Chapter 838: The Capture of Siberia (2)
When the Ming army entered within 100 miles of the city of Yakutsk, the Grand Duke of Sakha Principality of the Tsarist Empire received the news of the invasion of the Ming army.
Due to the distance from the Cossacks, the Grand Duke of Sakha did not know why the Ming army was attacking his Sakha principality.
However, there are not so many reasons for the war between countries in the first place, and they can fight if they want to, and their Tsarist Empire has always been like this, so there is no reason for Grand Duke Sakha to only invade the Ming army this time.
Now is not the time to think about these, but how to resist the Ming army.
Grand Duke Sakha urgently gathered the surrounding army and prepared to rely on the city of Yakutsk to resist the Ming army.
Since there were not many troops in the first place, and a large number of strongholds were destroyed by the Ming army all the way north, Grand Duke Saha tried his best to only gather a mere 20,000 people before the Ming army came to the city.
On the side of the Seventh Army, after destroying the Tsarist strongholds of the Tsarist on their respective routes, the 20th Route Army slowly surrounded the city of Yakutsk and also made peace with Chang Shunhou.
In just one day, the 20,000 men of the Seventh Army completed the purpose of gathering around the city of Yakutsk.
Although it is also 20,000 people, the 20,000 Russian troops in the city of Yakutsk will obviously not be taken into account by the Seventh Army.
"Boom boom" shells exploded on the not thick walls of the city of Yakutsk.
"Boom!" In the first round of shelling alone, some of the walls were blown down by shells.
It is not difficult to understand that the walls of Yakutsk were originally built to defend against the Tunguska natives, and the Tsarist Russian army never imagined that it would be attacked by a country like the Ming Dynasty.
After all, when Siberia was first occupied, Siberia was only uncivilized and inhabited, and it was just a real wild and cold land. For hundreds of thousands of years, no country wants to occupy such a place, how can it be that not many years after their Tsarist Russia came, there will be other high-civilization countries that have taken a fancy to this place and come to attack here.
In the city, Grand Duke Sakha and Tsarist Russian soldiers dodged the shells in fear.
Grand Duke Saha watched the small castle where he originally lived being blown up by several shells of the Ming army, and saw many soldiers in the city being torn apart by the shells.
"No, God, what kind of enemies are these, and why are they so powerful!" Grand Duke Saha shouted in horror.
He clearly felt that the artillery of the Ming army was more advanced than those conceited and advanced countries in Europe, such as Britain, France, and the Netherlands, and he didn't know how many times. Not only the artillery, but also the soldiers who had fled back from the outside stronghold said that the muskets of the Ming army were equally powerful, and they could shoot people from a few hundred meters away.
If that's the case, how can he resist?
Yakutsk is not a big city, the radius is only a few hundred meters, because there are few residents, most of the people living are Tsarist soldiers, so there are very few buildings in the city, the Ming army destroyed almost all the buildings inside after a few rounds of shelling, and most of the thin city walls were also blown down.
"Rush!" The Ming soldiers began to attack the city.
"Bang bang bang" dozens of Ming soldiers who rushed to the front shot at the Russian soldiers blocking the front.
"Poof! Burst! Suddenly, the bodies of more than twenty Tsarist soldiers were pierced, and bullets burst from behind them in a bloody mist.
A Ming machine gunner carrying a machine gun clicked the machine gun on the ground in front of him, and also opened fire on the Russian soldiers blocking in front.
"Da Da Da" Under the tongue of fire of the machine gun, another piece of Tsarist Russian soldiers fell.
Seeing such an attack, the Russian soldiers all gasped and retreated in horror.
The Ming army soon successfully entered the city and began to clear the city of Tsarist Russian soldiers.
The Ming army was surrounded from all sides, and there were few buildings in the city, and the city was not large, and there were almost no places for the Tsarist soldiers to hide, so soon the Tsarist soldiers in the city were forced by the Ming army to surround the ruins in the center of the city.
Looking at the Ming soldiers who came up from all directions, Grand Duke Saha and tens of thousands of soldiers of the Tsarist army who were surrounded were all dead.
