As the explosions and smoke cleared, hand-to-hand melee combat began, shouts of killing on a multi-mile battle front, and it didn't seem like a one-sided battle, but more like a fierce battle.

Perhaps it was because in the previous battles, it was rare to face the melee attack of the Ming army's spears, and faced more confrontation methods such as vehicle formations or long-range troops, so the equipment system of the Manchurian Army was more melee hand-to-hand weapons under complex conditions such as short spears and even knives that were conducive to skirmishers. In terms of length, it is not superior to the elite of the volunteer division and the teaching brigade, which mainly have long bayonets and metal short spears, and it also has a great advantage in lightness.

In addition, hand-to-hand combat was originally what the main force of Jianzhou was good at, and it had a lot of decent elites, so at the beginning, many officers and soldiers of the teaching brigade and volunteer division were stabbed or speared in hand-to-hand combat, and they were hit in many places.

However, then it was discovered that in the confrontational armoured hand-to-hand combat, even if the traditional short spear or sword and other weapons could occasionally hit the opponent's body and limbs, only a few masters with great martial arts advantages could break the defense solidly.

However, there were still enough soldiers for more than two years, and the main force led by Xiao Xuan also had many officers and soldiers who could effectively use strong bows, not to mention equipment such as grenades and guns that fired at close range.

On most fronts, the battle situation was at a stalemate because of the Che Shield of the Jianzhou Army, and even in hand-to-hand combat, most of the officers and men of the Volunteer Division and the former Teaching Brigade were still at a clear disadvantage. After all, in the recent rapid expansion of the army, when the size of the volunteer division was expanded to several thousand people, the quality seemed to have dropped significantly, and not all officers and men who participated in the fierce and vicious battle for the first time had the same consciousness as the first battalion of the first volunteer regiment in the past. However, at this time, the superiority in combat effectiveness of the vanguard of the 1st Regiment of the Volunteer Division, which was concentrated and equipped with double-barreled bayonet flintlock pistols, was clearly demonstrated.

Although there are also many threats in the Jianzhou army hand-to-hand combat and even archery masters, but these people are often scattered, under the battlefield as a drill of the first regiment of the volunteer division continued to approach and fire mixed with bayonet charges, the Jianzhou army front that looked thicker and also had a car shield barrier gradually showed a state of collapse.

Under the coordinated attack of skillful grenades, guns, and bayonets, the officers and men of Jianzhou, who were close to the car shield in the direction of the first regiment of the volunteer division, were soon forced to move out of ten paces. Under the special blasting attack, the formation of the entire car formation disintegrated more and more. At this time, the rapid and continuous offensive began to unfold in the direction of the 1st Regiment of the Volunteer Division.

In the bloody street battles of the capital attack and defense before, the officers and soldiers of the First Volunteer Regiment seemed to face a threat far greater than those Jianzhou troops who were not good at combining artillery and hand-to-hand combat. Under the blow of the bayonet attack that can skillfully and continuously play the firearms loaded in the back in front of them, and cooperate with the bayonet attack that can be fired at any time. It seems that the tough front of the Jianzhou Army is gradually broken.

The horizontal formation gradually turned into an arrow along the direction of the first regiment's attack, and in the rapid attack, the traditional formation battle in the ancient sense gradually turned into a skirmish and a relatively chaotic battle.

It should be said that in the previous battle, the casualty losses of the team led by Xiao Xuan were still significantly greater than those of the Jianzhou army, and at least nearly 2,000 of the more than 10,000 troops fell in the previous fierce confrontation, at most only causing about 1,000 casualties to the Jianzhou army. However, after the authorities changed to the chaotic combat and hand-to-hand combat that they were better at in training, the advantages of the team led by Xiao Xuan gradually appeared. The onslaught made it seem difficult for the enemy to organize and liaise effectively on miles of front.

In the hand-to-hand combat after this brutal break, many volunteer divisions or teaching brigade units that were not very solid in quality and combat effectiveness were defeated because they could not withstand the blows of the enemy's elite troops and the unprecedented pressure of the battle formation, but the real elite losses that completed the breakthrough and attack did not seem to have reached an unacceptable level.

Obviously, in this kind of face-to-face hand-to-hand combat, chaotic combat, and close combat, people and teams with significantly weaker courage and significantly worse combat quality are more likely to suffer casualties, while significantly more elite teams are less likely to suffer casualties in battle, even if they undertake more lethal tasks.

Although there were casualties and losses of more than 2,000 officers and soldiers of the volunteer division and the former teaching brigade in the subsequent attack, the casualties and losses caused to the Jianzhou army had accumulated to nearly 10,000 people, and more importantly, most of the armored soldiers with a certain combat effectiveness were gradually eliminated in this crazy battle, and only a few reserve cavalry saw that the general trend was irretrievable, so they gradually withdrew from the battlefield.

If it was the Jianzhou Army under normal circumstances, it would never have suffered such heavy casualties in this kind of operation, but the previous Western Expedition took away most of the cavalry vests and faced defeat in the enemy's active attack, and the losses could not be serious.

The elite of the revolutionary army, which also lacked cavalry pursuit ability and sufficient troops, and suffered heavy casualties, did not let most of the opponents other than armored soldiers stay on the battlefield in the end, and only occupied the original range of the enemy's military formation in the end, and the formation was already very scattered. Because the remaining Jianzhou army still seemed to maintain a superiority of several times in numbers, at least in terms of numbers, Xiao Xuan was also worried about encountering dangers and accidents, so he had to regather his team.

The survivor effect made the surviving team not feel that the previous battle losses had reached a rather dangerous point, but when he reassembled the team, Xiao Xuan found that there were less than 6,000 people left in the more than 10,000 people who participated in the battle, and nearly half of them were lost on the battlefield. Moreover, there were not too many wounded under this face-to-face hand-to-hand combat, and the number of dead and missing in battle alone was almost close to the scale of about 4,000.

On the surface, this seemed to be a pyrrhic victory, but when the enemy army had to finally withdraw from the battlefield and the entire battlefield was finally counted, Xiao Xuan's heart was completely relaxed. The First Regiment of the Volunteer Division, which had the largest battle record, suffered casualties and losses of more than 200 people, but it did not reach the point of losing its vitality, at least more than 8,000 pieces of armor that were intact or could be repaired at a small cost were left on the battlefield along with the corpses, and a lot of medium and heavy artillery and even other equipment were captured, which was at least enough to arm another 20,000 decent troops.

(End of chapter)