In fact, Jingzhou City does not have to be fought, especially from the perspective of cutting off the Ming army's supply line. As long as his Fourth Army stays outside the city, the food in Jingzhou City cannot be transported out, and Xingzhou City cannot be transported out.
It is impossible for the Ming army in Quanfu to obtain large quantities of food supplies. At most, they can transfer food from other places, but that is a drop in the bucket, and water from afar cannot quench their thirst.
But now there are not many defenders in Jingzhou City. It is possible to fight. More importantly, Chen Keqiao knows that there is a large amount of food in the city. This food is important to the Ming Army, and it is also important to the Fourth Army.
It is also very important.
These days, no one can have too much food.
Even for the food in the city, Chen Keqiao felt that he could fight a dozen!
But attacking Jingzhou City is also troublesome. If the attack is blocked, it will easily lose troops and generals. Although the Ming army is not its opponent in the field, if the Ming army relies on the city to defend itself, it will still pose a considerable threat to itself.
The attack would be blocked by then, and he didn't know when reinforcements from the Ming army would arrive. After staying in Jingzhou for so many days, he also learned from some outside intelligence that there were still many Ming troops in the hinterland of Huguang. It was rumored that the puppet troops
Zhang Yue, the governor of the fourth province in the Ming Dynasty, was a ruthless character. Not only did he mobilize a large number of guardsmen from Huguang to march into Guizhou immediately, but he also extensively recruited young men and strong men to form more armies.
Request reinforcements.
Chen Keqiao didn't know how many troops Zhang Yue still had on hand, but he knew that Zhang Yue would definitely not sit back and watch Jingzhou fall.
If too much time and troops are spent on attacking Jingzhou, then it is easy for Xingquan Mansion to have an accident.
Now in the city of Xingquan Prefecture, the Second Army is still surrounded by thousands of people, and they have been cut off from food and grass. If it goes on for a long time, there may be an accident.
Therefore, Chen Keqiao was still hesitant about whether to attack Jingzhou City.
That night, the troops of the Fourth Army continued to be stationed outside the city to rest and recuperate. At the same time, some officials from the Ministry of War and the civilian officers from the Privy Council Training Department who came with the army began to persuade the many captured prisoners to surrender to the Tang Dynasty.
Recruiting soldiers from the Ming army to join the garrison was an important means for the Tang Dynasty to expand its army on a large scale in the past year and reduce the pressure on the regular army. Therefore, every time a large number of prisoners were captured, great efforts were made to persuade the Ming army to surrender.
Anyway, surrender.
There were a lot of prisoners this time. When they attacked the Jingzhou defenders two days ago, they captured almost 2,000 prisoners, and this time they attacked the Xingquan Prefecture reinforcements and captured another 5,000 prisoners. If the two are added together,
The number of prisoners alone was 7,000.
Chen Keqiao also hoped to select some of the prisoners to replenish his army, for example, to select some elites to join the regular army. After this continuous battle, the regular army lost nearly two hundred people, and a lot of them were cavalry.
However, the additional troops from the rear have not yet been sent so quickly. If there are more troops to drop down now, the 3rd Infantry Brigade and other regular armies can also have more troops.
Secondly, some of the garrison troops that accompany the army are also seriously short of manpower. For example, the Eleventh Garrison Regiment and the three garrison battalions in the temporary first regiment are all very short of manpower.
If one or two thousand people can be directly selected from prisoners of war to supplement, then the Fourth Army can be greatly restored to full strength.
When Chen Keqiao was thinking about whether to attack Jingzhou that night, the Ming army in Jingzhou City was also in panic. They had watched the tens of thousands of troops who had left the city collapse a few days ago, and in the end they only recovered less than two thousand soldiers.
Thousands of people, the rest were either dead or wounded, captured or deserted.
However, during the day today, they saw the Xingquan Prefecture's reinforcements defeated miserably outside the city. That was an army of 15,000 people, and they were defeated cleanly.
Now, they are the only ones left to hold on in the city!
But can they hold on?
Currently, there are less than 4,000 regular troops in the city's garrison. Although they have mobilized as much as possible the young men in the city and the civilians who were originally used to transport military supplies, they can barely manage to gather 7,000 people.
But even so, they don’t have much confidence!
Especially the senior generals who led the army, they knew that during the Battle of Wuzhou, there were tens of thousands of defenders in Wuzhou City, but they were not defeated by the puppet Tang thief army, and the puppet Tang thief army that attacked the city
Only tens of thousands of people.
Therefore, although there are only six to seven thousand puppet Tang rebels outside the city, who knows whether the city can be defended.
But abandoning the city and fleeing is even more unfeasible. There is so much food in the city, which can be used to supply tens of thousands of troops. How can we give up so easily? If we abandon Jingzhou without fighting, Superintendent Zhang
Yue Dingran wanted to kill people until their blood flowed like rivers.
