I want to be emperor

Chapter 286 The Prodigal Son of Chu Jun

Along with the three thousand elite soldiers in the garrison of Linxiang City, they died and were wounded.

With the right counselor Wang Xinghuai hanging on the beam, the general Yu Xiuwen killed himself, and Linxiang City declared its complete fall.

After the Chu army entered the city and captured the city wall, they quickly captured many important buildings in the city.

By noon, the Chu army had completely defeated the last organized resistance force of the Ming army in the city, and then turned to the stage of clearing out the defeated soldiers and stubborn resisters in the city.

Before that, there were [-] Ming soldiers in the city who were killed or wounded. Anyway, they surrendered, and there were still a large number of people hiding in various houses or fleeing from the city.

Moreover, quite a few Ming soldiers escaped from the city, about 8000 to [-] people fled the city one after another.

When the Chu army attacked Linxiang City, they did not attack the city from all sides, but adopted the traditional method of encircling the city, only attacking the east, south, and north walls, leaving the west wall for the Ming army. For escape.

Of course, everyone knows that the west city gate seems to be able to escape, but the Chu army will definitely carry out ambushes in the outskirts, and it is indeed the case. It seems that the Chu army did not launch an attack on the west city wall, nor was it within sight. Deploy heavy troops.

But in fact, an infantry regiment and a cavalry brigade of the Guards were ambushed in the outlying area.

This kind of siege is clearly a conspiracy.

It is still possible for a small number of you to escape from the city and abscond, but if you want to leave the city on a large scale and organize a retreat, you must be blind to the Chu army.

The more than 7000 Ming troops who left the city were undoubtedly intercepted by the First Cavalry Brigade of the Chu Army not long after they left the city.

Under the threat of interception by thousands of cavalry, these Ming troops did not even have the intention to resist. The first time they found the Chu cavalry, these Ming troops were already broken into pieces...

A large number of Ming soldiers began to escape alone, so that the normal scene was very chaotic. Thousands of cavalry from the First Cavalry Brigade couldn't control the situation, and could only watch helplessly as many Ming soldiers fled in all directions.

This situation did not improve until the Fifth Cavalry Regiment and the Guards Cavalry Regiment arrived for reinforcements.

However, according to the last statistics, there were only more than 5000 Ming soldiers killed and captured by them, and more than 2000 soldiers were left missing.

In this regard, although the Chu army continued to send cavalry to continue to search and intercept the surrounding area, these follow-up battles were no longer important.

It can be said that the battle of Linxiang has come to an end. Even if the more than 2000 Ming troops who fled can be organized again, it is unlikely to cause any trouble for the Chu army in the future.

In the evening, Major General Xu Zhixian, the chief of staff, found Luo Zhixue who was still stationed in the eastern suburbs, and reported to Luo Zhixue the preliminary battle report of this fortified battle.

"In this battle, in addition to the 300-jin tunic and other light infantry support artillery, our army used more than [-] field artillery and mortars of various types, which greatly suppressed and severely damaged the Ming army defending the city!"

"In the first two days, our army took the fifth division as the main force. With the cooperation of the two garrison divisions and the guard division, we successively conquered the protrusions outside the enemy's city, filled up the moat, and excavated the blasting holes. typical."

"On the third and fourth days, we successively used the sixth garrison division and the eighth garrison division as the main force to carry out siege operations, and during the siege phase, we cooperated with the artillery unit to carry out targeted shelling of the enemy's garrison troops! "

"After the fierce offensive in the previous four days, the enemy army suffered heavy losses. Its light artillery units were completely suppressed by us, and at the same time killed and wounded at least 5000 enemy soldiers, of whom it is conservatively estimated that more than 2000 were enemy soldiers!"

"On the fifth day, which is today, as the number of soldiers available to the enemy was insufficient, we resolutely invested in the main forces such as the Fifth Division and the Guards Division, and mobilized two elite commandos to launch a fierce attack. , and successfully carried out a blast to open the gap.”

"At noon, the army completely captured the Linxiang city wall, and began to capture all the important places in the city. In the afternoon, the fighting in the city was completely ended, and the cavalry began to besiege the remnants of the Ming army that broke through the encirclement!"

"In the evening, the 5000st Cavalry Brigade and other troops reported that about 2000 remnants of the enemy army had been killed or captured, and the remaining [-] people fled!"

"As a result, the Linxiang tactics have achieved complete success!"

After Xu Zhixian paused for a while, he opened the report in his hand and continued: "In this battle, we killed about 3000 or [-] enemy troops, excluding minor injuries, and captured more than [-] people. We are still continuing Clearing up the broken troops in the city, it is expected that the number of enemies killed and the number of prisoners will increase.”

"Because the Ming army that can be confirmed to break out of the siege is only about 3000 people, and there are still [-] to [-] broken soldiers hiding in the city. The various ministries entering the city are conducting house-to-house searches and eliminations in different areas."

"About [-] cold weapons of various types were seized, more than [-] light guns of various types weighing less than [-] catties, and more than [-] short robes weighing more than [-] catties."

"Three thousand suits of armor of all kinds, and more than 1000 mules and horses."

"A batch of food and grass is enough for one division of our army to use for half a month."

"The amount of cash floating wealth is not much. At present, only about 5 taels of cash floating wealth have been seized, and all of them have been handed over to the Finance Department."

