My younger brother Zhuge Liang

Chapter 808: The Grand Master will enter his loyal Luoyang today

Cao Ren’s ability in defense makes him the undisputed number one in Cao Cao’s camp.

With sufficient supplies and manpower, even though Liu Bei's army had several times the number of troops, they completely surrounded Luoyang City and repeatedly attacked the city in an attempt to shake Cao's determination to hold on.

However, Cao Ren still relied on personally patrolling the city and supervising the battle every day, as well as his previous practice of frantically spending money and food to win people's hearts, to temporarily stabilize morale and make more than 60,000 soldiers willing to follow him and continue to hold out and watch.

After the initial two or three days of unsuccessful assault, Liu Bei's army slightly adjusted their tactics according to the plan of the Zhuge brothers, reducing the use of new tower carts/ladders and the intensity of the daily climbing of the city walls.

Instead, there were more and stronger battering rams and siege donkeys. The armor on these weapons was stronger, and the soldiers could hide inside them the whole time, without having to rush into hand-to-hand combat and expose themselves to the enemy's crossfire.

Although it would take a very long time to break through Luoyang with such an attack given its solidity, Liu Bei did not expect to break through the city by completely digging down several sections of the Luoyang city wall, as that would make it difficult for him to rebuild Luoyang in the future.

But Cao Ren could not turn a blind eye to this continued destruction.

First of all, water dripping wears away stone. If you really do nothing, do not obstruct or delay, and let the enemy dig open the way, it will eventually collapse.

Secondly, being beaten without fighting back is very damaging to morale. Soldiers are easily overthinking under the oppression of fear. At that time, more and more soldiers will believe the propaganda of Zhuge brothers, that is, "Cao Cao has already fled, and the remaining troops in the city are just to let you die with Cao Ren."

In fact, a small number of soldiers had already believed Liu Bei's army's propaganda and had begun to doubt their lives. They only reluctantly fought for a while longer because they had good food and drink every day and lived a comfortable life that they had never experienced before.

In order to boost morale, Cao Ren now even has to make sure that the soldiers have meat to eat every day. With such a supply intensity, even with the reserves in Luoyang, his logistics will collapse before he can hold out for long.

So even though Cao Ren knew that Zhuge's strategy was to use battering rams and wooden donkeys to dig into the city to consume a large amount of the defenders' scarce oil, quicklime, crossbows, and catapult parts, he had no choice but to accept the challenge.

As soon as the enemy advanced, he poured large pots of flammable grease down and threw dovetail torches madly to stop the enemy.

Liu Bei's army was not interested in fighting. If the chariots really caught fire and the soldiers inside were in danger of being roasted, they would decisively retreat. It was also very difficult for Cao's army to expect to kill the retreating enemy soldiers with bows and crossbows on the top of the city.

After several days of confrontation, Liu Bei's army even improved the battering ram and wooden donkey for digging cities.

On the first day, there was not even a smear of wet mud on the roof of the truck.

After discovering that Cao's army was well prepared and had sufficient supplies for arson, Liu Bei's army smeared wet mud on the tops of battering rams and wooden donkeys the next day. The mud was made of bentonite, which is the most water-absorbing and water-retaining. If Cao Ren wanted to sabotage again, he would have to spend several times more supplies.

But Cao Ren was not stupid. When he found that some siege weapons were particularly difficult to burn, he gave up. Instead of burning them, he organized his soldiers to throw big stones down to win by quantity.

Of course, the archers of Liu Bei's army were not idle either. Outside the moat, they had already built densely packed wooden plank array houses, which allowed Liu Bei's army's crossbow team to take the opportunity to kill a large number of enemy soldiers who leaned out from the top of the wall and threw stones.

Cao Ren's arson attempt failed, so he had to resort to using large amounts of stones and human lives to solve the problem.

This situation lasted for two days, and Liu Bei was quite satisfied. After a battle, Liu Bei casually asked Zhuge Liang: "Cao Cao is heaping up lives and throwing huge rocks at cars. How long will it take for the stones in the city to run out?"

Zhuge Liang was stunned for a moment, then explained in a low voice: "My lord, these stones are inexhaustible. The palaces in Luoyang City are high and steep. We can get countless stones by demolishing any house, even if we only demolish the stone walls outside the palace platform."

Liu Bei felt a little embarrassed, realizing that he had neglected this little common sense.

