There was no shouting in front of the formation, which showed that the small city of Maozhou was not regarded as a formidable enemy by the Tibetans.
The number of people exceeds 10,000, like a tide.
There is no neat array, just groups of people, large or small.
But the soldiers in Maozhou City did not take it lightly. Su Ce's military order was not to send a single soldier on the city wall.
The rough bamboo ladder looked rickety, and the Tibetan slaves ran towards Maozhou City, shouting and screaming.
Su Ce, who was behind the female wall, raised half of his face and looked at the Tibetan slaves attacking the city. These slave soldiers held all kinds of weapons in their hands.
Bronze scimitars, broken iron knives, iron forks... Su Ce even saw the bones of a ox-seal stick.
Although the weapons are of inferior quality, these are murderous things.
"Two hundred steps, school!"
"One hundred and fifty steps, shoot!"
…
The brigade commanders at the archery tower on the horse face to the west saw the Tibetans advancing and issued orders one after another.
For a moment, precise white-feathered arrows were shot across the city wall.
The slave soldiers, who only had simple leather covering their bodies, had a layer of skin peeled off that was visible to the naked eye.
In just a blink of an eye, these Tubo slaves who were shot by white feather arrows were trampled under the feet of other Tubo slaves and disappeared into the crowd.
White feathers shot down like raindrops, but no soldiers used red-feathered arrows. As for the thousand crossbowmen, they did not take action at this time, but took turns with ordinary soldiers down the city wall.
To deal with these unarmored Tibetan slaves, the Daqianfu soldiers were reluctant to use red-feathered arrows and crossbow arrows, which were left behind for the protection of the Tibetan archers.
The Qianfu soldiers who served as auxiliary soldiers in the city began to cut down trees, bamboos and other available materials in the city.
Even the door panels in the city have been searched.
Although supplies are still abundant at the moment, Su Ce is not sure. The King of Shu is attacking the wealthy people in Jiannan. When will the reinforcements come? Su Ce forces himself not to think about it. As the leader of an army, he understands that the army has no help.
It is possible to collapse an army.
Five hundred thousand arrows, including 300,000 white-feathered arrows and 200,000 red-feathered arrows.
But not all soldiers are sharpshooters, not to mention that there are cases where they shoot the same person.
If there were enough arrows, it would not be difficult to defend the city, but now Maozhou City does not have enough arrows.
"Shoot on target!" The Fu soldiers on the horse are commanding their men. At this time, there are only a thousand Fu soldiers in the female walls and various large and small arrow towers of the city wall. After a quarter of an hour, they will one after another fight with the Fu soldiers at the root of the city wall.
Soldier rotation.
From the beginning, Su Ce had no intention of letting his soldiers squat on the city wall and fight to the death.
Manpower is limited, and personal strength is also limited. The assessment of the soldiers is limited to two pots of arrows. Therefore, after shooting two pots of arrows, it is useless for the soldiers to stay on the city wall with sore arms.
The two thousand cavalry in the city are Su Ce's last trump card, and Su Ce doesn't plan to use it yet.
But the cavalry is not needed, and the cavalry's spare horses need to be used.
There were 10,000 imperial soldiers in the city, and Su Ce arranged 2,000 imperial soldiers, 300 crossbowmen, and 400 crossbowmen scattered in the four turrets on the east and west walls of the city.
There are no gates in the south and north of the city, and only a thousand soldiers are deployed.
The two thousand horse-riding soldiers left in Su Ce's hands can support the city walls.
They were all soldiers from Zhechong Mansion. Although Su Ce did not give detailed instructions to each captain.
But these captains who crawled out from the dead knew Su Ce's intentions very well.
So although the white-feathered arrows on the city wall were like raindrops, it was a light rain with only scattered direct shots.
With the rotation of fresh troops, the pressure on defending the city was drastically reduced.
However, the Tubo people were not fools. The Tubo slaves carrying rough bamboo ladders ran to the base of the city wall and set up bamboo ladders one after another on the city wall.
