Winter is not far off at the beginning of October. By early morning, the ground was already covered with hoarfrost, but the ground had not yet frozen. As soon as the Qing army arrived, they began to dig trenches and dig from the ground towards Niuzhuang Fort. The Qing army adopted the method of working in shifts, organizing the coats into several groups and taking turns to play, non-stop for twelve hours. In just one day, it approached more than 300 meters from outside the artillery range to the first trench of Niuzhuang Fort. In this way, in two days at most, the trench can approach the first trench of Niuzhuang Fort and launch an assault on the first earthen wall behind the trench.

In the midst of this, the model army defending the city also used artillery to fire at the Qing army in the tunnel. Some of the shells actually went into the trenches. And because the trenches dug by the Qing army pointed straight to Niuzhuang Fort, the solid shells that entered the trenches could often hit a large line of people along the bouncing guys. The most powerful shell actually killed more than 30 coats in one guy. All in all, on this day, the artillery of the Model Army killed at least two or three hundred people.

Although the Qing army did not care too much about the death of the clothed slave. Because of the lack of food, the Manchus were almost doomed to face a famine this winter. A large number of clothed slaves are destined not to survive this winter. Bringing so many coats this time originally contained the meaning of consuming them on the battlefield while they were not starving to death. But casualties like this still made the Manchu commanders frown, after all, if these clothed slaves could die in the back and hit the earthen wall, then their deaths would naturally be more valuable.

Therefore, the Qing army immediately changed their strategy, and they changed the route of the excavation, so that the direction of the excavation was no longer directly facing Niuzhuang Fort, so as to avoid the shells from entering the trench and knocking down a large platoon of people in one go. If I were willing to dig a zigzag trench every few meters, I wouldn't be able to kill a few people, even if a shell came in. This kind of plan was indeed proposed, but this plan was rejected by Huang Taiji without hesitation because it would greatly extend the construction time. Huang Taiji stipulated that he had to dig 100 steps to change direction, and the angle of deviation should not be too large.

This allows solid shells to still cause some casualties after entering the trench, but these shells can't bounce all the way through.

At most, it can bounce between the two walls of the trench once or twice, and the lethality is much lower.

By the time of the third day, the trenches dug by the Qing army were less than 100 steps away from the trenches of the model army. Because it is the first half of the moon, by this time, the moon has already set. However, the trenches of the Qing army were still very busy. The Qing soldiers lit the torches and took advantage of the night to dig hard.

Zhang Erliang panted and held the hoe and dug into the black soil in front of him with a hoe. A large area of black soil was dug up, and beside it, another coat was lifted with a piece of wood and threw the black soil out. Zhang Erliang has been digging for almost an hour, but he hasn't eaten enough before, and his hands and feet are already sore at this time. But he didn't dare to slow down a little, because a banner man was staring at the side with a ladder knife on his shoulder. The guy had a leather whip in his hand, and if he saw anyone slacking off, he would have a whip on his head. Sometimes, he would even drop the whip and directly pull out the ladder knife on his waist, and with one slash, he would end up with the "lazy" person. So although he was out of breath and his hands and feet were sore, Zhang Erliang didn't dare to stop at all - just a dozen steps behind him, there was a corpse, and that was because of "laziness". And the one who was "corrected on the spot" by that bannerman.

It's just that the body's reaction can't be overcome by the desire to survive alone, Zhang Erliang's movements are still getting slower and slower, and the flag ding's eyes seem to have been fixed on him. Zhang Erliang was in a hurry, and slammed the hoe, but he didn't want to lose his breath, and his feet were weak, and he fell to the ground. Zhang Erliang wanted to get up, but his hands and feet were weak but he couldn't struggle. I just watched the flag man throw the leather whip in his hand to the ground, went to his waist and pulled out the cold and shining cloud ladder knife, and strode towards him.

Zhang Erliang knew that death was just around the corner, but he couldn't afford to struggle, seeing that the flag man raised the ladder knife high with a cruel smile, and was about to scream, but suddenly heard a loud "bang", and saw that the flag Ding's smile froze all of a sudden, and at the same time a blood arrow shot out of his chest, and then he opened his mouth, as if he wanted to shout something, but a mouthful of blood came out of his mouth, and then he shook and fell to the ground.

At the same time, on all sides

Fangdu rang out the sound of "bang", "bang", "bang". The gunshots rang out in one piece, forming a thick cloud of sound. Zhang Erliang fell to the ground, still unable to stand up, but he could see that the people around him were scattering and fleeing. Pine torches or something, thrown to the ground. Then he saw several pairs of leather boots jump from the edge of the trench and land heavily in front of him......

Taking advantage of the darkness after the moon went down, the Model Army launched a night attack. Because of the large amount of seafood they eat, the soldiers of the Model Army have always had good eyesight at night, unlike many people of this era, who generally have varying degrees of night blindness. Of course, the soldiers of the Eight Banners did not have such a problem, but most of the clothed slaves were night blind. And the people who dug the trenches at the front were all those clothed slaves, and there were not many soldiers in the Qing army. Now that they were attacked, the clothed slaves suddenly became a mess, and these chaotic headless fly-like coatings led to the chaos of the Qing soldiers. It was difficult for them to organize against the model army that came out to attack at night.

On the other hand, the Model Army also attached much more importance to night warfare than the average army of this era. For the average army of this era, the darkness can almost easily destroy their already low level of organization. Therefore, night battles are also an effective means for highly organized troops to beat an army with insufficient organization.

In order to enhance its ability to fight at night, the Model Army has also set up a combat engineer unit for close combat and night combat, which is equipped with weapons specially prepared for night combat, such as double-barreled shotguns, luminous palm mines, and other specialized weapons. At night, both sides need to get very close to effectively detect each other, at this time, the double-barreled shotgun that can fire two shots in a row, each shotgun can cover a large area, with a high hit rate, high lethality, and high reaction speed, a guy has become an artifact in night combat. The Qing army, which had never seen such a way of fighting, collapsed under such an attack and became a mess.

By daybreak, the model army had withdrawn, and the Qing army began to count its losses. On this night, the Qing army lost more than 800 coats and killed more than 100 Eight Banner soldiers, although this loss was not too large, but it was a real blow to morale.