It is absolutely rare in the history of warfare, and it is surprising that the four hundred cavalry of Yu Sheng's army completely ignored the fact that the number of enemy troops in front of them was more than a hundred times that of them, and they actually charged directly towards them.

However, what makes it even more strange is that their charge was not met with any strong resistance!

When the Taiping routs saw hundreds of horsemen brandishing sabers rushing towards them, their first thought was to turn around and run, and few people dared to take up arms to resist, and even those people changed the direction of escape in order to avoid the hooves of the horses.

Since the position of Wang Luyun's charge was from the middle of the Taiping army, attacking from west to northeast, the Taiping army in front of them naturally did not care about the life or death of the people in the rear, they just buried their heads and continued to run forward, for them, they could survive if they ran faster than the friendly troops behind.

Some of the Taiping routs who happened to be on the way of Wang Luyun's charge invariably chose to dodge, and only a few unlucky ones were bumped into and killed by the swarming cavalry.

And the Taiping Army rout who was running behind suddenly saw a large number of Yu Shengjun cavalry in front of him, and he would continue to run forward, and immediately turned left or right one by one.

At this time, if you look down from the sky, then you will find that the rout of the 40,000 Taiping army is rapidly being divided between the front and rear, and the division of them is only 400 cavalry, these 400 cavalry continue to gallop away from west to east, almost cutting off the entire waist of the 40,000 rout.

There were 30,000 people who fled in front, while nearly 10,000 people in the back began to change direction because of the interception of cavalry, which became even more chaotic.

After a while, the infantry of the Yu Shengjun in the rear also caught up, and just as they were about to fire another volley, suddenly they saw that the Taiping army in front of them were all kneeling down one by one, or simply lying on the ground, shouting: "Don't kill me", "spare your life", "We have surrendered!" ”

At first, only the hundreds of people who faced the muzzle of the gun knelt on the ground and begged for mercy, but soon the surrender spread as quickly as the plague, and when the king Lu Yun in front was tired and half dead and finally came out of the rout of the Taiping army, he saw a Taiping army kneeling in the right hand direction behind him.

"They surrendered?" Lin Zhe couldn't believe his eyes: "How much does this cost, at least tens of thousands of people, just surrender?" ”

At the beginning, the purpose of his troops to pursue was relatively simple, that is, he wanted to take advantage of the victory to pursue and kill and injure the enemy as much as possible.

This is completely a kind of inertial tactical thinking, few generals do not pursue in the face of a large-scale rout of the enemy, he expected that the results of the battle may be relatively large, and it is possible to capture a certain number of enemies, for example, in the battle of Baiyun Bridge in the north of Guangde, Yu Shengjun killed and wounded Lin Chengting's main force in the pursuit battle, and captured at least 2,000 people.

But he didn't expect that this pursuit didn't kill or wound many enemy soldiers, but captured nearly 10,000 people!

This is already a bit subversive of his tactical thinking, this shouldn't be, even if these people can't fight, they can escape, even if they can't escape back to Suzhou City, they can also flee to the left and right, tens of thousands of people scattered and fled to chase after themselves, and it is impossible to catch up with all of them.

But they simply surrendered on the spot!

At this time, Shi Qingxuan said: "These people are all strong men wrapped up in the thief army, under the persecution of the thief army, it is better when the wind is smooth, but once they are defeated like today, it is normal to flee and surrender in a large area!" ”

Lin Zhe didn't know how to exclaim, so he could only say: "Let the troops disarm them, and then escort them back!" ”

These were ordinary people not long ago, without any training, and did not even have a decent weapon in their hands, the Taiping soldiers faced Yu Shengjun and asked them to lay down their arms, without any resistance, and they were extremely docile, and according to the requirements of Yu Shengjun's soldiers, they untied their belts or clothes and other strips of cloth to tie up their comrades, and after the binding, they also obediently let other captives tie themselves up, and the whole process did not even need to be urged by Yu Shengjun's soldiers.

It didn't take long for the nearly 10,000 captives to tie themselves up, and then walk back in a loose formation, the soldiers of Yu Shengjun on both sides were quite nervous at first, afraid that these captives who were far outnumbered by their own side would rebel, but soon they relaxed, because these captives were as docile as sheep, and they didn't have any intention of resisting at all.

Although the captives have been escorted back, but in the face of nearly 10,000 captives twice as large as himself, Lin Zhe also has some headaches How to deal with it, it is definitely not possible to kill them directly, although Yu Shengjun has killed the enemy on the battlefield without mercy, but he has really never done such a thing as large-scale killing of prisoners.

Although he had captured a lot of Taiping soldiers when he fought in northern Zhejiang and southern Anhui before, the number was not much, as few as a few hundred, and as many as one or two thousand, and he directly handed over the prisoners to other Qing army green battalions or local governments for processing, as for whether to kill or release, he did not care.

But now he didn't follow the other Qing army green battalions and local regiments to train, and these prisoners had to be taken care of by themselves.

Lin Zhe immediately said: "Let them build a fence by themselves as a temporary place for detention, and then let them dig a chest wall trench for us to build fortifications!" ”

They can't be killed, they can't be released, they don't even have a place to keep them, they can only let these captives build a rudimentary fenced prison for themselves.

In addition, now that Yu Shengjun has just arrived in Suzhou City, he has not even stationed a camp yet, so this camp still needs to be built, and his own soldiers have already fought a big battle and need to rest and recover their physical strength, so this kind of thing of digging a chest wall trench and establishing a camp is very good for the captives to do.

