Although Wang Kefan sent a lot of scouts and spies, it was very troublesome to travel back and forth between the banks of the Yangtze River, and he did not have enough information about Huanggang City, not knowing that the Qing army had closed the defense line and strengthened the defense in the city, nor did he know that Xu Yong's reinforcements were coming.

Huangzhou Mansion is too close to Wuchang Mansion, according to common sense, the Qing army must have thought that Wang Kefan would not dare to attack Huanggang, so he deliberately went the opposite way, crossed the river overnight, and attacked Huanggang by surprise.

If you are surprised, you have to fight quickly, and Wang Kefan decided to attack Huanggang.

This is undoubtedly a risky act, the so-called "siege for the bottom", without preparation, it is generally difficult to force the siege to work, and it will bring casualties to Yan zhòng, but according to the information he has, the Qing army in Huanggang City is very weak, so it is worth the gamble.

Huanggang is a prefecture city, the city wall is much stronger than the ordinary county town, if the attack is launched step by step, it is difficult to work in a few days, and the Qing army of Wuchang Mansion is downstream, and it can rush here to support in one day, the longer the battle of Huanggang drags on, the more likely it is to become a bad battle.

It is a very troublesome thing to transport artillery across the Yangtze River, the baggage troops of the Chu army are still far behind, Wang Kefan now has only four infantry battalions in his hands, half a cavalry battalion, he put the Chongyang battalion and the Yuezhou battalion at the south gate, and the Tongcheng battalion and the Puqi battalion at the west gate, and sent cavalry to monitor the four gates of the Yuezhou mansion, cut off the connection between the dock, if there are people and small troops out of the city, they will all be intercepted, so as not to be mixed out by the messengers of the Qing army.

The reason why Wang Kefan launched a strong attack at the expense of casualties was actually another reason, he had more than 2,000 green camp prisoners in his hands, which could be used as cannon fodder.

The Chu army set up camp to build siege equipment, and after an hour, the follow-up troops gradually arrived. Two three-pounder cannons were also transported, Wang Kefan immediately ordered to go into battle, cavalry, archers and musketeers pressed the position, strictly preventing the Qing army from attacking out of the city, and two three-pounder cannons were pushed to the front of the formation and aimed at the south gate of Huanggang.

"Test the gun."

With Wang Kefan's order, the two three-pounder cannons roared angrily, which shook people's ears. A cannonball hit the city wall, sending up a cloud of masonry debris and being blown by the wind. The Qing army in the city was covered with heads, and another shell hit the tower, breaking a window and half of the female wall.

Several Qing army generals and civil officials were exposed on the city tower, and Wang Kefan could see clearly with a telescope, one of them was Xu Bin. In the end, he is Xu Yong's younger brother, a genuine second-rank deputy general. Before being punished by the Qing court. It still has a certain status in the green camp of Huangzhou.

The main general in the center is another deputy general of the Green Battalion, his face is full of fierce and shrewd, and at first glance he is a battle-hardened general, according to the scout's intelligence, this deputy general is named Sun Bai'an.

There was also a fourth-grade civil official next to him, which was beyond Wang Kefan's expectations. Although he was a civil official, he didn't have any panicked expression, and his expression was quite cold, it was Niu Yan, the prefect of Huangzhou.

"This battle doesn't seem to be going to be easy." Wang Kefan muttered in his heart. The mighty Chu army suddenly appeared outside the city, and the pressure on the Qing army in Huanggang was extremely great, and the green battalion soldiers at the head of the city looked very nervous, but they were brave enough to be brave, and these Qing army generals and officials still remained calm, which was enough to control the shape in the city.

Under their command, the Qing army at the head of the city continued to move, seeing that the Ming army was attacking the west gate and the south gate, they also strengthened the defense of these two city gates, the number of green flags increased significantly, and there were more than a dozen flags on the south gate, plus the generals and military flags of different heights, etc., there were nearly 1,000 people in a big eye. A team of young men transported stones and ash bottles and other defensive equipment to the city wall, lit the fire oil in the iron pot and emitted black smoke to assist the Qing army in defending the city.

If it's not good to fight, you have to fight!

Under the command of Wang Kefan's Chinese army, all units of the Chu army lined up together, war horses galloped back and forth, infantry slowly advanced, swords and guns stood in a forest, shining in the sun, the flag fluttered, and the dust in the sky almost obscured the sun.

With a long horn, the green battalion prisoners pushed dozens of wooden donkey carts towards the south gate city wall, and more than 300 prisoners followed them with sacks, trying to hide their bodies within the protection of the wooden donkey carts.

Wang Kefan plans to attack the city with cloud ladder ants first, and test the Qing army's catties, the Qing army in Huanggang City is not Xu Yong's main force, and its combat effectiveness is relatively poor, as long as the Chu army attacks the city, it can basically gain a firm foothold and gradually open a breakthrough, rather than being annihilated by the Qing army's superior forces.

In addition to the ant-attached siege city, Wang Kefan also left a follow-up move, and the craftsmen and auxiliaries of the Chu army were rushing to make other siege equipment, building more wooden donkey carts and bridge carts, as well as the strongest half-cut boats.