During the Han Dynasty, most cities were still short of stone materials, because most houses were just civil structures and large stones were rarely used for repair, and the cost of collecting large stones was very high.

But Luoyang was different. Although the foundation and platform of the imperial palace were made of rammed earth inside, the outer surface was still covered with stone walls to prevent it from collapsing easily and the rammed earth from loosening and scattering.

Cao Ren had the outer bricks of the palace to dismantle, and there were enough large stones for him to use. Even if Liu Bei used up all his stones, the palace in Luoyang would have been stripped of its original shape by Cao Ren, and Liu Bei would have to spend a lot of manpower to rebuild it, which was not worth it.

After Liu Bei figured it out, he quickly humbly asked for advice: "Sir, do you have a good idea to let Cao Ren continue to use more kerosene, lime, crossbows and other materials to consume our army's battering rams and wooden donkeys? The most urgent task now is to let Cao's army use up the most scarce supplies.

These things are omnipresent and pose a huge threat to the soldiers of the Ant Rebellion. We have to use up all our troops before we can attack with all our strength."

Zhuge Liang also knew this truth, but he couldn't control Cao Ren from a distance. After thinking it over, he finally had an idea and thought of a change of tactics.

So starting from the next day, Liu Bei's army continued to modify the battering rams and wooden donkeys for digging cities, changing the original single-layer thick wood outer shell to an adjusted double layer of relatively thin wood inside and outside.

Of course, if there is a ram that has been built and not used yet, you can simply modify it by covering the outside with a very thin layer of low-quality wood.

Then, wet mud is poured between the inner and outer layers of wood to form a structure similar to pouring cement on a wooden frame.

This structure is not sealed on the outside, and the mud may still flow away when applied to the surface of the wood, but it is definitely fine to use it for a short period of time.

The original ram required fire-resistant, dense, high-quality wood. After this modification, the inner layer still had to be made of dense, good wood, but the outer layer could be made of any low-quality, loose wood, which would not be a pity if burned.

After the transformation, when Liu Bei's army attacked again, Cao Ren still chose to set fire. This time he suddenly found that Liu Bei's army's cars seemed easier to ignite. He was greatly encouraged and continued to work hard to consume them.

Zhuge Liang had ordered the soldiers to reduce the amount of battering rams and digging tools they carried, and instead carry more buckets filled with water for use in sprinkling water to control fires, so that these crudely made wooden carts could last as long as possible.

By the time Cao Ren realized the situation again and reacted, his reserve supplies had been greatly consumed, and the auxiliary soldiers who were responsible for throwing various things down from the top of the city were also repeatedly consumed and killed in large numbers by Liu Bei's army.

Cao's army suffered four-digit casualties every day. After fighting for several days, morale became increasingly low, and more and more people believed that Cao Cao must have escaped.

On the other hand, after a period of consumption, the meat in Cao Ren's military ration reserves was almost exhausted. He had to stop rationing wine and meat to ordinary soldiers and could only leave the last bit of reserves for generals and officers.

Even senior officers did not dare to eat meat in public, and they had to put on a hypocritical attitude of sharing the hardships with the soldiers to prevent the soldiers from worrying about inequality rather than scarcity.

However, once the meat supply stopped and the kerosene ran out, the fighting effectiveness of the Luoyang City defenders obviously declined.

One day in late September, after a continuous war of attrition, Liu Bei's army observed this situation. Liu Bei discussed with his main civil servants and advisers and decided to suddenly speed up and launch a ruthless attack to see how much strength Cao Ren had left.

On September 30th, Liu Bei's army, in contrast to its previous fatigue, suddenly deployed more than fifty tower carts for climbing the city walls and concentrated their efforts to launch a strong attack.

The fighting power of Cao's army had obviously declined compared to before, but after a quarter of an hour of fighting, Liu Bei's elite soldiers in steel armor stood on the top of the wall, fighting desperately with Cao's army, and almost created a gap at one point.

Cao Ren was so frightened by this sudden change that he broke out in a cold sweat. In the end, he desperately invested most of his reserve troops and personally led the team to supervise the battle, engaging in a fierce battle with Liu Bei's army on the wall.

The spears, lances, swords and halberds of both sides were as dense as hedgehogs, turning the top of the city into a Shura field. No matter how good the equipment or how strong the martial arts were, they could not be used. There was no room to maneuver. It was a pure waste of lives.

