Although the team that temporarily retreated from outside the city during the feint attack consciously leaned at an angle to face the wall during the attack according to the requirements of coordination, trying to avoid the possible dispersion of the blasting attack, the forward seemed to be like a very blunt arrow, but the dispersion in the blasting could not be regular after all. Many shells were scattered outside the city and even among the besieging crowds.

Although many of the attacking teams that remained loosely formed during the day avoided the first blow of the rain of bullets falling from the sky, many of them were killed and wounded by ricochets and even sweeping shells. Within a two-mile radius, a contingent of about 4,000 men was either killed or wounded under the threat of shells scattered around the perimeter of the blasting attack.

However, perhaps because of their early preparations, the officers and men who had recovered from the tremendous pressure began to quickly launch a fierce attack, and almost within half a minute they rushed to the vicinity of the city wall southwest of Xiangyang, and started the battle after a round of grenades and bombs using a steel and wooden ladder with a four-legged ladder and a very strong and lightweight steel and wood ladder. The thousands of prepared firearms men in charge of cover, each carrying at least five loaded ammunition guns, hit thousands of guns with side-firing angles to the inner side of the city wall in a very short period of time, although they also caused dozens of accidental injuries, but compared with the psychological pressure brought by the previous blasting attack, it was barely acceptable.

With such a rapid blast and the coordination of the siege team, the entire city seemed to be completely silent as the attackers entered the city, and at the beginning there were hardly many people projecting resistance. When someone crossed the battlements, sporadic resistance from the few survivors and brave men began to appear on the city. However, these sporadic braves were clearly unable to stop the attacking team that had climbed to the top of the city at great speed along hundreds of quadrangular ladders, hooks, and simple ladders.

The defenders on the inner side of the city wall, which were blocked by the fierce projectiles and firepower, still had a lot of troops, and they began to react when the siege teams poured into the city, although there were not many people who dared to charge, but the bows and arrows and projectiles fired from all directions still made the officers and soldiers who climbed to the top of the city feel a lot of pressure.

However, this pressure did not last long, as a steady stream of loaded firearms were sent to the head of the city, and even many elite archers who could shoot more than one stone bow boarded the city, and the troops occupying the southwest of Xiangyang City began to consolidate with the support of firepower and shields in front.

When light artillery and more elite troops began to reinforce the city, the tide of battle on the city gradually turned around. Stepping on the corpse of the enemy, the team led by Zhou Dayong began to engage in a fierce battle with the enemy troops who were constantly reinforcing them.

If the 20,000 or so troops were to face off head-to-head with the forces in the city that were clearly superior, it might not be easy to win. However, when the previous blasting attack caused nearly 10,000 casualties and losses to the defenders, the morale of the defenders at the head of the city had already begun to be greatly affected.

What's more: although the 20,000-strong contingent did not have an order of magnitude advantage over the average quality of the defenders due to the rapid expansion of the army, the vanguard with the two volunteer regiments as the core was completely different. The superior strength of the opponent, combined with the ability to concentrate firepower on the front line and combine it with hand-to-hand combat, made it possible for the entire army to gain a foothold above the city and then counterattack extremely quickly.

Because of the lack of troops, the team of about 20,000 people could not launch a strong offensive on the periphery of the entire Xiangyang City to annihilate the opponent, but at this time, the defenders of Xiangyang had begun to gradually turn into decline and even rout in the forced retreat under great pressure. Zhu Xieyuan is not stupid, in this case, he can only try to gather the team as much as possible, and strive to get more people to escape from Xiangyang City.

The losses in battle, coupled with the defenders' escape in the hasty retreat and even trampling on each other, brought another round of losses to the peak, and when Zhu Xieyuan led the troops who had withdrawn from the city to assemble downstream along the waterway, there were only more than 20,000 defenders left from the original 70,000 or so. This battle also completely shattered Zhu Xieyuan's confidence in the entire battle situation: "After the first battle of Xiangyang, in the future, those strong enemies are likely to have no strong cities that cannot be breached, and there will be no more battles that may be lost... ”

"No, now our army still has... A general who escaped with Zhu Xieyuan did not feel that the war was on the verge of despair at this time. At least Emperor Chongzhen's real hidden danger in the north has not been solved, from the southwest to the southeast, the entire Ming court still has hundreds of thousands of troops. Moreover, fighting in the complex area south of the Yangtze River seems to be completely different from fighting in the north, so how can it be said that there is a complete loss of hope?

"Although our army still has hundreds of thousands of troops, these hundreds of thousands of troops have never been a unified whole, and the gap between the command and the elite combat effectiveness and the hundreds of thousands of main forces in the north is far from being comparable to that of the Song and Jin dynasties. Even Sichuan and Shu will be lost sooner or later. Then Zhu Xieyuan seemed to have recovered from the defeat: "What our army has to do now is to preserve as much as possible the real backbone who are truly loyal to the fight against chaos and save the country when the enemy army is in its prime." Those powerful enemies will eventually decline after there is no external threat, just like the tyrannical Qin back then, and only when those strong enemy troops are at their peak, maybe our army will have some hope... ”

Just when Zhu Xieyuan led the remnants of the Ming army to retreat south, Zhou Dayong, who had counted the captures in this battle, felt that his risky gamble was correct. The all-or-nothing blasting attack consumed most of the gunpowder and lead bullets it carried. However, lead bullets can be recovered, and the consumption of gunpowder is not too huge, including the revenue from seizures, although there is still a loss in terms of high-quality gunpowder, so it seems that as long as there is an opportunity and necessary, the use of desperate blasting attacks and effective coordination in combat without fear of loss is obviously the most effective way to improve combat efficiency.

Of course, at this time, Zhou Dayong also realized that in the case of troops approaching the Yangtze River, the biggest variable is not to overcome difficulties in land warfare, but to face the threat of water warfare, how meaningful are the means of preparation at the beginning, and whether they can effectively deal with the enemy's big ships. Only when the right to control the river in the middle reaches is truly seized will the strategy against the south become smooth sailing, and the advantages of the revolutionary army may be brought into play in a real sense.

(End of chapter)