"Zhou Aiqing, it was so difficult for us to defend today, and we were almost attacked by the enemy. How will we defend tomorrow?"
"Do we need to abandon the outer city and concentrate our troops to defend the inner city?"
Zhu Cihong asked after suppressing the matter of Li Yan and Hong Niangzi.
I was really scared today.
He didn't have any confidence in tomorrow. If he couldn't escape, he would want to escape tonight.
"Your Majesty, there is no need to worry. The bandits are besieging us from all sides today. The offensive lasted from morning to dusk. There will be heavy losses, numerous injuries, and a great loss of morale.
It is absolutely impossible to organize another strong attack of this scale in a short period of time. The bandit army will probably rest for a few days and then choose one side to attack.
After today's fierce battle, our army has fully adapted, so it will be very difficult for the rebels to break the city again, so there is no need to abandon the outer city!"
Zhou Yuji said confidently, he originally thought that the opponent would choose to attack from the weak outer city first, but who would have thought that the opponent would be so crazy and attack from all sides.
But I felt relieved when I thought about the opponent's military strength.
"oh?"
Zhu Cixiang's eyes lit up. He didn't know how many casualties the rebels had suffered, but they must have suffered heavy casualties.
"Your Majesty, in terms of attack and defense, the first day is actually the most difficult time for the defender. Similarly, the easiest time for the attacker to break the city is also the first day. Otherwise, the rebel army would not be so crazy today. They just want to take advantage of the unbalanced dispatch of our army and focus on one thing and lose the other.
, destroy it in one go."
"So that's it. As the saying goes, if you work hard and then fail, you will be exhausted. Now I can rest assured."
Zhu Cihong nodded with understanding and a smile on his face.
As a modern person, his thinking and understanding abilities are still very strong. Zhou Yuji understood it as soon as he explained it.
In fact, Zhu Cixiang did not know that if it had not been for Zhou Yuji, an experienced and calm general who was good at guarding and dispatching, to direct and dispatch today, if it had been anyone else, the outcome would probably have been the defeat of the city.
Because today, if there is even a trace of wasted force, improper deployment, untimely dispatch, or incorrect distribution of strength, the city will be destroyed.
And Zhou Yuji's command and dispatch today can be said to be impeccable, especially his ability to adapt.
This not only requires the command ability to see the overall situation, but also requires rich experience in defending the city and an understanding of the enemy.
In this regard, even Hong Chengchou, Lu Xiangsheng, Sun Chuanting and others may not be able to compare with Zhou Yuji.
The former may be stronger than Zhou Yuji in terms of overall strategy, but in this kind of tactical city defense battle, he is far inferior to Zhou Yuji.
This is the difference between a general and a commander. The first three can all be commanders.
Although the latter is the best general, he cannot command the three armies.
As the saying goes, a thousand troops are easy to get, but a general is hard to find, but a general is even harder to find.
At least now, looking at the entire Ming Dynasty, there is no one who can command the three armies.
That night!
Breaking into the west camp of the army, inside the Chinese army's tent, there was a strong smell of gunpowder.
As soon as the red lady came in, she stared at Li Guo with blazing eyes and said sternly: "Li Guo, as the main attacking general, why did you withdraw your troops in advance? This caused me to fail in my success and tens of thousands of soldiers died in vain."
"Hmph! Today I have invested a total of 200,000 troops, and there have been countless casualties. If you hadn't conserved your strength and pretended not to attack hard, I would have broken Xizhimen long ago."
Li Guo was equally furious and stared at the two of them, finally falling on Liu Zongmin.
"Mom, what are you looking at me for?"
"I also invested 60,000 horses today, and there were countless casualties. Why aren't you working hard?"
Liu Zongmin immediately gave up and roared, and the generals behind him also joined in the insults.
"Huh, Liu, who doesn't know your little tricks?"
"Do you dare to say that among the 60,000 troops you invested, there are elite soldiers?"
The red lady snorted coldly.
Everyone else was also staring at Liu Zongmin.
Obviously, he knew his temper well. He never cared about the life and death of new recruits, and he never attacked or attacked the elite soldiers.
"How do you know I haven't invested my troops? Did you see it?"
"Hmph! The fact is that I invested a lot of elite soldiers from the beginning."
Liu Zongmin hummed with a stern face.
He looks like a dead pig who is not afraid of boiling water.
"This is so, do you dare to ask me to wait until we enter the camp to investigate?"
