I want to be emperor

Chapter 142 The Last Strategic Battle

At this time, it is estimated that the Ming army in Fancheng is also in shock. It was fine yesterday, but I heard that a group of thieves with 3000 to [-] people came from outside Xiangyang City.

But they didn't expect that Xiangyang City would be in flames at dawn the next day, and before they recovered, Xiangyang City would be over.

Now, it is estimated that the Ming army on the other side of Fancheng does not know which gang of thieves or what kind of rebels took Xiangyang City.

And Luo Zhixue didn't want to give the Ming army in Fancheng too much reaction time.

Even if there are fewer Ming troops in the city and their strength is weaker, if they are given too much preparation time, the city defense will be strengthened, and it will be more troublesome to fight at that time, and there may be more casualties .

They didn't kill or injure many people in Xiangyang, so they couldn't lose too many people under the small Fancheng.

In addition to this reason, there is a more important reason. Now that the Xiangyang Army has captured Xiangyang City, leaving Fancheng as a nail on the north bank of the Han River will make the Xiangyang Army very uncomfortable.

In such a situation, Luo Zhixue will naturally not ignore it, or even delay it for too long, but will quickly take down Fancheng!
For this reason, he quickly ordered the supply battalion and the cavalry brigade to cross the river north again and return to the same army battalion and artillery battalion to attack Fancheng.

At the same time, he ordered the First Infantry Brigade to collect ships while garrisoning Xiangyang City, and after the army arrived in Fancheng, send some troops across the river to assist in attacking Fancheng.

As long as Fancheng can also be taken down, then Fancheng and Xiangyang can be connected as one, plus the cities along the Baihe River such as Nanyang City and Xinye City that the Township Protection Army has captured before.

The Township Protection Army will be able to completely open up the Baihe-Hanshui route, and then bring the entire Nanyang Basin under control.

The battle against Fancheng will be the last of a series of battles launched by the Township Protection Army to control the Nanyang Basin.

After receiving Luo Zhixue's order, Wang Xiazi led the cavalry back to the north on the same day and joined the army led by Luo Zhixue himself. The cavalry brigade will then erect a peripheral barrier to intercept the enemy troops who may be reinforced from other places. At the same time, it is also necessary to shoulder the task of preventing the enemy from actively going out of the city to attack.

Accompanying Wang Xiazi and the others were more than 50 survivors from the pro-barracks led by Li Dongshao.

For these soldiers who ventured into Xiangyang City and seized the city gate, and finally made great contributions to the Xiangyang Army's victory.

Naturally, Luo Zhixue would not be stingy.

Li Dongshao was promoted to the commander of the personal battalion on the spot by him, and more than 50 meritorious soldiers under his command were all promoted, even ordinary soldiers were promoted to corporal or special commanders.

The two surviving captains were directly promoted to post chiefs, and several Shichang and Wuchang were also promoted to captain or Shichang.

All promotions, without any exception.

In addition to job promotion, there are generous material rewards.

Luo Zhixue has always never treated soldiers who have made military exploits badly, and this time is no exception.

Even in the [-]st Infantry Brigade and Cavalry Brigade, a large number of people will be promoted, and they even have positions.

After learning that Xiangyang City had been captured and at least 5000 prisoners of various types had been captured, Luo Zhixue formally ordered the formation of the Fifth Mixed Brigade later that day.

The brigade commander of the Fifth Mixed Brigade was Dong Mingjie, the former battalion commander of the Fourth Infantry Battalion. He performed equally well in the Battle of Xiangyang. When attacking the South Gate, his Fourth Infantry Battalion was the first to charge up and defeated the enemy in one fell swoop. A large-scale flight of the enemy was caused.

In fact, there is Xu Zhixian, the commander of the [-]rd Infantry Battalion who has more military achievements than him, but Xu Zhixian's position as the commander of the [-]rd Infantry Battalion is only a part-time job.

After this battle, not only Xu Zhixian would not be promoted in the field army, on the contrary, Luo Zhixue revoked his part-time job as the commander of the [-]rd Infantry Battalion, allowing him to return to the staff office to concentrate on his work.

Xu Zhixian served as the commander of the [-]rd Infantry Battalion purely for the sake of gold plating.

The position of commander of the third infantry battalion was promoted by Han Ziping, the former deputy commander of the third infantry battalion.

In fact, after the Battle of Nanyang City, this person should take over the post of battalion commander logically, but Xu Zhixian who was airborne blocked the way, and he was still a little unhappy a few days ago.

But he also knew that Xu Zhixian was purely here for gold plating, and he would leave if he got credit, so although he was dissatisfied, he tried his best to cooperate with Xu Zhixian to command the battle.

No, Xu Zhixian has made meritorious service and left too.

He, Han Ziping, also successfully became the commander of the third infantry battalion.

Dong Mingjie was promoted to the commander of the fifth mixed brigade, and Yu Tianhe, one of the former deputy battalion commanders of the pro-military battalion, took over the post of deputy brigade commander.

In order to balance the appointment of several confidantes in the personal battalion, Luo Zhixue directly selected three deputy battalion commanders.

And this is naturally abnormal. Now that Li Dongshao has been promoted to the commander of the personal battalion, one deputy battalion commander, Qu Yangshu, is enough, and there is no need for a second deputy battalion commander.

