When the reconnaissance cavalry began to try to reconnoiter the enemy troops in the direction of Chunhua to the east, the infantry without horses looked very uneasy, and even the cavalry troops were not without wavering, and some people had already begun to wonder whether to rush over first. After Yi Meng took the lead in killing the horses, whether they were willing or not, the cavalry and officers gave up their mounts, and the morale of the Ming infantry was a little calmer.

On the way to Chunhua, the breakthrough troops of the public servant division did not encounter any resistance, and according to Zhou Dongtian's order, the Shun army had retreated to several main forts on this side, and the rest of the periphery and outpost positions were all abandoned. After Yi Meng and the other staff officers walked for a few miles, a line of defense appeared on the road ahead, and three of the main fortresses were still fluttering eagle flags - this was the only line of defense west of Chunhua, and more than 1,000 officers and soldiers of the Guards Battalion held on to these three fortresses in the defense system that could best control the road. Between the three forts were several obstacles pulled by horses and thorns, and anyone who wanted to climb through them would be exposed to crossfire from the Shun troops on either side.

This line of defense was the main line of defense operated by the Shun army for several months, and the fortress was protected by a trench more than two people high, and a strong wall of more than 1.8 meters had a well-covered firing position.

"Isn't it a detour?" After seeing the defense of the Shun army, a staff officer immediately suggested that the Shun army had abandoned so many defensive lines in one go, and it looked like there were not enough troops, and they felt that there might be a hole in the flanks that would be easier to pass through.

"No way!" Without waiting for Yi Meng to answer, Wang Xingyun preemptively objected, Yi Meng killed the horses just now but boosted his morale, but now he can only send infantry to reconnoitre, the wind direction is not good today, the balloon has not floated over, so he can't see clearly, at this critical juncture Wang Xingyun said bluntly: "Run over, run back, how much time will it take?" And what if there is a mistake in the reconnaissance, or if the Shun army discovers our movement and rushes over to intercept it? What should I do if a new Shun army arrives at the blockage? ”

Wang Xingyun's series of rhetorical questions no one could answer immediately, and after a while, a staff officer said that he could divide an army to flank, and if he found a gap, he would quickly occupy it, and then send someone to report back to him where the large army would break through.

However, Wang Xingyun still objected, and he raised the most critical question, that is, it was likely to be safe through here, and if troops were sent to flank and detour, the officers and soldiers who had been hiding in Tibet for so long were likely to flee on their own as soon as they saw that escape was in sight. Now there is no way out, there are chasing soldiers behind, and the control of the officers of the public servant division over the troops has reached the verge of collapse, but perhaps because there is no way out, the soldiers are still following the officers and counting on everyone to work together to rush out of a way, Wang Xingyun shouted: "Even if only one person starts to run, it may lead to an uproar in the army!" ”

Yi Meng admitted that what Wang Xingyun said was very reasonable, and sending an army to the flank was likely to cause panic among the soldiers as it had just been when the scout cavalry had just been dispatched, and the officers and soldiers who were ordered to wait here might suspect that the friendly troops had escaped despite them because of their impetuousness, and with the current control of the officers, once there was a military commotion, it could be a big collapse.

"The technique of the fortress was originally imitated by the Duke of Qi to imitate Taixi, and then it was widely used in the Henan battlefield by General Xu, and it has been carried forward in our China after being tempered by the battle array for a long time, and now it is a sharp weapon that makes the soldiers famous, and it is said that it is absolutely impossible to capture by methods other than artillery fire." Yi Meng mobilized the officers gathered around him before the war: "But since ancient times, how can there be a kind of long-term victory and undefeated? The whole army is assaulting, and we are going to take the fortress on foot today. ”

"Yes, my lord." The officers responded with their heads held high.

"At least, we still have an advantage in troops." Anyone can see that the Shun army is seriously under-strengthened, giving up the covering defense of the main position, and there are no troops to cover the trenches and the front low wall, which has reduced the three-dimensional defense effect of the fortress a lot, and in order to block the effect, it has to disperse and occupy the three fortresses: "And we don't need to take all of them, as long as we take a large avenue, it will be open for us." ”

Yi Meng ordered the final pre-war mobilization and an all-out attack on the positions of the Shun army.

