In many ancient war DRAMAs, we can often see the scene of two armies facing each other and then charging to kill the enemy, which is very enjoyable. But in fact, in the era of cold weapon warfare, there are not many such stormtrooper battles, often only in the decisive stage or in the grassland and the nomadic people to fight such a situation, in ancient times, one side of the city and the other side to besiege the city and try to attack the city.
In some film and television works, the behavior of a few highly skilled soldiers to cross the city wall to take a city is purely nonsense; some film and television works strive to restore the real scene, and will also use equipment such as siege wood and ladders to attack the city. The defenders of the city will shoot arrows at the soldiers who push the siege wood, and will also use boiling water or rolling wood to attack the soldiers who climb the city wall from the ladder to the clouds. When seeing these scenes, many viewers will directly call out the tragedy of the cold weapon era, but in fact, the siege is much more tragic than the scenes in the TV series.
Since the Warring States period, China's city walls have begun to build battlements and moats, and circular brick walls made of rammed earth have also appeared. Corner towers were also set up on the city walls to house catapults, archers, and crossbowmen. In addition to the solid walls, on the outside soldiers will also set up traps, grab guns, resist the horse gun and other defensive facilities to resist the besieging army. To attack the city with these facilities, it is necessary to fill in a large number of troops, generally speaking, several times the strength of the defenders to successfully attack the city, which is what Sun Tzu said in the "Art of War" "ten is to encircle, five to attack." ”
The siege battle generally lasted very long, such as the Xiangyang siege battle in the Southern Song Dynasty, which lasted for six years. Of course, not every siege must be a strong attack, and there are many ways to outsmart it. The first general of the Warring States, Bai Qi, attacked the City of Yancheng in the Chu state by water attack, and When Wang Qi's son Wang Ben attacked the State of Wei, he also used a water attack to break through the capital of the State of Wei.
Many people will have a doubt, knowing that the siege war is so difficult to fight and so time-consuming, but also caused a large number of casualties, why not simply go half the way to the sky, from other places to bypass the city? In any case, the scale of the ancient city pool was not particularly large, and it would not take long to quickly ride around the city pool. In fact, these are just the wishful thinking of modern people, and if someone really chooses to let the army bypass at that time, the end may be worse than a direct siege.
If we use satellites to look at the distribution of ancient cities and pools in China, we can find that the entire continent is like a chessboard, the official roads that intersect each other are like grids on the chessboard, and the city pools are like chess pieces on the chessboard. These cities are often built on major transportation routes, which is the place where soldiers must fight in the "Art of War" of Sun Tzu. Ancient roads were not as developed as they are now, except that the official roads were basically barren mountains and wild mountains, and the city was built in the middle of the road, so it was not realistic to get around.
And the siege side of the support line is certainly not as sufficient as the defending side, one of the purposes of the siege is to plunder the grain in the city to continue the march, that is, commonly known as the war to feed the war, even if they bypass the city, there is not enough food to support them to continue to fight. Moreover, after circumnavigating the city, it is likely that it will be attacked back and forth, so that the entire army will fall into the situation of being attacked by the enemy on its stomach and back, which is undoubtedly a way to seek its own death.