Li Guo said aggressively.
Apparently he was also very annoyed that Liu Zongmin was conserving his strength.
"fart!"
Liu Zongmin immediately cursed, "How dare you let them enter the camp for inspection?"
For a time, the three parties were fighting with each other, and their generals started to take action while pushing and shoving.
Only Liu Fangliang remained silent. He was not well prepared when he arrived, so the three of them didn't blame him.
"That's enough, shut up!"
Seeing that there was a pot of porridge in the tent, King Chuang immediately stood up and roared, his face so gloomy that he almost dripped water.
Everyone stopped, returned to their respective positions, and became silent.
Li Zicheng then looked at Niu Jinxing: "Prime Minister, have the casualties of the main camp been calculated?"
"Back to your Majesty, after a rough calculation, the casualties should be between 80,000 and 20,000, including about 20,000 wounded."
Niu Jinxing said carefully.
After hearing this, everyone's expressions changed. King Chuang also took a deep breath and looked at the other three people.
"Back to your Majesty, our casualties are about 30,000."
The red lady clasped her fists and answered first, the look of regret on her face flashed away.
Liu Zongmin also said immediately: "Brother, our casualties are also about 30,000, including 5,000 old soldiers."
"Brother, our unit only suffered more than 20,000 casualties."
After Liu Fangliang finished speaking, everyone gasped.
Although I knew that after a day's battle, the casualties would definitely be high, I never imagined that the number would be as high as 160,000.
Li Zicheng could not sit still either. He stared with bull's eyes and said in a trembling voice: "How could there be so many casualties?"
When we first attacked Ningwuguan, we fought for more than ten days, but the total number of casualties was only 150,000.
It's better now. It's just one day and it's better than before. How can we still fight this battle?
"Your Majesty, the perimeter of the capital city wall is more than fifty miles, and our army attacked from all sides. We fought for a whole day and suffered 160,000 casualties. This is really normal."
Li Yan sighed and explained.
He knew that this would be the result. A huge city like Beijing would not be able to be attacked by force if there were plenty of food and troops in the city.
Especially when attacking from all sides for a whole day like this, if it were really spread out, hundreds of thousands of people might not be enough to fill the gap.
"Commander Li, what do you mean by this?"
"Don't you think that hundreds of thousands of our troops died?"
Song Xiance said sullenly.
Li Yan was inconvenient to argue with him, but the red lady couldn't help but said coldly: "Song Shenxian, if you don't know how to speak human words, just shut up. If you are in a weird mood, don't blame me for being ruthless under the sword."
After saying that, she held the hilt of the sword tightly. She could not bear the fact that Song Xiance and Niu Jinxing always wanted to run against her husband. If her husband hadn't allowed it, she would have given them a lesson.
All the generals behind the Red Lady were also staring at Song Xiance.
This made Song Xiance feel weak, but he forced himself to snort coldly.
"Okay, stop arguing!"
"Tell me how to deal with it next!"
Li Zicheng waved his hand impatiently, making noise all day long, which really made him exhausted mentally and physically.
"Your Majesty, it is probably not advisable to continue the siege on all sides. We should choose one side to attack. The outer city wall in the south is slightly shorter and can be used as a breakthrough."
Li Yan stood up again and suggested.
"Commander Li's words are wrong. The outer city is indeed easier to attack. But after the outer city is destroyed, the Ming army can still retreat to the inner city and defend it. With the loss of troops and generals, they can attack the outer city and attack the inner city. It is better to attack the inner city directly."
Niu Jinxing shook his head, then looked at Li Zicheng and said.
Most of the generals, generals and civil servants in the tent also nodded in agreement.
"What the Prime Minister said is not unreasonable. However, our army can hold on to the food and grass for at most one month and directly attack the inner city. If we cannot attack the inner city for a long time, our morale will be low. In addition, the food and grass are not available. Once the Ming army comes to help, our army may be destroyed.
danger.
And if we can quickly break through the outer city, we can force the little emperor to negotiate, which is a safe strategy. I hope the king will learn from it!"
Li Yan continued to argue his case, and it was clear that he was still willing to negotiate, even more so than before the war.
In the end, Li Zicheng hesitated and adopted Li Yan's suggestion.
The army was ordered to rest for three days. While continuing to build siege equipment, the moat of the southern outer city was completely filled in.
At the same time, people were sent to nearby states and counties to collect grain and grass in case of emergency needs.