Although Chen Hai and Ning chaner join hands to kill more than 200 soldiers and horses left behind on heifalcon cliff, they can''t achieve the purpose of training the horse infantry through actual combat - they fight alone at this time, but when they meet a stronghold with more than 1000 bandits and can gather the spirit of killing troops, can''t he and Ning chaner fight alone?
The stronghold gate made of iron birch is tightly closed, which is not much worse than the large iron gate made of refined iron. Chen Hai, Ning chaner and fan Dachun don''t fight. Ordinary soldiers risk arrows and falling stones from their heads to challenge wood. If they want to attack such a stronghold gate, there will be many casualties.
Chen Hai asked him to incorporate into the baggage camp of more than 200 slave craftsmen to build a waterwheel. However, he took ice from the ice lake in front of heifalcon cliff, burned it and melted it, and sprinkled water on the gate of the village with a waterwheel.
In the freezing cold, the water spilled in front of the stronghold gate and soon frozen into layers of solid ice, freezing the city gate cave into a large ice lump.
Since the stronghold gate is difficult to attack, it is simply sealed from the outside, and the thief soldiers will not have the opportunity to send troops from the stronghold to fight back.
After that, Chen Hai made the baggage camp cut wood in the oasis forest in front of heifalcon cliff, and built siege equipment such as side car, pole, building car and stone throwing crossbow outside heifalcon cliff stronghold
The side car is mainly used by the horse infantry to force the stronghold wall, which can block arrow stones and hit poles to attack the stronghold wall; The floor car is also very simple. The simplest wooden car rack has two high poles. As long as it can lift the hanging car to 20 or 30 meters high, it is convenient for elite archers to stand in the hanging car and shoot the thieves behind the fortress wall.
These are the siege weapons recorded in the code of conduct of Bingwei mansion, and the Mexican armour department also has the records of the manufacturing method of human-powered catapult, but this kind of catapult has not been paid attention to in many wars in Yanzhou.
In addition to the extremely strong cities built in Yanzhou, the cast iron shields held by ordinary soldiers are also extremely strong. If there are fierce soldiers in tongxuan territory, it is necessary to throw hundreds of kilograms of stone bullets to form a fatal threat.
At the same time, the bow and crossbow in Yanzhou has a very long range. A human catapult usually needs to be placed thousands of steps away, so that it can carry out continuous operation without being affected by the enemy''s bow and crossbow.
It is very difficult for a group of people to pull the pitching pole at the same time. At this time, it may take one or two hundred people to pull the pitching pole at the same time to throw a stone bullet weighing 100 kilograms or even hundreds of kilograms into the enemy array thousands of steps away.
If you want to attack the enemy''s array intensively, you need 20 or 30 stone catapults at the same time.
At this time, at least four or five thousand people need to cooperate in this matter at the same time, and enough defense troops and horses should be deployed outside to prevent the enemy''s counterattack and surprise attack.
There are too many disadvantages, so stone throwing crossbow rarely appears in the battlefield of Yanzhou.
The catapult crossbow made by Chen Hai at this time was made using the lever principle, equipped with a heavy catapult.
It is equipped with a heavy-duty pitching machine. One end of the pitching rod is no longer pulled by manpower, but is equipped with a solid counterweight box, which is filled with thousands or even tens of thousands of kilograms of gravel or iron ingots, which is tied to the tail end of the pitching rod as a counterweight; The front end of the pitching rod is loaded with hundreds of kilograms of stone bullets in the bullet bag at the front end of the pitching rod. The front end of the pitching rod is slowly pulled down with a winch and tied with a rope.
When attacking the enemy array, use a knife and axe to suddenly cut off the rope at the throwing end, and the counterweight box weighing tens of thousands of kilograms at the end suddenly falls, so that the stone bullet can be easily thrown one or two thousand steps away.
At the same time, twenty or thirty people can operate a heavy-duty catapult with local materials. It is also very convenient to manufacture. Chen Hai only needs to go out in person for parts that require high strength and need to be cast with quenched gold and iron.
At this time, Chen Hai made up 40 hundred troops for the Ma Bu army. For each heavy catapult built by the baggage camp, in addition to arranging the operation of more than 20 prisoners, he also arranged one or two hundred troops to guard the flank.
The Ma Bu army is hastily made up. The combat effectiveness of the pawn is only slightly better than that of ordinary people. Even if it forms a defensive battle array, the top three or four people form a battle group or battle surface, holding halberd shield or knife shield, it is impossible to stop a fierce pawn in the mysterious world.
In the dense array, a fierce soldier in the mysterious environment, holding an iron shield, was enough to resist the stabbing of three or four ordinary soldiers with spears.
This is also the key reason why fan Dachun can''t see the surrender of prisoners, soldiers and slave soldiers at all.
Chen Hai''s solution to this problem is very simple. He mainly trains these ordinary generals with Macedonia square array and five meter super long spear.
The Macedonian phalanx has fatal defects, but it is the best way Chen Hai can think of at this time to train the horse infantry and fight against the elite horse bandits in the vast sand sea.
In a dense battle array, the five meter long iron spear can make the first four to five columns of soldiers have direct contact with the enemy.
In this way, when a fierce soldier in tongxuan territory, even if it is the Royal horse, it will no longer be three to four ordinary generals, but stabbed by ten or even twenty overlapping iron spears. The dense spear wall formed in this way will completely make up for the serious deficiency of ordinary soldiers in individual combat effectiveness.
Of course, Chen Hai directly sealed the bandits of heifalcon cliff stronghold in the stronghold. At this time, he had no chance to test the power of this super long spear fangqidun square array. After all, it takes time to compile and practice fangqidun square array, and it takes time to transform three or four thousand lengthened iron spears.
