Outside the walls of Kashgar, smoke filled the air, and the sound of gunfire slowly thinned out. Luo Qiongshu stood on the main city tower in the west of the city, holding a telescope and looking at the Kokand soldiers who were gradually retreating in the distance, and breathed a long sigh of relief.

The enemy soldiers retreated, and this tragic attack was finally resisted again!

Under the city walls, there was a dense pile of corpses. Luo Qiongshu ordered the soldiers on the city tower to hurry up and rest, and fought for more than three months in a row, physically and mentally exhausted, and all the soldiers, including Luo Qiongshu himself, were on the verge of collapse.

Since the beginning of the year, more than 30,000 Kokand soldiers, under the leadership of the general Said Zhanggel, have frantically attacked Kashgar.

At the beginning, Luo Qiongshu also sent 7,000 soldiers of the Fifth Infantry Division to lay a defensive line, and laid a trench and two earthen walls between Laining City and Geng Gongquan for defense. After half a month of fierce fighting, more than 7,000 Kokand soldiers were killed and wounded, and nearly 1,000 soldiers of the Fifth Division were also killed and wounded.

In the more than two years since he entered Huijiang, he has fought dozens of fierce battles with the Qing troops stationed in the territory, but the total casualties of all the battles have not exceeded 500. But this battle of less than half a month, still hiding behind the fortifications to defend, killed and wounded thousands of people, what a loss! Of course, this also proves how tragic the war was.

At this time, a team of 20,000 reinforcements from the Kokand soldiers came again, and the leader was the Agu Bai who made Luo Qiongshu hate it so much, even if Luo Qiongshu wanted to lead the troops to kill the Agu Bai, but when he turned his head and saw the brothers who died in the battle, he calmed down again, he knew that even if the soldiers of the Fifth Division could fight well and the firearms in their hands were excellent, they would definitely not be able to take the initiative to attack, which would not only bury the entire Fifth Division in Huijiang, but also lose the entire Kashgar area.

Therefore, Luo Qiongshu endured the anger in his heart, took the initiative to lead the troops to retreat, and all of them retreated into Kashgar City, leaving only one battalion of infantry to guard Laining City.

Fortunately, Luo Qiongshu led the troops to withdraw into Kashgar City. However, what Luo Qiongshu regretted the most was that the soldiers who stayed in a battalion were in Laining City.

This Laining City, located in the northwest of Kashgar City 2 miles, was originally the Manchu Qing Dynasty Qianlong period in the pacification of the "big and small Zhuo Rebellion", unified the north and south of the Tianshan Mountains, on the basis of the ruins of the fortress of Kashgar's Vulture nobles and Zhuo Bo Polonidu, built a new city, named Laining City, as an official office to monitor and rule Kashgar City.

And the general who commanded the main force of Kokand, Said Zhangger, who was the great-grandson of Yamato Zhuopolonidu, hated the soldiers of the captive army stationed in his ancestral home, and directly ordered tens of thousands of Kokand soldiers to surround the city of Laining, which was only half a mile of the city wall, and attacked frantically.

The Kokand soldiers were similar to the White Horse Cult in general beliefs, completely disregarding life and death, but believed that dying in battle was a redemptive and extremely glorious thing, and they finally broke through the city of Lai Ning with the piles of more than 1,000 Kokand soldiers' corpses at any cost. There were no way to escape more than 300 soldiers and soldiers in the city of Laining, and when the city was broken, there were more than 200 people, seeing that there was no hope of escaping back to Kashgar City, so they directly rushed into the backyard of the former Manchu Qing Counselor's Office in Laining City to resist to the death, seizing the terrain, until the crazy Kokand soldiers attacked on all sides with the tactics of crowds, and forcibly knocked down the courtyard wall of the backyard of the government office. Don't let the enemy capture it and attack the friendly army. In this way, all the soldiers of this battalion were killed in battle, and none of them surrendered. However, the Kokand soldiers also paid several times the price.

Luo Qiongshu was on the tower of Kashgar City, two miles away, and watched the city of Laining being breached, and his heart was like a knife. He also wanted to lead the soldiers out of the city, defeat the Kokand soldiers and rescue the more than 300 brothers, but reason told him that he could not do so. In this way, this stout man could only turn his face away, and bit his lips out of blood, but Leng did not cry out until the moment when the city of Laining was breached, he slammed his fist on the earthen wall, and cried out violently: "Brothers, defend the city, aim and fight, and avenge the brothers who died in the battle!" ”

In the next two months, the soldiers of the captive army in Kashgar City, under the leadership of Luo Qiongshu, turned like chicken blood. At the beginning, because of the inconvenience of marching, the Fifth Infantry Division did not carry much artillery, only 12 small field guns that were easy to carry, and 3 were damaged because of the attack on the Manchu garrison castle all the way. And more than 8,000 people on the city walls, divided into two squads, tirelessly opened fire, pouring ammunition accurately on the Kokand soldiers who did not want to kill the siege of the city.

