As the worst-case scenario envisaged by Zhou Shixiang before the war, the Qing army changed to besieging the city after the siege. In order to achieve the goal of completely encircling the Taiping army, Shang Kexi returned to Guangzhou and immediately requisitioned thousands of Qing troops from Guangzhou and various prefectures and counties to Xinhui, and handed them over to the command of Shizi Shang Zhixin and Dutong Ban Zhifu, and forcibly recruited tens of thousands of people to build an encirclement against Xinhui City in just a few days.

The Taiping army, which did not have the ability to fight large-scale field battles with the Qing army, could only watch the Qing army building siege fortifications on the opposite side every day, and watched arrow towers, fences, and military camps sprung up around Xinhui like mushrooms after a rain. In this process, the Taiping army did not try to stop the Qing army, but after two consecutive night attacks failed, and Pingbai lost dozens of people, Zhou Shixiang, who was recuperating from his wounds, ordered all departments not to go out of the city to fight on their own.

Before Shang Kexi returned to Guangzhou, he personally made arrangements for the siege of the city, with his headquarters Han army inlaid with blue flags to surround the east gate, Jingnan Domain's Zhenghuang Banner Han army and part of the green battalion to surround the south gate, the general Hu Guoguo led the governor Fu Pacesetter and part of the green battalion to surround the north gate, and the rest of the green battalion soldiers and horses surrounded the west gate under the command of the general soldier Lin Shanzhi.

The encirclement of the Qing army had three lines of defense, each of which was fully equipped, and more than 10,000 Qing troops were distributed among the defense lines, cutting off all connections between Xinhui and the outside of the city, resulting in the Taiping army in the city being ignorant of the outside situation.

As the siege lengthened, there was no shortage of food in the city, but the wood used to make the fire became strained, and the Taiping army began to demolish the houses in the city in order to take out the wood from the construction and use it for the fire.

In terms of the Qing army, the grain and grass resources transferred from Guangzhou were endless, and more than 20,000 people were young and strong, and there were Guangdong sailors on the river, in addition to being unable to conquer Xinhuijiancheng, the Qing army had the upper hand in many aspects, and also had an advantage, which was also the biggest capital that Shang Kexi decided to besiege the city. As long as the Taiping army has no reinforcements to rescue, the winner must be the Qing army in the end.

Shortly after the Qing encirclement was constructed. Dozens of artillery pieces transferred from Guangzhou finally arrived, and after the concentrated artillery bombardment of the city wall failed, the Qing army stopped shelling the city wall and only fired artillery into the city every three or five times. The corresponding Taiping army in the city also continued to shell outside the city, but the effect of the artillery bombardment on both sides was limited, and after several battles, they both knew that this kind of shelling had no meaning, and the two sides invariably stopped this useless effort.

Just in case. Shang Kexi personally sent an urgent order to Xu Erxian, the chief soldier of Zhaoqing, ordering him to strictly monitor the Gaozhou side and send troops and horses to garrison Luoding, so as not to make the Gaozhou Ming army go further east.

As long as Gaozhou Li Dingguo's troops did not move, Guangzhou had no worries about besieging Xinhui, although there were several other Ming troops in Guangdong, but both in terms of troops and equipment were far behind Gaozhou's Li Dingguo's troops, and these Ming troops also had many coastal areas, and they could not take advantage of the naval divisions, and the Qing army was not afraid of real land battles. If these Ming troops really came to rescue the Xinhui Taiping army. On the contrary, the direction of Guangzhou is happy to see. The tens of thousands of Qing troops under Xinhui City used to besiege the city could not attack the city, but it was effortless to annihilate these Nanming miscellaneous cards.

The development of the situation also reassured the Guangzhou side, besieging the city for more than a month, except for the Ming army in Leizhou who tried to capture the prefecture and county, and marched eastward, the Ming army in other places showed no signs of activity, and the Gaozhou Ming army, which worried Guangzhou the most, did not move at all. All kinds of signs prove that the Taiping army trapped in Xinhui is a lone army, and it is even a question whether it is accepted by the small court of the Southern Ming Dynasty.

