I believe that everyone in many TV series, have seen the siege of the bridge section, in ancient times, whether it is Europe or China's feudal dynasty, have built a number of impregnable cities and castles to guard, so as to resist the invasion of those foreign enemies, but I believe that there is a point that is more puzzling, that is, the city is easy to defend and difficult to attack, why will the various armies at great cost to capture, rather than bypassing the city and taking the rear? Some readers believe that after bypassing the city, as long as the grain road is cut off, then after a period of time, the city will run out of food, and naturally it will only be able to obediently surrender.
This method sounds particularly useful, and there is another example, after the First World War, France once spent 5 billion francs to build the world's strongest Maginot Line, and as a result, in the French Campaign of World War II, the Germans raided the Ardennes Heights, bypassed the so-called unbreakable defensive circle, entered the French hinterland, captured the capital Paris, and the cannon machine guns of the Maginot Line became a pile of scrap iron, and the soldiers in the trenches could only drill out and surrender obediently.
However, let us not forget that this is already after the Industrial Revolution, the Maginot Line lacks the supply of oil and ammunition, and surrender has become inevitable, but in ancient times, it was particularly rare to bypass the city and take the rear directly, as for its reasons, historical experts also gave their own suggestions, and they analyzed the following reasons.
The first is to worry about the enemy on the abdomen and back, even if you want to go around. This is the most important point, the main general led the army around the city, when the time comes to meet the enemy, the defenders of the rear city rushed out, then the fighting army will fall into a state of two-sided attack, into a very unfavorable passive situation.
When Zhuge Liang of the Three Kingdoms went out of the Qishan Mountains to attack the Central Plains in the Northern Expedition, he led a hundred thousand troops to attack the Wei state city pool Chen Cang, and as a result, whether it was the vanguard Wei Yan or Zhuge Liang personally came to the front, even for 20 days, whether it was fire, cloud ladders, or digging tunnels, it was unable to break the defensive line composed of three thousand people in the hezhao district, which made Zhuge Liang angry and thunderous, and it was also a rare gaffe of Kong Ming in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms.
But even so. Zhuge Liang still deployed more than 10,000 troops here, fearing that Hezhao would rush out to rescue the Wei army, and the Shu army was overwhelmed by the attack of the Wei general Wang Shuang and others, and could only retreat twenty miles.
According to historical statistics, there have been more than 10,200 wars in China's history, which is a very frightening number, but more often, the war is not to eliminate each other, but the two regimes in order to plunder land, population and other resources of the armed struggle.
Once the war is tight and the front line of the war is fought, the government will collect all the grain, grass, gold, silver and gold from the people and the surrounding areas into the city, and step up their care, first, to protect the safety of the people, and second, to prevent the enemy from collecting resources.
Cities are often gathering places of wealth. What are the troops who come to attack for, and aren't they for resources? Besides, in ancient times, eating was the top priority, hundreds of thousands of troops went out on expeditions, grain and grass were a very large consumption, if you give up the near and far. It is very likely to cause a shortage of military food, and it will also lead to the defeat of the entire army, so don't look at the people in the city, in fact, the people who besiege the city are more anxious, they urgently need to obtain the resources of the city to achieve their desired interests. Therefore, when the ancients fought, they basically did not bypass the city.