Many of Liu Bei's soldiers who were the first to climb the city walls were well-armored, wearing a whole piece of forged steel breastplate. However, even if Cao's spears could not penetrate the armor, Cao's army could still use brute force to push people down the city walls because they had more people. However, in the process, a large number of Cao's soldiers would also be killed by Liu Bei's counterattack, and they would often have to pay several times the price.

In the end, it was Cao Ren who piled up lives without regard for losses or casualties, and even at the critical moment ordered the archers on both sides and the corner towers to indiscriminately rain arrows on the battle zone, and only then was the offensive of Liu Bei's army repelled. Finally, when the casualties were counted, the number of Cao's corpses found on the wall was at least five times that of Liu Bei's army, and many of them were accidentally injured by their own people's rain of arrows.

If it weren't for the dense crowds on the city walls, they would have been unable to surrender, and even if they surrendered, they would have been unable to avoid the rain of arrows. I'm afraid that this alone would have caused a partial collapse of Cao's army. After repelling the enemy, the morale of Cao's army did not rise, but became even lower. When they were shouting for a bloody battle just now, many people didn't have time to think. After calming down, looking at the corpses of their comrades on the ground, they recalled the bloody and cold-blooded General Cao just now, and countless people were terrified and unwilling.

Cao Ren also knew that doing such a thing would deal a huge blow to his own morale, so he had no choice but to spare no effort and leave nothing for nothing, even the last piece of meat and the last jar of wine he could find in the city were used to distribute to boost morale.

At the same time, he distributed all his private property in Luoyang City to reward the soldiers.

Even so, we were able to restore morale for two or three days.

But what happens after two or three days when all the material incentives have been used up?
Cao Ren had no choice but to think of some special sources of meat for wartime. He asked some of his trusted soldiers to secretly do some shameful things, and barely found a new source of meat, which kept up the morale for a few more days.

Unfortunately, there is no such thing as a wall that is impenetrable. Sooner or later, bad deeds will be exposed, and sooner or later, the trusted and loyal soldiers will find their conscience and leak the secrets. No matter how much benefit you get when boosting morale, once your bad deeds are exposed, the backlash will be more serious.

This is like taking an injection of stimulant. Morale will be boosted within three to five days, seven to eight days, but after tolerance is built up, if the stimulant is stopped, the person will only become more depressed and decadent.

Cao Ren fought desperately and used every possible means to sustain the war of attrition until mid-October. Finally, all his tricks were ineffective or there was no material support for them.

All the property that could be looted was distributed, and later on, the property of some dead soldiers was secretly collected and distributed to the living. Before this move was exposed, it worked well, but after it was exposed, it had a backlash effect.

Because many soldiers knew that the rewards they received for their bloody battles were not from the general, but from their comrades who were alive just yesterday. No one wanted to see their money divided up by those around them after they died.

This stimulant effect also lasts for a maximum of seven or eight days, and the backlash after exposure is extremely severe.

Apart from money, the incentives of wine and meat have all been exhausted, the supply of any dirty means has been cut off, and this has also caused backlash.

All the kerosene and quicklime were used up, and in the end the only thing they could do was throw down bundles of hay and firewood to increase the efficiency of ignition when setting fire to stop the enemy.

The consumable parts of the catapults and crossbows were also almost completely damaged. They could not be repaired after being broken, so they were directly destroyed by Liu Bei's army's counterattack.

There are still reserves of arrows and rolling logs and rocks, but we can only rely on these simple things to defend the city.

The casualties of Liu Bei's army on the opposite side were always well controlled, mainly because of the high consumption of materials, especially siege vehicles and various wooden construction products. The consumption was extremely huge. All the trees within 20 to 30 miles around Luoyang were cut down by Liu Bei's army.

From an environmental perspective, Liu Bei's army did cause some damage, but who cared about environmental protection in the Han Dynasty?

……

Liu Bei also saw the continuous and severe consumption. After so many days of fighting, the number of Cao's army killed should be over 10,000. The number of light and serious wounded is estimated to account for more than half of the total force. If it was a field battle on the plains, such losses would definitely lead to the total collapse of the army. It was only by relying on defending the city that the troops barely managed to survive.

However, Liu Bei also estimated that Cao Ren's last string was about to break, so on October 12, Liu Bei's army discussed it and finally decided to launch a full-scale general offensive.

Cao Ren's last moment has finally arrived.