At the same time as the preparation of the public servant division, Qi Delong, who was located in the central fortress, also mobilized his subordinates, and as a senior officer, he was assigned by Zhou Dongtian as the officer in charge of the defense of the Western Front.

"You've all seen it, Mingkou is about to attack." Qi Delong stood at the highest point of the central fortress and shouted to the officers and soldiers of Shun in this fortress, and the Ming army on the opposite side was forming a battle formation: "This desperate enemy army is being surrounded here by our army in all directions, and they are cornered and about to be destroyed!" ”

"We will undoubtedly face a bloody battle, and the enemy will use their last strength to storm us before they are destroyed, but we must hold on, we are not alone, and tens of thousands of troops are coming here at full speed to reinforce here." The soldiers in the fortress were not full, and there were some new recruits in the Guards battalion who had only been replenished after the Battle of Anqing, many of them from Shandong, and Qi Delong's speech was mainly directed at them: "You may have heard many stories about what happened in Shandong, where profiteers from the south opened up one factory after another, hired ignorant boys, forced them to do hard labor that even a strong man could not do, and then threw the disabled boys away like garbage, and casually ruined a boy's life; They deceived the honest peasants, seized their land, forced them to mine, and left them sick and wounded in the factories, but they had to deduct even their meager wages; The enemy troops standing opposite us are the minions of these profiteers......"

The officers and men of the Changsheng Army believed that all this would be corrected, and that when the war was over, the day of peace would come, and the Son of Heaven and the benevolent court would not tolerate profiteers wreaking havoc, and this was the reason why they threw down their hoes and followed Xu Ping in the Central Plains: they would support King Shun instead of the brutal Duming, who was born in poverty and was one of them, and he could feel the pain of every poor man who was struggling with tyranny—and this peace was also promised to them by King Shun and General Xu.

"For the peaceful world of Dashun, it is also our peaceful world," Qi Delong ended his mobilization, and after following Xu Ping to attack the defense of Shandong and the Yamen, he did not hesitate to become a rebel to persuade Xu Ping to rebel, and Xu Ping returned to join the army after being reinstated because he believed in Xu Ping's promise: "Gentlemen, don't let Your Majesty King Shun down, don't let His Royal Highness the Great General down, don't let your descendants continue to live under your rule in Duming!" ”

"Long live Your Majesty! Long live Dashun! There was an impassioned shout from the fortress.

……

"We are not only for ourselves, but also for the country," Wang Xingyun shouted with all his strength to the officers and soldiers of the 38th Regiment who were about to attack as the vanguard: "The friendly forces of Chunhua have been holding out here for half a year, and they are looking forward to reinforcements every day. ”

"The thief in there!" Wang Xingyun pointed his arm back and pointed hard at the three silent fortresses, and shouted at the soldiers: "Coveting the fame and fortune of the lord, trying to retake Zhejiang, and even attacking Fujian, trying to take away what we have obtained with great difficulty - the voting rights of corrupt officials and corrupt officials on our heads!" An attempt to destroy our Constituent Assembly, an attempt to once again take away our right to say '' to the dogs! ”

"Do you want to go back five years? Will you watch our Constituent Assembly destroyed? Would you like the wolf-like officials of the first emperor to ride on our heads and our parents and wives to be powerful? The more Wang Xingyun shouted, the more excited he became, and everyone jumped up from the ground: "The brothers of the constitutional master have fulfilled their duties, and our parents, wives, and fellow villagers are looking at us, wondering if our brothers of the public servant division can fulfill our duties!" ”

"Attack!" Wang Xingyun's face was flushed, the green tendons on his neck were exposed, and he roared again and again: "Defeat the thieves, long live the Constituent Assembly!" ”

"Long live the Constituent Assembly! Long live the Academy! The officers and men of the 38th Regiment also let out a thunderous shout.

