Chapter 1476: The Last Battle of Han Banner World (One Hundred and Sixty-Six) Years Ago (Part 2)

Shannan County was established by the Qin State. After King Wulie of Qin defeated the Huns on the grassland and annihilated the Xiongnu royal court in one fell swoop, the Huns on the grassland became a piece of scattered sand. At that time, the Qin people were unwilling to concentrate their efforts on the Central Plains. In order to fight against the Huns on the vast prairie, Shannan County was established. A force was stationed here to monitor the grassland. Firstly, it was to prevent the remnants of the Huns from harassing the northern part of Qin State again. Secondly, it was also to prevent the Huns from attacking again. It means sitting big.

This strategic abandonment of the prairie by the Qin people is, of course, extremely wrong now, because it gave Gao Yuan, who was in Jishi City at the time, the best opportunity to embezzle and cannibalize the Huns. As a result, Gao Yuan spent several years Over time, the Huns were integrated under the banner of the Eastern Marching Army, which caused the strength of the Eastern Marching Army to surge and firmly control the grassland.

Later, in order to compete for Shannan County, many conflicts broke out between Gao Yuan and the Qin people. Shannan County also changed hands several times, and both sides suffered losses here. He lost many of his generals and troops. Finally, after Li Xin and Wang Xiao invaded that year, the Qin army took over again. This time, the Qin people stationed heavy troops here to strengthen the city walls, and the Han army was already strong at this time. It is hard to shake that although the Qin people occupied Shannan County, they could no longer pose much of a threat to the Han Dynasty, and the Han army did not send troops to fight for it again.

But when the Han Dynasty annihilated all the countries on this continent except Qin, and the military front was directed at Qin again, Shannan County became the focus of competition again.

Taking Shannan County opened the door to the northern part of the Qin State. The Han army could launch an attack on the Qin State from both directions. When the importance of Shannan County was highlighted again, the Qin people discovered that they did not have enough strength to reinforce Shannan County.

When Wang Changyong left the border, he took away half of Shannan County's garrison and never returned. Now more than 10,000 people have to defend Shannan County, which has to be said to be a very heavy task.

These few years. With the strong rise of the Han State and the repeated defeats of the Qin State on the battlefield, Shannan County has been reinforced and raised again and again. Every time the Qin people lose a battle, Shannan County will undergo a large-scale upgrade. Renovation. Shannan County now is far different from when Lu Chao was guarding here.

From the initial adobe mud wall to the green brick-clad wall, to the exterior wall rebuilt with reinforced concrete now, Shannan County has been covered with a thick and solid shell. Even the artillery of the Han army is only It made shallow pits on it. But it can't penetrate through and collapse his thick wall.

However, the wall was strong enough, but the buildings above the city wall were not as strong. The cannonballs fell on the city wall, destroying the tower above, blowing up the cave where soldiers were hidden, overturning a crossbow platform, and setting off a fire. He smashed countless rocks and knocked away piles of stones that were originally intended to be used to smash the enemy when the Han army attacked the city. There was a raging fire on the city wall, and there was a lot of wailing.

This is the first time Shannan County Governor Fan Zhang has experienced being attacked by so many artillery pieces.

If it weren't for the quick hands and feet of his personal soldiers, the top official of Shannan County would have been caught in the first wave of bombings. He will be buried together with the collapsed towers, thus becoming the fastest defensive officer in history.

After several rounds of bombings, the highly nervous officers and soldiers of Shannan County found that there was nothing more to come. The Han army did not let their infantry attack at this moment. It seems that they are not ready to attack the city yet.

This made Fan Zhang breathe a sigh of relief. After the bombardment stopped, he began to organize people to clean up the messy city. Most of the defense facilities on the city wall have been destroyed, and there are ruins everywhere. Injured soldiers lie in the ruins and howl miserably. And among the ruins, people who died in this round of artillery attacks can be seen everywhere. remains of soldiers.

The only thing that made Fan Zhang happy was that the main wall of Shannan County still stood proudly under the attack of artillery fire and did not suffer much damage.

Outside the city, He Lanxiong was summoning the commander of his engineering unit and the commander of the artillery battalion.

"Commander, based on the artillery strike just now, we can determine that the outer body of the main wall of Shannan County is made of a reinforced concrete structure and is extremely strong. With our current artillery, we cannot cause too much damage to it. It is even more impossible to use engineers to destroy the wall. It cannot be dug at all, and it is completely worth the loss to destroy the wall against the enemy's counterattack. "

"Then what can the engineer do for me?" He Lanxiong asked with a frown.

"Commander, we can only build bigger and stronger siege vehicles, ladders and other objects for you. To capture Shannan County, I am afraid we will have to rely on infantry in the end." The engineer commander said a little embarrassedly: " We can provide a sufficient number of siege vehicles for the infantry. Here is close to Huolan Mountain, and there is an inexhaustible supply of wood, so we can continuously build siege equipment. "

"Can't we build a siege plank road vehicle?"

