Chapter 1244 - A Mistake Was Made

Fuli has been recovered, and Zhao Yu can't stay in Lingbi anymore, but he didn't go to Fuli's front line, but ordered to go to Xuzhou. Everyone listened to another good persuasion, although Xuzhou has been recovered, but the time is still short, the people's hearts are unstable, the scattered enemy army has not been cleared, and the surrounding states and counties are still in the hands of the enemy, Liuzi Town is still fighting fiercely, and it is possible to counterattack at any time.

But Zhao Yu was unmoved and insisted on going. He knew that at the moment, with the three brigades of the Imperial Front Protector led by Ni Liang rushing to the battlefield and Liu Zhixue's division freeing up his hands to join the battle, the strength had greatly exceeded that of the trapped Tutuha Division, and it was only a matter of time before they were completely annihilated. And he also understood that with the annihilation of the enemy's two major guards, the recovery of Yingtianfu was just around the corner, and the Northern Expedition had come to an end, and the day when he returned to Beijing was not far away. Therefore, Zhao Yu wanted to use the limited time on the front line to inspect Xuzhou to understand the situation on the spot and lay the foundation for the next step.

In the Lianghuai region, the importance of Xuzhou's geographical location is needless to say, and it has coal and iron resources, the population also occupies an advantage, and the Grand Canal passes by, so the transportation is convenient. Therefore, Zhao Yu did not want to build Xuzhou into a support point for the two Huai fronts, and also wanted to use the rich coal and iron resources to develop industry, especially the military manufacturing industry.

You must know that the current military manufacturing industry of the Great Song Dynasty is developed on the basis of the supervision of large internal instruments, and has now gradually expanded into five major supervisors: ordnance supervision, ship supervision, mining and metallurgical supervision, weaving supervision and miscellaneous supervision supervision, under the jurisdiction of more than 100 workshops of various colors, more than 10 smelting mines, forming a complete set of military industrial system. However, after entering the south of the Yangtze River, they were all concentrated near Hangzhou for safety reasons.

The surrounding areas of Hangzhou are not rich in minerals, and most of the raw materials needed need to be transported from various places and then further refined. After the manufacturing is completed, it has to be re-shipped to the troops stationed in various places, which not only increases the cost, but also consumes a lot of time. In addition, Hangzhou is cramped and populated, there is not much idle land, and the development of workshops is limited, but now the demand for weapons is growing, and now it is already at full capacity, it is still difficult to meet the needs, and the development of the site is imminent.

Therefore, it has long been considered to relocate some of the workshops. Xuzhou is very suitable for both location and transportation, with access to raw materials and skilled craftsmen, which has long been one of his locations. However, Zhao Yu also knew that due to the flooding of the Yellow River, most of the mines around Xuzhou were destroyed, but these were mostly from the collected news, and the real situation was not clear. The military workshop is related to the national strategy, and if it is blindly relocated, it will cause immeasurable losses, and he needs to personally inspect it before he can rest assured.

However, Zhao Yu still made a compromise, and the road from Lingbi to Xuzhou was only 100 miles, and the trip was only two days, but he had to pass through a large area of mountains on the way, and he had to rest on the way, which was easy to be attacked; It is much safer to take the waterway, but it is necessary to retreat from the old canal to Sizhou, and then turn into the new canal to go to Xuzhou, which is equivalent to going around a semi-circle, and the journey has also increased several times.

Zhao Hao originally wanted to take the land route to save time, but how could everyone agree, and in the end, he had to make a compromise. The next day, the baggage regiment also escorted the baggage, grain and grass to Fuli, and the driving group and the guard battalion were escorted by the imperial navy into the canal and went south first, and on the way, they stopped in Sizhou to pick up Wang Yinglin, the governor of political participation who was sitting here to supervise the reception, and went to Xuzhou together......

Luo Datong looked up at the full moon rising in the east on the wall, and felt a little melancholy in his heart, today was the fourth day that they had entered Liuzi Town, and Du Shuai had not yet arrived. He didn't know if it was because the battle over there was not going well, or if he was blocked by the enemies of Fuli, and he didn't know when they would arrive, which inevitably made him a little vague in his heart.

As the moon rose higher and higher, the clear moonlight sprinkled all over the land, illuminating the inside and outside of the town, and the rivers were lined with corpses of men and horses, and from time to time there were serious wounded and dying people letting out terrible howls, coupled with the smell of blood and corpses, under the white moonlight, this scene was like Shura's hell, making the veterans of a hundred battles shudder.

This battle also made Luo Datong more and more afraid, of course, he was not afraid that he would die on the battlefield, but that he would not be able to complete the task of gathering and destroying Tutuhabu. After the capture of Liuzi Town, perhaps because Tutuha did not understand the situation and did not launch a large-scale attack in hesitation, so that they could build fortifications relatively calmly, but the next day they were attacked fiercely, and now I still have lingering palpitations when I think about it.

Luo Datong thought that the enemy army would retreat decisively after judging the situation, and there would inevitably be a fierce battle between the two sides, and Tutuha's decisiveness also changed his opinion of it. According to the Mongol habit of siege warfare, first they would go around capturing civilians and use them as a precursor to deplete the strength of the defenders and demoralize the defenders. In the process, elite troops may be arranged, and after discovering a loophole in the defenders, they will suddenly launch a surprise attack, quickly open the gap, and clear the obstacles for the follow-up troops.

