Chapter five hundred and forty-eight Xingquan Mansion in the siege
With these reinforcements, it became possible for him to continue heading north, because he could use the newly reinforced troops to contain the scattered Ming army in the direction of Guilin, and then mobilize the main force to quickly advance north.
Without waiting for the reinforcements to arrive, Chen Keqiao calculated the strength of his troops and immediately led the troops with the core of the Fifth Infantry Regiment to the north quickly. Even Guilin Fucheng was too lazy to leave the main troops to defend, leaving only
It's just a garrison battalion.
As for what the Ming army wants, let them take it away. Anyway, the 6th Infantry Regiment and the 6th Guards Brigade led by Colonel Zhou Yibao, the deputy commander of the 3rd Infantry Brigade, and the 1st Battalion of the Liuzhou Independent Regiment will teach them how to behave.
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He took away the Fifth Infantry Regiment and the temporary First Regiment and a small number of garrison troops, leaving several battalions of garrison troops to garrison Guilin Fucheng and other important locations.
At the same time, he also gave an order to the subsequent reinforcements heading north, asking them to clear out the Ming army in Guilin after going north. Although these Ming troops only numbered ten thousand people, they were still divided into several groups. If they met head-on, Chen Keqiao was confident
They were completely annihilated, but they were hiding and only attacked the Tang Dynasty's food roads and small cities, and did not engage in direct confrontation with the Fourth Army.
Therefore, these people are also a great threat to the Fourth Army. Although Chen Keqiao planned to leave, he still let the subsequent troops from Wuzhou go north to encircle and suppress these Ming troops.
Unless these Ming troops are killed, the Fourth Army's logistics supply line will not be completely safe.
Chen Keqiao led the Fifth Infantry Regiment and the temporary First Regiment to the north. Li Chunjing's Third Army also mobilized troops to concentrate towards Liuzhou, and also sent a garrison regiment stationed in Liuzhou to Liping Mansion.
The 3rd Infantry Regiment of the Second Army in Liping Province and other units also seized the time to rest and replenish, recruit new soldiers, and replenish ammunition in order to restore their combat effectiveness.
These are all for the purpose of rescuing the Fourth Infantry Regiment and other troops who were besieged in Xingquanfu City.
While many troops on the periphery were working hard to rescue the Fourth Infantry Regiment, in Xingquan Mansion City, Wang Shanxu stood on the top of the city with a tired look on his face, observing the Ming army outside the city.
The fatigue on his face was naturally not due to the battle with the Ming army. Wang Shanxu was the commander of the regiment, with the rank of colonel, and had long since left the level of personally fighting against enemy soldiers, let alone being exhausted mentally and physically due to the siege by the Ming army.
We have been under siege for two months, and we have experienced everything we need to go through. Under this long-term siege, we have become accustomed to many things.
The reason why he has a tired look on his face is because yesterday when discussing military affairs, the time was too late, and today he got up early in the morning to inspect various troops in the city.
When patrolling around the city, he naturally couldn't forget to observe the Ming army outside the city.
From what he could see, the Ming army outside the city seemed to want to settle down in Xingquan Fucheng. They had built a huge and strong camp, layer after layer.
"The camp of these rebels is getting stronger and stronger. I'm afraid I won't be able to go out of the city and catch them off guard like we did at the beginning!" Seeing this scene, Wang Shanxu had a look of pity on his face.
"These thieves have fought against us many times, and now they are wiser!" At this time, the subordinate officers next to him also echoed his words.
"That is, when they first arrived outside the city, they were beaten by us, with hundreds of casualties and casualties. If we didn't know how to reinforce the camp, we would have defeated these bandits long ago!"
When the Huguang Ming Army outside the city first arrived outside Xingquanfu City, because they were not familiar with the combat mode of the Tang Dynasty King's Division and their defenses were not tight enough, Wang Shanxu commanded the troops to take the initiative to go out of the city and launched a small counterattack, killing Ming Ming.
The army must be at least 500 strong.
But later on, the Ming army learned to be smart and took very tight defenses.
"I don't know when reinforcements will arrive. Although we can still hold on to the city wall, we can't hold on for long. The food in the city is already less than five days of food. Even if we save more, it can only last for ten days at most.
, I’m afraid we’ll run out of food in ten days!”
"Is it only enough for ten days? Didn't we requisition all the food in the city? Why is it not enough?" Wang Shanxu said.
Others immediately replied: "Although we have requisitioned grain from various grain merchants in the city, we have been besieging the city for many days, and we have strictly prohibited grain merchants from hoarding and reluctant to sell, so the grain merchants do not have much in stock!"
Wang Shanxu said: "There must be food in the city, especially in the houses of big families. Send troops to buy up all the excess food in the hands of the people. Well, give money without making any notes!"
After being besieged for two months, the food in Xingquanfu City was already insufficient. Although the Second Army had hoarded a lot of food in Xingquanfu City, there were not only troops in the city, but also more than 20,000 civilians.
Well, these people don't have that much food in store.
