Before dawn, the defenders in the city had become disheartened.
In the middle of the night, women, children, the elderly and the weak were driven out, and riots broke out frequently in the city. The flames in the city rose and fell, but they never spread into a fire throughout the city despite the desperate fighting of Minzhuang, who was well prepared. The more than a thousand wolf soldiers who stayed in the city to prepare for arson and looting were not successful because they were on guard everywhere, coupled with the resistance of "friendly troops" and strong men. In the second half of the night, loudspeaker broadcasts outside the city revealed the conspiracy to set fire, which made the remaining common people and strong men in the city more determined to resist. As a result, some of the rebels planned to escape, while others had not yet given up and were preparing to assemble after daylight. They formed a large group of troops and set fire to the upper wind.
In this situation where the defenders and the common people have their own concerns and are distracted, the soldiers guarding the north of the city are all in danger, and no one knows what to do next.
Yesterday, the young men dug out the blocked city gate in accordance with the "order from the top" - supposedly to let the people out of the city. However, no people left the city from here at night. Now the city gate has been dug out, and there is no order to fill it in again.
The urn and city gate of Dayunmen had been destroyed in the previous shellings. If the gate was not blocked, the door would be completely opened. The guard general ordered the city gate to be re-blocked. Unexpectedly, the strong team who had been very active during the excavation would pretend to be deaf and dumb and did not take the order seriously at all. If they were to use force to force them to do it, they would probably show off immediately. A straight forward stance. In the end, we could only use some blocking horses and door jammers to block the gap.
There was no movement from the Kun thieves in front of him, and no one neighed. It will take about half an hour to stop attacking.
Because of fear of Australian snipers, except for a few lights, no lights or torches were lit anywhere in the city. It was lifeless.
At this time, Zhu Quanxing's troops outside Dayunmen, who were responsible for the main attack in the north of Wuzhou City, had completed preparations for the battle. Each company participating in the attack had eaten emergency rations and formed a column according to the attack sequence. The ladders and ropes used to climb the city and the explosives used to blast the city gate were all ready.
His 2nd Battalion's position was only about two hundred meters away from the camp outside Dayunmen. The Hongyi cannon on the top of the city had already been silenced by the artillery. Even the soldiers in the white trenches did not have to worry about the Ming army's artillery fire. On the contrary, it was the snipers who forced the Ming army on the city to dare not show their faces.
At this moment, the artillery deployed at the front was silent. The gunners carefully observed the dark city wall opposite. They had not yet received the order to fire.
At this time, under the cover of the darkest night before dawn, on the northeast side of Wuzhou City, the forward of the light infantry company of the 2nd Battalion had reached a distance of only thirty meters in front of the Ming army's camp. The light infantry were divided into groups of three and three groups, each group advancing in a triangular formation. Each team advances alternately. One team advances, and the other team lies down to cover. When the front team advances a certain distance and stops lying on the left, the rear team gets up and moves forward under the cover of the front team.
The task of the light infantry company is to knock down the barracks outside Dayunmen that protect the city gate to ensure that subsequent combat engineers can deliver explosives in time.
The camp outside Dayunmen suffered great damage in these shellings. Many trenches were destroyed and many walls were destroyed. Due to the constant sniping by the light infantry, the civilian soldiers who came out for emergency repairs suffered heavy casualties, so in the end they just hastily closed the gap temporarily with a door jammer and an earthen basket.
At this moment, a sentry on the fortification wall seemed to have discovered something, but it was pitch dark and he could not see anything - because he was afraid of being targeted by the Fubo Army's snipers, he did not dare to light torches on the fortification - he could only hear something not far away. There were rustling sounds everywhere, and the sounds were getting louder and louder, getting closer.
His hair stood on end immediately, and he turned around and shouted: "The enemy - attack -"
Just as he shouted, a red signal rocket suddenly rose from the Australian position. The colors are starting to shine!
The attack begins!
The officers and soldiers who were awakened by the sentry looked out and saw that dozens of Australians had begun to cross the collapsed trench, and some climbed directly onto the fortification wall. 【】
"Copycat! The enemy is coming!"
With a series of screams, all the defenders in the camp were alerted. The generals howled loudly and led their soldiers to drive the soldiers up to the camp to fight.
At this moment, the artillerymen who were waiting for this moment immediately inserted the fire tube into the fire door, hung up the pulling rope, and the gunner turned around. The artillery vibrated, spitting out fiery red shells, and flew towards the Dayunmen.
The first round of artillery shells flew into the camp, beating the officers and soldiers who hurriedly got up and ran towards the camp to fractures, tendons, and broken limbs. There were screams and chaos in the camp.
In order to prevent accidental damage, the covering artillery fire was fired only once. Originally, Zhang Dapao planned to bombard the targets on the Dayunmen city wall, but there was actually nothing left on the city wall. The city towers were blown down and burned, and in some places even the battlements of the female wall were destroyed. There was really nothing to hit, so they had to cease fire. .