Looking at the Tubo people who were climbing quickly with weapons in their mouths, the captains on horseback were giving orders one after another. The soldiers were holding putters, and a group of ten people were holding wooden poles as thick as a bowl, and the wooden poles were pointing towards the city.
At the outer end was an iron fork, pointed at the bamboo ladder. Under the shouts of the team leader, everyone used force.
"push!"
"Squeak!"
Under the influence of several forces, the bamboo ladder made an unpleasant sound.
The slave climbing on the bamboo ladder only regretted that he climbed too fast.
Each bamboo ladder was pushed away or turned over. The Tibetan slaves on the bamboo ladder fell down. The lucky ones were caught by other Tibetan slaves. The unlucky ones fell to the ground with a muffled sound, and their legs
Broken arm bones pierced the skin, causing the Tibetan slaves to cry loudly in pain.
However, among these unlucky Tibetan slaves, there were also some who were lucky enough to fall from a height of six to seven meters, but nothing happened. As for the other Tibetan slaves sitting under their buttocks, they did not care whether they were dead or alive.
"fall!"
Pots of boiling fat were bubbling and being held by the soldiers on wooden stands. The four men tilted the pot hard and poured it out, splashing the scalding hot oil.
The hoarse shouts from under the city wall did not make the archers relent; their goal was no longer to roll on the ground and seize the Tibetan slaves.
There is no mercy in the army!
"shoot!"
"The team is at attention, my arrow is gone!"
"Second Brigade of the 32nd Regiment!"
"Xia Gui, here!"
"Change!"
"promise!"
As archers one after another finished shooting two pots of arrows, on the west wall, brigade commanders continued to lead their soldiers down the city wall, and their vacancies had already been filled by other brigade soldiers who had caught up.
There were no greetings, and the soldiers who came down from the city wall were not idle either. They lined up to go to the auxiliary soldiers to collect arrows.
These soldiers were all soldiers who had taken turns at least once, and there were many veterans among them. Su Ce looked at it for a while. The soldiers on the west wall were advancing and retreating in a measured manner. With the horse-faced archery tower as the center, they were standing in their respective schools.
Under his command, there was no possibility for the Tibetan slaves to scale the city wall.
"Prince, look!" Su Ce's good mood was suddenly broken by an exclamation.
I saw at least two hundred crossbows rolled out from the Tubo camp.
What is a bed crossbow? It uses a string of wood as a bow, and a feathered spear as an arrow. It is launched with a trigger, and can shoot over a thousand steps, killing many people.
Looking up into the distance, Su Ce's face couldn't help but change. It was Daqian's standard three-bow bed crossbow. This kind of bed crossbow requires a group of people to work together to use it.
The Dagan bed crossbow is derived from the Daqian bed crossbow, except that a winch is added. There are three crossbows on the crossbow arm, two are installed at the front end, and one is installed at the back. The front and rear are installed opposite each other.
In the previous dynasties, the Daqi bed crossbow required manpower to fire the crossbow, which usually required 20 to 100 people. The general range was 200 to 300 steps, that is, about 370 to 560 meters.
After Da Gan added a winch to the tail, he reduced the number of people to eight to stir the winch, and one person loaded the ballista. It was said to be a ballista, but actually it meant the crossbow arrows used in the Sangong bed crossbow. The sound of shooting was explosive.
The ballista is composed of a thick arrow shaft and iron fletchings, with a huge triangular-edged iron arrowhead installed at the front end. Because its size is about the same as the spear used by ordinary soldiers, it is also called "one gun, three swords and arrows".
There is also a type of arrow called "Treading Arrow". Its function is to shoot a thick arrow at the enemy's wall when attacking an enemy castle, so that the front end of the crossbow is deeply inserted into the wall, leaving only half of the thick arrow shaft and tail feathers.
Exposed outside the wall, the siege soldiers can climb up the city wall with these huge arrow shafts inserted into the wall under the cover of their own side, and capture the city. This huge crossbow arrow also becomes the stepping stone for the siege attackers to climb.
Therefore, these arrows have the name of "stepping arrows".
But no matter what kind of crossbow it is, how come the Tubo people have these powerful killing weapons!
