On the first day, the Oirat people's offensive was not very fierce.
They dispatched 20,000 cavalry to dismount and attack the city on foot.
Yang Fan did not send out the Beijing Battalion, because the Oirats were mainly attacking the North City. The North City was left to Tuan Lian to guard, and only 10,000 Beijing Battalions were responsible for supervision. The other 30,000 Beijing Battalions were in the South City.
The South City is only half the size of the North City. It was formed by extending the east and west city walls into the Yellow River. It actually included the dock part and included this lifeline related to Jiuyuan City into the city.
As long as the water transportation of the Yellow River does not stop, this city will have an endless supply of supplies, soldiers, and weapons. Of course, there is about a hundred days of freezing period in winter. During this period, the Mongolian war horses are
It can run on ice.
During this period, Jiuyuan City will be surrounded on all sides. Because it is too cold in the north, the ice on the Yellow River is two to three feet thick. Not to mention the cavalry, even the heavy-duty trucks of later generations can also walk on the ice. It has been extremely cold these years.
Taihu Lake is so frozen that you can drive a heavy-duty carriage, let alone this place outside the Great Wall.
Yang Fan has been commanding at the North Tower today. Today he wants to have a good understanding of the Oirat people's tactics.
The people of Oirat are not easy to deal with. They have traveled across the Western Regions for hundreds of years, and they have never seen any kind of fortified city. They have not seen any kind of nation. They have not fought. They are either fighting or on the way to fight.
The Oirat people were the Wala people who also led the army back then. And those in this city today are the Jingying people.
It’s true that enemies often meet on narrow roads, but it’s not that enemies don’t get together.
The Jingying camp was also made by the guards, and it was passed down from father to son, with generations of soldiers serving as soldiers. The soldiers of the Jingying camp who died in Tumu Fort were their ancestors.
This is a feud and it needs to be ended.
Now, we met on a narrow road and bumped into each other at the foot of Yinshan Mountain and on the bank of the Yellow River.
Perhaps due to God's will, the offensive and defensive momentum has changed today.
This time it was the turn of the Beijing camp to attack the hinterland of Mongolia. Last time, there were few people in Oala, and a total of 80,000 people were dispatched. In fact, only 50,000 Tumubao participated in the battle.
Today, there are few soldiers in the Beijing camp, with only 40,000 actually participating in the battle.
Today, both sides are testing each other.
The Oirat people wanted to find out the deployment of troops in Jiuyuan City and the combat strength of the defenders in all directions. Each time they retreated without causing too many casualties.
The building carts and other siege equipment were parked a mile away and did not go up at all. They used ladders and trench-filling carts. In addition, ten thousand Mongolian archers were used to launch light arrows from a distance to cover the siege.
Yang Fan was also conserving his strength. The Beijing camp did not move. Obviously, the people attacking the city below were not elite. Yang Fan did not even use firearms.
The two sides exchanged bows and arrows, but the Oirat people did not take advantage. The team members were hiding tightly under the battlements and could not shoot at all.
Gushi Khan stared at the city glowing with white light with his deep eyes.
"Dasa Jinong, I heard that Jiuyuan City was built in the Tang Dynasty. Is it so well preserved?" Gushi Khan looked at the outer wall made of gray and white stones and asked in a dark and dignified voice.
This city is too new and looks too solid.
He also built many castles in the Western Regions, all of which were built of stone on top of mountains. The outer walls of those castles were generally only two feet thick and could be broken open by a trebuchet.
However, today the stones on the outside of the city wall seem to be one piece, and there are no gaps or clay or triple clay used to fill them in the masonry.
Da Sa's face turned red, he was the one who gave up on this earthly weizi.
Unexpectedly, when he came back three months later, this place had turned into a stone city.
"Dear Gushi Khan, when I left, this place was still a crumbling earthen city. Most of the buildings in the city had collapsed. There was only one thousand-household residence from the early Ming Dynasty and a small brick courtyard with three entrances that were still intact.
I don’t know what kind of magic Uncle Dingyuan knows, but he actually covered the city wall with stone within three months.”
Gushi Khan said with some worry: "There are no traces of excavation in the trenches of this city. In other words, what they filled between the stone walls and the original earth walls was not clay. What could it be?"
Daza thought for a while and said: "Then it can only be river sand. It is easiest for them to use river sand. I asked them how they repaired the wall so quickly. It turned out that they poured sand into it. It is easy to fight now.
The sand cannot stand, so as long as you use a trebuchet to smash the stone outer wall of the city wall, it will collapse on its own."
Gushi Khan gave him a strange look, and sighed when he saw the self-righteous expression on the old man's face. He finally understood why Monan Mongolia became like this. Why they were almost completely wiped out by the Beijing camp.
They haven't lived in a dangerous battlefield for too long.
Gushi Khan patiently told him: "That's not the case. These city walls have an inclination and are tilted inward. If we use a trebuchet to hit them, the stones on the walls will be smashed into the sand, and our stone bullets will be embedded in the sand."
No matter how much they are smashed, it has no effect except increasing the stone content of the wall."
"If I guess correctly, their city wall is multi-layered. One layer of stone, one layer of clay, one layer of sand, and inside is the original rammed earth wall. If the trebuchet hits the city wall, it will smash the stones of the city wall.
When the clay layer squeezes the sand, the sand will have large gaps and will cover the excess clay. Except for the replacement of a stone on the outer wall, there will be no changes to the city wall."
It sounds silly to me, but you can still do it like this.
His old face sank. It seemed that they had been at ease for too long and had lost the vigilance of warriors. The Ming Dynasty had been too weak in the past hundred years, causing their strength to decline sharply.
"This is nothing new. The city outside the pass was built like this in the days when Dajin was destroyed by our ancestors."
In the afternoon, the Oirat people withdrew their troops early. Yang Fan also returned to the Zhengxi General's Mansion in the city.
Although this five-entry courtyard is a double-eaves style building from the Ming Dynasty, it was temporarily poured and covered with concrete. The current progress is just a rough house with a roof, and the doors and windows have not been completed. It is simply used.
Cover the window with a screen.
The main reason is that cement houses are built very quickly, and the General's Mansion is also very important as the command center. Therefore, it is built first. Other buildings that have been established can only be moved in before the freeze. Most of the other people still live in tents.
After Yang Fan came back, he saw Zhang Shize cross-legged on the soft couch, facing the small kang table, eating braised pig head, beef with sauce, vegetable platter, white water mutton and drinking wine.
Yang Fan sat cross-legged opposite him and poured himself a glass of wine.
"I just like your soy sauce beef. It's chewy and chewy." Zhang Shize said happily. "Before I came back, I went to your house to meet my sister-in-law and asked them if there was anything they needed me to bring you.
. She actually asked me to bring you fifty loads of stuff. I was dumbfounded."
"She's always afraid that you'll be short of this and that. If it weren't for the unlucky nature of a woman when the army goes on an expedition, she'll probably have to send a few people to serve you. How could I bring so many things? They're all transported by water.
It will take a few days to arrive. I brought these soy sauce beef from your house with me."
"Are they okay?" Yang Fan then remembered that his two wives were about to give birth. He was still thousands of miles away and couldn't go back. From last winter to now, it has been seven months since the war.
"Everything is fine, don't worry, it's just that I'm about to give birth." Zhang Shize took a sip of wine and said, "Sister-in-law misses you very much. When she saw me, her eye circles were red. She asked a lot about your situation here.