Early on the morning of the third day, Saha led more than 1,700 cavalry back and attacked Zhenjiang Fort and harassed Phoenix City. Along the way, he lost only more than 200 cavalry, which was quite famous.

At the same time, Hunta transferred nearly a thousand people from all over the place.

The increase in troops improved the morale of the Qing army. Hunta took the opportunity to launch a fierce attack on Xiuyan City, with the direction of the attack being the two gates in the east and north that they had lured before.

This time, both the number of soldiers and the siege equipment increased. They even built several simple stone throwers to continuously throw bricks and stones at the top of the city.

Li Dingguo also concentrated the defenders at these two gates and actively defended. The artillery sprayed flames and smashed the shells into the enemy formation. The bows and arrows were thrown away like rain.

The Qing army attacked continuously for a day, climbed to the city countless times, and was driven down by the defenders countless times. Even at night, the Qing army continued to shoot arrows into the city to prevent the defenders from repairing the city walls.

On the fourth day, the Qing army continued to attack, with nearly half of the defenders killed and injured. The outer city was broken, and several gaps appeared, and countless Qing troops rushed into the city from there.

Seeing that Li Dingguo could no longer defend, he ordered the withdrawal of all the defenders in the outer city to concentrate all the troops on the stronger and more steep inner city.

In this way, the area of ​​defense is less and the strength of troops is more convenient for reinforcements in various places.

The newly-engraved soldiers also withstood the previous test and were no longer panicked when they saw the Qing army as they did at the beginning. Although the losses were much heavier than those old soldiers, they could also play a certain role in defending the city.

The Qing army did not continue to attack. First, they suffered too much losses, and second, more than 2,000 cavalry led by Wu Zhiying rushed to Xiuyan City.

Wu Zhiying did not directly rescue Xiuyan City, but sent people to contact Li Dingguo first and lined up outside according to his orders. When the Qing army came to fight, he broke away from contact. When the Qing army attacked the city, he posted it to harass him. It was neither far nor near, and it was close and distant. Hunta dared to attack the city with all his strength.

Hunta and Nan Chu had another quarrel.

Nan Chu accused Hunta in a provocative tone, saying that it is difficult to capture Xiuyan City now, and the army should be allowed to retreat north immediately. Hunta is the lord general of Xiuyan City, and his unauthorized actions have led to the fall of Xiuyan City. Even if he is held accountable, he can only be held accountable. As his deputy, Nan Chu is wrong, but it is no big deal.

But Hunta is different. If he escapes back, even if he can escape by chance, he will inevitably be dismissed from pursuing crimes and dismissal from office. At this moment, he has taken the outer city of Xiuyan City and forced Li Dingguo into the inner city. Perhaps he can regain Xiuyan City with one more effort. How could he easily withdraw his troops before completely losing hope?

Seeing that Hunta was so persistent, Nan Chu left a sentence "You can do whatever you want" and stood up and left. Then, he wrote a letter and sent someone to send him back to Liaoyang.

In the letter, he blamed Hunta for the extreme. On the premise that Hunta would be defeated, he wrote this letter in advance to completely put aside the responsibility of himself and his defeat.

Hunta heard that Nan Chu sent someone north and knew what he was thinking, but at this moment he could no longer care about so much. In his opinion, as long as he regained Xiuyan City, everything else would be trivial matters.

He sent three troops in a row to Tongyuan Fort, Gaizhou and Liaoyang, telling them the importance of Xiuyan City and asking them to send reinforcements.

In fact, the biggest hope for these three teams, Hunta is Luke Dehun and Li Lutai in Tongyuan Fort. They have enough soldiers and are relatively close to each other. Moreover, the reason why Xiuyan City fell was because Hunta led his troops to reinforce Tongyuan Fort, he believed that Luke Dehun would definitely send troops.

As long as you persist, there is hope.

Hunta launched several more attacks on the inner city, but because Li Dingguo's strict defense, the Qing army did not get any advantage. He launched an attack on Wu Zhiying's troops outside the city, but the latter did not fight with him at all. In addition, the number of Qing cavalry was not greater than that of the opponent, and there was no infantry involved, Hunta was not sure of winning, and he did not dare to pursue him with all his might.

After two days of stalemate, Hunta finally couldn't stand it anymore.

Because he received the news, more than 7,000 kilograms of the Liao army were crossing Baiyanggou and rushing towards Xiuyan City. Moreover, the Qing army did not have much food or grass.

Hunta and Nan Chu sat together again, and this time they finally reached an agreement, that is, withdrawal. But on the issue of how to withdraw, Hunta and Nan Chu had different ideas.

Nan Chu's opinion was to evacuate as soon as possible while the night was dark, and proposed to evacuate north through Guanmen Mountain.

But Hunta was unwilling. He felt that his army had sufficient troops and there was no need to evacuate at night. Because once attacked at night, accidents were likely to occur. Moreover, the road to Shimenguan was narrow and was not suitable for large troops to pass. His meaning was to retreat eastward, retreat to Tongyuan Fort and Luke Dehun to meet.

There are some selfish thoughts in Hunta.

Retreat north is to retreat to the hinterland of Liaodong. There may be no war in a short period of time, so his fate is destined. Retreat eastward, Luke Dehun was fighting with the Keliao army at Tongyuan Fort. He led his troops to surrender to Luke Dehun, and perhaps he would have the opportunity to commit crimes and make meritorious service there.

On this point, Nan Chu did not argue too much with Hunta. He proposed to retreat north because it was convenient for ambush there and could help Li Dingguo wipe out Hunta's troops.

But if you retreat north, except that you can retreat to the hinterland of Liaodong as soon as possible, there is no better reason to convince people except that you can retreat to the hinterland of Liaodong as soon as possible.

There were too many quarrels, and Nan Chu was worried that Hunta would become suspicious.

Moreover, Hunta also gave a reason that Nan Chu could not refuse from the general point of view. In addition to wanting the entire army to evacuate, he also wanted to move all the people around Xiuyan City.

Liaodong was sparsely populated, which was the usual practice of the Qing army. The Qing Dynasty entered the pass several times and robbed nearly one million to Liaodong as slaves. These people engaged in farming and were the source of military rations and military forces of the Qing Dynasty.

Another reason for retreating east is that the road to the east is wide and smooth, which makes it easier for the army to evacuate, even if you bring the people with you.

Nan Chu finally agreed to Hunta's retreat eastward, but suggested that he did not want to go to Phoenix City, hoping that Hunta would let him take his hundreds of flag dittoes to retreat northward according to his ideas.

Hunta had been so annoyed by Nan Chu's previous opposition to him. Hundreds of flag soldiers had nothing to do with the overall situation, so he agreed without thinking too much.

The two of them finished their discussion and left. But in a blink of an eye, Hunta's evacuation plan was put on the Li Dingguo's case.

After looking at it, Li Dingguo instantly understood the intention of Hunta. He spent so much effort and took such a great risk, so he naturally did not want Hunta to leave safely.
Chapter completed!