of Zhu Jun lying on Hu's bed. He suddenly pulled out his knife and yelled at Pao Ze behind him:
"Follow me and kill them all."
The people below always watch what the people above do. At this moment, Zhou Ang took the lead in charging. These elite marksmen naturally became more courageous and followed the horse's face to kill directly.
As soon as Zhou Ang came up, he shot and killed several crazy Han soldiers, and then shouted:
"I am Canglongmen Sima Zhou Ang. Now I will take over the city wall. Anyone who dares to kill will be executed."
These people have all heard of Zhou Ang's name.
In the past, everyone laughed at him for being slippery, but now he feels more friendly when hearing this name, and he actually obeys orders.
As a result, under Zhou Ang's formation, the morale of the Han army in the city was slightly boosted.
At the same time, the hundreds of sharpshooters also climbed up to the watchtower on the city tower and exchanged fire with the Taishan Army on Jinyong City to the northwest.
These people are all elite crossbowmen, military ministers who were selected from tens of thousands of people. They usually teach archery to the princes of the Han Dynasty.
At this time, both sides were shooting down, and the Shengsheng Army couldn't take any advantage at all.
Without the suppression of bows and arrows from the northwest, the Han army was free to knock down those ladders.
They used big yellow crossbows to kill the Taishan army in the distance. Those who can be seen under the city head are shot with bows and crossbows, and those who have rushed to the city head are shot with wood and fallen rocks.
As for the row of carriages under the city tower, the Han army also threw torches down and burned more than a dozen of them one after another.
The fighting continued until the afternoon. Xu Huang, who was standing outside the city, saw that there was no possibility of going to the city, so he retreated his troops.
This time, the actual death toll on both sides was not high.
But it was the most tiring day since the war began for the Xiamen Han Army. After repelling the Taishan Army's attack, many people lay down tiredly at the top of the city.
Although tired, everyone including Zhou Ang looked happy.
Because they saw the confidence to defend Kyoto, the Taishan Army was not invincible.
Immediately, Zhou Ang promised to the guard at the valley gate that he would ask the commander for a reward so that the brothers could have a good meal of meat.
As a result, the walls of Xiamen City were filled with cheers and high morale.
……
When the city was being attacked from all sides.
The digging team, composed of the most capable craftsmen battalion in the army, also began to dig at the military camp in the northeast corner.
That's right, the Taishan Army decided to conquer Kyoto.
After previously inspecting the terrain of Kyoto City, the master craftsmen of the craftsman camp believed that the land in the northeast of Kyoto was solid and there were no waterways nearby, making it the most suitable for attacking the city in caves.
Therefore, Zhang Chong ordered them to dig three corridors in the northeast, leading to the north, northeast corner, and east of Kyoto respectively.
The person in charge of this siege was Ren Jun. Since joining the Taishan Army, he has been transferred to construction and field affairs and has rich experience in civil engineering.
Ren Jun started digging on March 28. At that time, armies from all sides were besieging the fortress group on the outskirts of Kyoto. Under the cover of the noisy battlefield, the Taishan Army Craftsman Battalion started the first shovel.
Thanks to the research and development and manufacturing of the king and the generals, the Taishan Army's craftsmanship was very high and efficient, and they quickly dug the passage in the camp.
Moreover, Ren Jun was sure that this area was suitable for work. Although the lower soil was still wet, as long as the moat outside the city was drained, there would be no problem.
With Ren Jun's confirmation, Zhang Chong ordered Guo Mo, the chief general in the northeast, to be responsible for building fortifications near the tunnel and extending to Kyoto.
In this way, the three tunnels moved slowly and firmly towards Kyoto.
As for this crisis, Zheng Tai on the top of the city knew nothing about it.
At this time, he was furious and yelling at the generals.