Under the feudal system of China's old society, the level of status was determined by strength and weakness. Although the emperor of a country is the highest position in the country, if an emperor does not have a good ability to control power, he will still be seized by his ministers and even his own family.
In this environment, ancient China has been in war for many years, whether it is a powerful dynasty like the Tang Dynasty or an era like the Three Kingdoms Period, when major forces rise together, war is the main tone.
And as long as it is a war, there will be casualties. Especially in the ancient society where science and technology were very backward, when a war was launched, it was directly short-term contact, fighting the enemy with the flesh, and many times it was purely who was lucky or hard-fated.
In the wars of feudal society, there is a form of war, which can be called the most cruel of all forms of war. In this form of warfare, the attacking side can basically only advance in the form of human flesh accumulation. According to the ancient Chinese art of war, if the attacking side wants to successfully win the war, it needs at least ten times the strength of the defenders to have the hope of victory. The reason why it takes ten times the number of troops is because there are so many sacrifices to make it possible to succeed in the attack.
This type of war is siege warfare.
If the casualties were so heavy, why did the attacking side continue? The reason is that if you can successfully capture a city, its strategic value is very huge.
We all know that since it is the attacking side of the city, then the attacking side must come to the home of the defender to fight. If you can successfully capture a city, then all the materials in the city that originally belonged to the enemy belong to the attacking party. The materials in the city were not just some food, but the people and all other living materials, including those used in the war, belonged to the attacking party.
In addition, the city as a whole belongs to the attacking party, which means that the entire territory of the city can be arbitrarily used by the attacking party. Then, the attacking side will not only have an additional sphere of influence, but also be able to use this city as a base to move to other areas, and it will also be able to supply strategic materials here.
So why is siege warfare so hard to fight? The reason is that the defender is fighting at its own home, as long as the materials in the city are enough, and the food stored can be enough for the people in the city to eat for several years, then the defender can completely rely on the hard walls and moats to resist the attacking side for a long time. For example, in the late Qing Dynasty, when Zeng Guofan led an army to attack the city, even if modern equipment was used, it still took several years.
Moreover, siege warfare is a war that is easy to defend and difficult to attack, and the various advantages of the defensive side in defense have been mentioned earlier, and the following is to talk about the various disadvantages of the offensive side in the attack.
It is precisely because the attacking side is coming from its own territory to the enemy's territory to fight, so it is inevitable that the battle line will be too long. The biggest drawback of the long front is that it is too far away from its home field, and the food supply will become a very difficult problem. Once the battle is too long, it will cause the problem of food supply not keeping up. And leading soldiers to fight, the most is the soldiers, the basic meal has become a problem, then the soldier's combat effectiveness will naturally be greatly reduced.
In addition, the attacking side is actively fighting, but if you want to conquer the city, you must step through the walls and moats in front of them. At that time, there were only two ways to do it.
The first method is to use a special sledgehammer to attack the relatively weak defensive gates. However, the city gate is only relatively weak, and the defender naturally knows that the attacker will definitely hit the city gate, and will take various measures to prevent the attacker's attack. Therefore, blindly attacking the city gate with siege equipment is actually a very undesirable method, and the danger is very high.
The second method is the way we often see in TV dramas to take a siege ladder outside the city wall, and soldiers climb the stairs, go up to the city wall to fight the enemy, and attack the city.
In fact, the fierceness of this method is even worse than the first one, far more cruel than that shown in the TV series. Why?
Because the defender's soldiers basically stand on the city wall to attack the attacking party, and the attacking soldiers can only rely on the cover of their teammates when climbing the stairs, they can only go up. However, the only way for teammates to cover is to shoot arrows, but the enemy's attack methods are very many, such as shooting arrows, taking boiling water or scalding oil to directly splash, or taking large stones to smash. Moreover, the defenders knew how serious the consequences would be if they attacked them, and they would not spare their men at all.
So why didn't they just push the ladder down?
The reason is simple. Because this kind of siege ladder is not a few people can push, and if you want to push, you will also receive attacks from the attacker. In addition, the tops of such ladders are sharpened and coated with severe poison. It can only be said that only a fool would think of pushing a ladder.