Chapter 85: Strategy for defending the city

The city entrance of Echeng.

Zhang Xi pointed at Wei Yan, who had been covered with full paintings, and told him, "The general went to the southeast corner of the city to set up a village, form a corner with Echeng, and help each other. Don't be careless!"

Wei Yan's attitude towards Zhang Xi himself was still as dead as if he was unhappy, but he treated Zhang Xi's military orders in the end, obeyed the orders and said, "I will obey the order!"

After saying that, he ignored Zhang Xi, turned around and left, directing the 1,000 soldiers who had just been assigned to him yesterday to camp ten miles southeast of Echeng.

Kou Feng was very unhappy about this.

First, he was unhappy with Wei Yan's attitude towards Zhang Xi, but was jealous of Wei Yan's ability to lead the troops alone, and he needed to guard Zhang Xi.

"Brother, this person is just a guard, but he is so arrogant and rude. Why does his brother still have to appoint military power to him?!" Kou Feng complained to Zhang Xi indignantly.

Zhang Xi was also very unhappy about Wei Yan's attitude, but there was nothing he could do.

There are only two generals who can be used on hand, one is Wei Yan and the other is Kou Feng. Compared with Kou Feng, Zhang Xi still believes that Wei Yan is more capable of being independent.

As for Kou Feng?

"Dong Zhong doesn't have to say much. Go and organize military affairs and arrange the city to defend Wei Yan's departure. It's just support. How can you compare to Gong Zhong's defense of the city?!"

Zhang Xi coaxed the Erha to speak.

Kou Erha was relatively simple and easy to coax. When he heard Zhang Xi say this, he immediately ran to sort out the thousand soldiers under Zhang Xi and began to arrange the city to defend.

As for Zhang Xi, he was wondering how to defend this city.

The regular preparation of city guard supplies, with Kou Feng's help, should be a big problem. Zhang Xi also began to collect and prepare some of the rolling stones and wood in the city.

But Zhang Xi was always a little worried. This was his first time defending the city, and he always felt that there seemed to be something unsafe.

There is no way, "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" is so popular. In that book, siege is like drinking cold water. Maybe the enemy can "deception" with any tricks. What's even more unlucky is that Zhang Xi's opponent is still Zhou Yu, a commander with an intelligence value of up to 97.

You don’t have to worry too much about pretending to be reinforcements or scamming the city gate. Just be careful and be more careful and don’t open the door if anyone comes. This shouldn’t be a big problem.

What Zhang Xi was mainly worried about was that he was routinely guarding the city. He did not know the way to defend the city and would not solve the enemy's siege strategy, which led to the loss of the city.

Therefore, Zhang Xi began to recall the ways to defeat the enemy in history of the siege.

As for some of the methods of siege that Zhang Xi knew, the conventional method was to attack the city, which was a sea of ​​people, and constantly attacked the city walls and strive to attack the city head.

This kind of siege is very practical, but it is not efficient. You only need enough soldiers to defend the city wall, which makes it difficult for the opponent to attack.

Another thing is that Huang Zu really managed Jiangxia well. As the Jiangxia naval headquarters, Huang Zu was also very attentive to Echeng's defense and built a urn in Echeng.

In other words, if Jiangdong uses the method of ants to attack the city, Zhang Xi will be confident that Jiangdong will be a big loser.

But Zhang Xi felt that Zhou Yu could not be so stupid.

The Jiangdong Army is not at a good level in the land battle, but Zhou Yu is not a talented person who only knows water battles. He is versatile in the land and water. He cannot not understand land battles, and he will not use low-level methods such as ants supporting the city.

Therefore, Zhang Xi felt that we had to consider Zhou Yu's other methods to attack the city.

For example, using siege equipment.

The most common siege equipment are hook ladders and cloud ladders.

A hook ladder is an ordinary ladder, but there is an iron hook at one end that can hook the city wall. Then the soldiers climb up this cannot be pushed down with one hand.

The cloud ladder is more complicated, it is an upgraded version of the hook ladder, and it is also troublesome to manufacture. It is a bit like a scaffolding with wheels, placing a ladder obliquely on the scaffolding.

When attacking, the soldiers hid under the cloud ladder and pushed the cloud ladder to the city wall. Once the cloud ladder approached the city wall, they used the hooks on the ladder to hook the city wall. The soldiers climbed up along the cloud ladder diagonally with much higher efficiency than the hook ladder.

When dealing with the hook ladder, you can also use the gravity of the rolling stone wood to kill the enemy, but you can’t do anything about the cloud ladder. People come up from the diagonal behind the cloud ladder. If you hit people, you have to throw the stone out. If you don’t have to say it, you may not be able to hit people.

In this era, the only way to deal with the cloud ladder is to guard the exit of the cloud ladder while sending troops out of the city to burn it. This is why Zhang Xi sent Wei Yan to lead his troops outside.

As for the well railing and rushing, these siege tools are more troublesome to build and can be basically destroyed outside.

In addition to siege equipment, the commonly used special siege methods also include tunnel digging.

Although Zhang Xi felt that Zhou Yu was unlikely to use this time-consuming and labor-intensive method, Zhou Yu did not know when reinforcements would come to Xiling. But to be on the safe side, Zhang Xi buried large tanks under the four city walls, and sent people to listen to whether there were any sounds of digging tunnels.

In addition to these conventional methods of defending the city, Zhang Xi also began to wonder if there were any special defensive methods.

First of all, we should find a way to find a way to defend the city.

In this era, the defense of the city was also a very important thing, such as a car crash.

The crash is a simple version of the crash, but it is not used to hit the city gate, but to deal with the ladder.

There was no such era, and it will not last until nearly a thousand years later.

