When watching costume TV series, we will definitely find a very obvious phenomenon, that is, the ancient city gates are generally made of wood, compared to the tight and thick walls, these wooden doors always feel as if something is missing.
Since only the door in the city wall is made of wood, the hardness is relatively small, plus the wood is easy to catch fire, this is the common sense that many people understand, so some people are more curious, when the ancient soldiers attacked the city, why did not use fire to burn the city gate? Why bother to smash the wall?
Ancient city structure
Before we want to understand this problem, we may wish to first understand the ancient city structure, and after understanding it clearly, it is much simpler to study the problem. The ancient city pool has many components from the outside to the inside, of which the outermost is the moat or moat, and then further is the sheep and horse wall (city gate), after the city gate is the urn city, the urn city is the gate tower or arrow tower, these are all passed, can be regarded as the real sense of entering the city.
There are so many components, and each component has unique functions, the detailed functions of which I continue to analyze and list as follows:
The function of the moat or moat is actually the first protective barrier outside the city wall, this barrier is mainly to increase the difficulty of the enemy to attack the city, such as the moat ditch is very deep, if the enemy accidentally falls inside, it may be killed, in the fierce war, many soldiers will fall in the moat or moat for various reasons.
In addition to the function of a safety barrier, the second function of the moat is to provide a certain amount of water resources for the city, such as a fire in the city or a fire in the city tower, you can quickly take water resources from the moat to rescue it, so that many things are much more convenient.
The moat into the sheep horse wall, that is, what we call the city wall, the ancient requirements for the construction of the city wall is very strict, usually the city wall is very thick, especially the walls near the city gate, it is even thicker, two or three times thicker than the general city wall, which is mainly to consider the enemy siege to break the city wall factors.
Inside the city wall is the urn city, the urn city is equivalent to an all-round slaughterhouse and labyrinth without dead ends, once the enemy enters the urn city, the defender can take fire attack on it, in the urn city, the enemy basically has no way to fight back, can only obediently wait for death, such as the movie we are familiar with, Jet Li ordered to kill those soldiers, in fact, it was killed in the urn city, the ingenuity of the urn city is the same as its name, the urn catches turtles, in the doom.
After the urn city goes in, it is the gate tower or the arrow tower, the gate tower is mainly used to control some switches outside the city gate, and to watch the situation outside the city tower, the arrow tower, as the name suggests, is to arrange some archers and other soldiers on the top, once the outside of the city or the urn city encounters danger, it will quickly take firepower to attack, so that it is difficult for the attacking party to capture the city.
It is precisely because the composition of the city is so complicated, so in ancient times, if you want to attack the city pool, in fact, the difficulty is very large, we will randomly cite two more famous wars, one is the Battle of Changping, so many soldiers of the Qin State, want to capture the city pool, the difficulty is still very large, the Zhao State has always insisted on the city pool, the Qin State is difficult to capture, even if your weapons are good, there is still no way to take the Zhao State.
It was the same when the Xiang army conquered Tianjing, Zeng Guoquan spent two years besieging Tianjing, using various siege methods, whether it was threats, intimidation, throwing corpses, or digging tunnels and planing pits, still powerless against the city tower, and finally relying on perseverance to exhaust the grain in Tianjing City, and finally captured Tianjing.
Just from these two well-known siege battles, in fact, we can easily understand the difficulty of siege and the wisdom of ancient city architecture. Maybe when I say this, some people will still wonder, how did the ancient city attack the city, why is it so difficult? Then I'll go on.
Ancient soldier siege methods
In ancient times, there were no various shells, so to conquer the city, the main way to conquer the city was to use two plans, one was to open the city gate or smash the city wall, the army all rushed in to fight with the defenders, and the other plan was to directly use the stairs to climb the city tower in the TV series to kill the soldiers guarding the city tower, so as to enter the city and open the city gate.
These two methods are generally the main siege methods adopted by the ancients, of which the second method is too heavy because the loss is too heavy, and the probability of success is too small, so the siege side will use this method unless it is forced to do so, and its own soldiers are sufficient, otherwise it will not be considered.
After all, from my analysis of the composition of the city from now on, we can fully understand that the city has taken into account the problem of siege at the beginning of construction, so for the defending party, all protective measures will certainly be taken, and for the siege party, it is too difficult to force the siege.
In the case that the second method does not apply, most people still take the first way, and in the first way, it is divided into two situations, the first is to capture the city gate, directly from the city gate, and the second is to smash the wall, by opening the wall, and then enter.
The difficulty of these two situations is different, but basically it is impossible to directly capture the city gate and enter through the gate, the difficulty coefficient is only less than the one that directly climbs the building, so usually, the soldiers still use the method of smashing the city wall, although this method seems useless, but in actual action, it is the most effective, no matter how thick the city wall, there are always some places that are more fragile, and it is always promising to persist in destroying it.
Why is it that the city gate is obviously only made of a little wood, and it is so difficult to break it? There are two main reasons for this, on the one hand, there are too many soldiers guarding the city gate, it is difficult to approach the city gate, on the other hand, the design of the city gate is to open inward, and it is very difficult to destroy the city gate with the help of external forces.
It was so difficult to open the gates, so why didn't the soldiers burn them by fire? Such a simple thing, didn't the ancients understand? But in practice, it's a pipe dream.
Why didn't the ancients use fire to burn the city gates?
The ancients obviously have considered the problem of burning the city gate, so the ancients have long been in the construction of the city gate, has done a series of measures to deal with this problem, for example, some city gates in the construction, it is specially used some metal to inlay the door around, so as to reduce the flammability of the wooden door, want to burn the city gate, it is estimated that you have to light a lot of square in front of the city gate, but where is so much time for you to prepare a fire and light the city gate?
In addition to this fire prevention measure, above the city gate at the beginning of the construction, a small ditch will be specially designed, once the city gate is on fire, the soldiers on the upper side can pour water through the small ditch from above to directly extinguish the fire on the city gate, and there is a moat outside, and there is no need to worry about the lack of water resources.
After considering these two buildings, it can be said that the ancient city gate wants to use fire, at least at the technical level is somewhat difficult, because water and fire are incompatible, with the existence of water, you unless you use gasoline to burn the city gate, or there is no other way, the key ancient did not have gasoline, so the ancients basically did not have hope for the burning of the city gate.
epilogue
The wisdom of the ancients is actually very worthy of our study and thinking, many things may not be as meticulous as the ancients today, but in the lessons learned by the ancients, they have done a lot of things perfectly. You think that using fire to burn the city gates can be done quickly, but the ancients already had preventive measures, and you can only do it in vain!
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