If this tactic fails, the Mongol Yuan army will continue to consume the strength and supplies of the defenders by attacking the city with weaker combat units after the 'cannon fodder' has suffered all the casualties. At this time, once the defenders are tired, the elite of Meng Yuan will join the battle, and launch an attack without interruption, taking the city in one go. As soon as Tutuha changed this practice, the attack began with the use of the Han army's right guard and the firearm guard of a thousand households to attack, and used the cavalry of the Kipchak guard to carry out a diversion attack on the Song army blocking the old road outside the town.

The source of the guards of the Mengyuan and Han armies can be traced back to the earliest Hebei and Shandong Han princes who took refuge in the Mongols, these areas have been war-torn for a long time, the people are still martial, and the battle is brave, and they followed the Mongols to participate in the destruction of Jin, the attack on the Song Dynasty, and the suppression of the rebellion of the Mongol kings made special contributions, which were relied on by Kublai Khan. Later, in order to prevent the Han princes from becoming bigger, they gradually reduced the military power of the princes, collected some soldiers and horses to garrison Jiangnan, and the elite were incorporated into the guards and pro-army.

Because the Han Junwei participated in the assassination of the Mengyuan Quanchen Ahma, which aroused the suspicion of Kublai Khan, the generals of the Han army were replaced by the Mongols and Semu, although they still served as the task of garrisoning Gyeonggi, but more time was spent in Tuntian. Recently, due to neglect of training, the combat effectiveness has declined, but they have all joined the military and have been soldiers for generations, and the style of martial arts is still strong, and the officers have experienced actual combat from the bottom to the top, and they are still not to be underestimated.

The enemy army poured in like ants, even if Luo Datong, who had experienced the bloody battle of Changshu, was numb, you must know that the defense facilities of Liuzi Town are far inferior to Changshu City, that is, there are no outer city defense facilities such as urn city, sheep and horse walls, and moats, and there are no fortifications such as horse faces, corner towers, forts, city gates, and jack gates. And because the town was built across the canal, the spacious river channel in the middle has become a major road due to silting, and there will be no walled wall, although the fortifications have been blocked, but it is still very weak, and it has naturally become the focus of the enemy's attack.

The disparity in strength and the weak defense of the city, the only thing Luo Datong could rely on was strong firepower, so the battle was full of gunpowder at the beginning. The Song army launched a stubborn resistance to the enemy with artillery and muskets, and the fire points arranged outside the town in advance also fired disruptively at the enemy from the flanks, and with the cooperation of the two sides, the enemy attacked again and again.

However, the battle was also full of dangers, and the Song army's defense system relied on the support of artillery, but the artillery had an insurmountable difficulty. Because the continuous firing of the gun will increase the temperature of the gun chamber, and the heavy barrel can not quickly dissipate heat, and the propellant is directly hit into the gun chamber, once the temperature is too high, the propellant pack will spontaneously combust, resulting in the explosion of the gun. Therefore, the artillery needs a period of heat dissipation and cooling after firing a few shots, and the enemy army takes advantage of this gap in the weakening of the artillery fire to rush to the city.

Although the enemy soldiers fell in waves under the Song army's muskets, the enemy troops still swarmed and suppressed the Song army on the wall with bows and crossbows and firearms. Under the repeated impacts, the horses and corners in front of the walled wall were destroyed, and the simple fortifications that were repaired were also in danger. Luo Datong commanded the rapid-fire guns that could be fired to shoot in front of him, and prevented all kinds of small cannons from blocking and firing, but it was still difficult to resist the impact of the enemy, and he let the enemy rush into the formation several times. He had to use his reserves to launch a counter-assault on the first day to drive the enemy out.

The next day's battle lasted from sunrise to sunset, and the enemy troops withdrew from the battle, leaving thousands of corpses on the battlefield, and the Song army also suffered nearly 1,000 casualties. This made Luo Datong not frightened, the enemy's strength was far superior to his own, if they attacked so repeatedly regardless of casualties, their own forces would soon be exhausted, and they might not be able to wait for the arrival of reinforcements. Fortunately, although fierce fighting also broke out on the left flank position, it was far inferior to this, allowing him to catch his breath.

Both sides were not idle that night, and Luo Datong ordered the demolition of the houses in the town to strengthen the fortifications overnight. And the Yuan army constantly sent troops to launch night attacks, so that they did not have time to rest at all. As soon as the morning dawned, the battle began again, but today's main attack was replaced by the central guard of the Han army, and the firearms guard also invested most of its troops. In addition to continuing to storm non-stop, their tactics also launched attacks on the firepower points deployed outside the town in an attempt to clear them.

When Luo Datong saw this scene, he immediately realized that he had made a mistake, and his arrangement of firepower points in front of the formation came from his experience when he was in Changshu. The intention was to use the small detachment combined with infantry and artillery to occupy favorable terrain to attack the flank of the besieging enemy, so as to reduce the pressure on the defenders of the city. However, there was a weakness in the forward firepower, because of the small number of troops, the firepower was weak, and it was necessary to suppress the enemy through medium and heavy artillery and cover each other between the firing points in order to consolidate the position, and he neglected to use the mountainous terrain here and was very familiar with it, so that the enemy could not deploy a large force to besiege. But now the forward position only occupies the commanding heights, and the surrounding area is wide flat land, and the enemy can besiege it from all sides......

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