The task of the 4th Division was not only to maintain stability in the lower Ural region, but also to actively contact the Kalmyks living on the edge of the Caspian Sea and persuade them to return to the great embrace of the motherland. If these descendants of the Oirat Mongols, who have always believed in Tibetan Buddhism, can take up their swords and spears and stand with the Wehrmacht, the situation of the Wehrmacht here will be greatly reversed.

The Kalmyks on the shores of the Caspian Sea have a population of nearly 200,000 people, and these people remained on the west bank of the Volga River when Wobasi returned to the east. At that time, there were 4,700 Kalmyks in the West Bank who had not returned to their homeland, including more than 10,000 from the Dulbert tribe, more than 8,000 from the Turghut tribe, and more than 3,000 from the Hoshote tribe.

The current Kalmyks are the descendants of the 20,000 Oirat Mongol descendants, and after more than 100 years of reproduction, they have become a small people with a population of nearly 200,000. It can pull out 20,000 young warriors of the right age, and it does not affect the reproduction of the entire tribe.

That's 20,000 cavalry. It can bring great help to Liu Xian.

……

This snow has been falling intermittently for half a month. The snow on the field can not reach people's calves, how did the Russian army march, Liu Xian didn't know, the virtual map was not buggy to the point of being visible. The Wehrmacht was a sleigh here, with many wagons stripped of their wheels and nailed to widened sleigh boards, and cannons carried by wide forward planks, like ploughs. But it saved too much effort and time for the march.

Relying on this march much faster than the Russian army, Liu Xianhe was able to smoothly penetrate from the two Russian forces, and arrived forty or fifty miles outside Saratov. only to be detected by the Russian army defending the city.

Liu Xian immediately organized troops to attack. First, the towns of Yabinsk and Valtov around the city of Saratov were taken, and the road to the west and south of Saratov was cut off. The main force approached the Volga from the north and pinned down the main forces of the defenders in Saratov. In this way, all external relations with Saratov were completely cut off.

But the main force of the Chinese army appeared outside the city of Saratov, and the news must have reached Tsaritsyn and other places long ago. Although Liu Xian attacked the city of Saratov, his eyes could be fixed on Tsaritsyn and the army to the north.

He's going to besiege the city and send reinforcements!

Running thousands of miles in the ice and snow, without rest, no matter how strong the army is, it will be sparse. Liu Xian had abundant military supplies, and the soldiers were in good conditions for food and clothing, and with the help of sleds, they could naturally maintain relatively good physical strength. Especially the current siege warfare is an outright feint. The guns in the hands of the soldiers were captured Russian rifles. Don't look at the fight. It seems that a lot of bullets have been wasted, but the real family of the Wehrmacht has not been used at all. The officers and men did not work hard. The troops are not so much at war as at rest.

In this way, when the Russian army hurriedly ran back, Liu Xian prepared himself to wait for work and ate them cleanly in the field.

"Siege for reinforcements. We are besieging the city for reinforcements, not siege and blockade! ”

"And what is a siege for reinforcements? The purpose is not to encircle the enemy, but to fight to aid the enemy, and the battle against the encirclement is prepared for a fairly protracted period, but it must be quick and decisive to help the enemy. ”

"Let's not think of the Russians as incompetent. Let's not be too full of Russians. ”

"Saratov is one of the most important cities of the Russians on the Volga. It is a water transport hub connecting the upper and lower reaches of the Volga River. It is impossible for the Russians to let it go. ”

"We just need to release the scouts and keep an eye on the movement of the east, west, north and south."

"We waited for the enemy to take the bait. This time there may not be just one wave. ”

With a virtual map, you're in control. After Liu Xian dealt with this, he had time to take a look at Saratov. This yellow mountain town is located on the high ground on the right bank of the Volga River.

The defenders in the city were 20,000 people, and now they couldn't care about the fact that the ground was as hard as pig iron in the ice and snow, and the whole city mobilized to build defensive positions outside the city. It was the most famous center of the grain trade and sawmill industry in Russia during the Imperial era. It is enveloped in a lowland area surrounded by the mountains of Sasan, Altun and Uvel.

The terrain is not so dangerous, and the city defense is not much rubbish. And because Saratov is one of the all-Russian timber trading centers. There are many wooden buildings in the city, and the consequence is that there are constant fires. Although these fires also contributed to the construction of Saratov New City, the transformation of a city does not happen overnight. In the city of Saratov today, there are at least three or four percent of wooden houses.

And the best way to attack such a city is not to storm it, but to use incendiary bombs and take advantage of the winter wind to set a big fire.

And Liu Xian did the same. The technical difficulty of incendiary bombs is not great, of course, with the current scientific level, the cost is not low. Liu Xian had already ordered someone to make an incendiary bomb, and at that time he deliberately gave it the name of a special bomb.

