According to Wang Feng's instructions in advance, Tashkent was named Shicheng, which means the capital of Zhaowu Jiu surnamed Shiguo, east of Tashkent to the Chinese border, was named Zhaowu Province, and Xinjiang will also be renamed Anxi Province after the pacification in the future, after all, Xinjiang is no longer China's frontier, and it is very inappropriate to take Xinjiang as the name, and the vast area of Central Asia from Anxi, Zhaowu to the Caspian Sea, will be named after Beiting Province in the future.

In the heyday of the Tang Dynasty, the Beiting Protectorate expanded to the east coast of the Caspian Sea.

Of course, there is not even a single Chinese resident in Zhaowu Province today, all of them are garrisons, so Wang Feng and the Chinese government have not appointed governors, nor have they planned to set up administrative institutions, but temporarily implement military control.

Three days later, a division of Li Shixian's division was left to garrison Shicheng, and Li Xiucheng led his army to advance to the Ferghana Basin.

The Ferghana Basin is located in the Tien Shan Mountains and Gisar. Between the Ili Mountains, it is 170 kilometers wide from north to south, 300 kilometers long from east to west, and between 300 and 1,000 meters by sea.

It took four days for the NLD army to push from west to east, capturing more than 200,000 young women, a large number of cattle, horses, sheep and other livestock, and a part of grain, nearly 300,000 people were slaughtered, and less than 30,000 escaped.

Although the local residents also actively resisted, the Russian army could fight with one to ten with its Mini guns and smoothbore guns, so what was the use of resisting in the face of the more advanced Democratic Alliance forces? The massacre of Indians in the United States was no different.

This is obviously a catastrophe from heaven, but Li Xiucheng will not have mercy, when he was eighteen years old, the Taiping Army passed by his hometown, and he resolutely joined the Taiping Army. Unlike Shi Dakai, Li Kaifang, Lin Fengxiang and others, who were leading generals from the beginning of the army, Li Xiucheng started from the lowest-level soldier and promoted the military commander step by step with his military exploits.

And what is the merit? It is to kill, and the more people are killed, the greater the merits of the war, only by one's own hands. Although the lives in Li Xiucheng's hands cannot be counted, they are at least ten times that of Wang Feng.

Such a person can be described as having a heart like iron and stone, and has truly reached the realm of heaven and earth being unkind, and taking all things as a dog, in fact, in the eyes of most Democratic League soldiers, human life, what kind of thing is that?

Next. Li Xiucheng's task is to sweep around the perimeter, pay attention to the movements of the Russian army at any time, and maintain close contact with Li Erhu, after all, the two troops are not far apart, only a few hundred kilometers, and they can completely support each other.

And Li Erhu's troops did not start the pursuit until they broke Tashkent for an hour. Most of them ran, but in the vast grasslands. It's not that easy, especially in winter, and it's too late to carry food supplies.

How far can an average person run in one breath? Ten kilometers or twenty kilometers? There is no point in studying it in detail, and when he can't run, he will fall on the cold ground, perhaps not waiting to be discovered by the NLD forces. I will freeze to death first.

Even if you ride a horse, how far can a horse run in one breath? Fifty kilometers or a hundred kilometers? The Democratic Alliance also has cavalry!

Along the way, many people were not caught up and killed by the NLD forces, but froze to death or starved to death, and even died of exhaustion. The people who died at the hands of the Democratic Alliance Army basically lay on the ground and looked like they were waiting for death, and they really couldn't run, and even if they were lucky enough to run out of the horizontal push range of the Democratic Alliance Army, it would be difficult to survive in bad weather.

When Li Xiucheng completed the flat push of the Fergana Basin, the forward of Li Erhu's department also approached Vilneburg, he was not in a hurry to attack, there was nothing in the artillery baggage, and he had to wait for the rear to be transported, he just concentrated his forces and probed the situation around.

Vilneburg is the predecessor of Almaty, located in the hilly area at the foot of the Ili Mountains at the northern foot of the Tianshan Mountains, surrounded by mountains on three sides, with an altitude of 700 to 900 meters, the terrain is high in the south and low in the north, not far from the southeast is the Targol Peak of nearly 5,000 meters in the sea, the city is built in the plain in front of the mountain, condescendingly, overlooking the Ili River valley and its nearby desert area.

Such a place is certainly easy to defend and difficult to attack, but from another point of view, why is it not a dead place like a street pavilion? As long as the exit is blocked, the people in the castle can only be trapped alive, unless they have the courage to climb over the snow-capped mountains behind them.

Due to the irrigation of many mountain streams in the Outer Ili Mountains, the land around Vilneburg is fertile, and in addition to the production of grain, some places on the outskirts of the city have been opened up by the Russians into orchards, among which apple orchards are the majority, and Li Erhu is stationed near the orchards.

In the past few days, the castle has been in a panic, and there are even small groups of infantry and cavalry mixed teams trying to storm the army formation, although the Democratic Alliance army did not carry heavy artillery, but only mortars, which is enough to crush the Russian army's breakthrough again and again.

Seven days later, the heavy artillery and baggage came as scheduled, which made the Russian army dare not attack again, and they were as anxious as ants on a hot pot.

