When Luo Zhixue led various ministries to arrive at Shanghe Town, he did not go to Yuzhou City immediately, but rested in Yuzhou City for a day.
It was not until the morning of June 3 that he set off again, leading an army of more than 6,000 people and more than 3,000 soldiers and civilians accompanying him to Yuzhou.
The reason why we stayed in Shanghe Town for a day was mainly because after the 1st Infantry Brigade and other northbound troops marched continuously at high intensity, both the soldiers and the mules and horses were very tired and needed urgent rest to restore their physical fitness.
If they continue to move forward without recovery, the mules and horses will be exhausted, which will have a greater impact on their combat effectiveness.
At least it is difficult to bring into play the physical advantage of the Baoxiang Army. Without the physical advantage, it means losing the mobility advantage. This is very difficult for the main force of the Baoxiang Army, which has relatively few troops and tends to defeat the enemy in field battles. More deadly.
When the Baoxiang Army fought in outdoor battles, they rarely stayed put and waited for the enemy to slowly come over.
Rather, before the two sides officially start fighting, they often make repeated formation changes, thus forcing the enemy to also change their formations.
In the end, until the opponent's physical fitness or organizational ability cannot keep up, resulting in loopholes in the formation, or when there are loopholes in the formation, they directly launch an attack and fight to the death.
This will allow the Baoxiang Army to obtain better fighter opportunities.
The Baoxiang Army's tactics of using small-scale maneuvers and frequently changing formations before the war are, to put it bluntly, a competition for physical fitness with the opponent!
After all, during the formation changes and testing process after the formal formation, the soldiers had to line up and also wear armor.
Just imagine, wearing armor weighing dozens of kilograms, holding a spear several meters long, maneuvering in formation, walking or even trotting frequently, this is very demanding on the physical fitness of the soldiers.
In the past several field battles, the Baoxiang Army has been successful every time. Each time, it was able to rely on the superior physical fitness of its own soldiers to obtain favorable combat opportunities, and even forced the enemy to take the initiative to launch an attack in a disadvantageous situation, while its own side waited for a while.
During the previous battle with Lu Xiangsheng at Sanyuan Village, the Baoxiang Army used this tactic very successfully.
Through the frequent maneuvers of the cavalry, the Baoxiang Army forced holes in the enemy's right wing. Before the infantry of the two sides engaged in battle, the Baoxiang Army's cavalry had defeated one enemy phalanx and pinned down two enemy phalanxes.
This further led to the fact that when the infantry of the two sides officially engaged in battle, Lu Xiangsheng's right-wing army had at least 1,500 people unable to directly participate in the battle between the infantry. This ultimately affected the right wing's ability to move quickly not long after the infantry of the two sides engaged. The crash fell.
At the same time, the artillery unit of the Baoxiang Army at that time was able to fire quickly and accurately. It was also because the artillery unit of the Baoxiang Army occupied favorable terrain through frequent maneuvers and could directly cover several main infantry phalanxes that bombarded the enemy's central army. , and then forced the enemy's Chinese army to advance quickly over a long distance in advance, and finally fought with the infantry of the Baoxiang Army at an absolute disadvantage.
When the armies of both sides come into contact and engage in battle, it is very important for our soldiers to maintain sufficient physical fitness.
For this reason, Luo Zhixue would rather risk being discovered by the Ming army in advance and exposing the location of his main force to let thousands of soldiers rest for a day.
Of course, the reason why Luo Zhixue was able to delay his march eastward for a day was also because Yuzhou City was currently free of worries.
Although the Fourth Mixed Brigade in Yuzhou City fought very hard, they still firmly guarded Yuzhou City.
At least An Yongduo's battle report to Luo Zhixue stated that he was very confident in continuing to hold Yuzhou City, saying that he could hold on for at least three more days.
The reason why we can only hold on for three more days is not that the Fourth Mixed Brigade cannot fight, but that the ammunition will be completely consumed in three days.
Without the support of ammunition, it will be difficult for the fourth mixed brigade to defend Yuzhou City with only flesh and blood.
However, Yuzhou City could hold on for three more days, which was enough, so Luo Zhixue waited for a day before leading his troops to continue marching eastward!
Just when Luo Zhixue led an army of more than 6,000 people to march eastward, outside Yuzhou City, the Ming army launched another attack on Yuzhou City.
But this time the attack was just like yesterday's attack. Thousands of Ming troops came forward one after another. However, as soon as they got closer, the security forces on top of Yuzhou City began to fire one after another.
In particular, the relatively large general cannons and Folang machine guns were directly aimed at the several medium-sized siege equipment that the Ming army had finally built with great difficulty.
After a while, many siege equipment were destroyed.
Those small shield vehicles did escape the bombardment of the large and medium-sized artillery of the protecting army, but after approaching a distance of a hundred meters, they were still bombarded by the densely packed small and medium-sized artillery of the protecting army. After getting closer to a few dozen meters, they were attacked again. to the shooting of muskets and bows.
Before they even reached the top of the city, two to three hundred people had already been killed or injured. Although they continued to attack fiercely, dozens of people finally rushed to the top of the city. As a result, they were met by a group of armored soldiers from the security army. At the same time, a large number of enemy archers counterattacked to intercept the Ming army's subsequent reinforcements.
In the end, after most of the dozens of Ming troops who rushed to the city were killed or injured, they simply surrendered.
After seeing that his own attack failed again and that most of the siege equipment was lost, Zuo Liangyu's face turned black with anger.
This battle was harder than he imagined.