"Bed crossbow! Use the bed crossbow quickly!"
The drum sound in the watchtower no longer sounded regularly, but became three rapid beats one after another.
"Hurry up and push the crossbow out!"
The wooden planks of the archery tower above the horse's head were lifted, and a ten-foot-long bed crossbow was pushed out from the center of the archery tower.
"twist!"
"Creak, creak, creak, creak, creak, creak, creak, creak, creak, creak, creak, creak, creak, creak, creak, creak, creak, creak, creak, creak, creak, creak, creak, creak, creak, creak, creak, creak, creak, creak, crunch, creak, creak, creak, creak, creak, creak, creak, creak, creak, creak, creak, creak, creak, creak, creak, creak, creak, creak, creak, creak, creak, creak, creak, creak, creak, creak, creak, creak, creak, creak, creak, creak, creak, creak, creak, creak, creak, creak, creak, creak, creak, creak, etc. soldier, eight of whom were divided into two teams, four of whom were in charge of one winch, shouting one or two.
The beef tendons as thick as fingers were stretched straight, and as the crossbow was stressed, the crossbow bed made a harsh sound.
"Click!" With a sound, the beef tendon got stuck on the palm-sized crossbow hook.
The team leader took a wooden hammer and hit the crossbow hard.
"Bang!" With a sound, the ballistae like a spear shot out from the archery tower, hitting its target in the blink of an eye.
The Tubo people were obviously not as skilled in using bed crossbows as the soldiers, but they could not hold up the many bed crossbows of the Tubo people. There were twenty bed crossbows in the archery tower on the city gate, plus a dozen bed crossbows on the horses and more than two thousand Tibetan soldiers. The guardians began to shoot each other.
Da Gan was superior in speed and accuracy, but it could not withstand the Tibetan people's over 200 crossbows.
The archery tower on the horse's back was the first to fail, and he saw that the small archery tower on the horse's back was hit by a ballistae.
The huge force caused the wooden frame of the watchtower to twist.
"Boom!" With a sound, a small archery tower with a brick and wood structure was shot down by more than thirty ballistae.
The people inside were alive and dead, but the soldiers on the city wall did not go to rescue them because they were facing the Tibetan slaves who used their own bodies to build a ramp.
"prick!"
"Stab again!"
…
"Hurry! Hurry!" Under the leadership of their brigade commander, one group of rotating soldiers joined the fight at the female wall, while the other group went to the ruins of the collapsed archery tower to look for their surviving comrades.
The bricks, stones and wood that were pulled out were not thrown away, but were thrown directly to the bottom of the city, causing the Tibetan slaves to complain incessantly.
"fall!"
Pots of scalding hot oil were poured onto the ramps of Tibetan human flesh.
A school captain was holding a two-stone hard bow, the arrowheads were wrapped with linen cloth soaked in rosin, and the deputy on the side lit the linen cloth.
A plume of fire pierced the sky and fell on the slope made of the corpses of Tibetan slaves, blessed by the hot oil just now.
A fire burst out under the wall, and other horse-faced captains and brigade marshals also followed suit.
Suddenly, a fire dragon ignited under the western wall of Maozhou City.
The Tubo slaves who had just climbed up the city wall were pushed off the city wall by the soldiers and turned into fuel for the fire. Su Ce also learned for the first time that the human body can burn.
The Tubo slaves who were burned by a wall of fire began to retreat, and the soldiers on the city wall also began to retreat behind the female wall. The fire made of human bodies rolled up the female wall with enchanting flames.
"The Tubo people retreated!"
After this shout, there was no cheering. The soldiers began to form a team and count the casualties amidst the shouts of their respective superiors.
The Tibetan slaves who retreated did not return to the camp, but were driven by the Tibetan guardians to line up again.
"Replenish arrows, kerosene, and transport bricks and stones from the city!" Su Ce finished the order and frowned as he looked at the soldiers in the Tibetan army wearing large armor.
They are lining up, and the military formation is obviously much more orderly, and the weapons are more sophisticated.