Under the cover of artillery fire, the forward light infantry platoon rushed into the camp in an instant. The combat engineers assigned to them brandished axes and grappling hooks, quickly split open the knife carts and earth baskets blocking the gap, and cleared out several A breakthrough comes. An artillery squad quickly dragged 12 pounds of mountain grenades across the trench through a springboard set up by engineers.
Under the cover of the forward, the light infantry at the back crossed the trench dug by the Ming army in less than a minute and rushed into the camp. Except for a small number of Ming troops on sentry duty, most of the Ming troops stationed in the camps were sleeping. They were caught off guard and many died under the bullets or bayonets of the light infantry before they had time to pick up their weapons. The garrison in Wuzhou North City was also awakened by the sound of gunfire at this time. He knew that the Australians were coming to attack. After calming down for a while, he organized his troops and prepared to fight back.
This guard is also an old opponent of the Fubo Army. He is Li Modao, a former firearms battalion guard who participated in the Chengmai War. Li Modao is not as good at camp hunting as others. After escaping back, he has had no official career and has been forced to rely on others to operate. , working as a firearms camp commander under General Fang Yao Shen in Dongshan.
Li Modao is regarded as a "technical cadre" in the army. He has some skills, but he is too straightforward and is not very good at flattering horses and joining the camp - not to mention he doesn't have much money to join the camp. General Dongshan's troops retreated to Wuzhou, but he suddenly became "officially prosperous". Not only was he promoted, he was also assigned to the newly built "Wuzhou Firearms Camp".
However, as soon as the so-called "Wuzhou Firearms Battalion" was established, it was assigned to the most dangerous camp outside the city gate in the battle to defend the city. It was heavily bombarded by artillery in the first few days, and most of the camp was destroyed. Even the soldiers escaped with casualties and half of them were missing.
Although Li Baidao was not a loyal minister or good general, he at least knew whose food he would eat and who he would work for. He didn't think of escaping, and restrained the soldiers under his command not to participate in looting. This was not because he loved the people. In fact, if the soldiers were allowed to go out to loot under such a situation, the army would quickly disintegrate.
Based on the sporadic gunshots, Li Modao knew that there would not be too many Australian soldiers infiltrating into the position now, but if they were not driven out of the position immediately, they would have no choice but to suffer when the large Australian troops came over. It's your share.
So he immediately ordered his own soldiers, plus some strong ones, to form a team of about a hundred people, armed with swords, guns and regimental cards. Pushing several Fo Lang machines filled with gunpowder bullets, they rushed out of the gap dug by Dayun Gate. At first, they clicked several furlong machines regardless of whether they were three or seven, and then they rushed forward to fight with a cry.
The bombardment of the Fran machine gun knocked down several Fubo soldiers in front. However, at this time, the artillery had already pulled two 12-pound mountain durians through the gap in the camp. Li Baidao, the more than 100 men who came out of the city to fight back, immediately Hit the muzzle. Mountain grenades spit out tongues of flame, and shotgun shells shot out from the barrel, sweeping across the city gate. In a cloud of smoke and screams, the counterattack was instantly disintegrated. Li Modao was also hit by a bullet in his right arm, bleeding profusely, and suddenly fainted. past.
After the light infantry company captured the city gate, the combat engineers found that they had nothing to do. The soil at the city gate had been dug up, and the city gate had long been destroyed by artillery fire. All they could do was use axes to clean the door jammers. Cars and horses.
The light infantry used bayonets to disperse the defenders gathered in the Tibetan caves and city walls. In some places, fierce hand-to-hand fighting broke out, but in most cases the defenders either dispersed or knelt down to surrender. The young men's team at the north gate hung a white flag from the beginning, and everyone had a white cloth strip tied on their left arm.
"Dayunmen has been captured!" The news came back to Zhu Quanxing, who immediately ordered: "Each company will act according to the plan and use the fastest speed!"
At this time, in the Rice and Grain Industry Association, Luo Yangming, who had not slept all night, climbed on the roof with red eyes and looked towards the north of the city where the cannons were rumbling - he didn't know where the Fubo Army would attack from, but Dayunmen's Guns and artillery announced that the chief had begun the attack. This made him feel somewhat relieved: as long as the Fubo Army started to attack, the officers and soldiers were nothing more than chickens and wagyu!
But he was also worried that the rebels in the city would go completely crazy. You know, last night was thrilling. There were rioters looting and setting fires everywhere. Even the location of the Rice Grain Guild was attacked by a group of rioters. Fortunately, the local guardsmen were present, and the guild masters were willing to spend money. After a brawl, dozens of corpses and blood were left on the ground. Finally, the masters were not harmed. They and their families were all treated as "fat pigs" and tied up.
However, there are not many places with armed protection. The power of the local army is limited and can only protect some important places. Many neighbors relied on young men and street gates to block the rioters and put out the fire. However, there were also many places that were harmed by insurgents: killings, massacres, robberies... In some places, it was too late to put out the fire, and hundreds of families were burned down. Luo Yangming was on the roof of the rice industry guild, watching the fires in the city, listening to the cries and curses, his heart was cut like a knife - when will this man-made disaster end?
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Next update: Volume 7 - Guangzhou Governance Chapter 327
