Chapter 54 Mongol raid

It was at the end of October 1213 when Genghis Khan arrived at the city of Zhongdu. On the day when he looked at the city of Zhongdu from a distance, the clouds were densely covered with snowflakes.Those around him heard him sigh, and then he reined in the horse and went back to the tent.That sigh fluttered in the snowflakes, sweeping across the entire Mongolian army camp.Anyone who sees Zhongdu City will sigh like this. Zhongdu City is an impenetrable city with strange design.Zhongdu city is divided into inner city and outer city. The inner city is a complete city surrounding Zhongdu, and the outer city is four forts independently distributed outside the four gates of the inner city.There are 4,000 soldiers stationed in each fort. There is no wall between the forts. They are square, three miles long and three miles wide.There are grain depots and arsenals built inside, and there are tunnels connecting with the inner city.The troops and supplies in the inner city can be continuously supplied to the outer city through tunnels.

This is completely designed according to the defensive battle mode. If the enemy attacks the inner city, the four castles in the outer city will attack from the back, causing the enemy to be splinted; Cannons and arrows can also be used to send troops and supplies to the outer city from the tunnel; if the outer city cannot resist the enemy, the people in the fortress will withdraw from the tunnel to the inner city, then block the tunnel entrance, discard the outer city, and then board the fort. The upper inner city shelled the outer city.In other words, it is meaningless for the enemy to capture the outer city. If you don't attack it, you will be hit hard by it. This is a city that can distort the enemy's anger.

The wall base of the inner city of Zhongdu City is about 15 meters thick, with 13 gates in total, and a watchtower every 15 meters, totaling more than 900 watchtowers.Three moats fed by Kunming Lake form a rectangle with a side length of about four kilometers and a total of 15 kilometers to protect the city wall. This is already a defensive position that is difficult to conquer, but there are also defensive weapons that make the enemy shudder.A triple-bow bed crossbow that shoots a three-meter-long arrow out a kilometer, a defensive weapon that destroys anything it hits.There is also a super catapult, a lever about ten meters long is mounted on a cart, one end of the lever is loaded with stones, and the other end is tied with a rope.Under the command of an artilleryman standing on the wall, a group of six people can pull the rope tightly and throw a 50-jin boulder 300 meters in an arc.Once this kind of big rock is thrown, its power is equivalent to that of a meteorite of the same weight from outer space. Whether it is a person or a building hit by it, it will become a piece of cake.

Of course, there are also gunpowder defensive weapons that have been popularized on the city walls. The rocket is a representative weapon. When it is placed on a three-bow bed crossbow and fired, it is no different from today's mortar. When the Mongolian army stretched its neck and looked at Zhongdu City, Genghis Khan had made a wise decision to encircle Zhongdu City without fighting, completely wiped out the Kingdom of Jin, and leveled the vital forces of the Kingdom of Jin. fall. Except for some of the troops who besieged Jinzhongdu, Genghis Khan used all his troops to mop up.He divided his troops into three groups. The commander of the right route, Shuchi, swept the Shanxi Plateau and the area north of the Yellow River. The commander of the left route, Hesaer, swept the northeast.

Let's first look at Genghis Khan's Central Army.During the mopping up campaign, Genghis Khan went south from Zhuozhou. Because the area to be mopped up was the Great Plains, Genghis Khan divided his troops into several columns and marched side by side, sweeping forward at the same time on a front of more than 100 kilometers.The Mongolian cavalry galloped across the crop fields and orchards. Wherever they passed, the farms were turned into flying smoke and the haystacks were turned into fly ash.On this vast land, Genghis Khan’s regiments destroyed cities and forts when they encountered them. When they passed through the central and eastern regions of Hebei Province and entered the Shandong Peninsula, there were only a dozen fortified cities in the whole of Hebei Province. The spirit of resistance was not captured by them.

