In the Song Dynasty, there is no law. Chapter 281 of the main text: The Song Dynasty has guns. In late August of the fourth year of the Qingli period, the Western Xia army led an army of 100,000 to raid Qingtang.
Their vanguard also brought more than ten artillery pieces.
In the first year of the Kangding reign, the Song army's artillery appeared on the Song-Liao battlefield for the first time, shining brilliantly.
After that, Song and Liao, and Song and Xia signed treaties one after another, and both Liao and Western Xia began to spare no effort to obtain artillery and grenades.
Grenades were fine. In the first year of the Kangding reign, both the Liao and Xia countries were able to obtain a lot of them, whether they were duds left on the battlefield or later secretly purchased from the Song military.
But artillery doesn't work.
Because from the end of the war in the first year of Kangding to the second year of Qingli, the Song Dynasty had only more than 200 artillery pieces in total.
Moreover, they are all copper cannons, each of which is very expensive and is only supplied to special elite troops. These troops are strictly controlled and it is almost impossible to sell them secretly.
Things started to change in the second year of the Qingli reign, when Zhao Jun built a steel mill and used converters to produce steel, significantly increasing steel production. After the application of steel, production began to boom.
In the second half of that year alone, the Song Dynasty produced more than 400 steel cannons.
By the third year of the Qingli period, the situation was even more exaggerated. More than a thousand cannons were built. By the beginning of the fourth year of the Qingli period, almost all the cities on the border of Hebei and Shaanxi were filled with cannons, which was terrifying.
Manufacturing artillery on such a large scale naturally meant loopholes could be exploited. At that time, Zhao Jun hadn't reorganized the army, so the private sale of weapons was not uncommon.
The Liao Kingdom and the Western Xia obtained a lot of artillery from the Song Dynasty military at that time, but because they could not produce steel, they could only make wrought iron cannons.
The Liao Dynasty was lucky, as it had imitated black powder, grenades and cannons, and now had a certain level of firearms strength.
Xixia was in trouble.
Due to the lack of the raw material sulfur, the cannons currently in hand are only more than 50 wrought iron cannons, in addition to a few steel cannons secretly bought from the Song Dynasty army.
It was not that Xixia lacked iron. In fact, Xixia's smelting and forging technology were not bad. Otherwise, history would not record that during the war between the Song Dynasty and Xixia, the Song Dynasty's swords and spears could not pierce the armor of the Xixia people.
The black powder made from that little bit of sulfur was simply not enough. The stock of grenades was only tens of thousands, which shows how scarce the sulfur raw materials in Western Xia were.
In other words, the Liao Kingdom spent a huge amount of money this time, not only giving a large amount of money, but also a lot of sulfur. Li Yuanhao might not dare to send troops.
However, the sulfur was indeed on its way, but had not yet arrived. Worried that the Song army would quickly reorganize its military, Li Yuanhao also wanted to take advantage of the Song army's weakness and immediately send troops to capture Qingtang.
Li Yuanhao had already understood the situation in Qingtang.
The Song Dynasty did not sell a single cannon to Zuo Silu, not even a grenade. It was obvious that it wanted to make Zuo Silu dependent on the Song Dynasty and completely tie the Qingtang regime to the Song Dynasty's chariot.
On the Qinfeng Road side, only Qinzhou, which is Tianshui City in later generations, has more than 30 guns in stock.
The rest of the cannons were either in the hands of Fan Zhongyan's firearms army or deployed in various cities on the border of Hebei and Shaanxi. It was impossible for Lanzhou City to have cannons.
That's why Li Yuanhao felt confident and bold in sending troops.
In his opinion, taking Lanzhou City was not a problem. After taking Lanzhou, he would set up a defense line in Lanzhou and then immediately raid Xining to the west.
If the Song army attacked and he could not resist, he would withdraw his troops immediately.
Then, according to the original retreat plan, he said that the invasion of Qingtang was justified on the grounds that Xixia had only signed a peace treaty with the Song Dynasty, and then veiledly accused the Song Dynasty of tearing up the treaty by taking the initiative.
I think Zhao Zhen is a man who cares about his reputation, so there is probably nothing you can do to him.
It would be interesting if the Song army attacked and he not only resisted but also defeated the Song army.
This shows that there were major problems in the Song army's military management and the army's combat effectiveness was low. If Li Yuanhao could find out the strengths and weaknesses of the Song Dynasty, he could immediately unite with the Liao Kingdom and go south to annex the Song Dynasty.
This kills two birds with one stone.
What he never expected was that dozens of cannons suddenly appeared on Gaolan Mountain south of Lanzhou City.
Just by looking at the firing frequency, Li Yuanhao judged that there must be at least thirty guns.
This gave him a big shock.
At the end of the morning at noon, after two days of travel, the Xixia people first arrived north of Dongyuguan.
Then he went east along the north bank of the Yellow River and crossed the river in the area of Xigu District of Lanzhou in later times.
The attack on Lanzhou began this morning.
However, the defenders in Lanzhou were tenacious and had artillery, which smashed his vanguard into pieces.
If the west city of Lanzhou was not a vast plain area with spacious space, his front army and the middle army might have been defeated by the vanguard army.
"What's going on? Why are there so many gunshots?"
About ten miles outside the west city of Lanzhou, in the front army of Western Xia, Li Yuanhao was shocked when he suddenly heard many artillery fire.
Naturally, he brought all the more than fifty cannons this time, but the problem was that the vanguard only brought twelve.
Judging from the sound, there must be forty or fifty guns on the front battlefield.
Where are all these cannons?
"Your Majesty!"
At this moment, the scouts sent by the generals in the front came back in a hurry to report: "The enemy has deployed thirty cannons on the mountain and caught us off guard!"
"That's impossible!"
Li Yuanhao was stunned and said, "There are no cannons in Lanzhou City."
"They must have put it on the mountain."
The general next to him said, "Your Majesty, cannons are most afraid of close combat. Let's immediately bypass them and launch a surprise attack!"
"good!"
Li Yuanhao agreed, as he now had to go and see the situation on the battlefield.
My dear, there is more to this chapter. Please click on the next page to continue reading. It will be even more exciting later!
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