When the opponent launched the first feint attack in the evening, Xiao Xuan did not hesitate to give the order of the outer defenders to resist with ordinary firearms. It stands to reason that firing with firearms in such a night battle not only greatly reduces the combat efficiency, but also easily exposes the target. However, after careful deduction before the battle and some of Xiao Xuan's own thoughts, he felt that even for the sake of maintaining the morale of his own army, he could not let the gunfire stop during the battle. Because if the unique sound of fire on his side stops, it is very likely that the officers and soldiers defending in the fortifications will completely lose their fighting spirit and morale, and it is uncertain whether they will come out in large numbers to surrender Xiao Xuan.

To this end, each team also issued a simple hourglass prepared before the battle, and there were more than 100 in the whole battalion. Although it is not very precise, it is stipulated that at a certain moment it must be fired. If, at a certain time, the gunfire is not heard, and the person is still alive, he will be punished as fleeing from the battle after the battle, and he will be punished with a rod or the like.

Xiao Xuan also thought very clearly about this: if this battle is won, then it is easy to say, even if half of the people are executed? One of the great virtues of Chinese culture is that it is reasonable. If you can win, you have a large degree of control over the capital and its surroundings, so why worry about the source of troops? What's more, the firepower teams that were deployed and arranged by themselves were responsible for drawing lots to select and release guns, and there were not half of the people in the battalion in total. If they can't win, then the punishment after the war will be empty words. In order to win a crucial battle, blank checks can be made within the limits of what seems reasonable and credible. Of course, the deterrence of severe punishment can be more boundless.

The continuous flashes of light and the sound of firecrackers in the night did not hit a few people at all, but they still had a good deterrent effect at the beginning. At a distance of about one hundred and fifty paces, the skirmishers of the "elites" who had launched a feint were contained. As Jiang Baili or Cai Yi and others said, the traditional Chinese army is often good at defending but not good at attacking, and the spirit of attack and melee combat are the most scarce things.

Many of the attacking teams chose to lie on the ground and stagnate when they heard the sound of guns, but in the end, more than half of the people who were selected still put their shields in front of their heads and shoulders, or squatted or lying on their stomachs and slowly moved their bodies forward.

Wang Er, as a member of a martial arts family in the capital, is quite good at shooting and even in battle, although he has never been to Liaodong to fight with Jiannu, but when he was young, he had dealt with the bandits outside the border passes and even the more and more restless Mongols outside the Great Wall in the northwest. Listening to the sound of firearms and roughly estimating the distance before nightfall, you know that even if you are hit by a projectile at this distance, as long as you don't hit the door or the heart or even your fingers, I'm afraid that even if you don't have armor on your body, it's just a swollen bag, and the dull sound can't even penetrate the flesh at a distance of a hundred paces. Therefore, unlike the others, it was still very easy to approach a distance of about fifty paces from the earthen firing port of the outer defense line of the Imperial Horse Prison. After making sure that it was darker and that he should be safe at this distance, he began to release arrows to suppress it. These arrows are clearly marked on them, and they are not afraid of being taken by merit. While firing the bow and arrows, he also tried to move the position of the shield to release the arrows.

In the dark of night, even if the flash of fire is used as a guide to the approximate position, the arrows fired are basically one in ten. However, there is not only one person like Wang Er. Among the two or three thousand men who feinted from the west, thirty advanced archers fired thousands of arrows one after another, causing at least a dozen casualties to the officers and men of the Guards Battalion who opened fire in the dark night, and the fire guns in the direction of the assault were quickly suppressed.

Before, Xiao Xuan and some children with better understanding in the guard battalion and even some people from the Imperial Horse Prison also conducted a careful deduction, and found that although the guards battalion could get a lot of advantages in artillery skills, firearms and gunpowder use and defensive advantages during the day, if it faced the night attack of hundreds of melee strong men with the cooperation of elite archers at night. The best result is to repel the opponent's attack, and not to inflict too many casualties on the opponent in the initial battle. If you are a little careless, there is a high possibility of defeat caused by the opponent's clearance, so it is stipulated that as long as one of the squads responsible for firing is wounded, they should be prepared to retreat and cover as soon as possible.

Only a few dozen of the thousands of attacking troops were shot in the assault, and only a few of them were wounded because they did not cover their heads, hands and feet with shields. This only caused a slight cringe among some of the people, and did not stop the advance of the five military battalions that participated in the night attack.

Some soldiers of relatively low status lit torches under the strong orders and shields of those around them, illuminating the direction of the attack. It was also at this time that a continuous stream of bows and arrows began to be thrown from the earthen enclosure.

Most of these bows and arrows are weak and powerless, and many of them can't even be inserted into the shield at all, which makes the officers and soldiers of the Fifth Army Battalion, who have great pressure, feel that the pressure has been reduced a lot.

"There won't be a few good practitioners in the eunuch army! Rest assured! Attack! An officer shouted in the glow of the torches. The planked ladders were connected and set up on a wall at most a foot high, and when they were erected on the wall, which was at most a foot high, they were not so steep as they were during the siege that they had to climb up. The attackers can even rush forward with only the guidance of rockets in the night when the lighting conditions are not very good. Of course, the most important thing is that in this kind of battle against the ordinary earth fence, even if you fall off the ladder board like a bridge, no one will be injured at all.

The sound of cannons rang out again and again, and of course, there were also the bows and arrows of about two or three buckets that came from nowhere. When the attacking crowd used the ladder bridge to break through the outer defense line of the Imperial Horse Prison, there were still five or six casualties under the fire of fire and even bows and arrows at night, but they finally broke through the seemingly solid outer fortification defense line.

When they saw more than one place where people broke through the perimeter of the opponent's fortifications, Wei Yingjia and others, who were in charge of the front line in charge, also roughly settled down. If the opponent is a well-trained and strong army, you may have to watch out for some ambush or something. However, a new army that has only been in force for half a month cannot muster enough men to fight at night in close combat.

Of course, many of the selected elites who broke through the outer defense line also felt a little uneasy: because apart from the sporadic arrows that were not violent and the accumulation of ordinary firearms, there were not a few figures in the process of breaking through the outer defense line. It was as if the men were opening fire in a bunker or a well-concealed fortification.

However, Wei Yingjia and the others were not unaware of this situation, and the follow-up troops carrying improvised shields formed a shield formation near the periphery one after another, containing the opponent's firearms and bows and arrows that were not very powerful, and gradually launched an attack on the entire periphery of the Imperial Horse Prison. When the entire outer defense line of the Imperial Horse Prison is completely occupied, it will rely on the superiority in numbers and the method of advancing layer by layer to deal with those opponents who are hiding in the shadows at night.

At the beginning, the officers and men of the Fifth Army Battalion, who had encountered many lessons during the day, did not dare to move forward, but when the shouts of "breaking the siege" from the front were not only the voices of a few officers, but also the voices of a large number of men and horses of the vanguard selection team, the morale of the 20,000 troops who had rested and fed in all directions under the light of torches was re-invigorated and continued to approach reinforcements.