Chizhou, a majestic thousand-year-old city, was unrecognizable at the hands of the warring parties by the end of November.

Large areas of city bricks were smashed by stone bullets that lasted for more than 20 days by whirlwind crossbows, and large areas collapsed and peeled off, and the exposed rammed earth walls were also covered with branch-like cracks, and the eyes were full of devastation.

The walls of the city were full of collapsed gaps, long soaked in the blood of the generals on both sides.

Under the city walls, there were broken swords, bows, and halberds, and countless broken feathered arrows.

In a hurry, there were corpses that had not been cleaned up, filled in the gaps with the broken bricks and rubble, or one or two broken arms from the wooden fence wall, which was so hideous.

Chizhou City is bordered by the Yangtze River in the north, Qitian Lake in the east, and Jiuhua Mountain in the south to extend to the Yumai Mountains on the riverside.

In addition to approaching the city from the west, the siege soldiers and horses could only be inserted from the Guanyi Road in the southwest corner, and inserted into the open and narrow valley between the northern foot of Qijing Mountain and Chizhou for two or three miles, and launched an offensive against the south gate of Chizhou.

The attacks in these two directions were respectively responsible for the recruitment army along the river and the Jiangxi recruitment army, and then the Wuya Army's naval division warships sent a part of the soldiers of the recruitment army along the river to the north gate of the river and the east gate of the Tianhu Lake in Linqi to attract the attention of the defenders.

The defenders of Chizhou increased to more than 40,000 before the war, and the main general was also changed to Wen Bo, the son of Wen Duqiao.

In his early years, Wen Duqiao was the military envoy of the Huainan Jiedu envoy, although he was a civil servant, he knew about military affairs.

Emperor Tianyou rose Jianghuai, led the soldiers and horses to conquer the Quartet, and Wen Duqiao assisted Empress Xu to guard the rear, and I don't know how many hard battles have been fought over the years.

Although Wen Bo and other Wen children did not have great military exploits like Li Yu, Zhang Ben, Du Chongtao and others, they followed their father to guard the city since they were young, resisting the attacks of the powerful men of the feudal domains, and when it came to defending the city, they were not at all under the world's famous generals such as Zhang Chan and Du Chongtao.

However, considering that the Nanya Forbidden Army, which was mainly guarding Chizhou, was disheartened and demoralized, no one thought that it would be too difficult to capture Chizhou.

Before the war, the Zuoque Army was expanded to more than 25,000 people, but Li Zhi took the Zuolongque Army as the main force and attacked the two cities of Chiwu and Xunyang in Jiangzhou at the fastest speed.

In particular, in the battle where Li Zhihe captured the Jiangzhou warrior Zhong Yanhu on the bank of the Hengjin River, the casualties of the Zuo Longque Army were even higher than Zhong Yanhu's troops, plus the strong attack on Xunyang City, killing and wounding more than 14,000 enemy troops before and after twice, but the cumulative casualties of the Zuo Longque Army also exceeded 7,000, which was much larger than Yang Zhitang's Jiangxi Recruiting Army, which was responsible for attacking Pengze City from the west bank of Poyang Lake.

Although the Left Dragon Bird Army is the elite of a hundred battles, with such a high casualty ratio, it is difficult to put into the next fierce battle non-stop, and it must be rested.

In addition to the need for recuperation of wounded soldiers, it is also necessary to transfer more new soldiers from the rear states and counties to supplement the battalion for training.

Besides, Yang Zhitang and Zheng Yu, as the envoys of the two roads, could not sit back and watch all the scenery be completely taken by Li Zhihe.

Therefore, when the attack on Chizhou was really organized, the Zuo Longque Army did not directly push to the city of Chizhou in the early stage, but stayed in Pengze City to rest, mainly with the Jiangxi Recruitment Army and the state soldiers recruited from Hunan Prefectures to enter the city and take turns to attack the city.

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The gap between the main elite and the local soldiers and horses was completely reflected at this time.