The principle is also very simple. It is to tie two ropes to the two ends of the bumping wood, then wrap iron sheets on the bumping wood, and use the pendulum principle to hit the adjacent cloud ladder and smash the front end of the cloud ladder, so that the enemy will not be able to climb up.

This thing is easy to make and easy to operate. Zhang Xi quickly arranged for someone to make more than a dozen sub-collision cars to be used.

In addition to the collision, Zhang Xi also specially found a lot of bamboo poles, and then placed the long spear head on the bamboo pole to turn it into an extended version of the long spear. This is to attack enemy soldiers climbing up the hook ladder and cloud ladder for a long distance when the rolling stones are insufficient. If necessary, they can also be used to push the hook ladder, which is quite difficult and requires four or five people to operate at the same time.

Of course, these are all methods under the current conditions, and there is no way to do so. If there is strong turbulence, there is no need to prepare these city-guarding equipment. Just pour the oil and light the fire, and you will live together.

At this time, Zhang Xi felt very regretful. When he came to Jiangxia from Xinye to take office, why didn’t he bring some soybean oil and no hot tinder? It would be better if there was soybean oil. At least there was no need to divide the troops and send Wei Yan out of the city to defend.

Even if he can, he can dig a ditch in the urn. Once the enemy breaks through the outer city, he will pour oil into the ditch and mix sulfur hay and other things, which can kill the enemy at least.

There is no oil, I can only think of other ways.

The golden juice, which is also liquid, was remembered by Zhang Xi.

Jinju is a bit unethical.

The instantaneous lethality of this thing is actually not very high. If it falls down, it will only cause burns and temporarily lose its combat power.

But the unethical thing is that this thing is prone to bacterial infections, and if it encounters a warm and humid environment, it may also cause plague.

Bacterial infections are already incurable. If this causes the epidemic again, well, fortunately it is early spring now, so it shouldn't cause the plague.

No matter what, as a backup method, Zhang Xi still prepared some.

After spending a day and doing some preparations, Zhang Xi ordered all the soldiers to be martial law and wait for the enemy in Jiangdong to attack.

And the army in Jiangdong is indeed setting up camp now.

The Jiangxia Navy's debris had dismantled the wreckage of the water camp and floated downstream, and it was easily discovered by the Jiangdong army. Zhou Yu made a little judgment and felt that this was a sign of the Jiangxia Navy's retreat overnight.

Therefore, early in the morning, Zhou Yu sent a reconnaissance ship to inquire about the movements of the Jiangxia navy.

As a result, Zhou Yu received the reward that the Jiangxia navy did retreat, but they sank the ship to intercept the river and blocked the road toward the Yangtze River.

The move that made Zhou Yu angry at that time was so cruel and disgusting.

It’s not like this that the shipwrecked and the Jiang family’s many ships are ruined, right?

For this reason, Zhou Yu personally led the navy to check the place where the river was intercepted, and ordered General Ling to lead the navy to explore the way to see if he could find a waterway that was not completely blocked and could be passed by the army.

As a result, Ling Tong rewarded Zhou Yu after stranding three warships. The blockage was too dead. The fishing boat might be able to pass, but with the draft of the warship, it could not pass at all.

Zhou Yu had no choice but to think of other solutions.

Zhou Yu's mind was not in vain. He looked at the blocked waterway, then looked at Echeng on the shore, and after a little thought, he understood.

This is the guards of Echeng who are forcing themselves to give up the water and attack the city on land.

For a moment, Zhou Yu was angry and laughed.

Is this Echeng Guardian's mind sucking into the mind?

I am indeed famous for the command of the navy, but it does not mean that I can’t fight in the land. Who do I look down on me?!

It seems that I have been staying in Jiangdong for many years, but people have been underestimated.

Zhou Yu was so angry that he immediately ordered the entire army to set up camp on the south bank of the Yangtze River and prepare for siege equipment.

Today, Zhou Lang wants to let Jiang Xia’s idiot see his own land combat offensive ability.

Of course, Zhou Yu was not so angry that he was demented. Although he was also angry, Zhou Yu did not lose his calmness and was more disappointed.

At the end of February, Sun Quan ordered Zhou Yu to be the vanguard and lead 30,000 Jiangdong naval troops to attack Jiangxia. This was a way to risk the loss of a year's food harvest to capture Jiangxia and expand territory.

It was very smooth at the beginning. In early March, Zhou Yu captured Xiazhi and Qichun counties, and had a springboard to attack Jiangxia.

Immediately afterwards, Zhou Yu continued to head along the Yangtze River to the northern part of Jiangxia and arrived in E County.

Zhou Yu's original intention was to fight a decisive battle with the Jiangxia naval army in E County. If the Jiangxia naval army could be wiped out completely, then the rest would be a formality.

As Chen analyzed, Jiangxia counties without the protection of the navy are simply fish on the chopping board and can be slaughtered.

But Zhou Yu himself did not expect that the battle with the E County naval army would be so troublesome.

In more than ten days, Zhou Yu set out from Jiangdong and occupied the two eastern counties of Jiangxia.

It took more than ten days to go Zhou Yu to be blocked under the city of E County and did not move forward for a moment.

Of course, it is normal for the wars these days to not progress for more than ten days. Sometimes it is normal to attack a place without progress for half a year, and Zhou Yu would not be anxious because of this.

But Zhou Yu's advance was too smooth in the early stage, which gave Zhou Yu an illusion that if the Jiangxia strategy could be ended early, after the Jiangdong Army returned, the soldiers and the people might have time to catch up with spring plowing and replant the food for the previous season.

But the defenders of E County told him that this should be impossible.

Since he was destined to lose a year of food, Zhou Yu gave up his luck and let the soldiers camp ashore, and at the same time built siege equipment to prepare for siege.

(End of this chapter)
Chapter completed!