……

The shrubs or other shelters in front of the defense line had long been cut down by the Shun army, and after the Ming army entered the firing range, the Shun troops in the fortress began to shoot, and the Ming troops walking in the front row were like ears of wheat that had been harvested, falling to the ground in rows. At this distance, firing at the Shun army behind the bunker was no different from discharging the empty gun, the Ming army advanced against the fire of the other side, the three cannons deployed by the Shun army in the fortress paused for a moment, and when they fired again, they had already been replaced with shotguns, and with each cannon sound, a large area of the Ming army's column was swept away.

The Ming army continued to advance, and the opposing fortress did not cover the covering troops, they gritted their teeth and advanced to the trench in front of the main fortress wall, and it was only at this time that they raised their guns for the first time and fired back at the firing port and parapet wall of the fortress wall. While the soldiers in the back row were firing in cover, the soldiers in the front row began to jump down the trench, climbing up with their hands and feet.

However, the Shun army was not hit by the covering fire of the Ming army, and at the same time that the artillery began to lower the muzzle, the infantry of the Shun army also lowered the muzzle and fired at the Ming infantry who tried to climb the slope of the trench. The Ming soldiers were shot from three sides, and while they were struggling to climb upward, they would always keep slipping on the sandy surface, while their companions were constantly hit by the opponent's bullets, rolling down the slope and falling to the bottom of the ditch, like a big sandbag, smashing down the companions who could not dodge behind them.

Yi Meng has been nervously observing the development of the battle situation with binoculars, the infantry has not been able to suppress the Shun artillery behind the bunker, it is still firing, and the Ming attacking infantry has suffered heavy casualties under the fire of the Shun infantry, and so far none of them have climbed to the top of the trench. Every Ming soldier who was about to climb to the base of the wall would be cared for by many Shun soldiers, and their fallen bodies hindered the follow-up attack, and although the soldiers who were brought down tried hard to start climbing again, this kind of trench was originally difficult to climb, and it became more difficult under interference, and some soldiers began to get tired and slow after falling and sliding a few times.

In front of Wang Xingyun's feet, which was closer to the battlefield, to the front of the trench, there were hundreds of corpses of Ming soldiers, and he knew that the soldiers behind the field of vision obscured by the team were suffering greater casualties, and an officer ran back in a panic to report that the morale of the attacking soldiers had begun to decline, and some soldiers had already fallen on the bottom of the trench and no longer continued to climb.

"The officers are out of the ranks."

Wang Xingyun turned around and shouted, and the lieutenants in the reserve in the back row walked up a few steps one after another, standing side by side in front of Commander Wang.

"We officers enjoy the best treatment in the military academy, with instructor guidance, better food, better beds, horses to ride after joining the army, and higher military salaries." Wang Xingyun said loudly: "The so-called raising troops for a thousand days and using troops for a while, this battle does not need command, only morale. Wang Xingyun quoted the words of Hei Baoyi, the first battalion officer of the armored battalion: "I personally led the officer corps to charge, the brothers took the first step, the gentlemen followed, the captain died and the lieutenant took the lead, and if the lieutenant died, the second lieutenant took the lead." ”

This order silenced the officers for a moment, and then a second lieutenant strode forward two steps, so close that he almost hit Wang Xingyun's nose, and he shouted against the face of the regimental commander: "Obey, sir!" ”

The officer team rushed forward, Wang Xingyun rushed to the trench and jumped down, the living people and corpses at the bottom of the ditch were stacked on top of each other, as the officer had just reported, the soldiers had begun to retreat, and the soldiers who had climbed halfway up no longer braved the enemy's fire, but lay behind the dead bodies of their comrades in front, trying to dodge the bullets fired from the front and side.

"Long live the Constituent Assembly!" Wang Xingyun got up as soon as he stood, and when he shouted, he climbed up first, and several regimental staff officers followed closely beside him, shouting at the soldiers to follow while climbing up together.

The shouting Ming army immediately attracted the attention of the Shun army, and the guards next to him who helped Wang Xingyun to carry the flag bear the brunt, and when he climbed up, he used the flagpole as a crutch, trying to keep up with the commander while trying to keep the flag as high as possible. A bullet struck him in the head, and the standard-bearer rolled back to the bottom of the ditch with an upside-down onion, and an officer who had just jumped off the trench leaned down and grabbed his flag and climbed upwards as well.