The Qing army, which had no worries, finally shot a letter of surrender into the city on June 19, the 49th day of the siege. What I got was the eight big characters written by Zhou Shixiang - "The sons of the Han family will never be captured!" ”

On June 23, the 53rd day of the siege, the Qing army launched a tentative attack on Xinhuicheng. The attack was commanded by Wang Guohui, the deputy commander of the Han army, and the main force used for the siege was still the Green Battalion. Only a small number of flag men cooperated.

The Qing army launched an attack at dawn, and the direction of the attack was not the previous east gate, but the south gate. But the Taiping army on the south gate was obviously prepared for this, and the defenders of the city resisted stubbornly, and at the moment of danger, Chen Mo, the small banner of the guard battalion, led people to hang down the city with ropes to counterattack the Qing army besieging the city. More than 100 ladders and six shield carts used by the Qing army for siege were destroyed, forcing the Qing army to abandon the attack.

Wang Guohui saw that the strong attack was ineffective and the soldiers and materials were innumerable, after consulting Shang Zhixin and Ban Zhifu, he ordered the Qing army to pile up the soil in cloth bags as a wall, carry wood into a fence, supplemented by a sign as a cover, use the Han army's flag bird gun to shoot the Taiping army, secretly organize the people to dig tunnels, and try to dig into the city.

The Taiping army in the city detected the intention of the Qing army through the large vat in the city to listen to the underground movements, and immediately organized people to dig a deep ditch parallel to the city wall in the city, which was more than one zhang wide and more than two zhang deep, and was replaced by a unit of measurement in later generations, that is, more than three meters wide and seven meters deep.

After the deep ditch was dug, Zhou Shixiang immediately ordered that once the tunnel dug by the Qing army entered the city, it would be flooded, and if the flooding did not work, it would be killed by the newly rushed earth-shaking thunder, and the guns on both sides shot and killed, both methods did not work, so the battalions organized soldiers to go down the ditch to fight hand-to-hand, no matter how much sacrifice was paid, not a single soldier of the Qing army would emerge from the ditch!

Because the Taiping army was well prepared, the Qing army that sneaked in from the tunnel had not yet appeared, and was suddenly thrown into the earth-shattering thunder and injured a large area, and the rest of the Qing army rushed out but found that they were in the deep ditch, and there was no place to climb before and after, so they could only be trapped in the ditch and could not move, and on both sides of the deep ditch, there were Taiping troops with guns to shoot them, and after some hard work, the Qing army had no choice but to leave hundreds of corpses and retreat in a hurry.

After taking the city from the tunnel, in order to vent the grievances in his heart, Shang Zhixin ordered the east and west forts to shell the city again, and Zhou Shixiang ordered the gunners at the head of the city to fire a cannon counterattack and then reward the price at the same time, "Those who can go out of the city to capture the Qing army forts will be rewarded with fifty taels of silver." ”

There must be brave men under the heavy reward, this time it was the small flag of the guard battalion Chen Mo who took the lead in organizing a team of 80 dead soldiers, taking advantage of the late night from the tunnel dug by the Qing army to sneak into the Qing army camp, after an hour of excavation, the tunnel was finally opened, and then 80 Taiping warriors under the leadership of Chen Mo had two earth-shattering thunders, all the way to kill the Qing army and set fire.

In the middle of the night, the Qing army did not know how many people came from the Taiping army, and they were stunned by the earth-shaking thunder, and there were fires everywhere, so they couldn't stop the Taiping army from sneaking in, so that Chen Mo and others successfully pounced on the two batteries in the east and west of the Qing army, ignited the gunpowder reserve of the Qing army's batteries, and blew up more than 30 large and small artillery pieces on the spot.

After returning to the city, after counting, only 36 of the 80 warriors who left the city remained. This lesson also made the Qing army completely block the tunnels dug and also relieved the idea of digging into the city. (To be continued.) )