More than ten days later, a fortress near Yangxia in the Chu State.

This is a typical fortress built by the Chu State in the direction of the Central Plains near the Song State in order to prevent the Mo family from advancing westward into the Central Plains.

The angular structure was adopted from the Si Shang side, covered with a large amount of earth to protect against shelling, and each fort was not very large, with about 2,000 to 3,000 men stationed, armed with copper cannons and muskets.

There are a total of four such fortresses around Yangxia, and the location of Yangxia City is very important, so the Chu State built a very strong city here.

To the south of Yangxia is Chen, to the northwest is Xu, to the north is the Yuguan Liang of the Chu State, and to the west is the important city of the Chu State in the Zhumadian area.

Now part of the remnants of the feudal monarch of the Chu State is in the Chu army of the Mo family in Yefang, and the other part is led by Da Sima, who is in Chen Zhinan's bed, threatening Cai Shouchun and other important Huaishui towns.

After the Duke of Song announced the renunciation of the titles of princes, Shi immediately led more than 10,000 cavalry, 30,000 infantry and a large number of engineers and artillery, etc., to supplement supplies through Shangqiu, and rely on farmers to replenish the people in the villages and cities in the western Song Kingdom, and directly surrounded the first Chu fortress near Yangxia.

This typical angular structure of the fortress of the gunpowder era cost the Chu State a lot of manpower and material resources, after the improvement, if the attack casualties are large, if the siege may take half a year, it seems that it can hold back the main force of the Mo family.

Because the main force of the Mo family has a shortcoming, the demand for logistics is too great, and there are too many artillery and cavalry, so they can't be like the peasant soldiers in the Spring and Autumn Period who can move to the north and south with dry food.

Therefore, unless there are enough troops to surround and not protect the logistics, it is necessary to take them all.

Therefore, Chu Guo's calculation is very accurate, this kind of fortification tactic can indeed drag down the Mo family, making the Mo family's previous best tactic of sneak attack and outflanking ineffective.

However, he had heard the story of the cat and the tiger, and since he had asked Chu, Wei and other countries to build such fortresses, he naturally had the means to deal with it.

After the arrival of the army, they immediately adopted the same three ways as the Mo family attacked the city.

Cavalry controls the perimeter of the battlefield.

Infantry weave wicker baskets to fill soil.

Artillery cover.

Sappers dug zigzag trenches to construct new artillery positions close to the fortress.

The kind of fortress built by the Chu State after learning lessons and experience is not impossible to capture, but this siege method still requires a lot of casualties after all.

Adaptation is a different approach.

The biggest nemesis of the Gunpowder Age Bastion is the Blossom Shell, as the soldiers need to defend against the fort.

The flowering shell is too difficult, and the primitive and simple thing is not that it can't be made, but every time it is loaded, it has to be sealed with mud and wax, in short, it is very troublesome, and the artillerymen do not like to use it because it is very dangerous.

But there are two things that can be replaced by the Mo family.

Carpenters and mining explosives.

The technology of Sishang is deformed.

Primitive methods of soil use in the chemical industry have been established, such as acids, alkalis and supporting mining explosives industry; However, the technological progress of basic materials, such as materials, cast iron technology, boring tools, etc., which takes time to accumulate, is much slower, and it is not possible to quickly achieve a technological leap from scratch.

In fact, it is a hundred times easier to make a primitive battery, a primitive rotor generator, than a boring knife that can dig a utilitarian steam engine, and even less difficult than to make a cast iron process that can cast iron cannons...... It's even less than the handicraft difficulty of making a suitable wide loom.

So there are better and more powerful explosives than black powder, but they are actually very unsafe, but there are no iron and copper pipes that can use this kind of thing.

Some technologies can be leapfrogged, while others can only be accumulated from scratch.

But the living can't be suffocated by urine, so in order to deal with the fortresses built by Wei Hanchu around the Song Kingdom, a roundabout method was adopted - the most important thing for flowering bullets is bullets, and the progress of technology is only to catapult onto the fortress, which requires a series of advances in cast iron technology and boring machine technology.

But if you grasp the key, why do you have to use chemical energy to emit?

