Chapter 118: Vanguard

At the end of July in the third year of Jianwen, the King of Yan led an army of more than 200,000 soldiers to surround the county town of Pei County, and tried to persuade them to surrender by shooting arrows into the city, but was rejected. Then he fired more than a thousand large and small cannons on all sides, and the whole county was filled with smoke. The Prince of Yan believed that the county seat of Pei could be captured at any time, so he sent Zhu Gaoxu as the vanguard and led 5,000 infantry and cavalry from his own army and 3,000 cavalry from the vassal states to march south, with the vanguard approaching Xuzhou.