My younger brother Lü Fengxian

Chapter 177: Xianbei Rampant
Budugen is actually the grandson of Tan Shihuai and has the legal right of inheritance.

If he could make another extraordinary achievement, it would be a foregone conclusion that he would inherit the throne of the Xianbei Chanyu.

However, Jinyang City is the essence of the entire Bingzhou, and naturally its city defense is also the strongest in the entire Bingzhou.

Although Budugen directly controlled 30,000 Xianbei cavalry, he still could not easily capture Jinyang City.

Apart from leaving more than 2,000 corpses under the city of Jinyang, nothing was gained, and they were unable to even capture the top of the city.

There is no way, if we say that the Xianbei people are the strongest cavalry nation in the world.

The Han people are the strongest nation in defending the city.

Thousands of years of civil war have brought the Han people's city defense skills to a standstill.

Defending a city has become an art in the hands of the Han people.

The defenders have a strong city and the advantage of being high above, so they can easily resist enemies that are several times their number.

The most critical advantage of the defenders over the attackers is the time advantage.

No matter how powerful the enemy is, it is impossible to besiege the city 365 days a year.

This gave the defenders time to prepare.

They used their time to build strong cities in a safe period and prepare sufficient supplies and food for defending the cities.

And they don't need to maintain a constant supply of food.

Therefore, unless there is an absolute advantage in military strength, the defenders will always be the ones who have the upper hand.

In fact, even the Han people themselves are often helpless against their own cities.

In countless famous siege battles in history, the way to achieve victory in the end was either to use rivers to destroy the city, or to spend countless resources to surround the city and exhaust the food of the defenders before finally winning with great difficulty.

Although Jinyang City had a well-developed water system, Budugen was a Xianbei and few of his subordinates could even swim, so how could he build dams to store water?

The Xianbei people themselves had to invade and plunder Han territory because they lacked food to survive the winter. Naturally, their food reserves could not be compared with Jinyang, the capital of Bingzhou.

Therefore, Budugen was caught in a dilemma.

At this time, Hutuo, who was defeated in the battle, found Budugen's brother Luo Hanyi, and was immediately severely punished by the angry Budugen.

He was ordered by Budugen to lead the remaining 4,000 troops as the vanguard to directly attack Jinyang City.

But how strong is Jinyang City?

The people of Bingzhou had been bullied and robbed by the Xianbei people for many years, and almost every family had a blood feud with the Xianbei people. At this time, the Xianbei people were besieging Bingzhou.

Almost all the Han people from Bingzhou who were defending the city fought to the death.

Even Budugen's 30,000 troops were unable to capture the city wall of Jinyang.

How could a miracle happen when Huto's 4,000 soldiers, whose morale was severely damaged?

However, he did not dare to disobey the orders of Budugen, the leader of the western Xianbei people, and had to charge forward a few times.

The result was that the city of Jinyang remained intact, with only some soldiers defending the city being killed or injured by stray arrows.

However, Huto's troops left behind a total of one thousand dead bodies outside the city.

After following Budugen into the Great Wall this time, the Hutuo tribe not only did not gain any benefits, but also suffered heavy casualties and was seriously damaged. Even if they retreated to the grassland, they would decline from a large tribe to a medium-sized tribe, which was a great misfortune.

Budugen was unwilling to accept this, but he also understood that it was impossible to attack Jinyang, a city with a population of tens of thousands, without suffering huge casualties.

Therefore, Budugen could only temporarily suppress his ambition and instead lead his army to sweep the countryside around Jinyang.

These countrysides are not protected by tall cities.

Although the people of Bingzhou were tough, they still could not form an effective resistance compared to the organized Xianbei army.

For a time, the entire countryside of Bingzhou and Youzhou was ravaged by the Xianbei people.

No matter in the county, only a few people could hide in the city. Most people lived in the countryside outside the city.

There are farmlands and water sources here.

It is the place where they have lived for generations.

But such peace became a thing of the past with the arrival of the Xianbei people.

In the past, even if the Xianbei, Wuhuan and even the Southern Xiongnu broke through the Great Wall, they could only wreak havoc in border counties such as Wuyuan County.

Moreover, they were afraid of retaliation from the Han Dynasty, so the intensity of the retaliation was not too high.

They would just grab a handful of supplies, people, and food to survive the winter, and then withdraw from the Great Wall and return to the grassland before the Han army set out.

But this time, 300,000 Xianbei troops were mobilized in full force, making it difficult for the military and civilians of Bingzhou and Youzhou to form an effective resistance.

Not to mention the Wuhuan people who took advantage of the situation and followed the Xianbei people to eat the leftovers that the Xianbei people had temporarily ignored.

Only by holding the city firmly could they barely resist the looting of the Xianbei people.

If they went out of the city to fight in the field, they would be surrounded and annihilated by the more mobile Xianbei people who would unite and use their advantages in numbers and light cavalry.

Therefore, after blocking most of the army in the city, the Xianbei were able to plunder the countryside without any worries.

Some large families like Lu Yi who owned fortresses were better off and could barely resist the iron hoofs of the Xianbei people.

However, the ordinary people living scattered in Bingzhou and Youzhou suffered a great disaster.

They were looted one after another by the Xianbei people.

The Xianbei killed those who resisted among them, raped their wives and daughters, stole their winter food, and burned down their houses.

There were even some brutal Hu tribes who would toy with young women and then cook and kill them on the spot.

Those that could not be eaten temporarily were tied together with ropes and tied behind the horses.

The Han people are jokingly called two-legged sheep.

The entire Bingzhou and Youzhou suffered great disasters.

Except for the cities that could still be barely defended, the entire ruling system of Bingzhou and Youzhou was completely destroyed by the Xianbei people.

The Xianbei people washed over the two states like a torrent. The surviving cities became isolated islands under the vast ocean, bearing the possible flood impact of the Xianbei people at any time.

In January, the Xianbei people, who all had horses, looted the entire Bingzhou and Youzhou at an extremely fast speed.

Hundreds of thousands of people in Bingzhou and more than two million people in Youzhou were severely harmed by the Xianbei people, and five out of ten houses were left empty.

However, the Xianbei people, with their mouths full of grease, were still not satisfied.

In early February, the Xianbei people invaded Jizhou.

In mid-February, the Xianbei people invaded Qingzhou.

By late February, Xianbei cavalry could even be seen along the Yellow River.

The whole of Hebei is in ruins.

A full ten million Han people were looted by the sudden Xianbei people.

Countless hardworking and honest Han people died miserably under the butcher knives of the Xianbei people.

Countless families were destroyed by the Xianbei.

Countless farmlands were trampled and destroyed by the Xianbei cavalry.

It was not until early March that the Eastern Han court, with its impressive organizational skills, successfully recruited an army of 100,000 and marched to the battlefield in Hebei.

……

(End of this chapter)