At the same time, the Macedonian phalanx needs to cooperate well with elite cavalry and a large number of auxiliary sword and shield soldiers and archers. At the same time, it can play its due role on a relatively open and flat battlefield.
Chen Hai besieged heifalcon stronghold at this time, just trying to buy time and train troops in actual combat. What can play a role at this time is the heavy stone throwing crossbows built one after another.
Although stone bullets are more powerful, there are not enough people to collect them. Chen Hai directly arranges people to collect lake ice, make a large number of hard ice bullets, and throw them into heifalcon stronghold. At the same time, during the throwing process, he constantly trains these prisoners of war, calibrates and improves the throwing accuracy, so as to form a dense ice bullet coverage on the small section of stronghold wall.
Chen Hai also made the catapult crossbow simple first and then complicated. First, he asked the craftsman to use ordinary iron materials to cast parts and ordinary Populus euphratica trees to build the catapult rod. However, he slowly replaced the Millennium Populus euphratica solid wood and quenched gold iron castings.
By the 15th day, the baggage camp had built 20 stone catapults, which could launch hundreds of heavy ice bombs at the same time.
Even the martial arts practitioners in the spirit setting dare not easily pick up the heavy ice bombs thrown from 2000 steps away. The solid walled wall poured with iron juice from black sandstone is also full of spider like dense cracks on the dense and accurate continuous bombardment of ice bombs, which will collapse at any time.
The scale of heifalcon cliff stronghold is much smaller than that of Heishan city. It is only 400 steps square.
At night, the catapult changed the weight of the counterweight box, adjusted the range, and threw a large number of stone bullets into the stronghold City, causing heavy casualties for the thieves and dare not rest.
On the 15th day, we didn''t see reinforcements. After recognizing that Chen Hai was actually training with them, the more than 100 remnant bandits in the stockade, except for a dozen leaders who fled at night, others surrendered happily.
After stronger self-confidence, fan Dachun expelled the leader. Fan Dachun also obediently accepted Chen Hai''s suggestion and selected some prisoners from heifalcon cliff into the cavalry team to supplement the lack of combat power; Similarly, hundreds of strong slaves were selected and incorporated into the horse infantry and baggage camp.
Like the disposal of black mountain stronghold, if we can''t take away grain and other bulk materials, we will abandon them in the open field with timid and resigned slaves, who can be taken or left.
Five or six thousand troops didn''t stop at heifalcon rock. After all, the past ten days were mainly training, which was much easier than the forced army that lasted two or three days before. Ordinary generals didn''t consume much.
A small amount of stone mistletoe honey is taken every day. The soldiers selected from slaves have a slight change in their weak body and strengthen their health; On the day after the capture of heifalcon cliff, Chen Hai, Han wendang and others led more than 4000 horse infantry and baggage camps directly to Jinxiang ridge 400 miles away.
Although the twenty stone catapults are extremely heavy, they are disassembled into hundreds of large and small parts and dragged directly in the vast sand sea with thousands of horses. The speed is not slow.
Fan Dachun led more than 400 elite riders to approach the periphery of Jinxiang mountain, blocking more than 400 bandits in the stronghold so that they had no chance to abandon the stronghold and escape; Two days later, the Ma Bu army also came with the large and small parts of the stone throwing crossbow and assembled them outside the jinxiangling stronghold.
The same steps of attacking the stronghold have been demonstrated in the previous round, and Korean Dang is already familiar.
First, the water was frozen and frozen at the gate of the stronghold, so that the thief soldiers had no chance to go out of the stronghold to counterattack. Then they calmly assembled 20 stone throwing crossbows, collected lake ice and made bullets, and threw them over the stronghold one after another.
More than 4000 horse infantry and 20 hundred troops continued to form a defensive formation on the open oasis meadow outside the stockade to practice the Macedonian spear array; Ten teams of 100 people rehearsed the knife shield array; Ten hundred teams practice shooting; Fan Dachun led more than 400 elite cavalry to monitor one side in case of sudden changes.
At this time, Chen Hai seemed to completely ignore what happened to the troops and horses sending relatives to Hexi besieged in Yequ mountain, did not send anyone to spy on the movements of the Western Qiang country, and even didn''t care whether the reinforcements of the Western Qiang country were lured out by horse thieves, or who in the Western Qiang country wanted to overthrow the Ye family who ruled Pinglu oasis at this time.
When Korean can preside over the training and bombard the thief stronghold in an orderly manner, Chen Hai''s main energy is to cast more accurate and stronger parts, and transform the stone throwing crossbow step by step to be more sophisticated and powerful.
More than 400 bandits were besieged in the stockade, and the people were distracted. Chen Hai could calmly borrow the yuan interest of heaven and earth, condense the flame, melt the gold and cast iron, and make the casting more sophisticated. At the same time, he also tried to make the shape of the stone throwing crossbow smaller, which was easier to dismantle and resist, and easier to transport.
Ning chaner was also very enthusiastic to help. Of course, her purpose was to learn how to make and use heavy catapult crossbows.
The manufacturing process of this heavy stone throwing crossbow, which is not recorded in the first volume of the military training record, is not complex. At least it is much simpler than the mechanism crossbow. However, it is quite powerful to use the pawn to attack the city and besiege the stronghold.
In particular, after a large number of quenched gold and iron greatly improve the strength of stone throwing rods and other components, it is even possible to throw tens of thousands of kilograms of stone bullets.
She can imagine that once this kind of heavy stone throwing crossbow is arranged outside the city and tens of thousands of generals are called to operate, the defense array of Yanjing city will be fatally threatened - Chen Hai''s birth completely changed the old war pattern of Yanzhou.