manynovel Chapter 1206 Recovery
Chapter 1206 Recovery
Chapter 1206 Recovery
The sky over Liangzhou City was covered with dark clouds, and the sky was extremely dark.
Renduo Yading was writing on a piece of parchment with a pen and ink in his military headquarters.
Xixia characters are very difficult to write. In the past, Renduoyading had asked Tangut scribes to write the characters, but this time, as the matter was urgent, he used Chinese characters to write the characters.
As Ren Duoyading wrote, he heard the sound of Song army's artillery fire resuming, and he couldn't help but frown.
He picked up the golden cup and poured a glass of wine into it. The wine was red as blood, as if it was brewed from the mountains of corpses and seas of blood outside the city. He drank the glass in one gulp.
Ren Duoyading looked out the window. The heavy clouds were hanging low and pressing down on the city wall, as if foreshadowing something.
"I have also wasted a lot of time in this Liangzhou city."
Ren Duoyading stroked his long gray beard, and his wrinkled face showed a bit of vicissitudes of life.
Immediately, there was a loud bang, interrupting Renduo Yading's memories and bringing him back to the present moment. A soldier hurried in: "Commander-in-chief, south of the city! South of the city!"
Renduo Yading said: "Why panic? The Song army will not climb the city walls when they attack the city!"
After the soldiers saluted, they hurried out.
Soon, the sound of hurried horse hooves was heard on the street outside the Military Commandery.
Renduoyading calmed himself down and continued to write a letter to Li Bingchang, the leader of the Dangxiang Kingdom. This was also his last letter.
So far, the Song army in Liangzhou has been besieging the city for five days and attacking the city for twenty-five days. By this day, the city’s fall is imminent.
But the Dangxiang reinforcements were slow to arrive!
It can be described as completely silent.
The city was supposed to have been captured yesterday, but it happened to rain heavily yesterday, making it impossible for the Song army to push up their siege equipment.
Renduoyading continued to write letters to Li Bingchang, the leader of the Dangxiang State.
"There has been no news of reinforcements from Xuanhua and Guasha, and the Han army has been pressing the city hard for more than ten days."
Renduoyading remembered that the Song army spent five days digging a trench inside and outside the city. The Song army was not anxious at all, and it was obvious that the food and grass were sufficient.
Within five days afterwards, the Song army built more than a hundred artillery positions in the southwest and southeast of the city to bombard the walls. When the day of the siege came, the sound of the artillery was like thunder.
You should know that the city is square or rectangular, so at the four corners of the city, there are often gun mounts that can be deployed on both sides to attack the city. In order to deal with the Song army's cannonball attacks, Ren Duoya Ding built city towers and enemy sheds at the four corners, but they still could not withstand the bombardment of the Song army's cannonballs.
But the artillery shells of the Song army seemed to cover the sky and the earth.
The two three-story towers were carefully built by Renduo Yading. He had anticipated that the corners of the city, as a weak point, would be attacked by the Song army, so he reinforced the towers.
However, after more than ten days of bombardment, both towers were destroyed by the Song army's cannons. When the towers collapsed, wood chips flew and smoke billowed, and the Dangxiang troops on the top of the city were panicked and scattered like birds and beasts.
The artillery positions were fine, but hundreds of eight-ox crossbows and artillery carts were deployed on three walls to bombard the city. The Song army's artillery carts caused great trouble to the defenders, but fortunately, their range was only 50 steps. Only the northern exit was left for the defenders to escape.
Sometimes the Song army even allowed civilians to leave the city to collect firewood and fetch water, and even let women and children who were driven into the city leave.
This made Renduoyading puzzled by the contradictory behavior of the Song army.
However, this did not hinder Renduo Yading's management of Liangzhou City.
Fortunately, Liangzhou City was an important town that had been managed since the Han and Tang Dynasties. In the seventh year of Xining, when Zhang Yue captured Hezhou and killed Gui Zhang, the people of the Dangxiang State had foreseen the intention of the Song people to capture Liangzhou, so they began to strengthen the defense of Liangzhou City at that time.