The fort was dominated by Cossack cavalry, which originally numbered more than 3,000 people, and later gathered some routs, the number exceeded 7,000, but they were still surrounded.

Li Erhu decided to take a day off and start attacking from the next day.

In the early morning of December 5, the sky was covered with snowflakes and the snow on the ground was about 10 centimeters thick, and according to the temporary weather station, the wind was three to four northwesterly and the temperature was -three degrees Celsius.

In fact, the entire Central Asian steppe is not as cold as imagined, it is similar to the winter in Huaibei and North China in China, and the area around Ferghana in the south is as warm as the south of the Yangtze River.

The latitude of Vilneburg is a little lower than that of Urumqi and Ili, but the temperature is very different, and there are very few extreme cold temperatures of minus 20 or 30 degrees, only Xinjiang and Tibet, as well as the borders of China's northwestern provinces.

Artillerymen wore thick leather gloves, mortarists wore thinner canvas gloves, and soldiers were bare-handed, because minus three degrees could be overcome by ordinary people, and wearing gloves would have an impact on handling firearms.

Twenty 122-mm cannons, twenty howitzers of the same caliber, and 100 small mountain guns were already in place, and the muzzles of the black holes pointed at the castle.

On the stone wall, there stood a line of Russian troops, commanded by Colonel Velevkin, all with a look of despair on their faces.

They were armed with mini guns, but on the open piedmont plains, the soldiers with mini guns faced the 54-style rifles like live targets.

They also had artillery, but their scarcity in number, bulky size, and low rate of fire made them almost useless in a breakout.

Originally, this kind of equipment was very tall in front of the Central Asian countries, and the small detachment of more than 1,000 people of the Russian army could easily defeat the main force of tens of thousands of people in the Central Asian countries, but compared with the Democratic Alliance Army, the Russian army could not even compare with the British army a few years ago.

"Oh, damn it, who came up with the idea to build the castle in this place in the first place, and now I can't even run away." Velevkin pulled his hair and roared in pain.

One of the attendants said with a sad face: "Your Excellency Colonel, we have no choice, let's pray to God, maybe God will take care of us." ”

"Sorry fart, we have been abandoned by God, the Chinese army has tens of thousands of people, more than 100 artillery pieces, and hundreds of small cannons, and we only have 7,000 people, and there are not even 30 artillery pieces, it is difficult for us to survive until tonight! Damn, where did China get such advanced weapons! Velevkin shouted in despair.

"Then pray to be led to heaven by God." Another attendant was very humorous, closed his eyes slightly, and drew a cross.

The Russian soldiers drew crosses one after another and prayed sincerely.

But 10 minutes, 20 minutes later, the Chinese army still did not attack, which is very incomprehensible.

"Bring the binoculars!" Verevkin beckoned.

An attendant hurriedly handed over the binoculars, and Velevkin looked closely, and was affected by the snowflakes in the sky, and could not see clearly with the telescope, and the Chinese army a few kilometers away was like a shallow mountain range, and it was impossible to see the details clearly.

"Damn the weather!" Velev cursed urgently, and at this time, Li Erhu was receiving a report from the patrol post: "Report to Commander Li, the Russian army of about 200,000 people is approaching rapidly from the east, thirty kilometers away from the front of our army." ”

Huang Shaochun, the commander of the 30th Army, hurriedly said: "Commander Li, the Russian army must have come out of Ili, and it is quite fast, it must be too late to attack Fort Verne, should we move our position to avoid being attacked by the enemy?" The weather is now very bad for us. ”

Wang Feng's basic requirement for all commanders is that it is impossible to really make a last resort, in war, there will always be various unexpected situations, as a commander, you must be calm, the more urgent it is, the more you must be calm, and try to obtain the opponent's information.

Li Erhu took a deep breath, waved his hand, signaled that he was not busy, and then asked, "How is the equipment of the Russian army?" Can the composition of the force be clearly discerned? ”

"This" the patrol sentry hesitated for a moment, and then said: "I can't see clearly in the snow, and I don't dare to get too close, I can only judge from the shadow, I haven't seen many artillery, there are probably only a few dozen, or some are mixed in the ranks and are difficult to find, and in terms of troop composition, about half of them are dressed in Russian uniforms, and the rest are dressed as Central Asian herdsmen, there are a lot of horses, and it is not a problem to organize sixty or seventy thousand cavalry, it should be the Central Asian mob that has wandered into Xinjiang to be requisitioned by the Russian army." ”

Li Erhu waved his hand: "Explore again!" ”

"Yes!" The sentry saluted and rode away.

Li Erhu muttered: "Our goal is to kill and injure the enemy as much as possible, we can't let it, we have to make the Russian army have the illusion that it can be attacked from both sides of the castle, so we will continue to attack, otherwise he has so many cavalry, if he wants to escape, we can't chase it at all, which will bring trouble to the conquest of the Central Asian grasslands, if I am not mistaken, the Russian army will definitely bully our army with a clear vision, and the cavalry will rush first, you, and you, quickly go to Commander Li Xiucheng, and ask him to lead the army to come quickly." ”

"Yes!" The two soldiers got on their horses and galloped into the depths of the snow field on the slush of snow.

Li Erhu said again: "Retreat on all fronts, pay attention to your back, and build a defensive position on the spot!" (To be continued.) )