Under the hard work of the captives, Yu Shengjun's camp outside the city was quickly built, and at the same time, the corpses left over from the battle between the two sides just now were also taken away by the captives and dug pits for centralized burial.

Those who were wounded by the Taiping Army, those who were seriously injured, were not allowed to continue to suffer, and they went down with a bayonet to end their suffering, and those who were slightly injured were thrown into the prisoner of war camp.

When most of the troops of Yu Shengjun outside the city were resting, and a small number of soldiers were monitoring the prisoners of war to build a prisoner camp for themselves, digging breastwalls and trenches for Yu Shengjun, and establishing a camp, Wu Ruxiao at the head of the city was also busy.

When more than 40,000 Taiping troops fled just now, although nearly 10,000 people were divided and captured by Wang Luyun's cavalry, and another 1,000 or 2,000 were killed or wounded, more than 30,000 people still fled back.

Even though Wu Ruxiao didn't care much about their lives and deaths, since he was able to escape back, he naturally couldn't say that he would give up directly, but sent his right-hand man to reorganize them and keep them for cannon fodder next time.

At the same time, after seeing the terrifying combat power of the Yu Sheng army outside the city, he was full of vigilance and ordered his army to strengthen the defense system at the head of the city, demolish the houses near the city wall, and move the bricks, stones, and wood obtained from the demolition to the city wall, which were used by the Yu Sheng army when attacking the city.

After this short tentative contact battle in the morning, both Yu Shengjun and the Taiping army seemed to have calmed down, and the Taiping army was bent on arranging the defense of the city.

And Yu Shengjun also began to build his own camp, but it was not until late afternoon that Yu Shengjun had a new round of action, this time as in the previous siege of Yu Shengjun, it was still a twelve-pounder cannon to fire at the city wall.

Due to the large number of captives to drive, Yu Shengjun's camp was built very quickly, the camp was surrounded by breast walls and moats, and on the front of Suzhou City, its breast wall was thickened and heightened, and a low earthen wall only about two meters high gradually took shape.

The artillery was also moved to a temporary gun emplacement, because the outside of the city was a plain, and there was no small hill to use as a gun emplacement, so Lin Zhe simply asked a large number of prisoners to dig up the soil and pile up a small high platform to serve as an artillery position.

In the face of Yu Shengjun's artillery began to shoot at the city wall, although the Taiping soldiers on the Suzhou city wall had some damage, Wu Ruxiao did not seem to plan to send troops to attack again.

And Lin Zhe was not in a hurry to attack the city!

Although Yu Shengjun's strategy was to focus on offense, this offensive strategy was to replace defense with offense.

On the one hand, attacking Suzhou can firmly contain the Taiping army in Suzhou on the front line of Suzhou, preventing them from bypassing Suzhou and continuing southward, and then threatening Kunshan and others.

On the other hand, it can also attract the Taiping army from other regions to gather in Suzhou, especially the Taiping army division in Changshu, Shaowen and other counties before the Taiping division was divided, if Suzhou is in danger, they are very likely to come back for reinforcements, and they can not only wait for the opportunity to encircle the point to send reinforcements and eat their reinforcements, but also reduce the pressure on the Qing army's green battalion and local villagers in Taicang Prefecture and other places.

Although on the surface, since the First Battle of Suzhou, most of the green battalions of the Qing army led by Xu Naizhao have been annihilated, the green battalions of the Qing army are actually relatively scattered, and a considerable number of cities controlled by the Qing army actually do not rely on the green battalion to defend, but rely on the local government's own organization of the township warrior and regimental training.

Strictly speaking, the Hunan Army and Yu Shengjun are also a kind of these township warriors and regimental training, but their scale is larger and has a regular military organization, while most other places have a small scale of regimental training and a backward military system.

However, although these local regimental exercises in various places generally had problems such as small scale and weak strength, they were still an important defense force in the Qing court-controlled districts.

Naturally, these local regimental training forces could not be stopped against the large-scale Taiping troops, but if there were only a few hundred or thousands of Taiping troops, and these Taiping troops were still some strong men who were temporarily entrapped, then the problem of holding on was still not big.

As long as the main forces of the other Taiping armies in the north of Taicang Prefecture can be attracted to Suzhou, then Taicang Prefecture can still block the small-scale Taiping invasion with the strength of the local government, squires and other organizations, regimental training and a small number of green battalions.

The attack on Suzhou was, in essence, a strategy of Yu Shengjun's defense of the Shanghai area.

As for whether he can take Suzhou, Lin Zhe is cautious about this, after all, there are too many Taiping troops in the city, and according to the urine nature of the Taiping army, it will definitely be coerced by the people of the whole city to defend the city together, and it is estimated that there are not many regular troops of the Taiping army that need to be faced if they attack the city on a large scale, but the strong men who have been forcibly recruited must be tens of thousands.

Therefore, after Lin Zhe repelled the tentative attack of the Taiping army in Suzhou City, he was obviously more conservative, and did not continue to send troops to attack the city on a large scale, on the one hand, he built a camp, and prepared to rely on the camp to intercept any army that tried to move south or east from Suzhou.

On the other hand, he also sent his cavalry on a large scale, and while reconnoitring military intelligence in the surrounding area, he also intercepted and killed any small Taiping troops he encountered.

Soon, the cavalry he sent out gave him an important piece of military information, and the reconnaissance cavalry found a large number of thieves coming west in the northwest of Suzhou City, that is, in the direction of Changzhou County, Suzhou Prefecture.