Melgarejo was good at commanding and fighting, but he was not very lucky. When he was holding on to La Paz, the city was well defended and there were sufficient troops. The Chinese Independence Army did not dare to attack rashly.
However, the favorable situation did not last for a few days before news of the Adolfo coup came. As a last resort, Melgarejo led his troops back to support Sucre, while La Paz was occupied by the Chinese Independence Army.
After attacking Sucre for more than half a day, Melgarejo's troops had a good opportunity to break the city. More than 200 rebels inside the main gate launched an attack on the gatekeepers. The rebels were once less than ten meters away from the city gate. If the city
The outside troops noticed the situation at the city gate and sent additional troops to attack, possibly breaking through the city gate in one fell swoop.
However, the situation changed here. Melgarejo, who had not slept all night and rushed to the battlefield in person to direct the battle, suffered a recurrence of old injuries due to the eight days of continuous attacks and the blow caused by the fall of La Paz when the defenders in the city launched a rebellion.
, cannot personally direct the siege.
Therefore, Melgarejo temporarily handed over the command of the army to his brother Balivian and went back to rest for a while.
Balivian participated in the battle to suppress the native Indians, but when faced with large-scale wars, his reactions were not quick enough.
Some of the defenders on the city wall launched a rebellion and evacuated the defense area, leaving a weak link in the city wall defense.
The siege officer discovered the situation and on the one hand directed the soldiers to attack the weakly defended area and at the same time passed the news to Balivian.
There are weak areas in the defensive positions of the defenders, either intentionally by the enemy, or because of emergencies in the city, resulting in insufficient defense forces.
The battle lasted for most of the day, and both sides suffered a lot of casualties. Deliberately giving up the city wall position to let the opponent enter the city was undoubtedly an act of seeking death. Balivian ruled out this possibility from the beginning.
Therefore, there is only one possibility that an emergency occurred in the city.
The defensive battle in Sucre entered a fierce stage. The city wall positions were occasionally broken through by siege troops. Balivian judged that the pressure on other defensive areas of Sucre was too high, so the city wall defenders transferred troops from other defense lines to support them, which led to holes in the city wall defense line.
.
Balivian's judgment was basically correct, but he did not think about the possibility of the city's defenders launching a rebellion on their own. Therefore, faced with the new defensive weakness on the city wall, Balivian dispatched soldiers to reinforce this area in an attempt to break through.
Sucre's line of defence.
Balivian's decision was not wrong, but he only saw the direct factors for the holes in the city wall's defense line and did not take into account the underlying reasons. The result was that Adolf led the few remaining guards and soldiers around him to personally supervise the battle and resist
The attack of the siege troops was stopped, and the troops sent to the city gate and the remaining gate defense troops attacked front and back, quickly annihilating the rebel soldiers.
The fighter opportunity was fleeting, and Balivian did not seize the opportunity of the rebellion of the defenders in the city to break through the city gate, giving the Sucre defenders a chance to breathe. It would be even more difficult to conquer the city gate next.
As the war continued, the roaring artillery fire blocked the cries of killing on the battlefield, and artillery shells and bullets were poured into the opponent's position for free. The soldiers who died in the battle had no time to transport them away, and they were densely distributed in the position under the city, while the injured soldiers
, simply bandaged the back end, picked up the rifle and returned to the battlefield.
As the red sun gradually set in the west, Melgarejo stood on a high ground outside the city with a telescope and carefully observed the battle.
The battle is a competition of wills. The siege troops are of much higher quality than the defenders, and they showed good combat effectiveness in the initial attack.
However, no matter how powerful the army is, it cannot survive for a long time. After a high-intensity German battle, they arrived outside Sucre and entered the battle without rest. The battle continued for a day and still did not achieve a clear breakthrough. This not only affected the morale of the siege soldiers, but also Melgaret.
Huo also felt a sense of loss.
Putting down his telescope, Melgarejo issued an order: the attacking troops were to suspend the attack on the city, and all the soldiers were withdrawn to two miles away for repairs.