So the Mo family formed an artillery force that was "behind the times", using a counterweight stone throwing machine to throw explosives.

This kind of artillery, which is behind the times, is not suitable for long-term operations, because it is not easy to transport, and it is far less convenient than copper artillery.

But when the copper cannon appeared, the foundation of the city defense system was the rammed earth city wall, and to deal with the rammed earth city wall, digging a pit to bury gunpowder and copper cannon had a much greater advantage than the stone thrower, and it was convenient to transfer, so the stone thrower had no value in existence.

But after the vassal states began to build this kind of anti-artillery fortress, unless the artillery came up with suitable flowering shells, it would be difficult to rely on solid artillery to blast through such a heavy fortress.

Explosives are more advanced than cannon casting technology, so you can use a stone thrower with explosives as a flowering bomb.

The iron bucket buried in the soil used in later generations was suitable for the stone throwing machine that the carpenter had the advantage of, because the iron bucket could not be made at this time, and it could only be made into a large-caliber mortar cannon, and the mortar cannon was too heavy, and it was okay to use it at the door of the house, and it could not run too far.

Because Wei Chuhan had to guard against the Mo family, most of the new forts were built around the Song Kingdom, and this was within the effective range of transporting stone throwers.

No matter how far away, Wei Chuhan's productivity level simply couldn't build so many such fortresses, and it was impossible to build the entire territory.

This is the means to crack the problem first, and then induce the enemy to waste manpower and material resources.

Forty heavy counterweight trebuchets were placed under the cover of artillery, and the artillery bombarded the city's artillery to suppress the opposing side, while the soldiers next to the trebuchets began to raise the heavy counterweight ends with levers and winches.

In addition to the use of explosives, there were also incendiary materials such as tung oil, because the Chu army in the fortress had a large amount of gunpowder, and the previous solid shells did not have the means to ignite these things.

The fortress of the Chu people on the opposite side is a defense system against an imaginary enemy with an arquebus and copper cannon; But it is not a system for countering the mass destruction of projectile explosives as an imaginary enemy.

These heavy and slow stone throwers were supposed to be the dust of history after the advent of gunpowder, but because of this uneven technological development, they could bloom brightly.

And it is likely to induce Wei Han to make wrong judgments, thus affecting the overall strategic situation.

Now this situation is no longer possible to compromise, and it is not possible, so it is appropriate to hope that it can lure the princes into battle and defeat each one.

The worst-case scenario envisaged by the General Staff for the princes to send troops after half a year was the worst-case scenario, because the princes needed to coordinate and liaise with each other to unify the strategy.

On the front that stretches thousands of miles, communications at this time are basically transmitted by horses, and if the strategy is not coordinated and set in advance, there will definitely be problems.

The appropriate temptation was to attack Yangxia and capture several fortresses near Yangxia as quickly as possible, so as to tell the princes that this line of defense they had spent manpower and material resources to build was useless.

Twenty years ago, the Mo family could break the city in three or five days, and today it can be the same, including Xinzheng and Yangzhai in South Korea.

Once Yangxia was besieged, the most nervous were Han and Wei.

Seven or eight years ago, there was an alliance between Han, Wei and Chu for the defense of the Central Plains, and now Wei is actually no longer able to fulfill the alliance.

In the direction of Nanyang, South Korea will not cooperate with the elite and the Qin army, and it will not be able to open the situation at all.

If this siege of Yangxia can induce Korea to hold back, immediately send troops to rescue, and get involved in this war in advance before the princes are contacted, then the future situation of the Mo family will be much better.

It is suitable to concentrate some field troops in Sishang, tactically called the method of besieging the city and sending reinforcements, and strategically called forcing the other side to send troops to break each one, and break one finger and break the fist.

The Chu army in the south of Yangxia must be reinforced, and if Yangxia is lost, it is equivalent to the Chu army in the south of Yangxia being surrounded, and there is no place to retreat if it is too late.

Three months ago, near Xia Cai, after more than 8,000 people of the Chu State ventured forward and were annihilated, the feudal monarchs of the Chu State no longer dared to harass with a small force, and could only choose to organize a large-scale operation together.

