The eighth day of the twelfth lunar month is the traditional sacrificial day of Han people, and it is also the day for Buddhists to spread porridge to commemorate the Buddha Shakyamuni. After entering the Song Dynasty, eating Laba porridge has become a folk custom. Because Laba Li Spring Festival is approaching, every household has begun the beginning of the "Busy Year". Although there are some differences between the north and the south, they generally have to make porridge to worship the gods. This day is also considered the coldest day of the year, with the saying "Laqi Laba frozen chickens and ducks".

That morning, the west gate of Yangzhou opened and lowered the suspension bridge. A group of people quickly left the city. When the Song army's whistle cavalry saw people from the city holding up the banner with the words "peace agreement", they immediately divided into two teams, and a team of people rushed towards the camp. The remaining cavalry came forward, and after asking about the situation, they checked the token before taking the lead and leading them to the camp.

"Oh..." Ma Shao looked back at Yangzhou City, urged the horse to follow, but sighed. Since the King of Zhennan took over the defense power of Yangzhou City and rectified various departments, he also began to urge his husband and soldiers to repair the city defense. The Song army was not idle either. They continued to try to repair the long bridge and open the way to attack the city. Naturally, neither armies would let the other party succeed, and the battle broke out immediately.

The battle between the two sides mainly occurred in Jiacheng outside the main city. Jiacheng is the last stronghold to protect the main city. Once lost, the Song army can reach the city. The city of Jiacheng has long been destroyed, and repairing it has become an urgent task. Tuo Huan adapted the private soldiers and the six thousand soldiers mobilized by the prefecture. A total of 10,000 people repaired the city day and night. On the original basis, it piled up soil to siege the city, reinforced it with wooden fences, and built war sheds on the city walls.

In order to complete the construction as soon as possible, all the trees planted along the moat were cut down without wood; without soil, all the original houses in Jiacheng were demolished, and all the stones, bricks and wood obtained were used to build the city. For a moment, the people who had lost their shelter wanted to enter the city to find a place to hide from the cold, but Tuohuan ordered the city gate to be closed because the main city could not be resettled and prohibited the people in Jiacheng from entering the city. Ma Shao thought that treating the people so harshly would not only cause panic, but also cause turmoil, so he went to Zhennan Prince's Mansion for a visit.

Since Tuohuan controlled the military and political power of Yangzhou by using Pili methods that day, the royal palace replaced the government office and became the center of Yangzhou City. All officials had to go to Zhennan Prince's Mansion to ask for instructions and report when they had any questions. Ma Shao was nominally aware that he was only in charge of Yangzhou government affairs, but in fact he had been undermined. His words were not as effective as a small official in Zhennan Prince's Mansion.

Ma Shao thought that defending the city was the key at the moment, and it would be okay to suffer some grievances, but he couldn't stand it and felt that he had the obligation to speak for the people. Tuo Huan did not completely refute his face and agreed to provide half of the food in the city, but he still refused to enter the city on the grounds of preventing riots in the city.

Although he did not return in vain, Ma Shao was still very melancholy. Tuohuan controlled almost all the food and military funds he collected in his hands and regarded it as his own private property. The people outside the city had been requisitioned, and the remaining elderly, weak, women and children were only regarded as waste of resources by them. They refused to provide relief, and they would have less trouble if they died.

This is true. The Song army naturally would not sit idly by and watch their own side repair the city safely, which would only increase their difficulty in siege. Although they could not attack the city, they would bombard it with artillery to destroy and stop it. The artillery was powerful, and the city walls that were repaired were not built, and there were no bricks. If they were hit by a few cannons, they would collapse. Therefore, they did not make much progress and were in a cycle of just repaired, blown up, and then blown up.

At first, in order to avoid casualties, the husbands were asked to avoid artillery fire when the Song army fired artillery. But later, in order to speed up the progress, they were not careful. Even if the Song army fired artillery, the husbands were ordered to go to the city to build. Often, a shell fell down, and the people around them fell down in pieces, and the flesh and blood were blown away, or buried by the collapsed city walls. Thousands of people were killed and injured every day.

Even so, Tuohuan still ordered that the work would not be suspended, and ordered the generals to urge the construction day and night. Those who violated the orders would be executed on the spot, resulting in an exponential increase in the number of casualties and injured people, and the injured people would be filled into the city wall on the spot. Ma Shao heard from his subordinates that the entire Jiacheng could be said to be built with the corpses of his husband's servants. The city walls were blood-red, and they could be called a city made of flesh and blood.

On the contrary, the Song army was so unbearable that they shot the book city and changed the day and night artillery to every afternoon, so that the husbands and people who repaired the city could hide from the city walls to avoid innocent casualties. Ma Shao heard this and felt that the young emperor of the Southern Dynasty was kind-hearted, but Tuohuan sneered at it, thinking that his wife's kindness would not be a big deal. He even said in private that these husbands would die more, so that they could save more food, and they could hold on for a while and wait for reinforcements to arrive.