The staff officers around him were knocked down one after another, because this wave of Ming troops who rushed up without life were particularly united, so Wang Xingyun was miraculously able to reach out and touch the top of the trench, he climbed the edge with his left hand, drew his handgun and fired a shot at the Shunjun bunker at the height, and then stretched half of his body out of the deep trench with both hands at the same time.

At this time, the eyes of the whole regiment were focused on this person who was the first to approach the enemy's wall, and at this time, the bullets that the Shun army fired back had also flown in, Wang Xingyun was shot twice in the chest, as if he had been hit by a hammer, his body flew backwards, rolled in the air and fell to the ground.

The Ming army lying on his stomach looked at the top commander of their regiment in a daze, and his eyes followed his corpse back from a high place to the bottom of the ditch, and before they could react, two more corpses were thrown down, this was the deputy regiment commander and their chief of staff who were closely behind Wang Xingyun, who had already stepped on the top of the ditch, and even drew half of his sword.

"Long live the Constituent Assembly!"

One officer after another shouted slogans and was fired back by the fire of the Shun army, and many soldiers who were lying on the edge of the ditch in silence suddenly jumped up again, shouted loudly again, and climbed up in a frenzy, not dodging the opponent's lead bullet at all.

Yi Meng saw more and more soldiers crawling out of the trenches, and they stuck their bayonets into the cracks in the walls and began to climb over the walls without hesitation. Some soldiers took off their bayonets or broke them, and they continued to climb up with their fingernails against the wall, and their fingers were dripping with blood as if they didn't realize it, and at this time the division headquarters sent more reinforcements to the forward regiment, and they rushed to the edge of the trench after the original covering troops jumped off the trench and began to contain and suppress the Shun army.

When the first Ming army climbed over the wall, Qi Delong rushed up with a handcuff in each hand, and the Ming army under the wall was stacking more and more ladders, but as more Ming troops climbed over the wall, the strength of the Shun army was not enough to knock down these ladders, and now they could no longer take care of the enemies who were still climbing the ditch.

Qi Delong put down the two Ming soldiers with one shot, and then nailed an enemy soldier to the wall with his saber, and the Ming soldiers crossed on both sides, he pulled out the sword twice but did not draw it, so he picked up a rifle from the ground, and its owner was stabbed to death by the Ming army as soon as the bayonet was put on it.

Qi Delong, who had been a soldier for a long time, returned to his old business in the Battle of Anqing, personally carrying a banner to launch a foot charge against the Ming army, he danced the rifle in his hand vigorously, and soon added two more achievements, but when he put down his fifth opponent today, a bayonet pierced from the side was inserted into his right chest.

The enemy was smashed by the butt of Zidron's guard before he spun the bayonet, and he let go of his hands and threw himself to the ground, Zidron staggered back two steps, and fell to the ground with his back to the sky, the rifle still standing upright in his chest.

The two guards dragged Qi Delong behind, and more and more Ming troops poured in, while the Shun army became fewer and fewer, and Qi Delong was already confused, although the guards did not pull out the bayonet on his chest, but blood still gushed out from the blood groove of the bayonet, or poured into his chest, so that Qi Delong could not breathe.

"My lord," one of the guards burst into tears as he looked at Qi Delong as he was leaving, and suddenly shouted into his ear: "The general has arrived, the general's reinforcements have arrived!" ”

"Oh-" Qi Delong's already dazed gaze suddenly became clear again with this shout, and for a moment a relieved expression appeared on his face, and he exhaled his last breath: "-oh-"

At this moment, Qi Delong saw the faces of his parents who were starving to death on the way to escape, and saw that they were smiling at him—he endured the exploitation of the government, and finally threw down his hoe and fled the famine...... The corpses of the wanderers were cut down all over the field by the chasing border soldiers, and even the heads of the children were taken off and sent to the overseer for silver...... For the first time, he picked up his weapon, followed Xu Ping into the county seat, opened the city gate, and distributed the food in the warehouse to be transported to Beijing or supplied to the bandit army to the skinny hungry people...... Although he became an officer, he never did anything wrong, and he never bullied others......

