In recent years, many costume dramas have aroused people's enthusiastic discussion, because the history is far apart, and modern people's understanding of history is different from the ancients, often there will be some strange problems.
For example, in many TV series, we see the army helpless in the face of the city gate, or hit it with a very troublesome giant wood, and even a silly military general will let the soldiers "ant attack the city", and then be killed by the people above the city gate in a bunch, so many viewers who open their brains are thinking: Isn't it better to burn these gates with wood as the main structure directly?
But if you really go deep into the ancient environment to think, the practice of directly burning the city gate is really not very rational, at least for the following reasons:
1 Forcibly besieging the city is the next step
China is a war-torn country, so the study of war has been very profound for a long time. For example, the famous "Sun Tzu's Art of War" has until now been a military textbook for various countries. In the "Art of War of Sun Tzu", it is clearly put forward, "The upper soldiers cut down the plot, the second cuts the diplomatic relations, the second cuts the troops, and the next attacks the city", which is basically a negative attitude towards direct siege, and it is not necessary to do so unless it is absolutely necessary.
Especially in ancient times, the population size was very small, the size of the army was even smaller, don't look at the many times the movement is called tens of thousands of hundreds of thousands, the real number of troops is much smaller than the "claimed". Sometimes, an army has a total of 10,000 people, and if you go to a siege war and send the heads directly under the gates of people's cities, a few charges can lose half of the people - who can bear this loss?
Therefore, normal ancient people who have received formal military training, under normal circumstances, avoid siege warfare as much as possible, or find a way to lure the enemy out and then fight with the enemy, or directly bypass the city, hit his rear, directly attack the city gate, the loss is too large!
2 Although it is a wooden door, it may not burn
Although most of the ancient city gates were wooden doors, these wooden doors were designed by ancient designers with the situation of being attacked by enemies, so you may not be able to burn these wooden doors.
First of all, these wooden doors are made of the best wood, they are basically a hundred-year-old giant wood, and they are all iron birch, date wood, elm wood with good fire performance, not only that, in order to prevent fire and other reasons, basically the ancients will cover the wooden door with a layer of iron, the wood wrapped tightly, but also nailed on the iron sheet with huge copper nails to prevent the iron sheet and the wooden door from being relatively deformed. Such a wooden door, you really can't burn for a while and a half.
Even if you are lucky enough to have the city gate lit, it is still useless. There are basically moats and other water sources around the city gate, and there will be some small openings above the city gate, and the city gate below is on fire, and the people above will pour water down from the small hole, and the fire will be extinguished before it is burned.
3 Burned the wooden door, still can't get in
Even if you're lucky enough to have the door burned, can you get in? It is not necessarily, for the Xiongguan Fortress, the ancients basically set up a few doors, you burned the first door, rushed in, or separated by the second door, and just under the enemy's vitality range, it is simply a turtle in an urn, not too miserable.
Moreover, once such a large wooden door is lit, it cannot be burned for a while and a half, so it is very difficult for soldiers to rush into such a wooden door that is burning a raging fire, that is, there are a few people who are not afraid of death and rush in, and a piece of hot charcoal falls on it, which can directly burn the soldiers into serious injuries.
In fact, there have been such tragic lessons in history.
In 1561 AD, si li supervisor in charge of the eunuch Cao Jixiang and the military general Shi Heng in the capital rebellion, in order to rush into the palace, Shi Heng chose to set fire to the city gate, after unremitting efforts the city gate was lit, but once the fire burned up, there is no end, the people inside the city look at this fire is very interesting, but also add firewood to the inside, outside Shi Heng looked at such a fire helpless, can not really tell the soldiers to "go to the sea of fire"!
Therefore, it is not that the ancients were stupid, or the directors of historical dramas did not understand, but it was really difficult to use the fire to burn the city gates to attack the city.