When the sky seemed to be bright, a huge explosion sounded again in all directions of Tongzhou City. A single thousands to more than 10,000 catties of black powder may not be able to effectively blow up the outer and inner slopes of the capital, but the city walls and the small and many dirt slopes in the Tongzhou area are enough to blow up the passage of more than 20 zhang, and many earth and stone fragments falling from the sky have brought thousands of casualties to the defenders in the city. When the morning light in the sky began to make everything clear, more than forty Hongyi cannons prepared unfolded a direct shot in the direction of the center along the direction of the gap.

Unlike the capital, which has many sturdy and large buildings, the earthen walls of many ordinary houses in Tongzhou can even cause the collapse of many houses with a solid shell that can be effectively hit. In the past few months, the two brigades of the Teaching Brigade, the Guards Battalion and the Brave Guard Battalion, as well as the newly established reserve volunteer companies of other militia units, also launched a surprise attack at this time, and soon the opponents in the city who still had strong forces but had not yet reacted were caught in street battles and fortification battles.

The attack on Tongzhou does not seem to be very ingenious in terms of operational arrangement, and the attacking side can break through the city defense in a day or so or so or more by using the squandering of artillery and gunpowder, and even the full investment of elites from all walks of life. In order to speed up the progress as much as possible, the casualties and losses of the troops and the consumption of explosives and shells were much higher than expected.

Especially after the city was broken, under Xiao Xuan's request, he did not accept sporadic surrenders and battlefield surrenders, and even accepted the large-scale organized surrender that was agreed upon, which brought a lot of unnecessary battles.

However, in Xiao Xuan's opinion, the purpose of this battle of Tongzhou was obviously not to destroy the enemy or capture the city, or how many materials to seize as before. Instead, through battlefield tests and tempering under the condition of being prepared, a group of officers and men who are not only qualified in their daily behavior but also have outstanding combat psychological qualities will be selected from various units. Judging from some previous experience, such people are almost rare in this era when modern consciousness is not yet popular, but the elite main force with a scale of tens of thousands has also selected about 200 young officers and soldiers with outstanding performance from among them through an effective military intelligence organization system to supplement the volunteer regiment that has just been established, and replaced some of the reserve personnel of the volunteer regiment who did not perform very well, so that the volunteer regiment, which had originally appeared to be a little vain and watery with the expansion of the seeds of revolution, became more sophisticated.

Of course, Xiao Xuan at this time also realized a problem: when the environment of the times is different, it is impossible for everyone to have a high consciousness, and the way to maintain the military force comparable to the main force of revolutionary field warfare by tapping volunteers and nutrients from his own team seems to have reached a threshold, if there is a lack of effective supply of revolutionary high-quality soldiers, and after two or three major wars, at most 100,000 decent opponents will be eliminated, and the military strength may be depleted again, which is not what Xiao Xuan is willing to see.

According to Xiao Xuan's estimates, if all forces in the east at this time are fully mobilized and sincerely united, at least a decent force with a cumulative scale of about one million can still be armed. After all, in this era, the advent of firearms and gunpowder has greatly reduced the risk and cost of maintaining force, and even if the auxiliary forces solve about half of the opponents, they still need at least brigade-sized volunteer brigades that can be replenished with troops to ensure steady expansion and defeat the opponent step by step. In this way, opening up new sources of outstanding revolutionary troops has become a top priority and a basic goal after the capture of Tongzhou.

"What is the consumption of gunpowder and even the capture of various units in this battle?" Xiao Xuan asked Zhou Dayong and the others beside him.

"The gunpowder consumed in the first battle of Tongzhou can be more than 200,000 catties, which is still more than the 140,000 catties captured in Tongzhou. In the night battle, the explosion attack and defense, and then the fierce artillery battle day and night, both the enemy and the enemy consumed a lot of gunpowder. However, there are still some gains in the decent armor, and the total number of about 3,000 is still relatively decent armor. In addition to the captured and original ones captured in the previous battle of the capital, the volunteer troops, the teaching brigade, the guard battalion and the brave guard battalion can still be considered to be able to wear most of the armor. ”

Hearing this, Xiao Xuan also felt that the entire team still had the conditions to conduct a major battle based on firepower, after all, the counteroffensive of the Beijing City Volunteer Battalion also allowed the entire army to capture a lot of gunpowder, ammunition and materials of the besieging enemy, not to mention that the combat over the past year has also made the militia team of more than 100,000 armed not as fragile as before.

In this way, after breaking through Tongzhou with lightning speed, Xiao Xuan led the army to attack again in the direction of Shandong from the overland route along the direction of the canal that had not yet been navigable. At the same time, tens of thousands of militia units, which had been reorganized as military units, launched an attack on the entire Beizhili.

All of a sudden, the defenders of the capital, who had just repelled the siege just a few months ago, seemed to have launched an all-out counteroffensive, moving south in multiple directions like Mount Tai pressing the top.

Sun Chengzong had expected that Tongzhou would not be able to hold for a long time under the opponent's counterattack, and he did not think that the defenders might be easily defeated in the face of the opponent's explosive attack at all costs. However, it is still too unbelievable that a city densely defended by 100,000 defenders can be completely annihilated by the attacking side in a day and night.

In the face of the rapidly deteriorating battle situation, Sun Chengzong was also hesitating whether he should go all out to face the battle in the area from Dongchang to Linqing. Yuan Keli advocated defending Shandong, because the potential of the militia and volunteer battalions in the capital with Shandong people as the core was daunting, and once the whole of Shandong fell again, the power of Emperor Chongzhen was likely to be overwhelming. Therefore, Yuan Keli felt that even at the cost of the main force of 100,000 troops in Dongchang to Linqing again, it was necessary to weaken the power of those strong enemies as much as possible.

However, Mao Wenlong did not agree with the view of fighting a decisive battle with a strong enemy in the limelight in Shandong: "That tyrant must not be reasonable, and the strength of the whole training in the past few months is likely to have increased greatly." If they were not completely sure, they would not dare to attack so quickly with the main force. At present, when our army is in a top priority, taking advantage of the fact that the strong enemy does not have too many decent cavalry, we should lead the main force of the army to retreat to Yangzhou as soon as possible, contact all forces to resist the enemy together, and at the same time create conditions for expanding and reorganizing the ranks according to the new method. The imperial court can no longer hesitate any longer, and must boldly delegate power to change things to obey power, and allow all localities to train and raise troops."

(End of chapter)