As soon as Genghis Khan entered the flourishing Shandong Peninsula, he was fascinated by everything in front of him.On the vast and fertile plains in Shandong, he whipped his horse and swung his whip, with swords and blood, all of which were woven into bloody poems and paintings.When the sweeping troops advanced to the city of Jinan, he eagerly wanted to enter the city.Some very poetic counselors said to him: "In Jinan City, there are water lilies as big as wheels, forests of ancient trees, and countless statues of Buddha. No wonder Genghis Khan wants to go in so much." Genghis Khan shook his head: "I'm not interested in what you're talking about. I'm most interested in silk and beauties. I heard that beauties in Shandong are descended from heaven, and no one can resist their smiles."

The counselors immediately followed him and said, "Not only are there beauties, but there are also mountains of gold and silver treasures, and there are all kinds of small commodities that you have never seen before. Haha." "Haha," Genghis Khan laughed presumptuously, and ordered, "Hurry up and attack!" With the order of his general attack, several columns of the Mongolian Corps charged first, and the engineering troops let the advanced siege equipment play its limit role.But the city of Jinan is too strong, and the determination of the people of Jinan to resist is higher than that of Mount Tai, and deeper than the fertile land of Shandong.

Genghis Khan showed the housekeeping skills of the Mongols and pushed the Shandong people captured in the surrounding area to the battlefield, walking in the forefront.The defenders of Jinan City saw their seven aunts and eight aunts from the crowd, and the hands holding the weapons began to tremble.Although they were still resisting, they were no longer so reckless. The Mongols finally climbed the city wall, and Jinan fell.Jinan City is the spiritual city of the Shandong Peninsula. Its fall made other cities give up resistance. Genghis Khan ransacked the Shandong Peninsula. People from one city to another were driven out of the city and brutally slaughtered. Blood stained the Yellow Sea. The Pacific Ocean is dyed red.

After Genghis Khan plundered a large amount of gold and silver treasures, silk and livestock, and thousands of beautiful women in the Shandong Peninsula, he ordered a column to escort the spoils back to the city of Zhongdu, while he himself continued to sweep westward.Sweeping until the north of the Yellow River stopped before returning to the city of Zhongdu.The Yellow River is wide and the waves are rough, and he cannot cross the river, otherwise, his victory will be increased tenfold. The sweeping route of Shuchi, the commander of the right-hand army, was to go south along the Taihang Mountains to the north bank of the Yellow River, and then make a big roundabout, enter Shanxi from Tianjingguan, and attack Luzhou (now Changzhi, Shanxi) from south to north; The branch took Pingyang (now Linfen, Shanxi) in the west, crossed the Fen River, and went north from the Hexi area; the main force came from Luzhou to sweep the cities in Taiyuan.

The most striking result of this sweeping army was the capture of Taiyuan City.Taiyuan City is extremely prosperous and is one of the economic centers of the Kingdom of Jin, so the Kingdom of Jin is also very concerned about its management.The city wall of Taiyuan is high and strong, and the moat is deep and wide. It is almost a city that will never fall. When Jochi scouted Taiyuan City, he had discovered this difficulty, but he was also pleasantly surprised to find that there was a problem with the defense deployment of Taiyuan City.He said to his subordinates: "The defenders of Taiyuan must think that we will attack from the north, that is, from the direction of Xijing, so they all focus on the northern line. If we attack from the south, they must be dumbfounded."

