The next day, the Ming army outside the city also learned some methods of the team led by Xiao Xuan in the past, erected poles with a height of more than 100 feet on the breakthrough temporarily erected outside the city, and let the very few young children who were not too heavy, and selected a few smart and brave children crossed the city wall with binoculars and observed the movements in the city at a height of more than ten zhang.

The two consecutive nights of shelling obviously did not make Zhu Changying very satisfied.

"It was originally expected that the attack of hundreds of thousands of shells in two nights would definitely cause the soldiers and civilians inside to suffer casualties and losses of at least 30% just under the shelling, and their morale would plummet, why does it seem that the people in the city are still so energetic, as if they are digging something?" A Praetorian Guard officer who was in charge of observing the movements in the city said with some confusion.

Zhu Changying, of course, was not stupid, and soon realized that it was likely that some of the cellars or similar fortifications of the night defenders were strong enough to resist shells, and not as fragile as he thought. Therefore, he did not hesitate to order: "It seems that it is really a mistake to launch an artillery bombardment at night!" Let's start this shelling during the day! After nightfall, there is no need to follow the standard of the maximum range charge, you can push the artillery team closer, launch side fire near the enemy city, and focus on suppressing the inner wall of the enemy city within the depth of 100 steps! ”

The rumbling of artillery rang out again, and this time the Ming army outside the city launched a fierce artillery bombardment just after dawn. During the day, the casualty rate is much lower than at night, as the trajectory of many shells seems to be able to be effectively evaded. However, soon the Ming army outside the city also began to react, firing as much as possible when firing, and took the initiative to bombard the roughly unknown with artillery fire. Every few minutes, thousands of heavy bombs will be concentrated in an area, people have no way to avoid it, and many people just barely dodge the falling bullet points, but are killed by the unstoppable ricochet. The fortification work carried out during the day was also largely hampered.

However, this time, Zhang Fan decided that there was still some gain under pressure, that is, in the face of such an artillery threat, some people who were not afraid of casualties and were willing to take the initiative to work stood out at this time, and it seemed that they could achieve the selection effect that can only be achieved on a certain battlefield under the relatively low risk of casualties and losses. At the same time, because the militia has established an effective monitoring and organizational system, those who have performed well have been selected quickly. Although the casualties and losses are still not light, they are much better than at the beginning.

On the fifth day, it seemed that he began to perceive that the effect of such an unprecedented artillery bombardment was not as expected, and Zhu Changying decisively issued an order to attack the city with Hongyi artillery and launch a real all-out attack.

This time, relying on sufficient firepower and material resources, the artillerymen did not adopt tactics such as side-firing suppression and cooperating with the attack, but directly concentrated 60 Hongyi cannons outside the east gate of Xuzhou to bombard the city gate at a distance of about one mile, and used hundreds of general cannons to fire fiercely with shotguns to cover the cover. In just two hours, thousands of shells bombarded, and the east gate of Xuzhou, which was not very strong, was completely collapsed, and like the inner wall and the soil slope, it quickly formed a passage at least ten zhang wide, and it could be directly climbed on foot to attack.

Under the cover of fierce arrows, hoplites with well-made iron-clad shields in front and firearms behind, at least tens of thousands of selected Ming troops launched a fierce attack during the day with a long column under the cover of the gaps in the artillery. Fierce fighting also broke out on the sixth day of the arrival of the army.

At the beginning, the enemy's attack outside the city soon suffered a heavy setback under the resistance of the Ninth Army of the Revolutionary Army, especially after the various positions of the entire Xuzhou City were carefully calibrated and different firearms fired from different positions were formulated, and the defenders could concentrate at least half of the firearms in the city to hit targets within a range by projectile or direct fire. Moreover, after more than a year of army building, the quality of training of the newly built army is not as bad as it was during the offensive and defensive battles of Beijing.

Although the Ming army outside the city relied on artillery fire at any cost, and the losses of the attacking side were not too disparity, only three times that of the defenders, such a price still seemed unacceptable to the attacking side.

However, after all, the strength of the defenders was only one-sixth of that of the attacking side, and in addition, on the first day of the confrontation, there were thousands of dead and wounded, and two or three thousand were killed and wounded.

In this way, while greatly reducing the loss rate of the defenders, more and more excellent teams and excellent soldiers will stand out through the method of selecting soldiers for battle. All this is also due to Xiao Xuan's "decentralization" before leaving

After careful consideration, Xiao Xuan did not prohibit other people in the team from spontaneously establishing the organization system of the Romans Society in addition to himself as the protagonist.

Obviously, if the organizational system of the Datong Society was not based on common ideals and ideology, but on relationships and personal dependence, it would not have been able to play an obvious and effective role in actual combat. Therefore, the expansion of the organization only requires the review of the original organization's superiors, and does not require the screening of the top level that Xiao Xuan is responsible for.

Under Zhang Fan's organization, with more than 100 members of the Datong Society as the core and a 500-person volunteer battalion as the core, the skeleton of the Xuzhou Revolutionary Army Volunteer Regiment was quickly established, and it had to be expanded into the Second Division of the Volunteer Army in the face of serious battlefield pressure.

At the beginning, because of excessive expansion, just like the Soviet Red Army in the early days of the Soviet Union, in terms of combat performance at the most basic level, this team did not seem to have a significant advantage in combat effectiveness and casualty ratio compared with other units, or even enemy troops outside the city. However, the superiority in command and initiative, and even the ability to bear casualties and losses, immediately reversed the situation in which the defenders were overstretched after suffering a lot of casualties.

"Is the original message really accurate? Is it true that the defenders are less than 20,000 men at most? How is it that after many days of attrition, it seems that the defenders in the city still show no obvious signs of attrition, and there are still sufficient troops everywhere? Zhu Changying also felt strange, the fierce battle lasted five days after the real attack began, and the attacking army alone had thousands of dead and more than 15,000 losses, which had largely reached a limit that the besieging army could encounter without affecting morale.

It's just that in the fierce battle, the defending side will inevitably have people captured in the battle, and when the news that the volunteer division did not leave Xuzhou came, Zhu Changying also began to realize that this attack was likely to fail to achieve the original goal.

(End of chapter)