Groups of heavily armed soldiers, carrying special siege ladders dropped from the ordnance ship, rushed directly towards the huge gaps in the two city gates.

Behind them, tens of feet away, were thousands of powerful platoon gunners and Maxim heavy machine guns on shallow-water gunboats, covering the siege.

"Come on, warriors of the Republican Army!"

"Surge into the city and bury the evil Manchu Dynasty."

"..."

With the beating of war drums, the sound of horns, and the shocking roar, the Republican Allied Forces, with a passion to save the country and the people, rushed towards the city wall like locusts.

The forty-kilogram shells smashed into the enemy formation, leaving a wide and long path of blood. Wherever they hit, the explosion knocked people off their feet and caused blood and flesh to fly everywhere.

Faced with such a dense concentration of Qing soldiers within the city wall, there was no need to aim at the coalition soldiers who invaded the gaps in the city wall.

Groups of platoon gunners, they took turns to go into battle, acted according to the order flag, just aimed, firing round after round, each round was a volley of hundreds of rifles, the rain of black bullets, covering the

The sky covers the sun.

The grenades also flew away like locusts.

Under the pressure of Zhang Xun's command team, many soldiers of Jiang's defense army, with their heads hunched, constantly organized counterattacks in an attempt to block the gap in the city wall.

But before they could reach the city wall, they all fell down.

If you get hit by a bullet and fall into the river, you will either be shot to death or drowned.

Of course, there were also some smart soldiers who pretended to be dead as soon as they reached the gap in the city wall, waiting for the Republican forces to attack and then surrender.

There were also many soldiers of the Qing army who neither wanted to be killed as cannon fodder by the coalition forces nor to be killed by the supervising troops. They took advantage of the smoke of the artillery fire and fled into the spacious and dense forest of Shogunate Mountain.

The coalition forces later deliberately stopped bombarding the shogunate mountains and forests, in order to give the Qing troops a hiding place and a chance to surrender.

More than five hours had passed since the fierce battle in the afternoon. At half past six, the sun in the west had already set and the sky began to get dark.

However, the corpses of Jiang Fang soldiers from the Qing army had piled up several hills in front of the two gaps between Foning Gate and Shangyuan Gate.

Inside the city wall, there are mountains of corpses and seas of blood.

More than half of Jiang's defense troops who retreated into the outer city have been killed or wounded. In addition to the soldiers who surrendered and fled into the mountains and forests, there are only about 7,000 soldiers who can go into battle now.

Governor Zhang Renjun saw this and immediately handed over the 20,000 patrol battalion to Zhang Xun's command.

Zhang Xun ordered the remaining 7,000 Jiang defense troops to withdraw and change defenses, and asked them to dig deep trenches and build fortifications in front of Shence Gate, Taiping Gate and Jinchuan Gate.

Let the patrol battalion, who was waiting for work, step forward to replace Jiang's defense army and attack the gaps between the two city gates, vowing to block the coalition forces outside the city.

In the Jiang Defense Army and patrol battalion outside Shence Gate, and in the joint Chinese army tent, the battalion, regiment, and brigade-level officers of the patrol battalion were so nervous that they turned pale and bitten their lips when they heard that they were asked to step forward to attack the giant gap position.

.

They all looked at their commander-in-chief, Wang Youhong.

But the commander-in-chief of the battlefield now is Zhang Xun, the commander-in-chief of the Jiang Defense Army.

At this time, Zhang Xun was like a gambler with red eyes. He had been angered by the cannonballs flying over the river.

His eyes were red, and he was yelling with gritted teeth: "Commander Wang, give me a strict order to go down and continue the attack. If you are afraid, you will not go first, and you will be killed without mercy!"

Damn, I don’t feel bad for betraying my father. Anyway, they are no longer his Jiang Fang soldiers.

The officers of the patrol battalion nearby were not only afraid, but also quite aggrieved.

The agreed-upon defense of the city north of the river is the responsibility of Jiang's defense army. You can't defend it yourself, so you retreated back to the city, and now you let our patrol battalion act as cannon fodder for you. It's so unethical!