The city gate of Huanggang is relatively stronger, and there is a gange board on the outside to protect it, which is difficult to break with artillery, and it is impossible to attack the urn city inside if it is broken, so Wang Kefan plans to find a way on the city wall, and the half-interception boat is a powerful weapon to attack the city wall.

This kind of strong attack will consume a lot of human lives, the casualties of the attacking and defending sides are completely disproportionate, the casualties of the besieging side are often three or four times that of the defending side, Wang Kefan will not let the Chu army sacrifice a lot, so he will let the more than 2,000 green camp prisoners out.

When the Xianning Qing army was recruited, Wang Kefan promised to ensure their personal safety, but now he is forcing these captives to be cannon fodder, but Wang Kefan is a pragmatist, or he starts from reality, as long as he doesn't touch the hidden bottom line, it is too pedantic to keep his promises.

If the prisoners of the Green Battalion are released directly, they will turn around and join the Qing army, but they will always be in the army, which is a very troublesome burden, so simply let them make some contributions. Since these captives became lackeys of the Manchu Qing Dynasty, they must be mentally prepared to atone for their sins, and if they can survive by luck after completing the task in this battle, Wang Kefan will consider gradually releasing them, and even absorb some of these meritorious prisoners into the Chu army.

The first group of four hundred captives went into battle, they pushed the wooden donkey cart creaking towards the city wall, less than two miles away from the moat, the red-coated cannon on the head of the city spewed out a fire, with a loud noise and white smoke, a three-pound cannonball shot out, slammed into the middle of the wooden donkey cart, the nearby green camp prisoners let out a burst of exclamation, a timid turned around and ran, just ran a few steps, was slashed by the overseers who rushed up on the horse.

"Hurry up, it's useless to rush to the city and the cannon!"

There were also some Chu soldiers in charge of the command in the middle of the wooden donkey cart, they were wearing armor and holding sharp blades, and they were almost armed to the teeth in the face of the unarmed green camp captives, and they reminded the green camp captives according to experience, but they never stopped saying that there were still archers and stone cannons of the green camp on the head of the city.

The captives panicked and desperately pushed the cart, and twenty or thirty people simply did not want the cover of the wooden donkey cart, and trotted forward with sacks on their backs, trying to get out of the range of the red-coated cannons, and the soldiers of the Chu army still had to take care of the large army, so they were left to die.

The rate of fire of the red-coated cannon was very slow, although the wooden donkey cart was also very slow, only three shots were fired before and after, the first shot did not hit the target, the second shot destroyed a wooden donkey cart, and the third cannon even strung a sugar gourd, and the shells bounced around in the open space in front of the city wall, smashing three wooden donkey carts in a row.

More than three catties of shells blew the bamboo guard into countless pieces, the prisoners of the cart were crushed together, the stumps flew a few feet away, and the seven or eight prisoners behind were knocked down several by the fragments, and the miserable howl echoed under the city for a long time, but the cannonball remained unwielded, and bounced up and smashed two wooden donkey carts outside the city, and injured several prisoners.

The captives were immediately in chaos, and the Chu army supervised the battle team to kill more than a dozen people in a row before they calmed down and continued to advance, at this moment, five or six fires and smoke suddenly erupted from the city, and several copper cannons made by the Ming army opened fire.

The weight of the copper cannon is lighter, but the airtightness is not good, the charge is far lower than that of the red-coated cannon, and the firing range is much closer, these copper cannons are all general cannons made by the Ming Dynasty, and the quality is even worse, even if it is erected on the high city wall, it can only hit a hundred steps away, so after the wooden donkey cart went away in a hurry, only two were damaged and more than a dozen people died, and they were out of the range of the copper cannon.

The first twenty or thirty captives rushed to the vicinity of the moat, and as long as they threw the sacks of earth into the moat, they could retreat and rest for a while if they had completed a mission, and wait until all the other captives had taken their turns before going into battle again. Seeing that hope was in front of them, they all quickened their pace and rushed forward.

"Whoosh!"

Arrows rained down on the city.

If it was four hundred captives who acted together, they were still a cover for each other, and these twenty or thirty captives were alone in front, they would become the live targets of the Qing archers, and the captives had no armor on their bodies, and they would fall when they were hit by arrows, and the screams continued, and the remaining dozen or so people shouted again and again, hoping that the Qing army in the city would show mercy.

"Stop shooting, we're our own people!"

"Oops, Wu Er, you dare to fucking shoot Lao Tzu!"

"Brother......, ah!"

The Qing army in the city showed no mercy and shot the remaining few people to the ground, they turned around and wanted to escape, but they saw the Chu army supervising the team rushing up murderously, and hurriedly picked up the sack on the ground and followed behind the wooden donkey cart.

All the wooden donkey carts were pushed to the front of the moat together, but the Chu army supervised the battle team to avoid the range of bows and arrows, and carefully watched the artillery and stone cannons on the city.

The Qing army in the city continued to shoot arrows, and shot down another twenty or thirty prisoners, but the other prisoners fled back to the back of the wooden donkey cart in time, pulling the cart backwards.

In the first wave of the Chu army's attack, the Green Battalion captured more than 70 casualties and threw more than 400 sacks in the moat, and they had not yet withdrawn to a safe range, and the second and third waves of attacks began again. (To be continued......)