The stupid Saeed Zhanger personally led the remaining less than 17,000 Kokand soldiers under his command to rush up, thinking that the city of Kashgar would be attacked in large numbers, but under the accurate bombardment of three field guns, Saeed Zhanger was killed on the spot. Of the 17,000 Kokand soldiers, more than 10,000 were recruited by Agubai, who was only an assistant, and more than 6,000 even committed suicide attacks, tirelessly attacking Kashgar City in the most primitive way of attaching ants to ladders, armed with scimitars and primitive arquebuses, and were all killed under the city wall by the soldiers of the Fifth Division, which was heavily defended.

Then, the situation took a turn for the worse. The rest of the battle was commanded by the cunning Aguba, who, realizing that a direct assault on the city would only send him to death, stopped the all-out assault and instead sent a small number of Kokand troops to attack day and night, so that the captives could not rest. Then, while organizing soldiers to capture the Vultures, he transported the siege artillery provided by Tsarist Russia behind.

In the short time of waiting for the siege artillery to arrive, the sinister and fierce Agubai directly ordered the captured Wuer people to be the vanguard and attack Kashgar City in batches. Luo Qiongshu hardened his heart and ignored it, and directly ordered all of them to be shot. In this way, more than 10 batches of people and women and children such as Brut and Kokand around were organized to attack the city of Kashgar, and they were all shot and killed by the soldiers of the captive army, which lasted for nearly a month and a half, as many as nearly 20,000 people.

Just half a month ago, Agubai's siege artillery finally arrived outside the city, with the help of artillery, the Kokand soldiers launched a fierce attack on Kashgar City again and again, at this time, Luo Qiongshu finally discovered the other party's conspiracy: the bullets and gunpowder of the fifth division are not enough!

The cunning Aguba, who used the forcible drive of the Vultures and the women and children of Burut and Kokand, to send them to death in batches, consuming the ammunition of the soldiers in the city. This practice of exchanging human lives for bullet consumption made Luo Qiongshu have to be frightened! He immediately ordered to fire sparingly, and to treat the Kokand soldiers before firing again, and to treat the people, women and children who were driven away, using cold weapons such as knives and spears to fight, and defeat them.

Despite this, with the help of the siege of several large artillery, the Kokand soldiers still organized several powerful attacks, but they were all extinguished by Luo Qiongshu's soldiers. However, the cost was also enormous, and the result of forcible fire in the face of artillery fire was a serious loss to the captured soldiers. Moreover, because the caliber of the cannons of the Kokand army was very large, a city wall and a city tower were bombed and collapsed directly, if it were not for a regiment commander leading half of the regiment of soldiers to block the city wall, I was afraid that the city of Kashgar had been breached. However, because of the concentrated fire at all costs, the ammunition was depleted even faster. Originally, it had consumed a huge amount of ammunition to shoot and kill the people who had been driven away, and now with these few attempts to block the enemy's attacks, the ammunition in the Fifth Division was even more insufficient.

Agubai also sensed the lack of firepower of the Han soldiers in the city, and just an hour and a half earlier, he organized a group of his descendants, the "Huyi Rattan Soldiers", to launch the most fierce attack. In his opinion, he could basically take Kashgar City this time, but to his disappointment, he failed in the end. However, what made him happy was that in the end, he found that the number of troops in the city that could fight was insufficient, and the original tens of thousands of troops were now estimated to be less than 5,000. Moreover, in the last wave of attack, the defenders in the city did not shoot for a long time, until his tiger-clothed rattan soldiers had even rushed to the opponent's city wall, and the opponent opened fire sparsely, and the artillery did not fire a single shot, and finally relied on bayonets and terrain to cooperate with the advance and attack of the tiger-clothed rattan soldiers. It is already obvious that the Han army in the city has reached the point of exhaustion! Prepare for it yourself, and organize an attack next time, and you will definitely be able to take Kashgar City.

Taking advantage of the fact that the enemy did not attack, Luo Qiongshu sent a small number of soldiers to drag the large pile of corpses under the city wall away from the city wall, first, to avoid the outbreak of plague when the weather warmed up, and secondly, not to let the enemy use the corpses to climb the city wall. After arranging for the subordinates who had fought fiercely just now to take turns to rest, looking at the young soldiers who were sleeping on the ground leaning against the city wall, Luo Qiongshu didn't feel good in his heart.

He knew that the Fifth Division had reached the point of exhaustion. Until now, even if he wants to abandon Kashgar City now and lead the remaining soldiers to rush out, it is impossible. The Kokand soldiers outside the city had tens of thousands of cavalry. Moreover, there is a shortage of ammunition, and relying only on the foot strength of the infantry, coupled with the bayonets of the muskets in their hands, it is tantamount to a fool's dream to fight out. If the enemy is the Manchu army, it is still possible, but unfortunately, the opponent is the fearless Kokand soldiers, after three months of fighting, Luo Qiongshu has seen that this Kokand soldiers are a group of complete madmen, like puppets who have drunk ecstasy soup, rushing forward at any cost.

After the fierce battle just now, especially when the enemy rushed up the city wall, he led the soldiers to fight with bayonets, and sacrificed many brothers, he asked the deputy division commander to count how many troops he still had, but he was afraid that the situation would not be too good.

Everything sucks!