Except for the Wuya Army Naval Division, which blocked the Yangtze River waterway and blocked the warships of the Louchuan Army Naval Division from upstream to reinforce Chizhou, there was no energy to participate in the cooperation, and 80,000 people with local soldiers and horses took turns to attack Chizhou, fighting for 20 days, losing a large number of siege weapons and more than 20,000 casualties of soldiers and horses, but they failed to attack the city.

The principle of rising and disappearing is applicable everywhere, Yueyang's soldiers and horses took turns for more than 20 days, but they failed to break the morale of the defenders, but instead made the defenders see that there was hope of repelling Yueyang's soldiers and horses, and the morale and morale of the army became more and more vigorous.

After the naval division of the Lou Boat Army led by Yang Jian, Marquis of Zhenyuan, was unable to build new ships due to the shortage of materials, the water war was fought more cautiously, and at first it was only a small-scale harassment from the downstream to the upstream.

Seeing that Yueyang's soldiers and horses were weak in attacking Chizhou, the sailors of the Lou Boat Army from the downstream Fanchang and Tongling directions of the water village became more and more frequent, and in the later period, hundreds of large and small warships were organized to rush to Qitian Lake, and at the mouth of Qitian Lake, they frequently fought with the Wuya Army water warships.

After the Wuya Army Naval Division joined the water battalions of Poyang Lake Prefectures, the scale of warships and men exceeded that of the Lou Boat Army, but whether it was an ordinary general, a middle or lower-level military attaché or even a high-level general commanding the operation, they lacked the experience of conducting large-scale water battles on a wide water, and they were defeated in several battles, and were finally suppressed by the Lou Boat Army Naval Division, and could only retreat to defend in Qitian Lake in the east of Chizhou City.

This is also because the Guangde army reversed the situation in Xuanzhou too quickly, too suddenly, a large number of soldiers and horses gathered, and it was difficult to suddenly adapt to the rhythm of bloody siege warfare and water warfare in a short period of time, let alone accumulate tactical advantages step by step.

Like the existence of the Chishan Army, which can form a strong combat force in a short period of time, after all, it is an example.

Zheng Yu and Yang Zhitang saw that the situation was not very good, so they had to hand over the command of the battlefield to Li Zhihe, transfer the Zuo Longque Army, which had rested and replenished the new pawns, to launch a strong attack on Chizhou from the west, and used hundreds of whirlwind crossbows transported from Xuzhou to assemble them in front of the city, suppress the defenders, and take the west city gate after three days of strong attack.

However, the defenders did not crumble.

Under the command of the chief general Wen Bo, during the stalemate of the offensive and defensive battles in the past 20 days, not only did the sewage river in the city communicate as a defensive inner hao, but also surrounded the narrow streets and alleys near the Beicheng Shuiguan, the state government and other solid buildings with fences, and simply formed an inner city to resist stubbornly as the last resistance.

Li Zhihe transferred thousands of generals into the city, and fought with the defenders for every street and alley, until the end of the month, he completely occupied Chizhou, which had been completely destroyed, but he still watched the defender Wen Bo lead more than 3,000 remnants of the army to break through from the water pass in the north city, and join the Louchuan army and sailors to flee in the direction of the lower reaches of the Yangtze River.

In the first battle of the capture of Chizhou, the total casualties of the soldiers and horses of the Yangtze River Recruitment Army and the Jiangxi Recruitment Army exceeded 40,000, which was even higher than the defenders who were considered to have low morale and weak fighting before the war, which was somewhat enlightening.

However, after the capture of Chizhou City, the defenders of Tongling and Fanchang fled to Quarry City, an important town east of the mouth of the Shuiyang River, which also meant that the main force of Yueyang entered Jinling eastward, and the passage to join the Guangde army was opened.

This is a crucial victory for Yue Yanglai.

