Luo Qiongshu somewhat understood.

As the saying goes, there is no outnumber, but there is inequality, so that these Cossack soldiers in Orenburg and the soldiers of the Tsarist Guards sent by St. Petersburg are distinguished, and with different treatment, they will naturally have contradictions. And taking advantage of and expanding this contradiction will naturally make the soldiers defending Orenburg alienated, so that they will have a chance to break through Orenburg.

"Your Excellency the Governor, there are hundreds of Kazakh soldiers in Orenburg, who can also be used. By freeing those Cossack captives, the message was passed on. Ren Weiqi continued to suggest: "Of course, these are ideal situations. If it doesn't work, we can still take Orenburg by storming it, but our own losses will be a little large. ”

In this offensive, the field army led by Luo Qiongshu can be said to be fully prepared: in addition to all the infantry equipped with the latest Mauser 60 rifles, it also specially pulled half of the strength of the artillery division of the Third Field Corps, 3 field artillery regiments, 1 howitzer regiment, and also specially carried 2 rifled heavy guns, with a total artillery capacity of 182, plus a small number of artillery pieces in the infantry division, it has exceeded 200. It seems that the number of this artillery is not very large, but the key is that the caliber and model of this artillery, as well as the power of gunpowder, are completely different from the smoothbore guns of a few years ago, and even one artillery is already worth the firepower of the previous ten guns, which can be described as very powerful.

As long as there were enough shells, even a strong Orenburg, if not the entire fortress could be blown over, at least a few openings could be blown up, killing and injuring many enemy troops hiding in it. And this time, Luo Qiongshu carried a lot of shells, the reason was nothing else, it was in his plan, not only to capture Orenburg, but also to capture Yekaterinburg, a fortified city, which he needed to capture. His final plan was to occupy several checkpoint fortresses throughout the Ural Mountains, and to block all the passages of the Cossack cavalry into Siberia east of the Ural Mountains once and for all.

At this time, a team of scouts rushed over, led by a very skilled Mongol, saluted Luo Qiongshu and Ren Weiqi, and reported: "Report to the Governor-General, Chief of Staff, that the Russian army in Orenburg has discovered the whereabouts of our army three days ago and is ready to defend the city!" We fought several times with the enemy's reconnaissance cavalry, lost more than a dozen soldiers, captured several enemy sentries, and after torture we learned that the commander of the Orenburg garrison was the Orenburg governor Krezanovsky. ”

With the scout captain's narration, Luo Qiongshu and Ren Weiqi slowly began to understand more about the Orenburg guards.

This Klezhanovsky, who was born in the nobility of Tsarist Russia, was strict in governing the army and was difficult to deal with.

He mainly has two powerful generals under his command: one is the major general of the Guards Army Chernyaev, who is also stationed in Orenburg, who is responsible for directly commanding nearly 2,600 guards and 11,000 Ural legionnaires in Orenburg, of which most of the 11,000 elite Ural legionnaires are Cossack soldiers, selected from more than 100,000 soldiers in six or seven Cossack clusters under the Orenburg jurisdiction, and the benefits and treatment are more generous than ordinary Cossack soldiers.

Another capable subordinate was the commander of the Siberian Cossack Cavalry Corps, Major General Kolpakovsky, not that he performed particularly well, but that he had the most troops at his disposal.

Originally, Orenburg was in charge of several Kazakh khanates and the expansion of power in Siberia and even the Far East, with a total of six Cossack clusters, but because of the two consecutive organization of these Cossack forces to attack the Chinese Empire, they were all defeats, losing most of the Cossack soldiers, resulting in a great loss of strength of other Cossack clusters, and recently the Kazakh Khanate began to gradually harden under the support of the Chinese Empire, and there have been several wars with the Cossack sporadic army sent by Orenburg, which has greatly damaged the vitality of some other Cossacks. The end result was that the Cossack army under the untalented Kolpakovsky became the main force, and these Siberian Cossack cavalry corps, consisting of more than 50,000 cavalry, formed by the Siberian Cossack cluster, turned out to be the main force of the Orenburg defense.

The most crucial piece of information is that this Major General named Kolpakovsky is somewhat at odds with the Major General named Chernyaev in Orenburg. It was said that Governor Krezanovsky was about to be transferred, so both men began to secretly compete for the position of Governor of Orenburg.

Hearing this news, Ren Weiqi was overjoyed, and said to Luo Qiongshu with a smile: "Lord Governor, great, the two major generals of the enemy army have contradictions, which is the key to breaking the city!" Moreover, the European side of the plan is almost about to be launched, although I don't know if it will succeed, but even if it fails, the news will not reach here for a while, and we will spread the news, how can the enemy distinguish it?

As long as the guards guarding Orenburg believed it, they naturally had no intention of defending the city.

And for those Cossack troops outside the city, as long as they don't have the support of the tsar, those guards are like a fart to them, and they can tear these guards apart at any time! ”

Luo Qiongshu nodded, and according to Ren Weiqi's suggestion, he directly ordered to arrange the hundreds of Cossack prisoners in the rear army, and let some Kazakhs secretly let them leave at night.

That night, the Cossack captives managed to escape.

The next day, a number of people were taken to Orenburg.

Soon, rumors of the Eastern Army spread in Orenburg, which shocked the guards from St. Petersburg, and made the Cossack elite inside the fortress indignant and somewhat gloating.

A rumor, spread throughout Orenburg with the spread of the Cossack captives, along with the large number of enemy troops from the east that gradually became clear outside the castle, caused chaos throughout the castle!

Rumors circulated in the castle that the St. Petersburg side of the Russian Empire had reached an agreement with the Chinese Empire, that is, the soldiers captured by the Chinese Empire would be treated differently. If it was a Cossack soldier who was captured, it didn't matter, he was dead, and the Guards soldiers, at St. Petersburg's expense, were redeemed for 50 rubles per person.

And that's not all, another piece of news made the whole of Orenburg boiling: Tsar Alexander Nikolayevich, who had not been in office for a long time in the Russian Empire, was assassinated!

Suddenly, the soldiers in Orenburg exploded.