Under the intense firepower of the Baoxiang Army, those Ming soldiers simply hid and did not go to the city. Many people even turned around and ran towards the city after getting off the city.
Some of the guardsmen took off their military uniforms while running away, then broke into private houses and snatched ordinary clothes, turning themselves into ordinary 'good citizens'.
At the beginning, the civilian officials and generals of the Ming army on the top of the city tried their best to drive the defeated soldiers to the top of the city.
However, as time passed, the casualties of the Ming army at the top of the city slowly increased to two or three hundred people. Especially after several daring generals who had been refusing to come down at the top of the city were killed or injured, the remaining officials , no matter whether civil servants or military commanders, none of them were willing to go to the top of the city.
No one even drove the defeated soldiers to continue to resist on the city wall, because they had already quietly fled away one after another.
At about three o'clock in the afternoon, the Baoxiang Army temporarily filled a small section of the moat with sand, gravel and wooden boards, and completed the left and right preparations before climbing the city head.
The northwest wall where the Baoxiang Army focused its attack was already empty...
As a result, a group of heavy infantrymen who had originally planned to charge despite the enemy's arrows and gunfire, arrived at the city wall like a march in the countryside without encountering any counterattack.
You must know that each of these heavy infantrymen who are preparing to climb the wall is wearing heavy armor, carrying a shield and a stainless steel waist knife, and their load is very heavy.
With such a heavy load, coupled with the need to maintain physical fitness to climb the city wall and the subsequent fighting, they were not very fast when approaching.
At this time, if the Ming army on the top of the city could use light artillery, muskets and even bows and arrows to cover the shooting, it would definitely bring a lot of casualties to the heavy infantry of the Baoxiang Army.
However, the heavy infantrymen of the Baoxiang Army who were attacking the city approached the city wall as if they were on an outing, and they did not encounter any strong obstruction in the process of climbing the city wall. The casualties incurred in the whole process were only single digits.
This is almost unimaginable in traditional siege operations.
When these heavy armored infantry carefully climbed up to the top of the city, they did not find many Ming soldiers hiding behind the battlements. Instead, they found a large number of Ming guardsmen and young men under the inner wall of the city wall.
When these defenders saw the heavy armored infantry of the Home Guard Army appearing on the top of the city, they all howled like frightened sheep and turned around and fled towards the city.
In the huge Nanyang City, there were thousands of defenders, but no one dared to go to the top of the city to fight with the thieves!
Under such circumstances, there would be no fierce fighting in the subsequent so-called capture operations of Nanyang City. After the heavy infantry climbed to the top of the city, they quickly took control of the city gate, and then opened the city gate, followed by a large number of defense troops. Soldiers poured in from the city gate one after another and began to control the four walls. At the same time, there were also troops going deep into the city.
Their first target when going deep into the city was the various official warehouses in the city, followed by important official buildings in the city, including the prefect's Yamen, the magistrate's Yamen, the school grounds in the city, the Tang Prince's Mansion and other locations.
By this time, it could basically be declared that the Baoxiang Army had captured Nanyang City, but the entire process of attacking Nanyang City seemed nondescript.
To a certain extent, the Baoxiang Army did not actually encounter any actual resistance when they attacked Nanyang City.
Even in the extremely important stage of climbing and seizing the city head, the Ming army did not offer any actual resistance.
All the resistance of the Ming army in the city seemed to have completely collapsed in the early fierce shelling by the Baoxiang army and the bullets and arrows of the infantry.
Luo Zhixue couldn't believe all this in his own eyes.
He expected that the attack on Nanyang City would go smoothly, but he never thought about attacking Nanyang City. The casualties he suffered before and after were only more than twenty people.
Even the Ming army defending the city did not actually suffer many casualties. The total number of casualties was only more than 200 people. It is estimated that only about 100 people were actually killed in the battle.
At the same time, most of these casualties on both sides were caused by their respective artillery, muskets and other long-range firepower.
There was no close-quarters fighting, because there was no tragic close-quarters fighting from the beginning to the end.
Luo Zhixue and the others worked hard before the war to mobilize elite heavy-armored soldiers from various units to form a temporary commando team, and the whole process was just a matter of skimming...
But in the initial battle plan, this temporary commando team was expected to suffer a certain amount of casualties, and finally rush to the top of the city to fight with the enemy!
According to Luo Zhixue and Huang Guangmao's vision, the temporary commando team will need the rich combat experience and extraordinary combat skills of these elite soldiers, coupled with their extraordinary courage and equipment advantages, to fight to the death and finally stand at the head of the city. Steady your footing and then cover more friendly troops entering the city.
During the siege of Nanyang City, Luo Zhixue felt as if he had been hit with a heavy punch on cotton. It failed to hit the mark and always made people feel light and unreal.
When the troops entering the city continued to capture important places in the city as planned, Luo Zhixue also reviewed the siege operations with Huang Guangmao and Xu Zhixian, and even called Chen Yongfu and Chen De's father and son.