Other battalion commanders, deputy battalion commanders, sentry officers, deputy sentry officers, captains and other officers in the Fifth Mixed Brigade will also draw officers from the personal battalion, supply battalion, and the [-]st Infantry Brigade nearby.

According to the tradition, most of them are promoted from deputy to principal, and there are also a few people who made a contribution from a lower-level principal to a higher-level deputy, and directly promoted to a higher-level principal.

As for the soldiers of the Fifth Mixed Brigade, except for a few backbones, they will naturally be dominated by a large number of surrendered troops in Xiangyang City.

Among the more than 4000 prisoners of war, the average quality is not bad. Among them, there are hundreds of soldiers, as well as technical arms such as artillery and archers. There are also some ordinary soldiers who are not bad in physical fitness. More than 2000 people were selected to form a mixed brigade.

After Luo Zhixue ordered the establishment of the fifth mixed brigade, the brigade commander Dong Mingjie took office in Xiangyang City, and the deputy brigade commander took a group of people across the river to Xiangyang City for reunion.

They have to complete the selection of soldiers in the shortest possible time, and also try to maintain the original grassroots organization of the Ming army, mainly the grassroots organization of the Shi level. After all, in traditional tactics, the cooperation between soldiers is very important , Soldiers need long-term training to form a tacit understanding of cooperation, so if possible, it is necessary to maintain the original Wu and Shi establishments as much as possible.

Although this will lead to some problems, even if there are problems, it is not as important as the current shortage of troops in the Township Protection Army.

Luo Zhixue is also counting on the complete reorganization of this mixed brigade in a short period of time, and after forming a certain combat effectiveness, it will reduce the pressure on the troops of more than 3000 troops going south.

On May [-]nd of the eighth year of Chongzhen, the day after Xiangyang was conquered by the Baoxiang Army, Luo Zhixue personally led the cavalry brigade, personal army battalion, supply battalion, and artillery brigade to the city of Fancheng.

However, they did not immediately attack the city, but arrived at the river, put out twelve [-]-jin field guns, and began to cover some soldiers of the [-]st Infantry Brigade on the other side of the river to cross the river.

During this process, although some ships in the Ming army tried to go upstream to disrupt the river crossing operation of the First Infantry Brigade.

However, they were all successfully repelled by the rural protection army.

With the strength of the [-]-jin artillery of the artillery brigade, it is enough to cause fatal damage to the small-tonnage inland river ships in the Ming army. Warships, and some civilian merchant ships that were urgently requisitioned.

There was only one infantry battalion from the first infantry brigade across the river, but this infantry battalion was an elite first infantry battalion.

After the first infantry battalion crossed the river, all kinds of siege equipment of the rural protection army were basically built.

Anyway, there is no need to make any messy things like siege vehicles, just build some iron hooks and long ladders to climb the city wall, and then make some shield cars modified from unicycles.

As for other siege equipment and the like, the Township Protection Army said that they have artillery and don't need these messy things.

Well, in fact, on the other hand, the Ming army on the top of the city also had artillery. Using those slow wooden large siege equipment was basically being hit by the artillery on the top of the enemy's city.

The engineering warfare of these years is different from the siege warfare hundreds of years ago. The emergence and extensive use of artillery has made many large wooden siege equipment in ancient times useless.

In order to prevent accidents from procrastinating, Luo Zhixue did not wait too long, and officially launched an attack on Fancheng on the second day, that is, May [-]rd.

Compared with the previous surprise attack on Xiangyang this time, the siege battle seemed a bit quite satisfactory.

After all, the Ming army in the city had already taken precautions this time. Although the Intelligence Section of the Township Protection Army also ambushed more than 20 spies in Fancheng, it was okay to create some disturbances. That's impossible.

This siege is a competition of hard power between the two sides!
Early in the morning, the artillery of the Township Protection Army began to fire at the Ming army on the top of the city. This time they gave priority to shelling the gate tower on the west gate of Fancheng.

Things like gate towers are not for the sake of showing good looks, but serious military defense facilities. The defenders can station a large number of gate towers that are higher than the city walls, and then shoot arrows from the heights.

At the same time, because it is usually a brick and wood structure, it is stronger than ordinary watchtowers, and because it is higher than the city wall, it is usually used as the headquarters of the defending general.

Not to mention the lookout function.

In ancient or modern wars, the city gate tower was a very important military facility, and such an important military facility naturally became the key target of Zhang Marin's artillery unit.

The gate tower with brick and wood structure can be said to be strong in the face of traditional weapons such as stone catapults, short-barreled shotguns, bows and arrows, and muskets, but it is like paper when faced with solid shells fired by long-barreled artillery. same.

Under the bombardment of solid shells, the extremely thick oriental city wall might be fine, at most some battlements were knocked out, but the city gate tower couldn't withstand the bombardment of such solid shells.

As the solid shells concentrated on the gate tower of the west city gate, the gate tower was immediately smashed to pieces.

Several officials of the Ming army who were originally commanding the battle on the gate tower fled down the gate tower in embarrassment at the beginning of the shelling.

If they didn't escape, they would all have to die under the artillery fire of the Township Protection Army.

Not only these officials fled, but even the large number of archers deployed on the gate tower had to retreat due to heavy casualties.

In the first battle between the two sides, the Ming army defending the city suffered heavy losses and was powerless to fight back, and lost the important defensive facility of the west city gate gate tower.

The balance of victory in the battle began to tilt towards the Rural Protection Army!

(End of this chapter)