From this point, it also proves that Zhang Yue's strategy of transferring local officials and generals away and only using officials and generals from other provinces was indeed effective. At least when the situation in the district was not good, no one immediately thought of escaping.
Or surrender, because if they dare to do this, Zhang Yue will directly confiscate his home and exterminate his clan.
Hong Linquan is a typical example.
The Ming army in the city was uneasy, but this had nothing to do with Chen Keqiao. After thinking about it for a night, Chen Keqiao decided to fight first the next day to see how the Jingzhou city defense was doing and whether there was a chance to short-circuit it.
Defeat it within the time limit without paying a heavy price.
However, Chen Keqiao's siege battle was not ideal. There were not many heavy artillery reinforcements. The musketeers could not exert much power in the siege battle. The line tactics that the Tang Dynasty King was proud of were also unsatisfactory.
There is no place to use it, so we can only use traditional methods to attack.
As a result, after two days of fighting, the 11th Guards Regiment, which served as the main force of the trial attack, lost almost two hundred people. Moreover, after paying such a price, even the moat could not be filled.
This result made him quite helpless!
His Fourth Army was good at frontal decisive battles in the wild, but not so good at siege warfare.
Just when he was worried about attacking Jingzhou City, Fang Xitong of the Second Army was also very angry because he received a report from the reconnaissance cavalry, saying that something was wrong with the Ming army on the opposite side. There should have been a large number of Ming troops stationed there.
There was no Ming army at all, but the Ming army camps that stretched for miles were empty, with only a handful of troops stationed inside.
Then the reconnaissance cavalry reported that most of the Ming troops outside Xingquanfu City had also disappeared.
At the same time, news of a large number of soldiers and horses crossing the border was also discovered in the north of Xingquan Mansion!
When Fang Xitong got the news, he didn't know what happened there. This shows that the Ming army in Xingquan Prefecture had given up the siege of Xingquan Prefecture, leaving only a few troops to break up the rear, and then the main force fled north. And it looks like this
, seems to have been running away for several days.
Fang Xitong immediately said: "Then what are you waiting for? Launch an attack immediately!"
The attack of the Second Army was extremely smooth. The Ming army that had blocked them for a long time had long since disappeared. Only a few thousand old and young men were left. When the Tang Dynasty King's army came over, they immediately surrendered without hesitation.
No resistance at all!
Immediately, Fang Xitong dispatched all his main forces to go north. As for Xingquan Fucheng, he only sent one battalion, and then there were a large number of baggage troops.
As the Ming army retreated, the encirclement of Xingquan Mansion naturally ceased to exist. What else would his second army do? Just send some people to take care of them and send food there!
When the reinforcements of the Second Army arrived at Xingquanfu City escorting a large amount of food, the sight they saw made these soldiers unbearable. This was not to say that the city was completely destroyed, but because of what they saw.
The defenders were all hungry and turned blue.
Even senior generals like Wang Shanxu have become much thinner.
The officers and soldiers in this army were a little better. At most they were dizzy from hunger and their faces didn't look good. However, the ordinary civilians in the city were even worse. Many of them starved to death, and the survivors were all skin and bones.
When Wang Shanxu saw the reinforcements arriving with a large amount of food, an old man in his thirties couldn't help but shed tears. It has not been easy for him these past few months.
If he waits just a few more days, I'm afraid most of his soldiers will starve to death, let alone the ordinary people in the city.
The soldiers and civilians of Xingquan Fucheng, who were under siege, had run out of food three days ago. Wang Shanxu only had the last bit of food on hand, which he regarded as the last life-saving food. Every soldier
He could only drink a bowl of porridge every day, which was so thin that there were no grains of rice in it to survive.
Even this could not last for more than a few days. The last grain of food was eaten yesterday. If the reinforcements did not send food today, these soldiers would starve to death completely.
The soldiers were starving to death frequently, and the common people were even more miserable. Some old, young and infirm people were even starved to death. Most of them were skin and bones without any appearance.
So after the reinforcements entered the city, the first thing they did was give porridge!
Even because many people were too hungry to get the porridge on their own, the reinforcements carried porridge and distributed it door to door.
However, although they were starving, the siege of Xingquan Mansion was finally solved, and there were no large-scale starvation deaths, which can be considered a blessing among misfortunes.
When there were cries in the city of Xingquan Prefecture, Fang Xitong had already turned his attention to the north.
The more than 30,000 Huguang Ming Army must not let them escape easily and must be pursued. Otherwise, these more than 30,000 Ming Army will still cause them great trouble in the future.
Especially now that there are more than 10,000 Ming troops in Zhenyuan Prefecture. If Tan Rong's 30,000 Ming troops are allowed to join the more than 10,000 Ming troops, the subsequent fight will be more troublesome.
But although Fang Xitong led his army in pursuit, Tan Rong ran faster!
When he heard that Hong Lin in Jingzhou was defeated and died, he was even more grateful that he ran fast, otherwise none of the 30,000 troops would have thought of escaping!