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Updated: June 1, 2025
Nothing would have been done had not abler and bolder spirits come to the assistance of the beleaguered host. Litingchi, governor of Ganlo, a town on the Han south of Sianyang, incensed by the tardy march of the army of relief, resolved to strike a prompt and telling blow.
This diversion gave the other Chinese leader an opportunity to push on to Sianyang with the store-ships, where they were joyfully received by the people, who for three years had been cut off from communication with the outside world.
By their aid the bridges across the river were first destroyed, and then the walls of Sianyang were so severely damaged that an assault appeared to be feasible. But Fanching had suffered still more from the Mongol bombardment, and Alihaya therefore attacked it first. The garrison offered a determined resistance, and the fighting was continued in the streets.
By the time all these preliminaries were completed and the Mongol army had fairly taken the field it was 1268, and Kublai sent sixty thousand of his best troops, with a large number of auxiliaries, to lay siege to Sianyang, which was held by a large garrison and a resolute governor.
Several hundred vessels, escorted by the band of devoted warriors, sailed down a tributary of the Han towards Sianyang. The Mongols had sought by chains and other obstacles to close the stream, but these were broken through by the junks, whose impetuous advance had taken the besiegers by surprise.
In the year 1268 the army of Kublai Khan, grandson of Genghis the famous conqueror, made its appearance before the stronghold of Sianyang, an important city of China on the southern bank of the Han River. On the opposite side of the stream stood the city of Fanching, the two being connected by bridges and forming virtually a single city.
The engines were now all directed against the fortifications of Sianyang, where the garrison had become greatly dispirited by the fall of Fanching and the failure of the army of relief to appear. Lieouwen Hoan still held out, though he saw that his powers of defence were nearly at an end, and feared that at any moment the soldiers might refuse to continue what seemed to them a useless effort.
As yet they had given their attention mainly to Sianyang, but now they drew their lines around Fanching as well. The great extent of the Mongol dominion is shown by the fact that they sent as far as Persia for engineers skilful in siege-work and accustomed to building and handling the great catapults with which huge stones were flung against fortified places in the warfare of that age.
The incompetent Chinese emperor had died, and the incapable minister to whose feebleness the fall of Sianyang was due had been dismissed by his master and murdered by his enemies. The succeeding emperor had been captured by the Mongols on the fall of the capital.
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