At this time, the permanent sage of the Dongchang prefect was a rare "martial arts transfer" who was born in the military and was born as a jinshi, so he was still a little familiar with military affairs and even civil affairs. He also served as the prefect of Dongchang Mansion for a period of time, so he knew a little about the garrison from Linqing to Dongchang at this time.

But because of this, Chang Renxian still has a lot of confidence in the precautions in the Linqing area, because he knows that it is the henchmen of many big families, and at the same time, there is no shortage of money. Even if the thieves with a strength of more than 10,000 people are strong, they will not want to attack even a city like Linqing without many decent Western heavy artillery. The Ming Dynasty was different from other dynasties, and the huge mobilization power from Hongwu to Yongle and the improvement of the technical conditions of the Yuan Dynasty made many prefectures and counties across the country build very strong brick-clad city walls. In addition, the use of firearms and artillery is becoming more and more widespread. In the past, those siege methods that seemed to be quite reliable, such as building cars, ladders, mounds of earth, etc., are facing more and more challenges. It can be said that it is more and more conducive to defense,

However, when the news came that Linqing, which was heavily armed with tens of thousands of powerful people, was broken almost overnight, or even in the middle of the night and a day, many local big households, including Chang Renxian, were a little unable to sit still. Many people who are still smart choose to flee out of the city in the first place to protect themselves.

But they didn't expect that when some big families in Dongchang Mansion felt the wind and some troops, just packed their bags and prepared to run away lightly, more than 1,000 cavalry troops led by Gao Jie and others took the lead in rushing to the periphery of Dongchang, and surrounded and captured many people who had just planned to escape from the city with cavalry shooting.

Dongchang Mansion, as an important capital along the canal, also had about 2,000 regular Ming troops stationed at this time, and the temporarily mobilized garrison force in the case of early preparation was as many as 40,000 or 50,000 people. Seeing that there were not many thieves coming, many of the Ming troops in the city also had the intention of going out of the city to meet the battle and make contributions, but when they saw that more and more people and horses were gathered in the distance, even if there were not more than 10,000 people, there were thousands of people, they still gave up this thought.

This is also a summary of the experience of the team led by Li Zicheng after the practice of mobile warfare in the past few months: Torture and digging up land and wealth is a matter that will delay a certain amount of time. And if it's too hasty, there must be a lot of omissions. Because even if it is a large family, the head of the family or the head of the family may not be able to know the whereabouts of all the people's private wealth and land. However, as long as people can't run, most of the money of land wealth can't run after all. Regardless of men, women, old and young, the family members of every rich family are almost equivalent to "moving silver taels", and the most important thing is to obtain and capture these people as quickly as possible, which has become a common sense of the team led by Li Zicheng at this time.

In pursuit of arrogant interests, the offensive against Dongchang still did not drag on. During the day, under the constant artillery fire and even the threat of firearms from the defenders, the large army, which was not too large in number, pretended to be weak and did not seem to dare to attack the city.

However, at night, the tactics copied in the Battle of Linqing, and the rapid assault was quickly launched near dawn. Because if the attack is carried out in the evening, I am afraid that many people who get the news of the loss of the city defense will flee. At this time, Li Zicheng's troops, which were only more than 10,000 troops, did not have enough troops to besiege a city as large as Dongchang. Therefore, only a quick solution can be adopted.

Chang Renxian's actual combat experience is not rich, and many of his officers and even the temporarily mobilized heroes have not seen the archers with excellent archery skills to concentrate on the direction of the city head with rockets to carry out the tactics of side firing suppression, and soon the more and more skilled in the siege process of the army to capture the city, and under the pressure of thousands of firearms that take turns to fill and concentrate on shooting tactics, they were occupied at least two miles of the city, but Dongchang City is not the Linqing with a circumference of only a dozen miles at the head of the city. Although thousands of soldiers were lost in the initial rout, the momentum of the rout was gradually curbed by the fact that many regular Ming troops were overwhelmed by artillery.

At this time, Li Zicheng and even Gao Jie and others did not hesitate at all, and when the sky was dark and not completely brightened, they launched a melee raid on the city with armored soldiers carrying sketches prepared in advance and carrying many beggars who knew the local situation, and rushed directly into the city with more than 1,000 elite soldiers bypassing the defense line at the head of the city.

The reason, of course, is that in the case of insufficient troops, it is very difficult to control the entire Dongchang City. But this time, the goal of the battle is very obvious: it is to control many "meat tickets" in the city, the territory is not important, and talent is the most important.

For the first time since the Battle of Fuping, a fierce battle that was decent and began to suffer many casualties soon began at this time. The entire team of about 10,000 people only stayed at the head of the city about 1,000 people, used to guard the key prisoners, and left more than 1,000 people on the outside of the city wall to prepare for the pursuit of those who might flee out of the city at any time after dawn, and the main force of 7,000 or 8,000 people began to bypass the defense line of the city head and launched a surprise attack and street fighting on many courtyards in the city. As the sky began to lighten, the confrontation became more and more intense.

If the entire Dongchang Mansion has been surrounded at this time, and many people in the city have no way to retreat, Li Zicheng's department, which is a slightly stronger level of combat effectiveness, will have to pay more than 1,000 casualties and losses if they want to eat the backbone of many powerful families in the city, not to mention the casualties, and this must be the case that the backbone leader is also serious about fighting. But after dawn, many people saw that this was not only not a "siege of three queyi" and even the siege of Dongchang Mansion, many defenders also responded passively at this time, and more powerful family backbones chose to flee as much as possible, but in a hurry, although many family owners fled out of the city with core family members and henchmen, many family members who stayed in the city did not have time to take them away.

In this way, when the defenders of the entire Dongchang Mansion lost their will to resist, there were still fierce confrontations in many places in the city during the day, but when the night came again, even Ding Zhuang and the defenders who were watching from the city began to flee.

Another day passed, when the sporadic resistance in the city was also solved one by one by concentrated forces, and thousands of "meat tickets" were captured in the entire Dongchang Mansion, coercion and torture began at this time. At the same time, in order to make up for the problems caused by the shortage of manpower in the past, the entire contingent of Li Zicheng's department has also redeveloped to a scale of about 20,000 or 30,000 people after adding a lot of newly recruited troops.

Almost as soon as the news of Li Zicheng's subordinate's capture of Dongchang Mansion reached the territory of Beizhili, the men and horses led by Xiao Xuan, who had been grinding before, also began to march towards the target at a normal marching speed.

(End of chapter)