"Click, click, click!" A machine gun was set up all around, and a large number of black rifle muzzles were also pointed in front, and it is believed that as soon as an order was given, these machine guns and rifles would not hesitate to shoot and slaughter the besieged Russian soldiers.
Finally, Grand Duke Sakha could not bear it anymore and ordered the besieged soldiers to surrender.
Although the Tsarist Russian army was said to be more tenacious and could resist longer, in the face of the absolute superiority of the Ming army's guns, resistance was slaughtered, and they could not continue to be tenacious.
In less than half a day, the battle for the city of Yakutsk ended with the capture of about 15,300 Tsarist Russian soldiers.
After the destruction of the Sakha principality, the goal of the Seventh Army was only a Khabaslavsk principality, which was not a quarter of the size of the Sakha principality.
Khabaslovsk, a small Russian principality, had only been established for less than five years, and there were not many strongholds, so it was obvious that there was no need for the entire Seventh Army to be dispatched, and Chang Shunhou only sent 6,000 men to the east to attack the Khabaslovsk principality.
In about four days, the city of Khabaslovsk, the core of the Khabaslovsk principality, was also captured by the Ming army, and the two principalities faced by the Seventh Army were destroyed.
The battles of the Seventh Army were only part of the battle for Siberia as a whole.
In the direction of Lake Baikal, the four principalities and autonomous oblasts that together were only larger than the Sakha principality, were destroyed by the Ming army responsible for attacking the area at almost the same time.
The same was true of several Russian principalities and autonomous prefectures in northern Xinjiang, which were wiped out by the Ming army in charge of them in less than half a month.
However, the Cossacks are due north, because it is close to the European 6 boundary, and it is relatively close to Moscow, the core of the Tsarist Russian Empire, and it was first opened up by the Tsarist Empire, which has been nearly a hundred years, and the original strongholds have become cities, and there are more Tsarist Russian troops, and the two Ming regular armies in charge of this place are more troublesome.
It took a full month for the Ming army to destroy the six autonomous prefectures and principalities here.
In addition to leaving 10,000 Cossacks to defend the Cossacks, Ji Feng personally led another 10,000 soldiers of the First Army to join another regular army, a total of 30,000 iron cavalry, along the Eurasian 6th dividing line north of the Caspian Sea, the Ural River and the Ural Mountains, to clear the cities and strongholds of Tsarist Russia, preparing to completely cut off the tentacles of the Tsarist Russian Empire outside the European 6.
The Battle of Siberia lasted more than two months in total. Based on the dividing line between Eurasia and the Great 6, the Ming Dynasty completely conquered the entire Siberia in Asia, and the Tsarist Russian Empire was completely driven out of the Asian 6 and returned to the European 6.
It's not that the Ming Dynasty doesn't have the ability to completely destroy the Tsarist Russian Empire, it's that Siberia is already too big, plus Australia, which was also captured this year, the Ming Dynasty needs time to digest.
Moreover, the territory is captured and it needs to be garrisoned by troops.
Siberia is vast and sparsely populated, except for the Russian soldiers who established strongholds to maintain their rule, the rest are all uncivilized natives, and there are not many natives, and there are more than one million natives in the whole of Siberia, and many have been killed by Tsarist Russia over the years, and now there are less than 500,000 natives left.
Without the strength of Tsarist Russia, these hundreds of thousands of Siberian natives could not pose the slightest threat to the Ming Dynasty, and the Ming only needed to send a part of the army to defend the Ural River and the Ural Mountains in Eurasia 6 to imitate the counterattack of the Tsarist Empire, and only a very small number of soldiers were needed to stay in the rest of the place.
It would be different if it was to directly destroy the entire Tsarist Russian Empire, the European part of the Tsarist Empire had a population of more than 10 million, and it was too far away from the Ming Dynasty to completely capture it at a huge cost, and even if it was occupied, it would not be easy to rule for a while, so it could only be left until the railway was built there in the future, and then slowly try to do it.
All in all, the territory of the Ming Dynasty, which conquered Siberia, was at least 40 million square kilometers.