The casualties of the 1st Infantry Division had led some to hope that the 1st Mountain Brigade would take the lead in the attack, but the voice was silenced. The mountain brigade is indeed strong in combat effectiveness and has rich combat experience, which will greatly speed up the course of the battle. However, not all battles must rely on one unit, the training opportunity of the 1st Infantry Division is precious, and the effort is worth it, and the casualties of the 1st Infantry Division attacking Yibin are 103 people, and such casualties cannot shake the determination to attack.

After clarifying the defense of Yibin's periphery, a thorny problem arose, according to the Qing army's will to resist, if the city was forcibly attacked, there would definitely be a lot of civilian casualties. According to intelligence, the Qing army had been preparing for a long time in Sichuan, and only stored the grain and grass needed for a year in Yibin City, and there was a water source in the city, so it was not worried about the water source being cut off, so the method of siege in such a city would not work.

After the failure of persuasion, Lefei's battalion was tasked with being the first force to storm Yibin after the artillery smashed through the city walls. The commander of the 1st battalion, Le Fei, had relatively rich combat experience, especially siege operations, which was the main reason why the division headquarters considered the 1st battalion of Le Fei to attack the main battle.

"Meeting, meeting!" Le Fei found that the number of meetings he held after becoming the battalion commander became very frequent, and after receiving the task, Le Fei immediately convened a meeting with the deputy battalion commander Dong Dashan and the company commanders. According to his experience, siege operations required several necessary conditions, familiarity with the interior of the city, organization of the siege troops, continuity of firepower and speed of attack.

Spreading out the map of Yibin City, Le Fei said: "Intelligence shows that there are 500 soldiers of the Green Battalion, 200 soldiers of the New Army, and more than 20,000 ordinary people in Yibin City. The roads in the city are winding and there are few complete straight avenues, which is a typical Sichuan city, and the complexity of the city is very unfavorable for us. According to the plan formulated by the battalion headquarters, the first company was responsible for breaking through the two flanks after smashing the city wall, controlling the city wall and occupying the commanding heights; The second company was responsible for key departments such as the county government, arsenal, and government treasury, which were estimated to be the focus of the Qing army's defense; The third company is responsible for responding, and it will support in whichever direction is blocked. ”

"During the attack, it is necessary to carry enough mortar shells, which is the main means of breaking through the street barriers of the Qing army. If you encounter Qing troops hiding in private houses and refuse to surrender, you can throw grenades first, without worrying about civilian casualties, but try not to shoot at civilian houses for no reason to avoid civilian casualties. In addition, it is necessary to pay attention to the cooperation of various groups, and do not fall into the situation of fighting more with less. Okay, let's all go down and prepare, and in twenty minutes the shelling will begin. "During the war, everything was simple, and Le Fei did not intend to ask his subordinates for their opinions in a democratic way, because the army was the least democratic place, and that would hurt the combat effectiveness of the troops.

"Lao Dong, to be honest, my least favorite battle is the siege war, from the beginning there was no clear indication of the scale of civilians during the siege, the intensity is strong, I am afraid of causing too many civilian casualties, the intensity is lower, we have to bear the loss, really fuck it!" This is the first time that Le Fei has complained to Dong Dashan about the dissatisfaction in his heart.

Dong Dashan was in charge of leading the second company of the main attack to carry out the assault, and now he was studying the map, when he was interrupted by Le Fei's complaint, raised his head and said with a smile: "There are so many problems in small Yibin, our Sixth Army is not good, I don't know how the Fourth Army is doing?" ”

The luck of the Sixth Army is indeed not very good, relatively speaking, the luck of the Fourth Army can be described as against the sky, it did not take much effort to attack Guizhou, and the same is true for the attack on Chongqing. Cen Chunxuan did not deploy heavy troops in Chongqing at all, from the topographical point of view, this is the east gate of Chengdu, and the strategic location is very important, but for Cen Chunxuan, Chongqing is a lonely city, and sooner or later it will be lost, and if heavy troops are stationed, so many people will be lost in vain.

Therefore, Cen Chunxuan shrank his forces around Chengdu, Yibin and Luzhou in the south, Zigong and Suining in the east were the focus of defense, but the important town of Chongqing only had a few thousand old and weak green battalions, and the Fourth Army simply surrendered as soon as it arrived. Such an outcome was very unexpected by the General Staff Staff, and everyone thought that a fierce battle would break out in Chongqing.

From Chongqing to the west, it can be described as a horse and a flat river, the Qing army lost Chongqing, and all the way to Chengdu will be in no danger, which is why the general meeting is so predicted - no one will give up the entire strategic town of Chongqing, except for Cen Chunxuan, the brains of these Manchu bureaucrats are really unimaginable to ordinary people.

The importance of Yibin to Chengdu is no less than Chongqing, its left and right sides are Daliang Mountain and Da Lou Mountain, out of Yibin where the two rivers converge, along the Min River to the north is Chengdu City, this area is the core area of Sichuan, the birthplace of ancient Shu civilization, therefore, the General Staff respectively Yibin and Chongqing as the first target.