However, large-scale operations require more time and more supplies.

Although the king of Chu was captured, the feudal monarchs of Chu still had a certain amount of strength north of the Huai River and in the Fangcheng area, and the king of Chu could be re-established, because the feudal monarchs did not choose to give up.

Among the important ministers of the Chu State, only the Great Sima was not captured in the Battle of Yicheng, and he was ordered to go to Fangcheng and Chen Cai to collect troops to cut off the back road of the Mo family before the Battle of Yicheng, not wanting to lose before he could cut the back of the Chu king.

Now Chu Da Sima is in the south of Chendi, and there are 40,000 soldiers available in his hands, of which more than 30,000 are peasant soldiers, and there are only a few thousand who really have combat effectiveness.

The Chu State in the area of Fangcheng can still gather about forty or fifty thousand troops, which is also about the same composition, thousands of elites, and most of the peasant soldiers.

Once a future war begins, these forces will be troublesome. However, this time, the legion of the handsome Shuai Sishang attacked, not treating them as opponents.

Surrounding Yangxia, Chu Da Sima will inevitably retreat north, once he retreats north, he can rely on the cavalry advantage in his hands, intercept halfway, and annihilate before he retreats and joins forces.

After annihilating these 40,000 peasant soldiers, the remaining forces of Chu will inevitably retreat, but they will obviously not be able to hold it, which is likely to follow Shen Baoxu's cry for Qin Court again, kneeling and begging Han Wei to send troops.

The suitable target is the elite field army of South Korea in Zhengdi.

The previous battle of Xihe had just ended, and part of the Korean army was still in Xihe, and the battle of Qin and Jin was still going on, and it could not be returned in a short time.

If the power of the feudal monarch of Chu is completely destroyed, the Mo family can directly threaten the heart of South Korea, especially after this siege battle, which will make South Korea panic about the Mo family's siege ability.

The Wei State could no longer be counted on, and when the Mo family attacked Chu, it was a sudden raid, and the ambition was clearly revealed, and the Korean monarchs and ministers must have no illusions.

Zheng Di's elite Korean army is the Korean field army, if this field army can be lured to rescue the remaining cities of Chu State, it can find an opportunity to annihilate.

If this idea can be realized, the worst-case situation can be broken, and the possibility of the princes joining forces can be completely destroyed.

Once the field army in Korea is eliminated in advance, then on the Western Front, the army stationed in Chu will only have to deal with the Qin State, and the way that the Qin State can take is either to attack Danyang in business or to capture Nanzheng.

Either way, it's easy to defend and hard to attack.

Danyang has the advantage of the navy, and Nanzheng has the natural danger of the Qinling Mountains.

The crisis on the Western Front originated from Qin's attack on Nanzheng and Danyang; The Han and Wei coalition forces passed through Lushan and Funiu Mountain to attack Nanyang.

It must be under the condition of the joint efforts of the three parties that the Mo family's army stationed in Chu can be under pressure. As long as one side is cut off, there is nothing to be afraid of the other.

On the Eastern Front, if this field army of South Korea was destroyed and the field forces of Qi were close to them, as long as the Mo family chose to hold on to the turtle, the Qi army would not be able to break through the defense line of Sishang at all.

did not dare to go deep alone, and the result was that they did not dare to attack Sishang, but could only choose to attack Wei to seek benefits.

Now the northern princes are the most capable of fighting Qin and Qi, but the position of Sishang determines that Qi and Qin cannot connect the east and west, and the key is still in the middle, which can connect Qi and Qin to form a mutually supportive Han Wei.

The Wei state has been abolished, as long as the Korean troops are seized to annihilate the field army, then the Korean army is unable to support the Qin army on the western front, and Qin Jun chooses to confront the Mo family in Danyang and has no chance of winning; On the eastern front, Korea had to defend and was unable to march with Qi together, and Qi did not dare to attack Sishang by itself.

In this way, the alliance of princes has collapsed before it is established, and there is no need for a decisive battle in the true sense of the word.

Drag time, the advantage is on the side of the Mo family.