Although Yang Wenyue is a military attache who knows the soldiers, perhaps because he used to command a decent army, at least because he was a decent family, Ding Haoqiang, he is still somewhat inexperienced in commanding tens of thousands of temporary rabble. In other words, it can be said that since ancient times, there have been many examples of winning more with less, but the examples of defeating strong soldiers with weak troops, or even defeating strong soldiers with superior numbers, are even more difficult to find in the era of cold weapons or semi-cold weapons than "winning more with less".

Just the local front was broken by the intrusive army that concentrated elite forces, which triggered a domino-like linkage effect, and the army of tens of thousands of people collapsed with only a few hundred casualties. In the past, when encountering this situation, Li Zicheng's subordinates often hoped to capture the opponent as much as possible to see if there was a reliable source of troops, but although this group of militia clusters with a large number and decent equipment easily collapsed and defeated, and even the increasingly thick family foundation of the entire team made Li Zicheng and most of his subordinates have no mind to capture the opponent by leading the leading officers, obviously: in this case, it is most meaningful to exercise the confidence and courage of the entire team by chasing and killing the head hunter.

With the rout, more than 10,000 troops quickly attacked the city of Linqing, an important town along the canal. However, the outpost rangers suffered casualties of more than a dozen people in a small battle, which also began to alert Li Guo, Gao Jie and others, especially when they heard the people in charge of the outpost recall that they had encountered many masters.

In fact, Gao Yingxiang, who is well-informed and has some brains, is not surprised by this, and when the army launched a siege and assembly under the city, he said to Li Zicheng: "The fat sheep we encountered before are probably the strength of the big families in Shandong to temporarily cope with errands. Of course, the real elite will be used to defend their own homes, and there will not be many backbones transferred out... There is a way to live in the wilderness in a big chaos and a small chaos in the city. Although today's army is not small in the eyes of those big families, it is not a force that swept the world like the Yellow Turban Thieves or the Yellow Nest back then. According to the investigation of our army's outpost, many powerful people in the northwest of Shandong Province had let many of their cronies flee to the area from Linqing City to Dongchang Mansion before our arrival. It's just that if you want to take down those big families, Dongchang and Linqing, where the elite gather, I'm afraid I'm going to suffer a lot of losses... ”

It is not without reason that Gao Yingxiang has been able to lead the peasant army to fight in the north and south for a long time in history, if you talk about martial arts and strategy, you are relatively outstanding people among the leaders of the peasant armies from all walks of life, so when you see that Linqing and even Dongchang seem to be some decent and capable, you know that this battle may not be so easy to fight.

"Jining in the south, and even Yangzhou in the south should be the place where the wealth is most concentrated, if our army turns to attack the south road, those powerful people will definitely mobilize more troops to defend Xuzhou, Jining and other places, at this time our army returns to attack Dongchang Mansion is much stronger than fighting Linqing, which looks a little hard. . . ."

Li Zicheng did not agree with Gao Yingxiang's opinion this time, and said: "Our army has never carried out a siege war in the real sense before, but there have been many preparations in this area for more than a year. Linqing and Dongchang and other places can be easily taken down, but also try to know... Li Zicheng said. The real reason may only be known to a very few people such as Li Guo: on the surface, Li Zicheng's department is a team of rogues, but in essence, they are just pawns of the Son of Heaven. If a few months ago, many people may not have had the ambition to compete for the world, especially after the team grew to tens of thousands and achieved many victories, but after the shadow of the Battle of Fuping, many people gave up this idea. At least until there is a basis to prove that their strength is enough to fight against the Son of Heaven's forbidden brigade, they are just a team that wants to act according to the Son of Heaven's intentions.

When night fell, the army, which had just reorganized its ranks and completed its rotation, immediately took advantage of the cover of night to start the siege. The reason is simple: for teams that rely heavily on bows and arrows, a strong bow at night is obviously much more advantageous. As an important town with abundant materials for a long time, the more than 10,000 powerful armed forces gathered in the Linqing generation and even the more than 30,000 strong men who were temporarily mobilized to defend the city made the city's head troops and even the city's defense equipment appear to be very abundant. In a very short time, the fire-lit grass frames and other incendiary materials thrown from the city made the entire city glow, and the gunners, shotgunners, and archers on the city also made the besieging side with limited forces look helpless. However, Li Zicheng, who has received Xiao Xuan's secret biography and has a lot of perfect summaries in actual combat, is already very different from the army in history that is not very good at using tactics. Concentrate the trained archers and use the lit rocket horn generation to launch a flank attack along the direction of the city. In the case of a lot of preparation in terms of projectile archery and ranging. The accumulation of rockets by thousands of archers quickly alarmed the defenders at the head of the city, who used planks as their main shield and protection, and the rockets were not necessarily effective in igniting the wooden shields.

Almost at the same time, following the experience of the opponents in the Battle of Fuping, the intrusive army, which also used bamboo poles and sticks to improvise the explosion of a lot of captured gunpowder to cover the siege, finally attacked the city with dozens of casualties. Subsequently, thousands of shotguns that had already been loaded with ammunition and captured before were transported to the city one after another, and then specially loaded by those who gathered under the city and could not be pressured by the battlefield environment, and soon formed an overwhelming fire superiority, breaking through one defense line after another at the head of the city, so that the defenders on the head of the city began to rout when it was close to dawn.

When the sky gradually brightened, the intrusive army that had first experienced fierce battles had already taken control of the entire city, and at this time, they also began to use the firearms temporarily captured at the city, including pine cannons or earthen cannons, to bombard many strongholds in the city from the nearest distance horizontally, and soon forced most of the people in the city to choose to flee in this desperate environment, and only a very small number of henchmen and backbones still resisted stubbornly relying on the government and some more decent houses. The reason is also very simple: because there is no way back, if the main family finishes playing, many henchmen will not have much to go to or face huge risks. Especially in this era when regions and clans are separated from each other in many places.

However, with most of the cannon fodder lost, it was difficult for the few backbones in the city to maintain a decent defensive line. After a day or so of confrontation, when night came again, all the strongholds in the city were breached.

Although this battle to break the Linqing Dynasty also suffered some casualties and resistance, it made the team's self-confidence even higher. Even Gao Yingxiang, who originally disagreed, agreed to seize the time to quickly attack in the direction of Dongchang at this time.

(End of chapter)