- This is the only skill I have, and I will die with the dimness, and you will definitely be able to take your brothers to our peaceful world.

……

After breaking through the central fortress, Yi Meng ordered the soldiers to carry their wounded companions on their backs and continue to advance towards Chunhua, while the Shun fortresses on both sides were still firing at the Ming army, but they could no longer stop the Ming army from continuing to move eastward. And Yi Meng himself personally carried Wang Xingyun's body on his shoulders, carrying this subordinate on his back and silently marching with his soldiers.

After walking for several miles, a group of cavalry with red flags suddenly appeared in front, and after seeing the banner of the constitutional division, the officers and men of the Ming Dynasty were relieved one by one, and many of them immediately softened to the ground.

"Keep going!" The officers shouted one after another, although the position of the Constitutional Division was close at hand, as long as they had not stepped into the friendly position of Chunhua, it could not be called absolutely safe.

Yi Meng was greeted by an acquaintance, Ren Hongcheng, who, although the Constitutional Master discovered the battle to the west, never received a report of contact with a friendly outpost (they did not know at the time that Yi Meng had killed all his horses).

After seeing Ren Hongcheng, Yi Meng also collapsed all over his body, almost paralyzing on the ground.

"Doctor Ren, there are still seven or eight thousand sons under the last general," Yi Meng couldn't wait to express his worries: "You still have enough grain and grass here, right?" ”

"I don't know if there is grain and grass, but there are definitely seven or eight thousand pairs of chopsticks." Ren Hongcheng stepped forward to support Yi Meng, who was already weak on the soles of his feet, in fact, Chunhua had also reached the point where he was about to run out of food, but even if Zhou Dongtian had air defense on the eastern front, Tang Desheng did not consider breaking through: "As long as the constitutional division still has food, will it make the public servant division hungry?" ”

In the evening, Yi Meng's worried food also had a whereabouts, Tang Desheng, who had just returned to Chunhua, ran to visit Yi Meng, who had escaped, and his first sentence was to apologize to him, for Chunhua did not send troops to support the public servant division to break through - after finding that the northern strength of the Shun army was weak, Tang Desheng did his best to the north to respond to the siege of the council division, and their two divisions surrounded the three thousand Shun troops in several fortresses, and successfully transported a large number of baggage to the encirclement.

Now the town of Chunhua was filled with the cheers of soldiers, and this time the liberation troops of the parliamentary division brought hundreds of wagons, and in addition to sending a large number of baggage, they also took away thousands of wounded soldiers of the constitutional division by the way.

"Originally, Chen Wei's kid wanted to throw a group to me, but I didn't ask for it, and Dr. Ren sent someone to find me and say that there are thousands of more mouths here," Tang Desheng smiled at Yi Meng: "We will continue to hold on to Chunhua." ”

……

When Li Laiheng rushed to the battlefield where Wang Xingyun and Qi Delong were killed, more than 6,000 Ming troops had already passed through here, and the eleventh town of Nanming learned that the main force of the Shun army did not try to annihilate the first infantry wing of the Shun army after arriving but withdrew back to Longtan in the starry night, and before leaving, they shot all the shells they brought to the fortress of the guard battalion, and the Ming army near Chunhua also retreated to their positions.

"Big failure." Li Laiheng was so angry that he threw his horsewhip on the ground, when will such an encirclement of Chunhua end? Moreover, the threat of the strengthened Chunhua Ming army was restored, and the main force of the Shun army could not stay away calmly.

"What about Nanjing?" Chen Zhe asked cautiously.

"The general's agreement, I can't tear it up." Li Laiheng said angrily.

"What about the captives?" Chen Zhe asked again, the two regiments after the public servant division was broken have been annihilated, but there are still some routs who have escaped from this gap.

"Leave them alive and pray for the general, I hope that God can see the general's benevolence." Li Laiheng said hatefully, and finally glanced in the direction of Chunhua, and then turned the horse's head and galloped away.

……

"The glory of our army is won and maintained by the brave volunteers, starting from Chunhua until the end of this world."

Fifty years later, the inscription at the gate of the Nanjing Military Academy.

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