The reason why they were called was that today's siege operation was too weird. At the same time, what was more important was the combat effectiveness of the defenders in the city today, that is, the combat effectiveness of the ordinary guard soldiers, and Luo Zhixue's influence on the ordinary guards. The combat effectiveness of soldiers is different.
The guards in the city were also the same guardsmen as those in the Zhaozhuang battle yesterday, but the combat effectiveness displayed between the two was vastly different.
This made Luo Zhixue a little confused.
What is the real combat effectiveness of these ordinary guardsmen of the Ming Army?
Well, he knew it was bad, but to what extent? The kind that can scare you away with just a few shots? Or does it mean that it will collapse after casually killing and injuring a few people? Or maybe they have some tolerance for casualties, but the soldiers' military literacy, tactics, equipment, etc. can't keep up?
This is very important and directly related to the subsequent strategic choices of the Baoxiang Army.
If the real combat effectiveness of all the ordinary guardsmen was the same as that of the Nanyang City defenders, Luo Zhixue would not have to think too much and just send his troops everywhere to attack the city and seize territory.
After all, in the Ming army system, although the battalion sentry soldiers were the main force, the total number of troops was not large. The Ming army mostly consisted of ordinary guardsmen, especially the Ming army that carried out defensive operations in the interior. In fact, they were still based on local guards Soldiers are the main force.
Only field armies with mobile operations will be dominated by battalion sentries.
Therefore, the combat effectiveness of ordinary guardsmen in the Ming army system is also worthy of the attention of the rural protection army.
And after a review of the siege battle, Luo Zhixue became even more confused...
Because during the review exercise, Luo Zhixue asked Chen Yongfu to serve as the commander of the city's defenders.
According to the derivation results of the review, in the end the Baoxiang Army was able to attack Nanyang City, but it would have to cost at least 400 casualties.
This is not normal!
There must be something wrong there.
And it's not that there is a problem with the deduction. The deduction process was that Luo Zhixue personally acted as the referee, Xu Zhixian was the main attacker, and Chen Yongfu was the main defender. The strength and equipment of both sides were based on the actual situation in the siege battle just now.
The only difference is that the commander of the garrison has changed.
But the result is very different from reality.
Luo Zhixue glanced at Chen Yongfu and finally sighed.
He considered many conditions, but he didn't expect that a general would have such a big impact on the combat effectiveness of an army.
In fact, this is not in line with Luo Zhixue's long-standing understanding. In his view, when fighting a war, it is all about equipment and logistics. It doesn't matter what tactics are used and it is done.
However, Chen Yongfu gave him one today.
A capable general can make a mediocre army become more capable, and can also make a capable army become more capable.
For example, in the same battle to defend the city, other Ming army generals sent a small number of soldiers from the ordinary guards to lead the ordinary guards to fight with the civilians.
However, Chen Yongfu was not the one. He directly mobilized all the elite soldiers to serve as a supervising team, and then rushed the ordinary guardsmen and guardsmen to the top of the city. Once the guardsmen collapsed, he directly killed them without mercy.
Just like he did in yesterday's Battle of Zhaozhuang, the soldiers from his headquarters were used to supervise the battle team, and those who charged into battle were the guardsmen, and the guardsmen were directly killed on a large scale when they retreated.
They didn't use knives, but directly covered them with arrows and light cannons... The killing was more ruthless than the Baoxiang Army.
Under such circumstances, the guardsmen and civilians might die if they continued to fight, but if they retreated they would surely die. They had no choice but to die on the city walls.
By the end of the deduction, thousands of Ming garrison soldiers and civilians defending the city were killed and wounded, and the Baoxiang army attacking the city suffered four to five hundred casualties.
The funniest thing is that when the fighting reached this level, the more than 200 soldiers dispatched by Chen Yongfu suffered only sporadic casualties, and most of them were fine.
Because Chen Yongfu never put them on the battlefield from the beginning to the end, he just acted as a supervising team.
After such a deduction, Luo Zhixue finally understood why the combat effectiveness of the Ming Army Guardsmen in the Battle of Zhaozhuang and the Battle of Nanyang City was so surprising.
There is only one variable here: Chen Yongfu, a ruthless man who kills his defeated troops without mercy!
It seems that in the future we will still focus on collecting information about enemy generals, analyzing their personalities, and predicting their behaviors.
While Luo Zhixue, the staff office, and Chen Yongfu were conducting review exercises at the headquarters outside the city to study the gains and losses of this battle, most of the Baoxiang Army troops that had entered the city had already completed their combat missions.
Since the defenders in the city had completely lost organized resistance and a large number of troops either surrendered or hid, the troops entering the city successfully entered the city and took control of key areas, and successively captured the prefecture yamen, county yamen, military camps in the city, official warehouses, etc. Important land.
On the contrary, they encountered some stubborn resistance when they attacked Prince Tang's Mansion, but when the Baoxiang Army pulled the two hundred kilograms of artillery over, all the resistance disappeared.
