The Jin army besieged the city, and the Song emperor’s daughter died

Chapter 222 Two major events and a secret event

December [-]th of the first year of Jingkang.

Two things happened on this day, which are recorded in history books, and one secret thing, which is not mentioned in history books.

Thousands of miles away in Xingqing Mansion, the capital of the Xixia Kingdom, with rare clear skies and warm sunshine, Yao Pingzhong, who was on an envoy to Xixia, finally met the Xixia Emperor Li Qianshun.

It's just that this meeting was not like the previous envoys of Song and Xia, where they discussed matters openly and openly in the Hao Palace.

Instead, he secretly chose to stay in a slightly more spacious room in Xingqingfu Station.

Except for a few entourages, Li Qianshun only brought King Richard of Jin with him.

This is no longer a low-key issue, this is clearly a closed-door meeting that you don't want people to know about.

Yao Pingzhong knew that he had only one chance to convince Li Qianshun.

Therefore, the red tape was ignored, and Yao Pingzhong went directly to the topic: "The reason why Your Majesty professed vassalage to the Jin Kingdom was not His Majesty's original intention. It was just a helpless move due to the defeat of both Liao and Song Dynasties. I fully understand but feel that Your Majesty is not worthy of it."

Li Qianshun smiled and said, "Why isn't it worth it?"

Yao Pingzhong also smiled and said: "When Xixia declared itself a minister to the Song Dynasty, did our court treat him poorly? Did we give him less every year?"

Li Qianshun smiled and said nothing.

Yao Pingzhong continued: "When the Liao Kingdom was still alive, Xixia paid tribute to the Liao Kingdom, and the Liao Kingdom paid back even more tribute than you paid. Not only that, they also married the princess and became an in-law. But think about it, Your Majesty, you are paying tribute to the Liao Kingdom. Jin Chengchen, what did you get?"

This question pierced Li Qianshun’s lungs!

Didn't Li Qianshun not give his opinion to the Kingdom of Jin? I have already surrendered to you, but you don't give me any money. Even if you don't give me money, you still want me to give you money?
This confused the group of people who were killed in the white mountains and black waters.

You surrendered to me, but you still want my money without giving me any money. How can this make sense?
Xixia looked down upon him: Brother, you are new here and you don’t understand the rules. Our East Asian cultural circle is all like this. If I call you brother, you have to act like a big brother. You have no money and you still want to take on a younger brother?
At that time, in order to capture Emperor Tianzuo, Wanyan Zongwang had to give in: "If you want money, I will give you the land in the future!"

Regarding the issue of profit distribution, it was an issue that had not been straightened out between Xixia and the Jin Kingdom from the beginning, so the relationship between Xixia and the Jin Kingdom had never been as strong as that between Xixia and the Liao Kingdom.

And this was the breakthrough point that Zhao Fujin helped Yao Pingzhong smooth out with letters before he left.

Seeing that Li Qianshun looked unhappy, Yao Pingzhong continued to attack: "Wanyan Zongwang attacked Kaifeng last time, and you Xixia took the opportunity to capture Tiande, Yunnei, Wuzhou and other eight places. You even sent troops to attack Zhenwucheng (now Yulin, Shaanxi) and Xi'an Prefecture. , and gained a lot of benefits. But what happened in the end?"

When Yao Pingzhong said this, he deliberately showed a mocking expression.

Li Qianshun and King of Jin Brother Richard looked at each other with red faces.

Because Wanyan Zongwang promised to cede land to them, but after returning from Kaifeng, the fourth prince Wanyan Zongbi was unhappy and took a special detour to snatch Yunnei and Tiande from Xixia.

This made Li Qianshun furious!
Is there anyone more shameless than me, Xixia, going back on my word?
unacceptable!

Li Qianshun wrote to Wanyan Zongwang to question him, but Wanyan Zongwang was also helpless.

Yao Pingzhong chuckled and said: "The Jin people are untrustworthy. Everyone knows that they made a maritime alliance with the Song Dynasty and jointly conquered the Liao Dynasty. They promised Yanyun sixteen states. But now, your majesty has seen it. He can do this to the Song Dynasty." , can’t we treat you Xixia the same way?”

Regarding the maritime alliance, the Jin Kingdom and the Song Dynasty had different opinions.

Jin Renyan: I never said that I would return the Sixteen States of Yanyun to you. I only agreed that the land of Yanyun would be returned to you.

The Jin people threw out evidence. Your Daojun Emperor’s handwriting says that it is the land of Yanyun.

The Song Dynasty retorted: The land of Yanyun refers to the sixteen states of Yanyun.

Jin Guo shook his head: It's written in black and white, don't let me interpret it too much.

This incident shows that when signing a contract, it must be written clearly. Don't make such a low-level mistake like the Taoist Emperor.

