Seeing that the casualties were not large, Xiao Xuan ordered the density of troops to be moderately increased, and the speed of ascending the city was as fast as possible. The officers and soldiers of individual volunteer infantry regiments also began to shake at this time, Xiao Xuan couldn't help but shake his head, and directly used the telescope to record the number numbers behind the officers and soldiers who would be afraid and shaken when observing under such a situation where the risk of attrition and casualties was not great. Of course, this is all done without the knowledge of the attacking team itself.

Supported by the heavy fire from inside the city, the enemy troops at the head of the city, a certain distance from the southwest corner, also began to counterattack at this time, but then firearms and crossbows from other directions continued to attack from the flanks and rear.

Compared with the city head that stretches for dozens of miles, and at least one side of which there is a large city of several miles to ten miles, the disadvantages of a small city like Tongzhou, which is slightly larger than the county seat, in the defense of the new era are also fully reflected, that is, because the city head is not too long, it may encounter a pincer attack in all directions.

In the Southern Song Dynasty, the effective projectile distance of the bow and crossbow was only about 200 paces, so it was not easy to defend the county town of less than one mile when facing the attack of the regular army. However, at this moment, when a firearm armed with a relatively low level of technology but a relatively reasonable and perfect level of firearms can effectively eject a relatively heavy projectile, the effective killing distance in the face of large-scale targets can reach a distance of at least about one and a half miles. At a distance of about two miles, it is not without the possibility of threat. In this way, the defenders in Tongzhou City, who looked quite small, fell into the dilemma of being attacked from all sides. If it weren't for the lessons learned from the offensive and defensive battles of Beijing over the past few months, the defenders in the city did not place too many troops naked near the city walls, and perhaps they would have suffered heavy casualties in the preparation of sudden firepower.

In order to guard against possible dangers, the volunteer infantry regiment launched an attack in as scattered formation as possible throughout the city, and from time to time had to engage in fierce hand-to-hand combat with the enemy troops on the city, and even encountered the elite defenders who were hidden. After some previous battles, Cao Wenzhao also seemed to understand that the biggest shortcoming of this new army was that the hand-to-hand combat training did not seem to be from a professional martial artist, and most of them relied on firearms to maintain combat capability, so he was ready to deal with it.

However, this time, when the armored soldiers of the Ming army armed with swords, shields and short spears appeared again and launched a surprise attack at a very close distance, although they suffered a lot of casualties and finally fell into melee hand-to-hand combat, they suddenly found that in just two months, those legendary firearms elite soldiers who did not have much martial arts foundation at all used iron-clad short spears or spears with sharp steel blades to fight, although there were no too fancy doorways. But from footwork to the mastery of the sense of distance, and even the cooperation between each other, it is not at all like an ordinary person who has no martial arts foundation or even a beginner in martial arts. In the face of the counterattack of the elite soldiers of the Ming army at the head of the city, although they were suppressed at the beginning and retreated frequently, they soon seemed to adapt to it.

What the opponents of this era do not know is that the training method of constantly summarizing the confrontational training with protective gear and the collaborative confrontational training in small groups clearly surpasses the efficiency of the general training methods of traditional martial arts in this era. Although two months of at least a few hundred hours of special stabbing training does not make every fighter a professional trainer, with the bonus of courage, it is no longer as easy to fall into disadvantage in front of real masters as before.

Seeing that the recruits of the volunteer battalion at the front were able to pass the test of hand-to-hand combat, the members of the Datong Society, who were responsible for managing and supervising the war, suddenly came in at this time and threw themselves into the battle with double-barreled flintlock pistols loaded with projectiles and also bayonets.

The explosion of a heavy light grenade mixed with the sound of guns firing at a distance of bayonets barely a man was finally turned the tide of the battle to a great extent, and the elite counterattack of the enemy, which had just seemed to be able to pose a slight threat to the officers and men of the Volunteer Infantry Regiment in hand-to-hand combat, was thwarted.

It seems that the defenders organizing such a decisive counterattack with elite forces cannot be sustained on a large scale, nor can it be carried out often. After all, those enemy troops that do not have ideological support, even if a few people are well-trained, may not have the ability to fight to the death.

The battle on the entire city head was carried out step by step, and when it was close to dusk, when Xiao Xuan ordered an attack in all directions, he quickly captured the entire city head.

As night fell, a violent explosion like rolling thunder rang out in the city, as if a powder magazine had exploded. However, Xiao Xuan believes that everything may not be so coincidental. Sure enough, in the aftermath, the bricks and stones that had been prepared in the night sky fell like hail on a vast area that stretched for nine miles and was two hundred paces deep. The defenders of the city then quickly launched a counterattack, and it seemed that they quickly recaptured the city and the subsequent breakthrough.

But what the defenders didn't expect was that the counterattack also came soon after the blasting counterattack of the defenders in the city. For many nights before, the demolition attacks that had been prepared from a distance of 200 paces to a mile or so outside the city had caused the defenders at the head of the city to suffer even greater casualties. In the face of the offensive launched again after the blasting, the entire city of Tongzhou City was easily regained again.

Unlike the people of this era, Xiao Xuan's understanding of the combination of projectile firepower and combat arms is obviously stronger. When you have reliable infantry with superior strength as support, and at the same time have fire support. The requirement for the density of troops can be appropriately sparse compared to normal infantry combat to reduce unnecessary casualties. Even, where the density of fire support is relatively high, the offensive force can be thinner. Therefore, although the attacking team also suffered a lot of casualties in the blasting offensive and defensive battles that came at night, the casualty rate of the volunteer regiment and even the team composed of various teaching brigades with relatively concentrated combat effectiveness was much smaller than that of the enemy or the militia team.

The strength and materiel of the defenders were not small, and Cao Wenzhao launched several rounds of demolition attacks and defenses with the attacking troops outside the city throughout the night, but at least two or more counterattacks were missed, and when the dawn came again and he was not able to take many heads. Even some of Cao Wenzhao's generals seemed to feel the smell of defeat.

(End of chapter)