Outside the city of Kokand, a deafening cannon explosion broke through the already solemn atmosphere, and the siege officially began.

3 miles outside the east gate, two siege cannons, four heavy guns and six medium cannons were aimed at the battlements of the east city of the city, and the new flowering cannon exploded almost earth-shattering, and the entire east wall and foundation of Kokand City were trembling.

And in the city, Alimukul, who was originally a little commanding, turned pale all of a sudden.

He didn't expect that the artillery of this Han army would have such a long range, attacking the city nearly four miles away, and it was extremely accurate, almost half of the shells fell on the battlements of the city wall, blowing the battlements apart, and soon there were gaps.

Moreover, the general who was ordered to defend the city came to tell him that even if all the 8 Russian-made cannons in the city were used to target the forts set up by the Han people at the east city gate, it would still not work, because the Russian-made cannons were too old, the effective range was too close, and the accuracy was too poor, and they were only suitable for attacking targets within 2 and a half miles.

Alimukul didn't care so much, he was already terrified and panicked, and ordered to fire back desperately. Ten minutes later, his subordinates reported that the cannons on the city wall fired three rounds, and none of them hit the enemy, but because of the firing they exposed their own positions, they were accurately hit by the enemy batteries under the city, and 5 guns were blown up, and the artillery also suffered heavy casualties. At this moment, Alimukul was completely desperate!

He knew that now that he was in such a passive situation, the city wall, which was not very strong, would be blown down sooner or later. Fifteen years ago, the city of Kokand was conquered by the Bukhara Khanate in the west with Russian-made cannons, when even his uncle Madari Khan was killed by enemy soldiers, and the Kokand Khanate, which had dominated the Tashkent region and the vast area around Ferghana, also declined. Do you have to repeat the mistakes of your predecessor?

The enemy batteries outside the city must be destroyed as soon as possible, otherwise the city of Kokand will be destroyed! He did not have much hope that the Russian army and the troops of the Bukhara Khanate would come to his rescue. Originally, the Russians were just using themselves, and he knew this very well.

But at this moment, Alimukul could not care so much, and while he personally went up to the castle tower to beat drums and supervise the battle, he ordered to gather 3,000 cavalry, ready to destroy the enemy batteries and cannons outside the city at all costs. After some arrangement, the east gate was opened, and the cavalry rushed out of the city gate first, armed with scimitars and fire oil, etc., and rushed to the fort to destroy the siege artillery.

But it backfired. The other party had already seen through their intentions, and when the Kokand cavalry team rushed through a distance of one and a half miles, six medium guns that were easy to adjust the angle had already been adjusted, and they fired at the sprinting cavalry group, and several flower shells exploded in the cavalry ranks, and some unlucky Kokand cavalry were blurred with blood. By the time the cavalry rushed closer, thousands of infantry had been arranged under the battery, half-squatting and half-standing, and had already aimed their muskets at the Kokand cavalry.

As a dazzling Congreve rocket launcher crossed the battery and drilled into the charging Kokand cavalry ranks, they exploded one after another, the flames rose into the air, and the cavalry was interrupted at once, and the speed of the Kokand cavalry was full, and in the infantry line formation in front of the battery, suddenly there was a loud gunfire, and the thick smoke rose, blocking the entire battlefield, but only the sprinting Kokand cavalry understood that they had almost collapsed.

The cavalry in the group was shot and fell, and the 3,000 cavalry, when they rushed within 200 paces, found that at some point, on both sides of the infantry phalanx in front, there were two brave cavalry teams that were diagonally inserted, and a forest of spears formed by flat-ended spears completely knocked the Kokand cavalry into the ice cellar. Sure enough, the sparse Kokand cavalry could not contain the inertia of the high-speed charge, and collided with the neat and dense Sikh cavalry, and quickly fell off their horses and died. The 3,000 Kokand cavalry, with less than 500 survivors, hurriedly turned around and returned to Kokand City, and the rest fell off their horses one after another.

In just a quarter of an hour, the 3,000 Kokand cavalry who went out of the city to attack the siege artillery were left with less than four or five hundred who fled back in embarrassment. This is also because the Sikh cavalry did not pursue, otherwise, even these four or five hundred may not be able to return to the city.

During this period, on the high forts outside the city, the flowering rifled cannons kept firing all the time, and there was no sign of slowing down. At the moment when the east gate of Kokand City had just been closed, under the hit of two giant flowering bullets, a battlement next to the east gate finally could not bear it and collapsed suddenly.

Alimukul, who was hiding on the side of the city wall, had long forgotten to beat the drums and cheer at this moment, and hurriedly ordered the people in the city to repair the city wall in the face of artillery fire. But how could the captives outside the city possibly give them a chance to mend themselves?

The batteries outside the city all aimed their artillery at the gap and bombarded intensively, and from the evening when the gap was opened to the late night, although the wall was blurred, it could still be seen that a large part of the city had collapsed. This is because of the amazing power of this flowering rifled cannon specially made by the Imperial Krupp Steel Company for siege, and secondly, it is also the city wall in this Central Asian region that is mostly compacted with mud, although the middle part of the city wall is rammed tightly, after years of wind and rain, many tight city walls have begun to crack and loosen, after continuous concentrated bombardment of artillery shells, it has been overwhelmed and finally collapsed. At one point, the power of the bullets became apparent, and the gap grew larger and larger, and although many of the people in the city were forced to tear down their houses and transport bricks and earth to build the walls, they were extremely limited in the continuous night of artillery fire.