Li Qianshun does not want to eat the melons of the Song Dynasty and the Jin Dynasty, nor does he want to judge who is right and who is wrong. This is a confusing account.

But one thing is certain, that is the death of the rabbit and the sorrow of the fox.

Yao Pingzhong's words had already touched Li Qianshun.

Seeing this, Jin King Richard sighed: "We in Xixia do not want to be enemies with the Song Dynasty, but the current situation is such that Xixia's soldiers are weak, so we can only keep the country safe by following the lead of the Jin people and horses."

Yao Pingzhong agreed with this and put it bluntly: "So how Xixia chooses to stand in line depends on who is better between the Song Dynasty and the Jin people?"

Brother Richard is also a veteran who has fought on the battlefield for many years. He knows that all the gains from negotiation are in vain. In the end, it all depends on who has the strongest troops and horses, so he does not feel any embarrassment and nodded: "Exactly!"

Yao Pingzhong sighed and asked: "The King of Jin is also a fierce general on the battlefield in the old calendar. According to the King of Jin, who will live and die between the Song Dynasty and the Jin people now?"

Brother Richard was stunned: "You want to fight?"

Yao Pingzhong nodded lightly: "Fight without peace!"

Li Qianshun smiled: "You, the Song Dynasty, and I, the Xixia Dynasty, have been fighting each other for many years. Everyone knows how much they weigh, so don't make fun of them."

Yao Pingzhong asked with a serious face: "The 1000 iron kites of Xixia were defeated by [-] people from Wanyan Lou's room, did your majesty feel scared?"

Li Qianshun's face darkened, and he snorted: "So what? You and I, Xixia, are evenly matched. We can't win, but you can win?"

Yao Pingzhong chuckled and shook his head: "Wanyan Zongwang's Eastern Route Army fell into the hands of our officials of the Song Dynasty ten months ago. The battle at Moutuogang was besieged on all sides. If it hadn't been for the kindness of our officials of the Song Dynasty, Wanyan Zongwang would have had his bones buried and unsealed. This matter , Your Majesty won’t know, right?”

Before Li Qianshun could speak, Brother Richard took over: "What little Xianggong Yao said is completely different from what the Jin people said."

Yao Pingzhong asked: "What did the Jin people say?"

Brother Richard smiled and said, "I shouldn't have said these words to avoid being disrespectful, but since Mr. Yao asked, I can only tell the truth."

Immediately after the first battle of Kaifeng, the Kingdom of Jin sent envoys to inform Xixia that the reason why the East Route Army withdrew from Kaifeng was because the female officials of the Song Dynasty used sex to lure them and promised to go to Huining Mansion in person in a year to bring the generals with them. Song returned to Jin Dynasty, and not only that, he also personally stayed in Huining Mansion to serve Wanyan Zongwang.

Wanyan Zong hoped that he could capture the Song Dynasty without a single blow, and even accepted the female official's family into his house, and then agreed to withdraw his troops.

Brother Richard asked: "If it was true that your Song Dynasty defeated the Eastern Route Army, how could they return to Huining Mansion in a dignified manner and snatch Yunnei and Tiande along the way? Could this be what the defeated army did? "

Yao Pingzhong was speechless for a moment, because according to common sense, it really didn't look like what the defeated army did.

Seeing that Yao Pingzhong had failed, he almost lost his temper and said some harsh words, such as "Let's touch each other", but at this moment, Li Qianshun's entourage hurriedly came in and said something in Li Qianshun's ear, Li Qianshun suddenly became stunned. After a big change, he immediately stood up and said to Yao Pingzhong: "Stay a little while, I will discuss it with the King of Jin."

After saying that, he followed King Jin out of the house.

A quarter of an hour later, the two came back again. As soon as they entered the door this time, Yao Pingzhong could feel that their attitudes were completely different from before.

Brother Richard asked with a smile: "Has Mr. Yao heard about the battle in Taiyuan?"

Yao Pingzhong only knew that the Jin Army's West Route Army had surrounded Taiyuan, but he did not know how the battle was going. He could only tell the truth: "When I was sent as an envoy under the imperial decree, I had not received any news from Taiyuan."

Brother Richard continued to smile and said: "General Taiyuan was recalled by the twelve gold medals, and Taiyuan City was ceded to the Kingdom of Jin."

When Yao Pingzhong heard this, his whole body wilted.

Is this nonsense?
"But... the Taiyuan defenders actually killed the Western Route Army forward general Wanyan Yinshuke..."

Yao Pingzhong was shocked and didn't know how to answer the question.

He was not a diplomat to begin with, but Yan'an Mansion was closer to Xingqing Mansion, the capital of the Xixia Kingdom, so he was temporarily appointed to act as an envoy. When he encountered this situation of half good news and half bad news, he really couldn't wrap his head around it. .