In fact, to be honest, Jiang's defense army performed admirably in today's battle. Whether it was the artillery battle in the morning or the city defense in the afternoon, the Republican coalition forces paid a heavy price.

Zhang Xun is a fierce general. He understands that in today's battle, he does not care about the number of casualties. He only wants to defend the city and try to severely damage the Republican coalition forces and let them retreat on their own. As for the Qing army, they can only coexist with the city and have no other choice. Law, unless it is a shameful surrender to the Republican forces.

Unfortunately, the overall combat strength of this Republican coalition army is too strong. It is definitely not on the same level as the Shanghai-Zhejiang coalition forces last time, whether in terms of military command, artillery fire, or tactics.

Now, all we can do is to persevere, grit our teeth, and compete with our enemies for perseverance.

Wang Youhong had no choice. Under the eyes of the governor, he disobeyed the military orders and executed him no matter who he was.

He had no choice but to order his troops to enter the offensive sequence, try to slow down the pace, and move towards the gaps in the two giant city gates.

Li Xinghong's First Division was responsible for the main attack on Shangyuan Gate and Funing Gate. He saw that it was getting late and the sergeants had been tired for another day and could not attack, so he ordered the frontline troops to build defenses on the inside of the gap. The fortifications were completed, the troops were ordered to retreat, and they planned to fight again early tomorrow morning.

Oddly enough, because the weather was too cold, the mountain of Qing army corpses piled up in front of the gap became a natural barrier. The enemy and us used the corpse mountain as a watershed to confront each other, and no one wanted to attack again.

In this way, the two sides are close at hand, but they are at peace with each other.

After a while, the Republican Party dinner arrived.

Each warship uses coal-fired steam boilers, which are ready-made military food processing plants. More than 30,000 soldiers on the entire battlefield can eat hot meat buns, rice, stewed meat, and fresh vegetables. and hot soup, especially for the sick and wounded.

But the Qing army, which was so close at hand, had a chaotic logistics support. The frontline soldiers could only chew on the ice-hard wotou, without even a drop of oil in the bowl.

The nest of steamed buns was too small to chew, and the quantity was still small. When the smell of meat came to their nostrils, many Qing soldiers couldn't stand it. They didn't get any edible food all day long, and it was cold in the wild.

In this damn war, no matter who comes to power, they will serve as soldiers and feed them wherever they go.

So, after dark, the Qing troops here began to sneak over one after another, from a few, to a dozen, to groups of mutinies.

At almost midnight, the soldiers killed the team officers, and some of the team officers killed Zhang Xun's picket team. They climbed over the mountain of corpses lightly and arrived at the Republican Allied Forces.

When Zhang Xun and the others realized that the situation was not good and more than 3,000 people had escaped, he became furious and ordered Wang Youhong and other senior officers to tighten control and increase the manpower of the pickets.

…

Between Shence Gate and Taiping Gate, there is a natural lake called Hou Lake.

This is a flat and wide grassland. The rich water resources of the back lake make the surrounding crops and vegetation lush, and the green shade blocks out the sun.

This is the official horse farm of Jiangning Prefecture, where hundreds of war horses used by the entire Jiangning Prefecture's military or government offices are raised.

This is the racecourse in the city, the royal racecourse during the Ming Dynasty.

Of course, the size of the horse ranch here is dwarfed by Chen Tianhua's livestock farm in Meiguang Autonomous Region.

There is a house with a stone wall structure in the Royal Racecourse, surrounded by fortresses, with three floors. This was the prison of the Ministry of Punishment in the early Ming Dynasty, and is now the first prison of Jiangning Prefecture.

However, this time, in order to have enough troops to deal with the Republican Allied Forces and reduce the burden on the Yamen during the war, with the approval of Governor Zhang Renjun, the prefect released all the thousands of prisoners and took them to the front line to fight against the Republican Allied Forces.
Chapter completed!