Li Zhihe stood in front of the relatively intact North City Gatehouse, looking eastward

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At the mouth of Qitian Lake in the direction of the North Point, the sunken warship and the remnants of the mast were exposed on the vast water, although the last glory belonged to him, but his heart was still secretly frightened and sad for the heavy casualties.

"Hou Ye wants to capture Nanling two days earlier than here, but it is not easy to fight, and this time Han Qian in order to preserve his strength, the Zuoguang German army did not dispatch at all......" Deng Tai climbed the city gate tower and brought the messenger sent by Li Pu from Nanling to report the details of the German army on Youguang being ordered by Han Qian to attack Nanling City.

Deng Tai's tone also had a lot of accusations against Han Qian, Li Zhihe naturally knew why Deng Tai had such a subtle change, sighed slightly in his heart, and just said lightly: "I know." ”

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At this moment, Li Pu stood at the head of Nanling City, somewhat high-spirited.

They successfully took Nanling City two days ago, but it was not easy to fight.

The main reason is that Li Pu and Gu Zhilong also wanted to preserve the strength of their own troops as much as possible in the early stage, and first made the state soldiers of Hangzhou and Xiuzhou attack Nanling City.

The soldiers of Xiuhang may not be weak in defending the city, but whether it is the soldiers and horses who directly lead the troops, or the military attachés at the grassroots level, the number of people who have participated in siege operations is very small.

At the same time, except for the simple ladder, there were no large-scale siege equipment, and there were no craftsmen who built large-scale siege equipment.

They suddenly went up as the main force of the siege, how could the siege go smoothly?

Li Pu and Gu Zhilong were anxious to make meritorious contributions again, and they were in a hurry, and the soldiers and horses of the two states gathered under the city, and they also stubbornly raised a cloud ladder to attack the city.

Although the city of Nanling is not big, it is not a high risk, the defenders in the city are only more than 5,000 people, less than half of the Nanya forbidden army, and the others are mostly county soldiers or people who have been forcibly recruited, the supply is scarce, the generals are disheartened and the morale is low, but even so, the soldiers and horses of Xiuhang and Hangzhou panicked and attacked for several days, suffered heavy casualties, and were counterattacked twice by the defenders out of the city.

If it weren't for Li Zhen leading the elite to supervise the formation nearby, and on both occasions he led a small number of elites with his personal courage to defeat the defenders who withdrew from the city, and the local soldiers and horses in the two states would have almost been defeated.

Gu Zhilong and Li Xiu saw that the morale and combat effectiveness of the local state soldiers were too poor, and ignored the opposition of Wu Zun, the assassin of Hangzhou, and Chen Fan, the assassin of Xiuzhou, and decided to dismantle the Xiuhang soldiers, select the strong and strong, and strengthen the unified command of the German army in Youguang, and then integrate the remaining old and weak soldiers into auxiliary battalion soldiers, specializing in the construction of siege equipment, the construction of trenches and walled cities, and the transportation of grain, etc., to slow down the pace of siege.

After that, they gained a firm foothold outside Nanling City.

After creating a batch of siege equipment, Li Pu and Gu Zhilong transferred the Youguang German army again, and the step-by-step detachments took turns to attack the city, little by little to wear out the defenders' will to fight, and only two days before the fall of Chizhou City, they were able to completely annihilate the Nanling defenders and take Nanling City at a relatively small cost.

This battle seems to have a lot of casualties, but it is mainly concentrated in the local soldiers and horses of Xiuzhou and Hangzhou, and after absorbing the strength of the soldiers of Hangzhou and Xiuzhou, the generals have been tempered in the siege war, and the combat power has been quite enhanced - this is also the key reason why Li Pu stood in front of the city gate tower with high spirits at this time.

In the face of Li Pu and Gu Zhilong's calculations, although the officials of Xiuhang and Hangzhou were unhappy, they saw that the dawn of the final victory was just around the corner, and when the time came, they would be indispensable to be crowned officials and knights, and they would not care about the damage of the distressed local children.

(End of chapter)