The level of guns and artillery of these anti-thief troops is no less than that of our own army, and even better. At least Zuo Liangyu did not bring over hundreds of kilograms of general cannons and large-scale Folang machines. The largest under his command There are only a few general cannons weighing three to four hundred kilograms.
The army under his command mostly consisted of small cannons weighing several dozen kilograms, such as assault cannons and squatting tiger cannons.
It's light, but it's too powerful!
Especially in this kind of siege operation, the opponent is protected by a city wall, and the role of one's own small artillery in siege is very limited.
It is naturally quite difficult to fight like this.
Watching the situation ahead where the climb to the top of the city failed again and the remaining soldiers had to retreat... Zuo Liangyu became more and more unhappy and annoyed as he thought about it.
He Renlong, who was standing next to him, also had a very ugly expression on his face: "Brother Zuo, if we really want to take over Yuzhou City at this rate, I'm afraid we will have to go to great lengths. At least we will have to fill in three or four thousand people!"
He Renlong said, then turned to look at Zuo Liangyu and said, "Brother Zuo, you have many people under your command, so you can withstand the torment, but I only have a few thousand people under my command, so I can't withstand such a torment!"
When He Renlong said this, his heart was bleeding. Since he came to Yuzhou City, he and Zuo Liangyu attacked Yuzhou City together. Every attack was a joint operation. Although He Renlong sent few troops, Also derived.
After so many days of siege, although there were not many casualties each time, the total number of attacks before and after added up to the loss of at least 500 troops under his command.
The total number of troops he brought over was only five thousand.
Calculated this way, the battle losses were close to one-tenth.
Fortunately, this was a war of attrition that lasted for several days and was spread out. In order to make up for the losses, He Renlong had also been forcibly recruiting young men from the army and civilians to supplement the manpower, so that the soldiers under his command could barely bear it.
If he lost one-tenth of his power in a war, his army would dare to collapse in front of him.
But even so, we can't continue to waste like this. Today we will kill and injure a few people, and tomorrow we will kill and injure hundreds of people. Then the two of them have a combined force of more than 10,000 officers and soldiers, and they can't help but waste so much.
As for directly sending civilian husbands as cannon fodder, they have actually tried it.
A few days ago, we started to send soldiers and civilians to serve as cannon fodder. However, as soon as these civilians heard that the security guards in front fired cannons, they turned around and ran away. Even the supervising troops could not rush forward. At least two to three thousand civilians were killed or injured. , except for consuming some rebel ammunition and arrows, no effect was seen.
Even later, it no longer even had the effect of consuming the bandit ammunition.
Because the security guards at the top of the city saw that civilians without weapons were rushing towards them, they were not even willing to fire their guns and cannons. Instead, they would put the civilians under the city wall, or even let them go up to the top of the city, and directly use various cold weapons. Just get rid of it.
Under such circumstances, Zuo Liangyu and He Renlong had no choice but to give up the strategy of using civilians as cannon fodder to consume the rebel ammunition.
The civilian men are useless, so they can only let the officers and soldiers go into battle in person.
However, most of the people who went up and consumed were ordinary guardsmen, not combat soldiers, let alone their direct servants and personal soldiers.
But they were heartbroken when there were too many casualties.
What's more, sending ordinary guardsmen to consume them would also require a small number of combat soldiers or even personal soldiers to lead them. In this way, even the combat soldiers and even personal soldiers would be killed or injured.
He Renlong's troops were not large to begin with, but he was heartbroken by the death of so many people, and he had long been unwilling to continue such a forceful attack.
Zuo Liangyu on the side heard this and nodded slightly: "It is indeed impossible to fight like this, but if we don't fight, the supervisor will have no way to explain!"
Whether it was Zuo Liangyu or He Renlong, they had no intention of attacking Yuzhou City for a long time.
But it won’t work without fighting!
The day before yesterday, Zuo Liangyu and He Renlong received another letter from Hong Chengchou. Hong Chengchou once again ordered Zuo Liangyu and He Renlong to quickly lead their troops to capture Yuzhou. After entering the hinterland of Nanyang, they cooperated with Lu Xiangsheng's troops to eliminate them as soon as possible. The army of thieves protecting the countryside.
Under the strong pressure of Hong Chengchou, neither Zuo Liangyu nor He Renlong could do anything. Even if the fight did not go smoothly and the casualties were high, they could only grit their teeth and persevere.
What's interesting is that until now, neither Hong Chengchou nor Zuo Liangyu on the front line knew that Lu Xiangsheng had been defeated and died.
After all, the Baoxiang Army had completely blocked the Nanyang Basin area, especially the connection with the northern region. Although it was impossible to completely block the news, the news of Lu Xiangsheng's defeat could not reach Zuo Liangyu in a short period of time.
Now Zuo Liangyu still wants to capture Yuzhou as soon as possible and cooperate with Lu Xiangsheng after entering the Nanyang Basin.
But how to defeat Yuzhou City?
After the Ming army's first trial attack failed many days ago, they did not launch an attack for several days in a row, but instead focused on building various siege equipment.
It was not until May 30 that the offensive was restarted, and now it has been fighting for three consecutive days.
However, the more than twenty artillery pieces of various types deployed by the Baoxiang Army on the head of Yuzhou City once again posed a huge threat to them.
Not only did it cause a lot of casualties to the siege Ming army, but it also destroyed a large number of the Ming army's siege equipment.
This made the Ming army's attack on Yuzhou City even more difficult.
This is also the reason why Anyong confidently reported to Luo Zhixue that he could persist for at least three days.