After the Song army took Huangzhou, the Dangxiang began to realize that a battle in Liangzhou was inevitable.
So they focused on building up the defense line around Liangzhou, until the Song army successively broke through Zhenwujun City, Renduoquan City and Tong'an City, and cleared out the outskirts of Liangzhou.
A few months ago, Renduo Yading made some arrangements for Liangzhou City.
They added powerful crossbows and cannonballs to the city walls, dug deeper cellars, and added more soldiers and generals. The latter were unprecedented in history. In history, the Song Dynasty never attacked Liangzhou, but Qingtang attacked once.
There are now five leaders in Liangzhou City, with nearly 20,000 soldiers and horses.
Renduoyading was a very capable general. When the Song army tried to climb the city wall, he fought back with boiling water, rolling logs, and pounding stones, causing heavy casualties among the Song army.
In addition to artillery carts, crossbows and battering rams to bombard and hammer the city gates, Renduoyading also prepared a large number of flammable objects to throw under the city, causing countless Song soldiers to be burned to death.
Although the Song army was defeated by Renduoyading many times in its sieges on the city, he did not show much joy when he wrote the letter.
Seven days ago, the defenders were killed and wounded by cannonballs every day. A few Liangzhou Dangxiang soldiers were afraid of the Song army's tactics and feared that they would be slaughtered if the city was breached, so they secretly surrendered to the Song army.
As a result, these guards revealed that a section of the city wall on the east side of Liangzhou City had collapsed during the construction of the city.
The next day, the Song army learned about it and brought in all the artillery vehicles to attack the city wall. When the city wall showed signs of collapse, the defenders climbed over the sheep and horse wall and tried to get out of the city to destroy the artillery vehicles, but were shot at by the Song army's eight-ox crossbows and strong crossbows, resulting in countless casualties.
Under the simultaneous firing of thousands of artillery pieces by the Song army, the eastern city wall collapsed in just half a day, leaving a gap of fifty or sixty steps.
However, Renduoyading was well prepared. He built a temporary wall with wooden fortifications inside the inner wall and dug pits. Hundreds of Song soldiers who took the opportunity to break through the city wall were killed and half of them were driven out.
Although they held on this time, the people in Liangzhou City were already in panic.
Every day, Renduo Yading drew a situation map of the four cities on the wall of the military headquarters, and arranged how to defend the cities.
It can be said that he put a lot of thought into it.
Now Renduo Yading also knew clearly that Liangzhou could not be held for a few more days. The artillery fire of the Song army was extremely fierce, causing heavy casualties on the city walls, and the attack was too intense. During the siege in the past few days, the city had almost fallen several times, and the manpower and material resources in the city had reached their limits.
At night, the converted soldiers of the Song army outside the city kept using Tangut dialect or playing Tangut music to lure the defenders inside the city to surrender. The soldiers of the Song army even deliberately feasted under the city wall, setting up a banquet for the Tangut soldiers to play finger-guessing games and eat meat to show that there was enough food and grass.
In the past, the Dangxiang soldiers would wait until the Song army ran out of food and retreat, but when they smelled the aroma of wine and meat and heard the sounds of finger-guessing games below the city, their hopes were shattered little by little.
The besieging Song army numbered over 200,000, but there were only 20,000 soldiers in the city.
Tens of thousands of people died in the one-month siege, more than half of whom were killed by cannonballs. Renduo Yading even asked his wife, children and women in the city to carry stones and cook.
But the Song army under the city not only had sufficient food and clothing and excellent equipment, but also seemed to have endless troops.
Unable to withstand the Song army's relentless artillery fire on the city walls, at first there were only a few people, then dozens, but now there are dozens or even hundreds of people fleeing to the lower city walls and surrendering to the Song army.
The troops on the city wall are already stretched to the limit.
