As the three thousand elite soldiers in the Linxiang City garrison died, they were injured.
With the right councilor Wang Xinghuai hanging on the beam and the commander-in-chief Yu Xiuwen committing suicide, Linxiang City was declared completely lost.
After the Chu army entered the city and captured the city wall area, they quickly captured many important buildings in the city.
By the afternoon, the Chu army had completely defeated the last organized resistance force of the Ming army in the city, and then entered the stage of clearing out the defeated troops and stubborn resisters in the city.
Before that, there were 20,000 Ming troops in the city who were killed or wounded, surrendered anyway, and a large number of people were hiding in various residential buildings or escaping from the city.
Moreover, many Ming troops escaped from the city, about seven to eight thousand people fled the city one after another.
When the Chu army attacked Linxiang City, they did not attack the city from all sides. Instead, they adopted the traditional method of surrounding three and one. They only attacked 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 ambush in the outer areas. In fact, this is indeed the case. The Chu army does not seem to launch an attack on the West City Wall, nor is it within sight. Deploy heavy troops.
But in fact, an infantry regiment and a cavalry brigade of the Guards were ambushed in the outer area.
This kind of encirclement of three people and one person is clearly a conspiracy.
It is possible for a small number of your people to escape from the city and flee, but if you want to leave the city on a large scale and organize a retreat, you will think that the Chu army is blind.
The more than 7,000 Ming troops who left the city were undoubtedly intercepted by the Chu Army's First Cavalry Brigade not long after they left the city.
Under the threat of interception by thousands of cavalry, these Ming troops did not even think about resisting. As soon as they discovered the Chu cavalry, these Ming troops were already reduced to pieces...
A large number of Ming soldiers began to escape alone, so that the normal scene was very chaotic. Thousands of cavalrymen from the First Cavalry Brigade were unable to control the situation and could only watch many Ming soldiers fleeing in all directions.
The situation did not improve until the Fifth Cavalry Regiment and the Guards Cavalry Regiment arrived for reinforcements.
However, at the last count, they killed, wounded, and captured only more than 5,000 Ming soldiers, and the remaining 2,000 people were still missing.
In this regard, although the Chu army continued to send cavalry to search and intercept the surrounding areas, these subsequent battles were no longer important.
The Battle of Linxiang, which has been going on so far, can be said to have come to an end. Even if the more than 2,000 Ming troops who escaped can be organized again, it is unlikely to cause any trouble to 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 critical attack.
"In this battle, in addition to the 200-pound short robes and other types of light infantry support artillery, our army used more than 300 field guns and mortars of various types, which greatly suppressed and severely damaged the Ming army defending the city!"
"In the first two days, our army, with the Fifth Division as the main force, and with the cooperation of the two garrison divisions and the Guards Division, successively captured the enemy's protruding areas outside the city, filled in the moat, and excavated explosives. typical."
“On the third and fourth days, we continued the siege operations with the 6th and 8th garrison divisions as the main force, and during the siege stage we cooperated with the artillery troops to carry out targeted artillery bombardments against the enemy’s garrison troops! "
"After the fierce offensive in the previous four days, the enemy suffered heavy losses. Its light artillery unit was completely suppressed by us. At the same time, we killed and injured at least four to five thousand enemy soldiers, of whom it is conservatively estimated that more than two thousand were enemy soldiers!"
"On the fifth day, that is, today, as the enemy's available troops were insufficient, we decisively once again invested the main forces such as the Fifth Division and the Guards Division, and mobilized two elite commandos to launch a fierce attack. , and successfully conducted a blast to open the gap."
"At noon, the army fully captured the Linxiang City Wall and began to seize important places in the city. In the afternoon, it completely ended the civil war in the city and began to use cavalry as the main force to encircle the remnants of the Ming army that broke through!"
"In the evening, the 1st Cavalry Brigade and other troops reported that they had killed or captured about 5,000 enemy remnants, and the remaining 2,000 people had fled!"
"Thus, the Linxiang strategy was a complete success!"
After Xu Zhixian paused for a while, he opened the report in his hand and continued: "In this battle, we killed a total of more than 3,200 enemy soldiers, not counting minor injuries, and captured more than 11,000 people. We are still here As we continue to clear out the defeated troops in the city, it is expected that the number of enemies killed and the number of prisoners captured will increase."
"Because it can be confirmed that there are only about 2,000 Ming troops who broke through the encirclement, and there are still 2,000 to 3,000 broken troops lurking in the city. All departments entering the city are conducting door-to-door searches and eliminations in separate areas."
"About 13,000 cold weapons of various types were seized, more than 100 light cannons of various types weighing less than 200 kilograms, and more than 20 short robes weighing more than 200 kilograms."
"Three thousand suits of armor of various types and more than a thousand mules and horses."
"A batch of food and fodder is enough for one division of our army for half a month."
"The amount of cash is not large. Currently, only about 50,000 taels of cash have been seized, and all 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 did not change much, and he was still smiling.
Xu Zhixian continued: "In terms of our army's losses, since the siege, there are more than 470 people killed on the spot or seriously injured and more than 1,600 people injured."