This move caught people off guard, caught them off guard, and immediately produced miraculous effects.The defenders on the south line of Taiyuan City were crooked melons and cracked dates, and their numbers were small. Shuchi captured Taiyuan City with ease. The Mongols ransacked the city of Taiyuan, destroyed farms, massacred farmers, burned food, and did countless bad things to kill their children and grandchildren.Jochi is so cruel, on the one hand, it is the habit of the Mongolian army, on the other hand, he encountered a lot of resistance on the way from the capital city to the Shanxi plateau, which naturally aroused his animal nature, not only in Taiyuan, but also in Shanxi plateau. The fate of the cities he conquered was equally miserable. When Shuchi went south from Zhuozhou to Zhangde Mansion (now Anyang, Henan), he encountered stubborn resistance. One month after the attack, Shuchi left a part of his troops dejectedly and continued to attack the city. Encountered tenacious resistance again, and finally captured Luzhou. When he arrived in Qinzhou (now Qinxian County, Shanxi), he encountered tenacious resistance. Shuchi was almost struggling, and there were fierce battles every minute. This is why he was so frantic on the Shanxi Plateau The reason for the massacre. The left army was much smoother than the right army. After starting from the city of Zhongdu, they crossed Pingzhou along the coast and attacked northeastward, capturing Shanhaiguan and Dexing County along the way.With the wind and the water going smoothly, they happily ran into the Jurchens' base camp, and they felt as if they had entered the land of no one in the Nenjiang, Songhua River, and Heilongjiang river basins.However, the booty they brought back was far less than that of Genghis Khan, because although the Northeast region was the hometown of the Jin Kingdom at that time, it was poor and backward, and there was nothing worth grabbing. The sweeping campaign organized by Genghis Khan was an away battle centered on Zhongdu and radiating around.The Mongolian Corps swept the hinterland of the Central Plains south of the Great Wall, north of the Yellow River, east and west of the Taihang Mountains.It took one month to mop up more than 90 cities, including today's five provinces of Hebei, Shandong, Shanxi, Henan, and Liaoning. The wide range and scale of the mopping up is amazing even in today's military history. It was not that the Jin army had no resistance, but the effect was negligible. Under the attack of the Mongolian army's hurricane, thousands of miles of territory collapsed in an instant.Among the nearly one hundred cities in the five provinces, only eleven cities such as Zhongdu survived, but it was only a matter of time. It took Genghis Khan a month-long sweeping campaign to finally accomplish his goal: to destroy most of the castles north of the Yellow River in the Kingdom of Jin, destroy the military defense facilities in the area, and isolate Zhongdu. The city of Zhongdu began to tremble under the eyes of the Mongols. Perhaps because of the nervousness under high pressure, a military coup broke out in the city of Zhongdu under the coveted eyes of the Mongols. Coup is co-starred by Hu Shahu and Shuhu Gaoqi.Shuhu Gaoqi couldn't understand Hu Shahu's arrogance, and Hu Shahu couldn't stand Shuhu Gaoqi's arrogance either. Shuhu Gao Qi attacked first. He led the Khitan special forces to suddenly surround Hu Shahu's private house in the middle of the night and launched a fierce attack.Hu Shahu woke up from the nightmare and had no time to gather the army in the palace, so he hurriedly looked for a way to escape.There is only one way to escape, which is a low wall in the backyard of his house.The low wall was so low that a mad pig could jump over it.But Hu Shahu's weight was equal to that of two pigs, and he was slow to move. He finally climbed up the low wall, but accidentally fell down, fell on his fat head, and broke a leg.He had never been injured so badly before, so he howled naturally, and the soldiers of Shuhu Gaoqi were attracted by the screams like slaughtering pigs, and seeing that they were the target, they cut off his big head with one knife.Shuhu Gao Qi carried his big head into the palace and threw it in front of Hu Shahu's army, who disarmed. When Wanyan Xun lost his soul, Shuhu Gaoqi pulled him out from under the bed, put him on the throne, summoned the officials and said: "Hu Shahu took the emperor to command the officials. He has committed a heinous crime and has been executed. The emperor's authority remains intact. We Let’s work together to protect our country.” All the ministers kowtowed to Wanyan Xun, and naturally they also kowtowed to Shuhu Gaoqi standing beside Wanyan Xun. After the coup d'état was completed, the urgent matter was in front of us. The Mongols were yelling and drinking outside the city. How to expel them and keep China safe was naturally the top priority.