Renduo Yading finally finished writing the letter. He wrote some words asking the king to be close to virtuous ministers and stay away from villains. He wanted to write down his loyalty in the letter, but unfortunately he was not good at writing and could not express his meaning.
But Renduo Yading finally learned how to write.
At the end of the letter, I sign my name as Renduoyading.
After finishing writing, Renduo Yading stood up and suddenly thought of Renduo Xizhong who had died in the battle under the city.
Ren Duoyading stood up and walked to the military supervisor.
Each military supervisory office of the Dangxiang people had a military commander and a military supervisor.
Either the commander of the army was a relative of the emperor or the supervisor of the army was a member of the Tangut royal family. The supervisor of the Chaoshun Army was a member of the royal family named Ali.
When Renduoyating arrived at Weiming Ali's house, he saw that the other party was ordering people to burn letters and some important documents.
Weiming Ali glanced at Renduo Yading and continued to order people to burn the documents. Renduo Yading wanted to discuss the big plan with him, but it was too late.
Amid the sound of artillery fire and shouts of killing from the Song army, Weiming Ali calmly ordered someone to bring wine, and the two of them drank while talking about horse riding and hunting.
After chatting for a while, we heard the gunfire outside suddenly stop.
The two men stopped talking and laughing, and Weiming Ali said sternly: "Now that things have come to this, the only way for me to repay the late emperor is to die."
Weiming Ali was Li Yuanhao's nephew. The two of them couldn't help but think of the time when Li Yuanhao dominated the world and defeated the Song and Liao dynasties.
Ren Duoyading nodded when he saw it, and the two of them drank another cup together.
Weiming Ali said: "The commander left first, I came a little later."
Renduo Yading nodded and walked out of the house, but suddenly he heard a woman's wailing coming from the door. A moment later, someone came to report: "Weiming Ali committed suicide by falling on a knife."
Renduo Yading showed an expected look, then placed the letter he had just written in his arms in the hands of his trusted subordinates and said: "After you fight to the death to release Baozhong, take this letter and fight your way out of the city, and go to Xingqing Mansion to see His Majesty."
……
As the Song army's artillery fire outside the city stopped, the soldiers of the three armies immediately pushed battering rams and ladders straight towards the city gate.
Wang Hou, Cai Bian and other generals looked at the crumbling Liangzhou City.
After a month of siege, it was finally time for the final attack.
Wang Hou has already offered a reward, the first one to reach the top will be rewarded with a fortune!
Therefore, the Song army fought hard to climb the city. In fact, the city would have been broken in one or two days. But Wang Hou's character completely inherited the cautiousness of his teacher Zhang Yue.
The Dangxiang troops on the city wall fought back feebly with crossbows, but in front of the huge crowd of Song army, they couldn't even make a wave.
The city of Liangzhou was attacked by the Song army on three sides, and each side seemed to be crumbling.
Especially in the direction of the gap opened by the thrown stones, at this moment the three armies shouted.
The flaming flag of the Song army was planted on a city wall in the south of the city, and the entire Song army cheered in unison.
Wang Hou and other generals were so excited that they could not control themselves.
But Wang Hou climbed up and said:
"Pass the order down. Anyone who plunders the people for even a penny after the city is captured will be killed! Anyone who destroys a piece of wood will be killed!"
"Also, protect the Buddhist temple and show respect to the monks!"
"After entering the city, go straight to the government office. Don't take anything else, just search for all the documents!"
The troops obeyed the order with a roar.
Immediately, the Song army attacked Liangzhou City from three sides. Ren Duoya Ding led his trusted men in street fighting but was defeated and was later wounded by arrows.
Finally, the seriously injured Renduoyading walked to the north gate towards Xingqing Prefecture, jumped from the high city wall of Liangzhou City, and fell to his death.
More than 200 of his trusted subordinates and wives and concubines were thrown into the city walls and executed.
His son Ren Duo Baozhong and several riders escaped before the city of Liangzhou was broken.
In August of the fourth year of Yuanfeng, the Song army recovered Liangzhou!