At this time, it is estimated that the Ming army in Fancheng was also stunned. They were fine yesterday, but they just heard that a group of two or three thousand bandits came outside Xiangyang City.

But they didn't expect that at dawn the next day, Xiangyang City would burst into flames. Before they could recover, Xiangyang City would be finished.

Now, it is estimated that the Ming army in Fancheng does not know which group of thieves or rebels took over Xiangyang City.

And Luo Zhixue did not want to give the Ming army in Fancheng too much time to react.

Even if the Ming army in the city is smaller and less powerful, if you give them too much preparation time, the city defense will be built stronger. Then it will be more troublesome to fight, and there may be more casualties.

.

They didn't even kill or injure many people when they attacked Xiangyang. They couldn't lose too many men under the small city of Fancheng.

In addition to this reason, the more important thing is that now that the Army of Protecting Xiangyang has captured Xiangyang City, leaving Fancheng as a nail on the north bank of the Han River will make the Army of Protecting Xiang in Xiangyang City very uncomfortable.<

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In such a situation, Luo Zhixue will naturally not ignore it, or even delay it for too long, but will quickly capture Fancheng!

For this reason, he quickly ordered the heavy supply camp and the cavalry brigade to cross the river and return north to join the personal camp and the artillery battalion to attack Fancheng.

At the same time, the First Infantry Brigade was ordered to collect ships while garrisoning Xiangyang City, and after the army arrived at Fancheng, send some troops across the river to assist in the attack on Fancheng.

As long as Fancheng can also be captured, then Fancheng and Xiangyang can be connected as one, plus the cities along the Baihe River such as Nanyang City and Xinye City that the Baoxiang Army has captured before.

The Baoxiang Army will be able to completely open up the Baihe-Hanshui route, and then bring the entire Nanyang Basin under control.

The attack on Fancheng will be the last of the series of battles launched by the Baoxiang Army to control the Nanyang Basin.

After receiving Luo Zhixue's order, Wang Xiazi took the cavalry back north that day and joined the army led by Luo Zhixue himself. Later, the cavalry brigade will erect peripheral barriers to intercept enemy troops that may be reinforced from other places.

At the same time, it also needs to shoulder the task of preventing the enemy from actively leaving the city to attack.

Accompanying Wang Xiazi and others, there were more than 50 survivors of the personal barracks led by Li Dongshao.

For these soldiers who took the risk to sneak into Xiangyang City and seize the city gate, and finally made great contributions to the Baoxiang Army's capture of Xiangyang.

Luo Zhixue will naturally not be stingy in any way.

Li Dongshao was promoted to battalion commander of the personal barracks by him on the spot, and more than 50 meritorious soldiers under his command were all promoted. Even ordinary soldiers were promoted to corps commander or senior commander.

The two surviving captains were directly promoted to guard commanders, and several captains and corps commanders were also promoted to captains or captains.

All promoted, without any exception.

In addition to job promotions, there are also generous material rewards.

Luo Zhixue has never treated soldiers who have made military exploits poorly, and this time will be no exception.

Even in the 1st Infantry Brigade and Cavalry Brigade, a large number of people will be promoted and even have positions.

After learning that Xiangyang City had been captured and at least 5,000 prisoners of war of all kinds were captured, Luo Zhixue formally ordered the establishment of the Fifth Mixed Brigade later that day.

The commander of the 5th Mixed Brigade is Dong Mingjie, the former commander of the 4th Infantry Battalion. This man also performed well in the Battle of Xiangyang. When attacking the South City Gate, his 4th Infantry Battalion was the first to rush forward and defeated the enemy in one fell swoop.

Caused a large-scale rout of the enemy troops.

In fact, there is Xu Zhixian, commander of the 3rd Infantry Battalion who has greater military exploits than him, but Xu Zhixian's position as commander of the 3rd Infantry Battalion is only part-time.

After this battle, not only would Xu Zhixian not be promoted in the field force, but Luo Zhixue would also revoke his part-time position as battalion commander of the 3rd Infantry Battalion, allowing him to return to the staff office to concentrate on his work.

Xu Zhixian served as the commander of the 3rd Infantry Battalion purely for the sake of gold-plating and credit.

The position of commander of the 3rd Infantry Battalion was promoted to the position by Han Ziping, the former deputy commander of the 3rd Infantry Battalion.

In fact, after the Battle of Nanyang City, this person should have taken over the position of battalion commander as a matter of course, but he was blocked by Xu Zhixian who was parachuted down. He was still a little depressed a few days ago.

However, he also knew that Xu Zhixian was just here to get gold, and he would get out when he got the credit, so although he was dissatisfied, he also cooperated with Xu Zhixian's command of the battle as much as possible.

No, Xu Zhixian has made a meritorious service and is gone.

He, Han Ziping, also successfully became the battalion commander of the 3rd Infantry Battalion.

Dong Mingjie was promoted to brigade commander of the 5th Mixed Brigade, and the deputy brigade commander position was taken over by Yu Tianhe, one of the former deputy battalion commanders of the personal barracks.

Previously, Luo Zhixue directly selected three deputy battalion commanders in order to balance the appointments of several confidants in the personal barracks.

And this is naturally abnormal. Now that Li Dongshao has been promoted to the commander of the personal barracks, it is enough to have one deputy battalion commander, Qu Yangshu, and there is no need for a second deputy battalion commander.

Other battalion commanders, deputy battalion commanders, sentry officers, deputy sentry officers, captains and other officers in the fifth mixed brigade will also be recruited from nearby personal barracks, supply camps, and the first infantry brigade to serve.