When the people ran out of food, in order to prevent people from starving to death, Wang Shanxu and the Xingquan Prefecture official discussed it and decided to use part of the military rations to relieve the people.
Of course, the Tang Dynasty never engaged in return-to-fund business. This relief food was not given for free, but was provided in exchange for work!
Defending the city will definitely require the construction of a large number of fortifications, such as making the city wall taller and thicker, and building anti-gun fortifications at the top of the city that can avoid the Ming army's cannons.
In traditional city defense operations, there has always been no shortage of young and strong labor force to help.
After the implementation of the work-for-relief program, the consumption of military rations increased rapidly. Even after the military took decisive measures, directly paying money and forcibly requisitioning grain from all grain dealers in the city, it was still unable to prevent the rapid decrease of military grain reserves.
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By now, Wang Shanxu, who had run out of options, was already planning to forcibly requisition food from those households in the city who had surplus food.
But Wang Shanxu knew very well that even so, he could not maintain it for long, because the food reserves in the city were always limited, whether it was the military's food reserves, civilian food reserves, or the government's food reserves, they were always limited.
And this upper limit will not exceed three months at most!
In other words, in less than a month, the whole city may be completely short of food.
When he thought of this horrific scene, his scalp went numb!
If he had enough food, he would still have the confidence to continue to defend the city, because after defending the city for two months, the Ming army had tried to attack Xingquanfu City. However, under his own resistance and the increasingly solid city defense system,
Each time, he could only throw away a large piece of corpse and run away in panic.
Therefore, from the military perspective of a single village, if the Ming army did not pay at least tens of thousands or even more casualties, it would be impossible to capture Xingquan Fucheng.
As for at least tens of thousands or even more casualties, even Zhang Yue, the governor of the four provinces, has to carefully consider it. This does not mean that he is reluctant to pay tens of thousands of casualties. On the contrary, if possible, Zhang Yue would rather sacrifice one person.
There are more than ten thousand people or even more, because in Zhang Yue's eyes, these soldiers are just a number.
Now he is recruiting many soldiers in the huge area of Huguang, dispatching more guardsmen, and at the same time, he is also asking the court to transfer troops from southern Zhili, Yunnan, Sichuan and other provinces for reinforcements.
He has plenty of these soldiers. If he gives him a month's work, he can raise another twenty or thirty thousand soldiers.
But in Zhang Yue's view, these soldiers were expendable cannon fodder, but this was not the case for the Ming army generals on the front line and the cannon fodder soldiers themselves.
For soldiers, their own lives are of course the most important thing. Let us die, it is a beautiful thought.
For the generals, these soldiers, especially their direct soldiers and recruits, are the cornerstone of their promotion and wealth. They can defeat the battle, but they must not let all their soldiers die.
If all the soldiers under his command were killed in order to capture Xingquan Prefecture, Zhang Yue would have made great contributions, but they themselves would have become mere commanders, and everyone knew who Zhang Yue was.
It is absolutely impossible to give them new recruits and let them lead them.
Soldiers are generals, and the soldiers Zhang Yue is recruiting now are all Zhang Yue's Zhang Family Army, but they have nothing to do with the generals of the Guard Army under Xingquan Prefecture City.
Therefore, even if Zhang Yue wanted to simply launch a strong attack at the cost of tens of thousands of people, he would not get the support of the frontline generals. Otherwise, the Ming army would have launched a general attack long ago, and there would be no need to siege the city.
How great it is to besiege the city. They can directly starve the puppet Tang rebels to death without having to die, and then get the credit for taking over Fuxingquanfu City in vain. They are indeed right to think so. Wang Shanxu in the city is indeed in a very embarrassed state now under siege.
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Xingquan Fucheng is the same as before. Wang Shanxu and the others are unable to break through, and the Ming army does not attack by force. The subsequent variables can only depend on the more than 4,000 troops led by Fang Xitong of the second army and the troops heading north from Guilin, led by Chen
The performance of Keqiao's leadership of the troops was outstanding.
The war in Guizhou also deeply stimulated Li Xuan. Looking at the besieged Xingquan Mansion on the map, Li Xuan felt that the scale of the rebellion was getting bigger and bigger, but it was also getting more and more difficult.
As early as the Huangzhushan era, or even the era when he occupied Zhengtai County, he did not feel that it was more difficult than now. On the contrary, it was easier.
After occupying the territory of three provinces and recruiting 100,000 troops, Li Xuan found that his strength had grown. However, with more territory and more troops, it became more difficult to fight a war.
In the end, he thought about it and came to a conclusion: It was not that he was not awesome enough, nor was it that the Ming army was awesome, but because his army was not large enough.
The Huguang Ming Army had 60,000 to 70,000 troops when it came over, but the Second Army in Guizhou direction only had 5,000 to 6,000 regular troops and a garrison force of 10,000 people. This put the troops at a huge disadvantage in a fight. It was strange that they were not at a disadvantage at this time!
If the army is not large enough, continue to expand it, but expanding the army is also very difficult!
Not to mention other military expansion plans, just the fifth infantry brigade made him worried.