"Most of the casualties came from the Sixth and Eighth Garrison Divisions. The Sixth Garrison Division had about 800 casualties, and the Eighth Garrison Division had more than 700 casualties."
"In the first two days, the Fifth Division, which was responsible for the main attack on the protrusion outside the city, suffered about 300 casualties. Today, the Guards Division, which was responsible for the attack on the southern city wall, encountered stubborn resistance from the enemy and suffered more than 100 casualties. Others in the rear area There were about a hundred casualties in each department.”
"The number of casualties in our army is more than half less than what we expected. In many previous deductions, we assumed that the number of casualties exceeded 5,000. In actual combat, the resistance strategy of the Ming army was in line with what we had expected. There is a discrepancy, so the actual casualties are much smaller.”
At this time Luo Zhixue spoke: "Linxiang City is well managed by the enemy, which greatly offsets our artillery threat. It is not bad to be able to capture it within five days with only a few casualties."
Luo Zhixue is quite satisfied with this result.
Nowadays, the Ming army is becoming more and more sophisticated in defending the city, and the city is becoming more and more difficult to defeat. It is already quite rare that our side can maintain such high efficiency and a huge ratio of losses between the enemy and ourselves.
During the early attack on Nanyang, the Nanyang defenders were already finished. Only one or two thousand ordinary guardsmen and young civilians were left. They were finished without fighting the opponent at all.
Xiangyang was captured by sneak attack, and no real large-scale battle broke out between the two sides.
But apart from these two cities, the Chu army's other early sieges were not too easy.
The early attacks on Nanzhao County, Luyang Pass, and Yuzhou were very typical examples.
The various Chu armies continued to fight against the above three cities, and they really relied on heavy casualties to win them.
At that time, the "Fourth Mixed Brigade" of the Ming Army, which mainly dropped troops, stormed Yuzhou City. Almost half of the soldiers were rotated. There were constant casualties in the front, and they were constantly replenished in the back. They killed and injured more than a thousand people before taking Yuzhou City.
At that time, there were not many Ming troops defending the city in Yuzhou, only about 2,000 people.
When attacking Luyang Pass, the Second Infantry Regiment, the only main force in the Chu army at that time, was also fighting hard while replenishing its troops. When Luyang Pass was finally captured, the Second Infantry Regiment had already accumulated casualties. Seven to eight hundred people.
In the subsequent attacks on Junzhou and Yunyang, they relied on more troops and a siege. At the same time, there was no main force of the Ming army in the city, and only some miscellaneous local troops were successfully captured.
This situation 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 off guard, and successfully captured Zhongxiang, and the price they paid was not too high.
This advantage continued until the Battle of Hanyang City and the battles in which the Chu army swept through other cities in northern Chu.
During that period, the Chu army fought most smoothly.
In field battles, he can defeat the Ming army.
Attacking the city can still defeat the Ming army.
However, after crossing the Yangtze River and heading south, that is, at the beginning of the Wuchang Battle, the Ming army on the opposite side also gradually responded and launched targeted defenses against the Chu army's artillery, especially the mortars.
The generals of the Ming army were not stupid. They knew that the Chu bandits had explosive artillery, but they still foolishly carried out defensive operations on the top of the empty city wall.
Even if you have no money or food, you can still build sandbags and artillery defenses on the city wall.
As a result, it became more difficult for the Chu army to subsequently attack the city guarded by the Ming army.
Things were going well during the Battle of Wuchang. Although the Ming army began to react, the various responses were not adequate. Therefore, although it was difficult, the Chu army carried out shelling and blasting at all costs, and at the same time organized commandos to carry out suicide missions. Under sufficient circumstances, Wuchang City was finally captured.
But when it comes to the follow-up, it will be more troublesome. These Ming soldiers began to learn to be smart. When defending the city, they built sandbag fortifications directly on the top of the city. They even dug trenches outside the city, built fortresses and deployed various artillery.
Turning the whole city into a hedgehog, Chu Jun felt like he had no idea what to say.
For these fortifications built by the Ming army, the solid shells fired by field artillery were useless, and the effect of the mortar shells was greatly reduced.
This forced the Chu army to begin to increase the number of mortar equipment, especially the number and proportion of large-caliber rear mortars such as the 48-pound mortar.
And began to think about how to attack the Ming army's various anti-artillery fortifications and the protruding defense fortifications outside the city.
In the end, there was the current Linxiang Battle!
Judging from the process and results of the Linxiang Battle, the Chu army's series of responses were outstanding and effective.
Linxiang was able to capture Linxiang at the cost of about 2,000 men by storming all the defenses, especially the artillery defenses. There were 20,000 defenders stationed at the same time, with 3,000 soldiers as the core, and the general refused to retreat. It's okay to change the city.
The only trouble is that this siege mode requires too high a number of artillery and consumes too much ammunition.
Just after the Battle of Linxiang, Huang Chengxuan, the Secretary of the Ministry of Finance, who learned about the ammunition consumption on the front line, could hardly stand still and muttered: "A bunch of losers... Sooner or later they will be defeated!"