According to tradition, most of the deputies are promoted to full-time positions, and there are also some cases where people are promoted from lower-level full-level positions to higher-level deputy positions and are directly promoted to higher-level full-time positions.

As for the soldiers of the Fifth Mixed Brigade, except for a few backbones, they will naturally be dominated by a large number of surrendered troops from Xiangyang City.

Among the more than 4,000 prisoners of war, the average quality is pretty good. Among them are hundreds of soldiers, as well as technical units such as artillery and archers. There are also some ordinary soldiers who are in good physical condition. Pick and choose.

Can select more than two thousand people to form a mixed brigade.

After Luo Zhixue ordered the establishment of the Fifth Mixed Brigade, brigade commander Dong Mingjie took office in Xiangyang City, and the deputy brigade commander led a group of people across the river to Xiangyang City for a meeting.

They have to complete the selection of soldiers in the shortest possible time, and they also need to maintain the original grassroots establishment of the Ming army as much as possible, mainly the grassroots establishment of the next level. After all, in traditional tactics, cooperation between soldiers is very important.

, requires long-term training of the soldiers to form a tacit understanding of cooperation, so if possible, it is still necessary to maintain the original formation of the team as much as possible.

Although this will cause some problems, even if there are problems, they are not as important as the current shortage of troops in the Baoxiang Army.

Luo Zhixue also hopes that this mixed brigade will be completely reorganized in a short time and form a certain combat effectiveness, which will reduce the pressure on the more than 3,000 troops heading south.

On May 2, the eighth year of Chongzhen, that is, the day after the Baoxiang Army captured Xiangyang City, Luo Zhixue personally led the cavalry brigade, personal barracks, transport camp, and artillery brigade to the foot of Fancheng City.

However, they did not attack the city immediately. Instead, they arrived at the riverside, deployed twelve 600-pound field guns, and began to cover some soldiers of the 1st Infantry Brigade on the other side of the river to cross the river.

During this process, although some ships from the Ming Army tried to sail upstream to sabotage the 1st Infantry Brigade's crossing operation.

However, they were all successfully repelled by the rural protection army.

The strength of the artillery brigade's 600-pound artillery was enough to cause fatal damage to the small-tonnage river vessels of the Ming Army, not to mention that the Baoxiang Army also obtained a large number of ships on the docks of Xiangyang City.

warships, and some civilian merchant ships that were urgently requisitioned.

The First Infantry Brigade that crossed the river only had one infantry battalion, but this infantry battalion was the elite First Infantry Battalion.

After the First Infantry Battalion completed crossing the river, the various siege equipment of the Baoxiang Army were basically completed.

Anyway, we don’t need to build any messy things like siege engines. We just need to build some long ladders with iron hooks for climbing the city wall, and then build some shield carts modified from wheelbarrows.

As for other siege equipment and the like, the Baoxiang Army said that they had artillery and there was no need for these messy things.

Well, in fact, conversely, the Ming army on top of the city also had artillery, and those large and slow wooden siege equipment were basically used as targets by the enemy's artillery on top of the city.

Engineering warfare these days is no longer the same as siege warfare hundreds of years ago. The emergence and extensive use of artillery has made many ancient large wooden siege equipment useless.

In order to prevent accidents from happening if the situation lasts too long, Luo Zhixue did not wait too long and officially launched the attack on Fancheng on the next day, May 3rd.

Compared with the previous surprise attack on Xiangyang, this siege seemed a bit more satisfactory.

After all, the Ming army in the city has taken precautions this time. Although the Intelligence Section of the Baoxiang Army has ambushed more than 20 spies in Fancheng, it is okay to create some commotion, but they want to seize it again when the opponent is highly vigilant.

The city gate is impossible.

This siege is a competition of hard power between the two sides!

Early in the morning, the artillery of the Baoxiang Army began to fire at the Ming army on top of the city. This time, they prioritized shelling the gate tower on the west gate of Fancheng.

Things like city gate towers are not just to show off their beauty, but are serious military defense facilities. The defenders can garrison a large number of these gate towers that are higher than the city wall, and then shoot arrows from a high position.

At the same time, because it is usually a brick and wood structure, it is stronger than ordinary watchtowers and the like, and because it is higher than the city wall, it is usually used as the headquarters of the garrison generals.

Not to mention the lookout function.

In ancient or modern wars, the city gate tower was a very important military facility. Such an important military facility naturally became the key target of Zhang Malin's artillery force.

The city gate tower with brick and wood structure can be said to be strong when faced with traditional weapons such as trebuchets, short-barreled shotguns, bows and arrows, and muskets. However, it is like paper when faced with solid shells fired by long-barreled artillery.

Same.

Under the bombardment of solid artillery shells, the extremely thick Eastern City Wall may not be in trouble. At most, some battlements will be knocked off, but the city gate tower cannot withstand the bombardment of such solid artillery shells.

As the solid artillery shells concentrated on the gate tower of the west city gate, the gate tower was immediately beaten to pieces.

Several Ming army officials who were originally directing the battle on the city gate tower fled down the city gate tower in panic as soon as the shelling started.

If they don't escape, they will probably die directly under the gunfire of the defense army.

Not only did these officials flee, but also the large number of archers deployed on the city gate tower had to retreat due to heavy casualties.

In the first battle between the two sides, the Ming army defending the city suffered heavy losses and was unable to fight back. It also lost the important defensive facility of the West City Gate Gate Tower.
Chapter completed!