The engineer commander shook his head: "Commander, the height of Shannan County City is too high and the angle is too large. It is difficult for the cavalry to launch a charge on it. Even if it is built and leaned against the wall, it will be extremely easy for the defenders to defend. They can use the large The steep angle caused a lot of damage to our cavalry."

"I, I understand, you go down and build more siege towers for our soldiers as you said. Remember, the stronger you build them, the fewer casualties our soldiers will have. And you engineers exist That’s the meaning of it.”

"I will do my best!" The engineer commander bowed and retreated.

Helan Xiong turned his eyes to the artillery commander: "Can the artillery really not blow down this damn wall?"

"Yes." The artillery commander nodded and said: "The outer wall of the entire Shannan County City is a whole. The reinforced concrete structure gives it extremely strong resistance to destruction. The Qin people are willing to spend a lot of money to build the entire wall into a whole, and it is thick enough that solid bullets can hardly cause too much damage to it. Commander, I suggest that the next main task of the artillery is to cause casualties to the Qin army defending the city. And provide artillery cover for the infantry siege."

"From now on, the artillery can attack the county city anytime and anywhere, with the purpose of destruction and killing." Helan Xiong stood up, He paced back and forth in the big tent for a few steps, "Kill the enemy, destroy the enemy's defense facilities, and destroy the enemy's courage and will to the greatest extent. Make them feel irresistible."

"I understand."

"Don't worry about the loss of artillery shells. Now we are the only army in the whole Han Dynasty that is still fighting. The others are all repairing. The logistics supplies will meet the supply, but I am afraid that you can't consume them all." Helan Xiong smiled and said, "This is also a good opportunity for you to practice your artillery. The artillery of our Third Military Region is not as good as the First and Second Military Regions, and there are few actual combat opportunities. In this battle, let your artillery practice their accuracy, and next year they will be able to show their skills."

"Yes!" The artillery commander was delighted. For him, there is no better news than this. The artillery's artillery is accurate, but it is just a fake trick if you just talk about it without practicing. A good gunner, an experienced gunner, is completely fed with artillery shells. The Third Military Region is not the main battle zone, and there are not many opportunities for artillery live-fire exercises. Now we can use war instead of training, and we don't have to worry about ammunition. This is a unique good opportunity.

The artillery commander left happily. Helan Jie walked in quickly. "Commander, the tortoise shell of Shannan County City is really hard."

"It's hard enough. Since we can't break the tortoise shell, we can only chop off its head directly." Helan Xiong smiled and said, "Ajie, lead your troops to build a snow platform for me. You should know the distance and so on, right?"

"Snow platform? Ski platform?" Helan Jie was stunned and suddenly understood. "Are you going to fly over?"

"Crawling on the ground, flying in the sky, I still don't believe that Shannan County City is really impregnable." Helan Xiong sneered. "The characteristics of our Third Military Region must be fought in this battle."

The rumbling of artillery sounded at irregular times every day. The Qin army on the tower had no sense of security and relatively safe time points, because the artillery bombardment below had no regularity at all. The sporadic bombardment never stopped, and occasionally there would be a salvo of hundreds of artillery. Some of the defense facilities that had just been built with great difficulty were destroyed again and again in such bombardment. What's more terrible is that the soldiers on the city wall found that the enemy's artillery was getting more and more accurate. At first, the sporadic bombardment was often incomprehensible, and there was not much killing power except for the sound. But after three days, the Qin army, who had been bombed countless times, found that the accuracy of those sporadic bombardments began to become scary.

This made the Qin soldiers desperate. They took great pains to carry the sand cannons to the city wall one by one. Just after they were built, a few shells flew over and they were blown to pieces. If they were not careful, they would have to sacrifice several lives. In this case, what's the point of sacrificing! The soldiers were unwilling to show up on the city wall again. They would rather stay under the city. Anyway, the Han army had no intention of rushing up to attack the city, and no one wanted to climb up the city wall and die in vain.

What made Fan Zhang even more anxious was that more and more Han army siege towers appeared outside the city. In three days, there were more than a hundred such siege towers. The height of these siege towers was flush with the city walls. Once they were allowed to lean against the city walls, the consequences would be disastrous. What puzzled him even more was that the Han army built high platforms with snow outside the city. Seeing that those platforms were getting higher and higher day by day, they were already far beyond the height of the city walls, and behind these platforms, long ramps were built. Because of the continuous bombardment by the Han army, there were no sufficient counterattack measures on the city, and they watched with their own eyes as these snow platforms were built little by little to a place only a hundred meters away from the city walls.

This couldn't go on. If it continued like this, the Han army would not have to fight, and the Qin army would collapse under such pressure.

Fan Zhang decided to fight a battle first to boost morale anyway. (To be continued.)