The order was passed to the frontline siege troops. The officers in charge of the attack breathed a sigh of relief and quickly ordered the soldiers to retreat. The defenders also cooperated and did not attack the retreating soldiers.
The battle lasted all day. Not only was the siege force unable to attack, but the defenders were also exhausted. The two soldiers at the bottom were fighting each other because they belonged to different camps. They were both descendants of white people and had no sworn sworn sympathies.
Hatred and a temporary truce were what soldiers on both sides wanted to see. Therefore, the soldiers on the two fronts quickly broke away from contact, and soon there were no attacking soldiers under the city.
As night fell, a bonfire was lit in the military camp two miles outside the city. Seven or eight soldiers who were lucky enough to be uninjured lay together and rested around the bonfire.
The temperature difference between day and night in the Bolivian Plateau changes greatly. Soon after the sun sets, the temperature begins to drop. By eight or nine o'clock in the evening, the camp outside the city feels a little cooler.
The battle during the day was fierce, with 830 people killed and 1,072 injured among the 6,000 siege troops. The total number of casualties reached 1,900, accounting for one-third of the total number.
In ancient China, soldiers were likely to collapse if their casualties accounted for one-tenth. In the 19th century, with the formation of the modern army, the casualty ratio of the troops has greatly increased. Some elite troops can still fight with more than half of the casualties.
The siege force suffered nearly one-third casualties and was close to the red line of collapse. Melgarejo did not dare to take the risk and order the troops to attack.
This unit is his most direct unit. Since taking office, Melgarejo has invested a lot of resources in the construction of his troops. Good weapons and sufficient training have made the troops of more than 5,000 people even though they are small in number.
The advantage is obvious when facing the same enemy. Because of the support of this army, Melgarejo dares to go head-to-head with the Chinese Independence Army.
Among the 830 people who died in the battle, 570 were remnants brought by Medellin. There were less than 260 soldiers who were truly direct descendants of Melgarejo, and more than 1,000 were injured.
, more than half of them can still kill the enemy in a strong formation.
If all the soldiers were organized, Melgarejo would have a total of 4,600 combat-effective soldiers.
When he just left the battlefield, Melgarejo planned to continue the attack after a period of repair, but when he heard a piece of news, he reluctantly gave up this decision.
When receiving the news of the fall of La Paz, Melgarejo sent soldiers to investigate the whereabouts of the Chinese Independence Army. The soldiers just sent word that the Chinese Independence Army's vanguard cavalry had advanced to a distance of less than fifty miles from Sucre, and the enemy cavalry
The troops are only a hundred miles away from our side.
What is the concept of a distance of one hundred miles? As long as the enemy is traveling at full speed, the two sides will meet head-on in less than half a day.
The marching speed of the Chinese Independence Army was faster than Melgarejo expected, and it was already very dangerous to continue the attack at this time.
The longer people stay in high positions, the less they dare to take risks. Melgarejo has the same mentality now.
In the three years since he became the president of Bolivia, he not only provided a large amount of sophisticated equipment to his troops, but also accumulated a large amount of money for himself. The fall of La Paz and Sucre caused the loss of more than half of Melgarejo's property, but it was stored in Peru.
And the money in other countries is still enough for him to live happily for several lifetimes.
Waking up to hold the power of the world, lying drunk on the knees of a beautiful woman. Losing the power to control a country is heartbreaking, but compared with losing the war and being sent to the gallows, holding a generous fortune is still a relatively better choice.
The attack on Sucre was unsuccessful, the Chinese Independence Army was about to arrive, and Melgarejo's chances of making a comeback were slim.
After all, he was a big warlord and political giant who had been involved in both the military and political circles of Bolivia for more than 20 years. Melgarejo quickly realized his situation. Adolfo and the Chinese Independence Army joined forces, and he would definitely lose under the attack from both sides.
Knowing that resisting to the end would only make his death worse, Melgareho made a pragmatic decision: to make peace with Adolfo and the Chinese Independence Army.