Sandwiched between the two rivers, Yibin has natural hazards, easy to defend and difficult to attack, originally Cen Chunxuan placed 3,000 soldiers here, including 800 new troops and more than 2,000 green battalions, after the outer defense operations, now there are less than 800 people left. However, the Qing army in Yibin had another killer feature, that is, thirty cannons.

The Qing generals defending Yibin were really able to endure it, and even if the soldiers suffered heavy losses and all the peripheral positions were lost, they did not use these thirty cannons. The artillery position is placed on the commanding heights near the confluence of the two rivers, away from the Zhenguo Army, and there is no need to worry about the attack from behind, however, if you look closely, you will find that these cannons are far from the artillery of the Zhenguo Army, and they are not on the same level as the artillery used in the six towns of Beiyang, and there are even red-coated cannons here, which are antiques from hundreds of years ago!

There is no way, the cannon is too expensive, and the transportation is inconvenient, Cen Chunxuan has no ability to equip the troops with new artillery, so he can only take out the old antiques in stock and renovate them, which is better than nothing.

At the beginning of the siege, the artillery collapsed the city wall without much effort, and a gap of more than 30 meters long at one end appeared in front of Le Fei's eyes. In the sound of his heavy breathing and clanging collisions, Dong Dashan was the first to pass through the smoke and enter Yibin City, and the gunshots rang out.

The battle in the city was very fierce, and the Qing army launched a confrontation with the Zhenguo army in the city wall area, and its courage was commendable, but it was defeated in the rain of bullets and explosions, and retreated to the city after leaving hundreds of corpses, and the battle for the city wall, on which the Qing army had high hopes, did not play much role. The first company bypassed the two wings under the city wall, and the second company attacked the city under the leadership of Dong Dashan, and a light machine gun was held in Dong Dashan's arms, holding the grip in one hand, bending his legs to offset the recoil, and advancing while firing, becoming the most reliable mobile firepower. The Qing army behind the barricade was suppressed and couldn't raise their heads, the soldiers took the opportunity to break through, threw grenades to blow up the Qing army, some soldiers searched the houses on both sides and advanced, because the misunderstanding caused by the language barrier was inevitable, some civilians held kitchen knives and shouted Sichuan loudly, and the soldiers misunderstood and shot, causing a helpless tragedy.

Snipers climb up to civilian houses and condescendingly shoot at the Qing soldiers hiding behind the barricades, and the snipers play an even more important role in street battles than machine guns, even if the Qing army finds the snipers and finds the exact location of the snipers, they will not be able to fight back against the snipers because of the enemy attack head-on.

The battle in the city went on very quickly, and Le Fei's prior organization and proper command played an important role, and the recruits of the first battalion became mentally stable after the positional battle, and behaved like veterans in this street battle. In fact, there is another important reason for this, most of the recruits are composed of railway workers, they have seen and experienced death, and their minds have long matured, as long as they have passed the stage of not adapting to the battlefield, their combat effectiveness will increase rapidly.

A company that surrounded the past from both sides played an important role, and Dong Dashan was startled when the artillery of the Qing army began to shell! Although the shelling was intermittent, and the damage was not great, and the fire from the obviously old artillery, the frontal shelling was carried out, and the attack was definitely suspended. Fortunately, a company launched an attack from the flank and captured the last position of the Qing artillery position.

On November 25, Yibin was recovered, and so far, the two most important strategic points in Sichuan have been held by the Zhenguo Army. There is not much obstacle to Chengdu from both directions, and the traffic situation is relatively good, and the battle has finally entered the favorite rhythm of Zhen ****.

The Fourth Army, which had been very depressed, finally broke out, and they divided their troops from Chongqing into two routes, one to the north to capture Guang'an, Nanchong, Dazhou, Bazhong, and the other directly to Chengdu. The Sixth Army and the Mountain Brigade took a break in Yibin, and after hearing about the Fourth Army, they secretly cursed and immediately marched to Chengdu, and both armies were vying for the credit of being the first to break through Chengdu, drawing a successful end to the Northern Expedition.

Unfortunately, compared with the Fourth Army, the Sixth Army was defeated, and the First Division of the Fourth Army basically did not encounter resistance in the process of marching to Chengdu, and the defenders in the Ziyang area collapsed because of the surrender of the generals, and the First Division of the Fourth Army arrived in Chengdu half a day ahead of the Sixth Army. On the other hand, the Sixth Army, which met with fierce resistance in the Zigong area, had to leave a section to destroy the enemy here, and then encountered resolute resistance from 3,000 Qing troops at Meishan, and had to stop when it was so close to Chengdu.

However, the firepower of the two armies in the plains was able to exert the maximum level, which was incomparable to the Qing army. Resistance ranged from fierce at the beginning to mild after the shelling, often requiring only a few hundred shells.