China by Adeline Yen Mah

Author:Adeline Yen Mah [Mah, Yen Adeline]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-375-89099-4
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2008-09-03T16:00:00+00:00

Kublai Khan taking part in a hunting expedition

SIEGE BY SEESAW

In 1268, Kublai ordered the construction of an enormous river feet of 500 boats and laid siege to the twin cities of Xiangyang and Fancheng on the Han River. These cities controlled the waterway to Southern Song’s capital city of Hangzhou. The siege lasted for five years.

In 1271, while the siege was still going on, Kublai announced the beginning of the Yuan Dynasty in China with himself as the First Emperor. Although this was a serious blow to the defenders of the two twin cities, they stubbornly refused to surrender.

In 1273, Kublai suddenly remembered that one of his brothers had used a kind of seesaw catapult that flung heavy missiles to break down the walls of Baghdad and Damascus. He brought in engineers from Persia, who arrived with counterweight trebuchets (named hui hui pao or ‘Muslim cannon’ in Chinese) that could hurl 100-kilogram (220-pound) rocks and thundercrash bombs (gunpowder packed into metal containers) up to 500 metres (550 yards).

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