At 1:15 PM.
The Yan army finally arrived at the outskirts of Nanze City. As the distance shortened, Qin Ze ordered the army to slow down. After all, times had changed. With the equipment of artillery, there was no need to rush to attack the city.
Moreover, Nanze City is no ordinary city; it is the old capital and the largest city in this land besides Jinling.
This is a giant city.
The reason why Jin Jianren was able to enter Jinling City so easily was because he was too arrogant. He led his army out of Jinling and chose to fight at Huichang. When the news of the defeat reached Jinling, there were not many troops left in the city. Jin Fengluan was worried about something going wrong, so she panicked and led the remaining troops back to Nanze.
But things are different now. Nanze is the last hiding place for the Jin family. Although it is an old capital, it has a large population of several million and nearly two hundred wards. Correspondingly, its city defenses are a level higher than those of Anyang County, which is known as "impregnable".
At this moment, Qin Ze had dismounted and boarded the ladder truck, which was several meters high and was moving slowly forward. After reaching the top, Qin Ze took out his binoculars and looked ahead.
The view here is much wider, and as far as the eye can see, the area outside Nanze City is now completely open, with no buildings in sight.
Even so, Qin Ze could still see some signs of hasty demolition, which clearly indicated that the Jin family had carried out a "scorched earth" policy outside the city.
This tactic leaves the attacking side with nowhere to hide; as long as they advance toward the city wall, they will be met with continuous long-range fire from the wall.
At this time, without corresponding defensive equipment, they would become sitting ducks and suffer heavy casualties.
The outer city wall of Nanze City has four main gates: east, west, south, and north. The one they are coming to now is the east gate. From here, Qin Ze can vaguely see the figures of many soldiers on the outermost sheep and horse wall. However, the crenellations are high and it is difficult to see them clearly. This is precisely the reason why the sheep and horse wall is so well-defended.
In addition, four towering watchtowers are embedded in the sheep and horse wall on the due east side. The sheep and horse wall is twenty or thirty meters high and more than ten miles long. It is also dotted with more than a dozen arrow towers that are slightly lower than the watchtowers. Furthermore, the horse path in the middle of the sheep and horse wall is three or four meters wide, which can not only pass through a large number of soldiers, but also allow warhorses to gallop.
The four towering watchtowers were seven or eight meters higher than the sheep and horse wall. In addition to serving as lookouts, each watchtower was a small hiding place for soldiers, and archers could fire at long range through the arrow slits.
The defensive fortifications of the sheep and horse wall alone are enough to deter any army that wants to attack the city, not to mention that there is a moat outside the sheep and horse wall that encircles the entire city of Nanze, which is seven or eight meters deep and dozens of meters wide.
But this is only the outermost wall of this giant city. In fact, Qin Ze can't see the main east gate at all at this moment, because the outer city wall is behind the sheep and horse wall.
As the birthplace of the Kim clan, this giant city was built with the principle of "keeping enemies at bay" in mind from the very beginning.
Behind the Sheep and Horse Wall lies the empty Sheep and Horse City, which has no buildings and is not used on ordinary days. It is only filled with soldiers and horses to defend against enemies during wartime. The outer barbican is located inside the Sheep and Horse City. It is a semi-circular, raised city with a huge and spacious interior.
It's like an open cloth bag; if the attackers break through the moat and the barbican and enter the outer city, the archers on the wall can fire continuously from above.
Under this trap, only those who survive will be able to see the main gate of the city wall.
In fact, this was Qin Ze's first time visiting Nanze. Before, he had been either in Jinling or fighting in various places, and he had never been to Nanze, the birthplace of the Jin family. However, seeing the towering city walls this time, he couldn't help but feel emotional.
If the city were to be besieged using conventional methods, even an army of hundreds of thousands, let alone millions, would likely take several months to conquer it, or even a year.
The most common strategy for attacking large cities is to besiege them, completely surrounding the city and cutting off all supplies. This way, the city can be captured with minimal casualties. However, Nanze is a truly massive city, making a siege virtually impossible. Moreover, Nanze is probably self-sufficient, so a siege would be completely useless.
Therefore, even though the Jin family doesn't have many troops in the city, they can hold out for a long time. Their reliance is not on their military strength, but on the city itself.
"That's a really hard shell..." Qin Ze shook his head.
No sooner had he finished speaking than Dian Wei, who was standing to the side, immediately leaned forward and said:
"My lord, judging from this situation, it will probably take us a lot of effort to break through."
Qin Ze glanced at him and said in a deep voice, "No matter how hard a tortoise shell is, it can't withstand round after round of artillery fire."
"These four main gates, one in the east, one in the west, one in the south, and one in the north, would require countless troops to breach simultaneously. Reinforcing them at this time would be too costly. We only need to attack one of them."
"No matter how hard the shell is, if you break a hole and go inside, you can kill the turtle from the inside!"
As he spoke, he shouted at the messenger beside him:
"Pass down the order: once within firing range, form ranks and aim all cannons at the sheep and horse wall, and bombard it!"
"Smash those watchtowers and arrow towers! And those soldiers on the sheep and horse walls, blast them all back. Once they can no longer fire, then we'll advance and cross the river!"
"Yes!" The messenger immediately left after saying this.
The second quarter of Shen time.
The Yan army finally reached the artillery position, and Qin Ze, who was on the ladder truck, was surprised to find that the bridge over the moat outside the sheep and horse wall had not been destroyed.
This was quite unexpected. At first, Qin Ze thought it was a trap, but then a conjecture suddenly occurred to him that he could hardly believe.
That means the Jin family might still be hoping to use the city's defenses to inflict a major blow on our side, and then plan to leave the city, cross the bridge, and then come back to hunt us down.
Perhaps feigning defeat could lure the enemy out, but it would also mean paying the price with some lives. Moreover, this was just a conjecture, so Qin Ze decided to clear the way with artillery.
Immediately, thousands of tanks carrying artillery were arrayed in an orderly formation, and soldiers loaded them with ammunition. During this time, the city was not attacked at all.
This was certainly not because they were soft-hearted, but because Qin Ze knew they didn't have any better or stronger long-range weapons than him.
The tortoise shell was indeed hard enough, but at this moment it could only passively take the beating.
Once the ammunition was loaded, the main gunner immediately shouted:
"put!"
"Bang bang bang!"
In an instant, like a series of thunderbolts falling from the sky, the deafening sound almost shattered people's eardrums. The air was filled with gunpowder smoke, and the ground was covered with clouds of dust due to the recoil from the artillery bombardment!
Amidst the swirling smoke, the first salvo saw hundreds of large-caliber shells hurtling towards Yangmaqiang!
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