kingnovel Chapter 465: Conquering the City
Chapter 465: Conquering the City
In April of the fifth year of Zhenghe, Song Huizong finally began to organize and train a new army. He drew 10,000 elite forces from the imperial guards and asked Zhong Shidao to allocate 3,000 elite Western Army troops. In addition, he recruited tens of thousands of new soldiers from various places near Bianliang to form a new army of 50,000 people and began training.
At this time, the number of troops under Lu Cheng's command in the various mountain strongholds along Yanshan North Road and Yunzhongfu Road had grown to nearly 30,000.
Over the past six months, Lu Da, Yang Zhi, Hua Rong, Shi Jin, Pang Wanchun and others have rapidly expanded their manpower and horses by recruiting refugees, subduing bandits, and looting Liao tribes.
In addition, the Yongchang Escort Agency was constantly transporting food, supplies, military equipment, etc., which was why the army grew so quickly.
While Lu Cheng stayed in the capital to assist in the training of the new army, the troops under his command were also undergoing training.
In fact, training new recruits is both difficult and easy. As long as there is sufficient supply of food and supplies, strict discipline, unity, and clear rewards and punishments, an elite army can be trained quickly.
The recruit training manuals that Lu Cheng prepared for Lu Da, Yang Zhi and others were easy to understand and very easy to use. They didn't even need to do too much. It was enough for them to just read from the manual and proceed step by step.
After learning the intelligence sent back from the front line, Lu Cheng also conveyed the latest instructions to them. After two months of training, starting from June, they would march into Liaodong, first capture Liaoyang Prefecture of the Liao Kingdom, and then quickly occupy the peninsula south of Liaoyang.
Now, after the founding of the Jin Dynasty, it also launched two combat plans to destroy the Liao Dynasty, one of which was aimed at Liaoyang Prefecture.
However, the main force of the Jin Kingdom was concentrated in the Western Army, which was attacking the Liao Kingdom's Shangjing Linhuang with all its might.
At the Jin's advancing speed, they would not reach Liaoyang Prefecture until June of next year.
Although the Liao Kingdom was in decline at this time, it still had some wealth and was not so easy to defeat. Historically, it took the Jin Kingdom five years to capture the Liao Kingdom's Shangjing.
In May of the fifth year of the Zhenghe reign, Song Jiang, who was exiled to Jiangzhou, wrote a rebellious poem on the Xunyang Tower. Huang Wenbing, the magistrate of Jiangzhou, discovered it and immediately reported it to the police. Song Jiang was imprisoned. Dai Zong, the Speedy Guardian, immediately rushed to Liangshan and asked everyone in Liangshan to rescue Song Jiang.
In June of the fifth year of Zhenghe, Lu Cheng handed over the task of training the new army to Lu Junyi, Guan Sheng, Qin Ming and others, and resigned from the post of training the new army.
Seeing that Lu Cheng was not interested in military affairs and just wanted to travel around with Zhao Yupan all day, Song Huizong stopped paying attention to Lu Cheng. He also rewarded Lu Cheng with some rare treasures and let Lu Cheng return to Yuncheng County.
After returning to Lujiazhuang, Lu Cheng first looked after the births of Hu Sanniang, Xia He and Qiulan. Hu Sanniang gave birth to a son for Lu Cheng, and Xia He and Qiulan each gave birth to a daughter.
By now, Lu Cheng already had three sons and three daughters.
Afterwards, Lu Cheng didn't bother to take care of the three women during their confinement period, and took Guo Sheng and several of his followers with him to the northern border.
In July of the fifth year of Zhenghe, Yang Zhi and Hua Rong each led 1200 cavalrymen and entered Xijin Prefecture of the Liao Kingdom, which is near Yanjing in later generations, and began to plunder Liao tribes and harass the Liao border.
At the same time, Lu Cheng personally led an army of nearly 30,000 troops, bypassed Laizhou, and arrived at the city of Jinzhou.
At this moment, the Jin and Liao countries were at war, and Yang Zhi and Hua Rong were each leading cavalry to harass nearby, leaving the southeastern part of the Jin Kingdom depleted of troops and its defense lax.
The Liao Kingdom never thought that the Song Dynasty would attack them, let alone think that someone would lead troops to attack Jinzhou.
Lu Cheng was very familiar with Jinzhou. As early as in the world of Embroidered Spring Blade, Lu Cheng started from Liaodong and it took him many years of operation and development to occupy Jinzhou.
Today, this is the territory of the Liao Kingdom, and the people under Lu Cheng do not belong to any country. They are currently in the stage of self-employment. They are completely barefoot and not afraid of wearing shoes, and they have no scruples at all.