While preventing the construction of the city by the Song army, they were also trying to repair the long bridge. Everyone knows that once the Song army successfully built the bridge, they could reach the city. With the power of their artillery, the dirt city built hastily could not resist the attack of the Song army. Therefore, the safety of the Jiacheng was all entrusted to the moat more than fifty feet wide. Fortunately, in order to build three long bridges connected with the outside world, dense wooden stakes were built in the trenches. Each wooden stake was half a foot thick and thin, and was rammed into the bottom of the river, with six to eight in each row, totaling more than thirty rows, using this as bridge piles to form a flat bridge structure.

The existence of these wooden piles made the Song army ships unable to pass through, making them able to lay them from the other end. In order to prevent the Song army from building bridges, Tuohuan asked someone to build a catapult in the city, and arranged archers on the top of the city to prevent the Song army from building bridges. He repeatedly destroyed the formed bridges and caused considerable losses to the Song army, so the progress was also extremely slow.

However, the situation is becoming increasingly unfavorable to our side. Under the pressure of the Song army and the strict orders of Tuohuan, the casualties of the soldiers and the soldiers guarding the city became increasingly serious. The soldiers were either killed by the artillery fire of the Song army, exhausted to death, or even under the swords of their own people. The left and right were dead, and the soldiers began to use the dark night, or use the help of the Song army to swim to the other side regardless of the thunderous river water when the Song army was bombarded.

After the soldiers who were guarding the city discovered it, they would shoot arrows and kill them. Countless corpses floated in the moat, but they still could not be stopped, and they were intensified. Even soldiers guarding the city joined in and defected to the Song army camp. In order to stop this defection, Tuohuan ordered the implementation of a joint seat. One person defected, and all the soldiers and soldiers in one yard and one mile were killed, but this triggered a greater escape. Anyway, if one person ran away, he would die, so let's run together!

What is funny is that the Song army stopped the private soldiers and Ding Zhuang's escape. The morning before yesterday, the Song army suddenly changed the previous agreement to fire the city in the afternoon and suddenly fired fire, and started building bridges under the cover of artillery fire. The Yuan army immediately used a catapult to counterattack, and the archers on the city also fired thousands of arrows at the same time to try to stop the Song army from building bridges.

However, this time the Song army did not retreat after being counterattacked as before, but instead attacked the Yuan army's stone throwing machine positions with more fierce artillery fire. As soon as the two sides fought, the stone throwing machine immediately appeared. The stone throwing machine had a short range, slow firing speed, low hit rate and difficulty in changing positions. However, the Song army's artillery could carry out relatively accurate shooting under the command of the observation post set on Bijia Mountain, destroying their stone throwing machine one by one. The archers in the city were even more vulnerable under the attack of artillery fire, and even the city walls were bombed into the sky.

Under the cover of artillery fire, the Song army also began to build bridges. They fixed several prefabricated long rails on the original foundation piles first, and then pushed the assembled bridge assembly up along the guide rails. A section of the bridge deck was laid. After having a foothold, they used this as a springboard to lay the guide rails forward, and a new section of the bridge assembly pushed the old components forward. The paving of the large section of the bridge deck was quickly completed.

After the laid bridge deck was reinforced, the rest of the bridge deck was paved much simpler. A traditional trench car pushed the broken bridge along the bridge set up to the broken bridge. Everyone worked together to push the trench car into the river. When the board was put down, a long bridge spanning more than 50 meters of moat was laid, and it took less than an hour.

The infantry, which had been prepared, quickly crossed the long bridge and rushed to the city under the cover of artillery fire. The artillery fire then extended forward. The Song army rushed to the city head in several ways along the slope formed by the wall that had been collapsed by artillery fire, and fought with the Yuan army. The private soldiers who were regarded as cannon fodder had been frightened by the artillery fire for several days and had no morale. Under the fierce attack of the Song army's guns and grenades, they were defeated after being defeated.

After establishing a bridgehead at the city wall, the subsequent Song army continued to cross the moat, rushed to the city, and developed along the city wall to drive the Yuan army down the city and rushed into the city. Tuohuan knew how serious the consequences of the fall of Jiacheng, so after the fall of the city, he sent cavalry out of the main city, attempting to launch a counterattack to drive the Song army out of the city. The Song army down the city used the houses and ruins in the city to block the Yuan cavalry, and the Song army on the city also shot and killed the enemy cavalry from a high point.

Jiacheng is not big and the streets are not wide. In addition, the ruins left by the city and demolished houses, the cavalry was difficult to spread and even more difficult to gallop on horseback, and the impact power was greatly reduced. Cavalry without speed became a living target, and after the Song army built simple fortifications, it was difficult to advance. As artillery entered the city, the cavalry's counterattack was defeated again and again.
Chapter completed!