Now these incendiary shells are no longer artillery shells, but rockets from individual rocket artillery. But after more than a hundred refueled rockets were fired, the city of Saratov was turned into a sea of fire.

The fire directly burned a third of Saratov City, because the snow had just stopped, and there was still ice and snow on the roofs of many houses in the city, which seemed to create a lot of conditions for Saratov to extinguish the fire.

But even so, the whole Saratov was in chaos, and Liu Xian did take the opportunity to command the troops to fight for a while. As a result, it didn't make it. The Russians deployed tens of thousands of troops on all sides of the position outside, although the city was full of flames, although the Russian army's heart was shaking and trembling, the Russian troops on the position were not mobilized at all, and later three or five thousand troops were transferred from the city to support. Liu Xian saw that although the attacking troops took some advantage, the proportion of casualties between the enemy and us was too close, so he stopped the offensive.

Liu Xian glanced at the Russian army defenders in Saratov City. He is decided. At a stall where the whole city is about to be engulfed in flames, it is really good to be able to endure the troops outside the city and not move, and when the fire is slightly controlled, it is really good to quickly dispatch troops to reinforce the positions outside the city.

Seeing that such a good opportunity failed to take Saratov, Liu Xian lost the idea of taking the city in a short period of time. The Wehrmacht also built a defensive line in Saratov, and Liu Xian ordered people to burn snow melt water, pour ice walls, and fortify the fortress. In today's situation of minus ten or twenty degrees, the ice water reinforcement really adds a layer of iron armor to the defense line. Very sturdy!

Little Nikolai. Nikolayevich was a lawsuit at this time. As a close relative of the Russian royal family, little Nikolai must have the title of duke, even if he eats and waits for death. But little Nikolai, like his father, had a deep love for war. He entered the military academy early, graduated from the Military Academy of the General Staff in 1876, and worked in the staff of the commander-in-chief of the Russian army in the Balkan theater where his father served during the Russo-Turkish War. Later, he served as the commander of the Janissary Hussar Regiment, Brigade Commander and Cavalry Division.

After the Battle of Tacheng, Little Nikolai fell into a deep silence for a while. But without Liu Xian knowing, Little Nikolai once again returned to the position of commander of the army. Now with the rank of major general, he was responsible for the defense of the city of Saratov.

As the commander of Saratov's city defense, Nikolai Jr.'s performance yesterday was qualified. But as the current supreme commander of Saratov City, he has a headache for the next aftermath work.

A third of the city was burned and everything was reduced to ashes. Not to mention the loss of property and personnel, how should the refugees who were born out of it be resettled?

The Volga is not Lake Balkhash, it is inhabited by a large number of Slavs. When the Wehrmacht came here with the aura of war, a large number of Slavs fled to the city. And such a large city as the city of Saratov is the favorite of the Slavs in the countryside.

"Order, to defend Saratov, it is necessary to first stabilize order in the city. Stability requires enough food and houses to live in. ”

"Mr. Ostaup, I hope that at this critical time, you will take up your responsibilities. As the governor of the Samatov province, I hope that you will be able to handle all this properly as soon as possible. ”

"I'm tired of the noise and painful sounds in the city."

"I also need to face the Chinese emperor, a formidable opponent. It's all going to distract me. ”

Tea. Ostaper walked out of Little Nikolai's office in distress. Before he stepped out of the gate of the city defense headquarters, a noisy sound reached his ears. More than 40,000 refugees, as well as the many Slavs who would have poured in to weigh them, was a huge suffocating burden.

But when confronted with little Nikolai, Ostap couldn't say a word of rebuttal. Because he knew that little Nikolai would not allow him to refute. That was not the request of Nikolai Jr., but the order of the commander of the city defense in wartime.

"Bring me Mr. François, Mr. Samsonov and Mr. Rennankampf. I need their help now. As presidents of the Chamber of Commerce, they are now also obligated to take responsibility......"

Ostaper said to the people around him. He should now be glad that two of the city's granaries have not been burned, and that there are enough grain stores in them to sustain the whole of Saratov through these difficult years. Now that little Nikolai has 'wanted' to stabilize the order of the whole city, it is logical for Ostap to open a warehouse and release grain.

The hard part is how to maintain this order. How to find a place for these refugees.

Now it's not like summer, sleeping in the open air when it's minus ten or twenty degrees, it's going to die. And the ruins also need to be cleaned up, at least those corpses need to be cleaned up.

The reappearance of the Wehrmacht remained a great disaster for Saratov. It is a disaster that is many times bigger than the previous one. Because if they don't handle it well, all of them will lose everything they have. (To be continued......)