Seeing that Yao Pingzhong didn't speak, Emperor Li Qianshun of Xixia asked: "Tell me what you want us to do with Xixia. Needless to say, we want to unite with the Song Dynasty to fight against the Jin Dynasty. What we Xixia can do is not to send troops to harass the border when the Song Dynasty and the Jin Dynasty are at war." .”

When Yao Pingzhong heard this, he thought it was a joke and said bluntly: "The Song Dynasty is not afraid of sending troops to attack and harass us... We just want to borrow a way for others."

"Borrowing the road?" Li Qianshun and Brother Richard looked at each other: "Borrowing the road for whom?"

"Yelv Dashi!"

……

...The second thing that happened that day was in Kaifeng, thousands of miles away from Xingqing Mansion.

Compared with the clear sky and warm sunshine in Xingqing Mansion, the sky and earth in Kaifeng City at this time were still cold and gray, with wind and snow falling from the sky.

The Jin army sent troops from Qingcheng and attacked Tongjin Gate of Kaifeng.

Wanyan Zongwang's East Route Army dispatched two generals, Yelu Yujian and Wanyan Zongbi, each with three thousand troops. Their mission was to escort the West Route Army safely to the outside of Tongjin Gate in Kaifeng City, so as not to be defeated by Kaifeng City on the way. King Qin's army outside was destroyed.

After arriving at Tongjin Gate, he was also responsible for protecting the West Route Army from being harassed by the Song Army outside the city, but he had to stay far away.

The mission of the West Route Army was to pretend to attack the city.

Therefore, the West Route Army did not send many soldiers and horses, so it only sent five sinking artillery pieces, two trench-filling vehicles, and a team of less than 1000 people.

The reason why he was pretending was actually to test the defensive power of Kaifeng City.

Familiarize yourself with the terrain and calculate the position of the Jin Army's artillery array when attacking the city with all its strength in the future.

In the past two months, Wanyan Zonghan had been thinking hard about how to prevent his artillery array from being hit by the Song Army's strange firearms again and being unable to fight back.

He thought of two ways.

The first way is to increase the range of the sinker cannon.

This is the most effective method. As long as Song Jun's firearms cannot hit him, there is no threat.

Improving the range of sinking artillery is easy to say, but not easy to implement.

After Wanyan Xiyin organized a large number of craftsmen to discuss, the simplest way was to use smaller and lighter stones. This would naturally increase the range, at the cost of more time required to destroy an area of ​​the city.

Wanyan Zonghan felt that it didn't matter.

After replenishing food and grass in Taiyuan, he had plenty of time.

The second method is to spread out the gunners as much as possible.

After questioning the gunners who survived the First World War in Taiyuan, we learned that the sinking artillery array was destroyed. Most of the time, one sinking gun fell down and crushed another, thus forming a chain reaction.

Therefore, as long as there is a large enough area and the guns are dispersed, this chain damage can be effectively avoided.

Fortunately, there is no pond outside Kaifeng City, so the place where it can be used is large enough.

As the Jin army marched toward the outside of Tongjin Gate, the Song army discovered siege equipment outside the city. Even if there was no order from the court, they knew they needed to intercept it.

So several teams stationed in the east of Kaifeng City sent some troops to try to destroy these devices that threatened the city's defense halfway up, including Zhang Jun's troops.

According to the feedback from the scouts, Zhang Jun felt that it was obviously unrealistic to break through the defense of the [-] Jin Army cavalry with the second battalion of the Qingshuo Army and rush in to destroy the siege equipment of the West Route Army, so he decided to Order people to carry rockets and harass the surrounding area, looking for opportunities.

But the weather didn't go as planned, with strong winds and snow, and these rockets couldn't burn at all.

So after firing a few arrows sporadically, they were driven away by Yelu Yujian's troops. Fortunately, they ran fast and did not cause any casualties.

Zhang Jun thought to himself, this is not an interception, nor is it not an interception. He might as well follow from a distance and follow in the direction of Tongjin Gate to see how the defenders in the city respond. When the time comes, they will act according to their plans, which is not considered slacking off.

After arriving at Tongjin Gate, after watching the West Route Army set up artillery machines, the two teams of the East Route Army retreated five miles away.

As for why they did this, Wanyan Zongbi and Yelu Yujian were puzzled.

Since they are guarding siege equipment, shouldn't they just stand aside?It is only in line with common sense that if there is any emergency situation, there is still time to react.

However, Wanyan Zonghan specifically told them to retreat five miles and just watch the Song army outside the city. As for how the defenders inside the city reacted, they should not worry about it.

The five artillery machines found their positions, spread out, and adjusted their angles before launching an attack on Tongjin Gate.