When Xu Zhixian said this, he was also looking at Luo Zhixue's expression, but Luo Zhixue's expression didn't change much, and he still looked smiling.

Xu Zhixian continued: "In terms of our army's losses, since the siege, there were more than 470 people killed on the spot and seriously injured and died, and more than [-] people were injured."

"Most of the casualties came from the sixth and eighth garrison divisions. The sixth garrison division had more than [-] casualties, and the eighth garrison division had more than [-] casualties."

"In the first two days, the Fifth Division, which was responsible for the main attack on the salient outside the city, suffered about 100 casualties. Today, the Guards Division, which undertook the assault on the southern city wall, was once stubbornly resisted by the enemy and suffered more than [-] casualties. About a hundred people were killed or injured."

"The number of casualties in our army is less than half of what we estimated. In the previous deduction, we assumed that the number of casualties exceeded 5000. In actual combat, the resistance strategy of the Ming army is similar to what we estimated before. Therefore, the actual casualties are much smaller.”

At this moment Luo Zhixue spoke up: "Linxiang City is not badly run by the enemy, which has greatly offset the threat of our shelling. It is not bad to be able to take it within five days and only pay this little casualty."
Luo Zhixue is quite satisfied with the result.

Now the Ming army is becoming more and more smart in defending the city, and the city is becoming more and more difficult to fight. It is quite rare for our own side to maintain such high efficiency and a huge loss ratio between the enemy and ourselves.

When Nanyang was attacked in the early days, the Nanyang defenders were already finished. There were only a mere 2000 ordinary guard soldiers and young and strong civilian husbands. They were finished without fighting the opponent.

And Xiangyang was taken by surprise attack, and neither side had a real large-scale battle.

But apart from these two cities, the other early siege operations were not easy for the Chu army.

The early attacks on Nanzhao County and Luyang Pass and Yuzhou were very typical examples.

All the Chu armies continued to smash the above three cities, and it was really because of heavy casualties that they won it.

At that time, the "Fourth Mixed Brigade", which was dominated by surrendered troops from the Ming army, stormed Yuzhou City, and almost rotated most of its soldiers.

At that time, there were not many Ming troops defending the city of Yuzhou, only about 2000 people.

When attacking Luyang Pass, the only few main forces in the Chu army at that time, the Second Infantry Regiment, also replenished their troops while fighting. When Luyang Pass was finally taken, the Second Infantry Regiment had already accumulated casualties Seven 800 people.

When they attacked Junzhou and Yunyang later, they also relied on more troops and added siege. At the same time, there was no main force of the Ming army in the city, and only some miscellaneous local troops were able to successfully win.

This situation was improved after the Chu army installed mortars.

In the Battle of Zhongxiang, the Chu army used a lot of mortars to catch the Ming army by surprise, and successfully captured Zhongxiang, and the price paid was not too high.

This advantage continued to the battle of Hanyang City and the battles in which the Chu army swept other cities in northern Chu.

During that period of time, it was the most convenient time for Chu Jun to fight.

In field battles, it can hang and beat the Ming army.

Siege can still beat the Ming army.

After the transition to the south of the Yangtze River, that is, at the beginning of the Battle of Wuchang, the Ming army on the opposite side also reacted one after another, and carried out targeted defenses against the Chu army's artillery, especially mortars.

The generals of the Ming army are not stupid. They don't know that they are foolishly conducting defensive operations on the top of the empty city wall when they know that the Chu thieves have explosive artillery.

Even if there is no money or food, it is still possible for someone to build a sandbag on the city wall to prevent artillery fortifications

As a result, it was more difficult for the Chu army to attack the cities guarded by the Ming army.

The battle of Wuchang was pretty good. Although the Ming army began to react, the various responses were not sufficient, so although it was difficult, the Chu army carried out shelling and blasting at all costs, and at the same time organized commandos to dare to die. Under sufficient circumstances, Wuchang City was finally captured.

But it will be more troublesome when it comes to the follow-up. These Ming soldiers began to learn to be smart. When defending the city, they built sandbag fortifications directly on the top of the city, and even dug trenches outside the city to build fortresses and deploy various artillery.

Making the whole city look like a hedgehog made Chu Jun feel helpless for a while.

For these fortifications built by the Ming army, the solid shells fired by the field artillery were useless in the past, and the explosive shells fired by the mortars were fired, and the effect was also greatly discounted.

This forced the Chu army to increase the number of mortars equipped, especially to further increase the number and proportion of large-caliber rear mortars such as 48-jin mortars.

And began to think about how to target the various artillery fortifications of the Ming army and the fortifications of the salient outside the city.

In the end, there will be the current Linxiang Battle!
Judging from the process and results of the Linxiang Campaign, the Chu army's series of responses were excellent and effective.

Storming various fortifications, especially the perfect anti-artillery fortifications, with 2000 defenders stationed at the same time, [-] soldiers as the core, and Linxiang, whose main general is still fighting to the death, can win the reform at the cost of about [-] people. City, that's fine.

The only trouble is that this siege mode requires too much artillery and consumes too much ammunition.

Just after the Battle of Linxiang, Huang Chengxuan, Minister of the Finance Department, who learned about the ammunition consumption on the front line, almost lost his footing, muttering: "A bunch of prodigal sons... sooner or later, they will all be defeated!"

(End of this chapter)