Taking advantage of the night, Lu Cheng led his men to the city gate. Afterwards, Lu Cheng took the lead, quickly climbed to the top of the city wall with the help of a flying rope, drew his bow and arrows, and shot more than a dozen arrows in succession, killing the guards on the city gate tower. Then he occupied the top of the city wall, with a long spear, he was invincible and quickly stabilized the situation.
Immediately afterwards, Yuan Lang, Shi Jin, Lu Fang and Guo Sheng each climbed up to the top of the city wall, completely occupied the tower, quickly went down the city wall and opened the city gate from the inside.
As the shouts and cries of killing rang out, the sleeping people of Jinzhou were awakened, as well as the few remaining defenders in the city.
At this time, Pang Wanchun and Lu Da had already led a large army into the city.
For Lu Cheng and others, it was effortless to capture the poorly defended city of Jinzhou.
The shouting and killing in the city lasted less than an hour, followed by sporadic resistance. Hua Rong and Yang Zhi led the cavalry to eliminate the fleeing troops in the surrounding area.
By dawn, Lu Cheng and his men had completely taken control of the entire Jinzhou city.
Moreover, due to the thorough preparations last night, all the Liao soldiers who escaped from the city were wiped out, and the news of Jinzhou's occupation did not spread.
After daybreak, Lu Cheng ordered a notice to be posted to reassure the people, and left Yang Zhi, Lu Fang, and Guo Sheng to lead 5,000 soldiers to guard the city.
Jinzhou City is the western gate of the Liaonan Peninsula. It must be defended in order to stabilize the situation in southern Liaoning.
Afterwards, Lu Cheng led his men straight in, capturing cities and strongholds along the way, and finally captured Liaoyang Prefecture.
The Liao Dynasty implemented the five-capital system. In addition to the capital Zhongjing, there were four capitals in the east, west, south and north as the four secondary capitals. Liaoyang Prefecture was the Dongjing Prefecture of the Liao Dynasty.
When Lu Cheng led his army to the city of Liaoyang, Liaoyang had already received the news and mobilized nearby troops in advance for garrison.
With more than 400 soldiers attacking cities and strongholds and marching miles, it was naturally impossible for them to block all the news.
After learning of the situation, Liaoyang Prefecture asked Zhongjing for help while withdrawing troops from nearby cities to defend Liaoyang Prefecture.
When Lu Cheng led his troops to Liaoyang Prefecture, 20,000 soldiers had already gathered.
It was not that the Liao army did not want to mobilize more troops, but that the Liao army had to block the Jin army in the north and guard against the dishonest Goryeo in the southeast. There were simply not many troops near Liaoyang Prefecture.
Looking at the walls of Liaoyang Prefecture, which were much taller and stronger than those of Jinzhou City, Pang Wanchun, Hua Rong and others were a little worried: "As the Art of War says, if there are ten of them, surround them; if there are five of them, attack them; if there are twice as many, divide them. General, the walls of Liaoyang Prefecture are tall and heavily guarded, so it may not be easy to capture. Why don't we capture various places in the south first, and then work slowly."
Lu Cheng shook his head: "Southern Liaoning is now empty. If we don't seize Liaoyang Prefecture now, it will be more difficult to attack the city in the future."
"But... our forces are limited. If we attack the city rashly, will there be too many casualties?"
Lu Cheng laughed: "Don't worry about that, we have prepared new weapons."
Lu Cheng waved his hand, and Hong Tianlei Ling Zhen commanded his soldiers to pull up a dozen ox carts, took some wood from the ox carts, and quickly assembled them into a catapult. Then they took out explosive packs, lit them, placed them on the catapults, and fired them towards the Liaoyang City ahead.
"Boom boom boom" As the explosions sounded, the city wall of Liaoyang Prefecture was suddenly thrown into chaos.
Not long after, two or three explosive packs fell accurately under the city gate, and the south gate of Liaoyang City was instantly blown to pieces.
Following Lu Cheng's order, Lu Da and Yuan Lang led the army to rush in and directly attacked Liaoyang City.
Lu Cheng smiled slightly and glanced at the generals beside him, such as Hua Rong and Pang Wanchun: "From now on, Ling Zhen will take the lead in attacking the city. Professional matters should be left to professionals."
Hua Rong and Pang Wanchun were stunned. Could this battle be so big?
"Let's go, let's go into the city. There are still 20,000 Liao soldiers in the city waiting to be conquered, and we can't let the soldiers suffer too many casualties."
Now that the business has just started, Lu Cheng, the big boss, must take the lead and charge forward to reduce the casualties of his subordinates as much as possible...