Under the cover of the trench-filling truck, dozens of observing Jin soldiers had arrived at the bank of the moat. Before they could even sigh that the moat was so damn wide, they saw five boulders flying overhead and hitting Tongjin Gate heavily. On the nearby city wall.

One thing to say, they are all masters of cannon, and the distance adjustment by visual inspection is very accurate. Although these five boulders came from different directions and angles, they all hit the same position without any bias.

This is called concentrating firepower to attack one point.

Although an ordinary city wall would not be destroyed by five sinking cannons, a layer of skin would still fall off if it was hit by a huge boulder for a moment.

However, what surprised these observing soldiers was that after three rounds of heavy cannon hits, not only did no complete bricks fall off the city wall, but they felt like the bricks were getting tighter and tighter, and they were embedded inward.

The two observation soldiers looked at each other, and before they could speak to each other, they saw another scene that surprised them even more.

A huge boulder that hit the city wall did not fall, but was dented in. Then it was hit by another boulder, and then it shattered and fell. But even so, a small part of the boulder was still dented in the city wall. It's like it's stuck.

Just as the observers were speculating on how Kaifeng's city wall was built, someone pointed at the Tongjinmen city wall and shouted: "Someone is coming down!"

Everyone looked up through the snow curtain and saw dozens of chains suddenly hanging down from the wall of Tongjin Gate, and Song Jun was climbing down along the chains.

If at this time, the siege gunners adjusted their angles, they should be able to kill many.

However, because the snow cover was too thick and the distance was too far, the gunners of the five artillery machines did not notice it at all. By the time the observers on the moat bank came back to notify them, it was already too late.

Eight hundred soldiers with swords and shields had already rushed across the moat. After first destroying two trench-filling trucks, they then charged in the direction of five artillery machines.

Wanyan Zongbi, who was five miles away, seemed to have noticed something was wrong. He was about to lead his troops to respond, but he heard the sound of killing from behind. It turned out that Zhang Jun's troops who were following behind and other Song troops outside the city had already surrounded them. Wanyan Zongbi and Yeluyu met and discussed, but they could not avoid being attacked from two sides, so they could only lead their troops to kill in the rear.

……

……

In the Academy of Song Dynasty, Zhao Fujin was quite surprised when he looked at the new gadget brought by Shen Qiong.

This thing is shaped like a sealed iron can, with a pressable iron block leaking out of it. Shen Qiong explained seriously: "Its principle is the same as that of the explosive bomb. The explosive bullet breaks the contents inside through impact. There is a porcelain bottle with red hot coals, and the black gunpowder inside is lit. Do the officials understand?"

Zhao Fujin frowned and said: "Understood, but before firing the bombs, the charcoal porcelain bottles are installed to ensure that they are still burning. You..."

Shen Qiong demonstrated: "There is no porcelain bottle here, but nitroglycerin and nitrocellulose. As long as the iron block is pressed down and rubs against the iron piece in the middle, there is a high probability that the nitroglycerine will catch fire, and then ignite the nitrocellulose." , and then...bang!"

After Shen Qiong made an explosive movement, he looked at Zhao Fujin with a smile.

Zhao Fujin was puzzled. He already had thunderbolts, so why did he need them?
Shen Qiong waved his hands repeatedly: "The usage is different. We can bury it in the snow. As long as the Jin army charges in large scale and Tiefutu steps on this iron block, the scene will be..."

Zhao Fujin suddenly realized it and felt funny: "Are you talking about a landmine?"

Shen Qiong was stunned: "Landmine? This name is amazing. Why didn't I think of it? Yes, yes, it will be called Landmine from now on."

Zhao Fujin smiled silently and said: "Refining nitroglycerine is so troublesome, and it is impossible to produce it on a large scale. If you use it like this... it's a waste!"

Zhao Fujin shook his head repeatedly: "I still don't know the probability of detonating it. Even if it explodes, how lethal it will be. Have you tried it?"

Shen Qiong's head nodded like a rattle: "I tried it, it can kill a cow! It's just...it's just that the officials are right, what is the probability that it can be detonated? There is really no condition to try this. After killing so many cows, some It’s cruel.”

Zhao Fujin said with relief: "Forget it, let's stop this research for now. As long as the thunderbolt bullets and Dongfeng cannon are researched together, it will be considered a great achievement."

Zhao Fujin smiled bitterly in his heart: "If you continue like this, will you show me intercontinental missiles in a few years?"

Shen Qiong scratched her head and replied with some reluctance: "That's okay, but... more than 100 have been produced..."

Zhao Fujin was stunned: "More than 100?"

Shen Qiong nodded aggrievedly.

"What a waste!" Zhao Fujin covered his face and smiled bitterly.

(End of this chapter)