The captives outside the city did not launch a charge to attack the city, but only fired the cannon non-stop, and they did not know how many shells were consumed, and they did not know why the barrel of the cannon did not have the hidden worry of being hot. Alimukul's heart hung there in fear, until the guard officer came to report that two large gaps had been blown up outside the East Gate, and it was really difficult to repair. Alimukul's heart was relieved—but not at ease, but with complete death—and he knew that unless he really followed the words of the Han Khan outside the city, and surrendered to him, there was only one way to go, and that was to escape.

He finally thought about it, when the city was about to be broken, he would submit to those Han people, and his value was no longer obvious, even if he could save his life, he would not be rich and noble in the times. So, in a ruthless manner, he quietly ordered his soldiers to pack up the treasures in the palace, and without informing the Kokand soldiers who were guarding the city, he let 2,000 soldiers escort him, and took advantage of the darkness before dawn to leave the city from the west of the city and flee to Tashkent.

Early the next morning, outside the city of Kokand, tens of thousands of captives and Sikh cavalry began to attack the city. The artillery had stopped, there were already two huge gaps in the eastern wall of the city, and the defenders of the city were organizing the people to fortify, but it was obviously too late.

Thousands of Sikh cavalry formed two sharp cone formations, and one horse took the lead in penetrating the two breaches of the city wall, and a killing cry suddenly sounded at the gap in the city wall, and hundreds of cavalry blocked there. However, with the continuous addition of the follow-up cavalry, the Kokand soldiers in the city could not resist, and the previous Sikh cavalry quickly cleared a passage, and the continuous flow of Sikh cavalry behind rushed forward and rushed in. In a few moments, the east gate of the city creaked open.

The soldiers of the captives who followed swarmed in, and in an instant, the city of Kokand was officially destroyed. Although some of the Kokand soldiers in the city were still fearless to death and organized a counterattack, they quickly fell into a pool of blood under the fire of muskets in a neat line. At this time, I don't know who revealed the news that the Kokand Khan had fled, and suddenly, all the Kokand soldiers lost their reasons to resist, and either surrendered or fled into the houses to hide. The city of Kokand was soon occupied by the captives.

Before noon, the righteous king Shi Dakai, accompanied by Luo Qiongshu, Shi Xiangzhen and other generals, rode a tall horse and went straight to the gate of the eastern city of Kokand City, which had collapsed a little. Shi Dakai noticed that Akxie led more than 100 Sikh cavalry to wait with several captives, so he asked casually, but he didn't expect to be told that the leader of those captives was actually the Kokand Khan Alimukur who escaped last night. It turned out that last night Alimakul led 2,000 Kokand cavalry to flee from the west of the city, after the Sikh outpost found out, Akxie notified Shi Xiangzhen to send someone to intercept it, and personally led 2,000 Sikh cavalry to pursue, and the Kokand cavalry scattered and fled after a night of fierce fighting, and finally captured Alimakul and several Kokand nobles hiding in a small valley in the morning, and just escorted them back.

Looking at Alimukul with a pale face, Shi Dakai did not have the slightest sympathy, and directly ordered: "Come on, behead the head of this invasion of the Chinese Empire and show it to the public for three days, and then put its head on the banner of the army that captured Tashkent, deter the enemy soldiers, and urge them to surrender the city!" ”

Suddenly, Luo Qiongshu stepped forward with his sword, raised his knife and fell, and cut Alimukul, who was still begging for mercy, into two pieces, so decisive that the Sikh cavalry present was also shocked. Akxie even secretly reminded himself to be cautious and to restrain his subordinates, so as not to violate the taboo of the righteous king. In the fierce battles of the past few days, although his Sikh cavalry regiment was extremely brave, the actual killing of the enemy was far less simple and weightless than the rows of musket infantry of the opponent, and the casualty ratio was even less frightening, and this was the result of the opponent's deliberate suppression. Aksei knew that even if he was not a Kokand soldier, he would change his Sikh cavalry and fight head-on, but he was afraid of the same fiasco. Perhaps, after returning home, he will have to suggest to the Maharaja that the Sikhs should strengthen the formation of musketeers.

Shi Dakai sent Shi Xiangzhen to lead thousands of infantry and horses and 2,000 Sikh cavalry to expand the results of the battle and attack Tashkent, and the rest of the soldiers rested in Kokand for three days.

The captured Kokand soldiers, Shi Dakai selected 4,000 men and handed them all over to the Sikh cavalry regiment, and sent them back to Punjab as slaves as prisoners of war, and the remaining 3,000 prisoners, together with 2,000 strong and strong men in the city, were all escorted by an infantry regiment to Kashgar and Yarkand, where they were used as prisoner labor to reclaim wasteland and hand over to local garrisons for management.

As for the rest of the Kokand civilians in the city, Shi Dakai did not embarrass too much, but only told everyone to settle down and live as usual, and selected a few guides brought from Kashgar City and Kokand merchants close to China as temporary officials to assist in the management of civil affairs in Kokand City. Outside Tashkent and other places, the Han Kingdom of Kokand has basically been annexed by the Chinese Empire, but how to govern it is still a troublesome matter. After all, now there is barely Liang Litai as the governor of Xinjiang in the Ili area, and he has set up a governor's palace and recruited a group of staff and subordinate officials to govern the place, and even Kashgar and Khotan have only sent a few local governors to form a local government, not to mention how many officials have been sent to govern the newly occupied Kokand Khanate. But Shi Dakai didn't have any good way, he could only send a messenger to report to the emperor, and at the same time transfer Liang Litai and let the other party arrange personnel to come and hand over.

On the seventh day, news came that the garrison of Tashkent had not yet arrived at Shi Xiangzhen's army, and he led his troops west to flee to the Bukhara Khanate. Since then, the entire territory of the Kokand Khanate has been occupied, and the Kokand Khanate has perished.