Early that morning, Liu Bei's army assembled 200 large siege tower vehicles converted from Ge Gongche in one go, which was the largest number of troops mobilized in all previous assaults.

There were also more than 40,000 archers and various auxiliary troops who pinned down the enemy from all directions and provided fire cover.

Hundreds of catapults and other heavy equipment were also used.

After being reinforced and raised over the past few days, the watchtower is now much higher than the Luoyang city wall. From there, one can easily observe the deployment of the defenders in the city and find weak points in the defense with a telescope.

Cao Ren could only endure this unfavorable situation where the enemy unilaterally turned on the fog of war and the perspective hack, and fight hard.

After another round of firepower preparation, Liu Bei's army launched an all-out attack, with hundreds of chariots crossing the river in a mighty force.

Cao's army rained arrows and threw logs and rocks down madly, but that was all they could do because all other supplies for defending the city had been used up.

Liu Bei's crossbowmen and catapults that rained gravel frantically suppressed Cao's crossbowmen and auxiliary soldiers on the top of the city. Cao's crossbowmen could not bear this kind of covering fire, and many of them abandoned the target in front of them and turned to shoot at Liu Bei's crossbow formation in the distance.

But the archers of Liu Bei's army were much farther away than the soldiers who were attacking with carts, and they were also protected by the wooden plank houses. The efficiency of Cao's army's crossbowmen in shooting at this target was actually very low - of course, the efficiency of Liu Bei's army's crossbowmen in killing them was also very low.

In any case, after the Cao army's archers were forced to change their targets, the Liu Bei army, which was responsible for pushing carts and charging, was the first to board, and the pressure was much less. Liu Bei's army was large in number and well-equipped, so they were not afraid of being consumed by the Cao army's archers.

Soon, dozens of siege towers were placed on the top of the city wall again. They had become frequent visitors recently and were used to it. Many battlements and parapets on the top of the city wall had been destroyed, so they could rush up directly.

"Cao Ren is sending you to die in vain!"

"Cao Cao ran away a long time ago!"

"You were originally soldiers of the Han Dynasty, why did you work for the traitorous Cao family?"

The soldiers of Liu Bei's army charged forward while shouting loudly. They had been shouting these words for several days, but never as loudly and fiercely as today.

The resistance momentum of Cao's army was obviously suppressed. Everyone's face was filled with fatigue and confusion. After a fierce fight, hundreds of innocent souls died in vain.

Finally, some Cao's soldiers could not bear the tremendous psychological pressure and the suffering they had endured before, and began to turn against their own side in the battle, shouting wildly, not knowing where to go, and just hacking and killing indiscriminately without distinguishing between friend and foe.

This chaos quickly began to spread, and finally, like a spark, it gradually became a prairie fire.

"I will not work for Cao anymore! Cao dog, die!"

"If Cao Gou hadn't held everyone's families hostage, who would fight for Cao Gou? If we have to kill anyone, we'd first kill the lackeys of the family members of the readers!"

The initial chaos soon became clear-cut, and Cao's soldiers who wanted to turn against their own side began to kill their own officers. Generally, the sergeants, squad leaders, and team leaders could still escape, after all, they were with the ordinary soldiers every day and it was easy for them to get along well with them. However, those above the garrison commander, who were far away from the ordinary soldiers, would find it difficult to escape in this tsunami-like frenzy.

On the city wall that was breached by Liu Bei's army, three or five Cao army commanders were hacked to death by their own people at first, and then hundreds of soldiers turned against their own people and attacked backwards, causing chaos in their own army formation and serving as free vanguards for the enemy.

Gradually, Qu Chang and Jun Sima were also killed by the chaotic soldiers. Liu Bei's army was greatly encouraged, and they rushed forward with the collapsed chaotic soldiers, gradually seizing one horse-faced tower after another and corner towers.

Finally, after half an hour of fierce fighting, the collapse became more and more serious, and there was a melee everywhere where it was difficult to distinguish between the enemy and us. Finally, the vanguard of Liu Bei's army climbed onto the east and west towers of Luoyang.

The soldiers rushed into the city wall frantically and hacked to death two gatekeepers under Cao Ren with their swords. After a fierce battle, the city gates on the east and west sides were opened.

Liu Bei's reserve troops poured in from the city gate like a tide and engaged in a final street battle with Cao Ren. Cao's resistance was quickly wiped out.

(End of this chapter)