My Apprenticeship to Uncle Jiu: I Was a Warlord in the Republic of China

But how could Jiang Li miss such a good opportunity? He was just one step away from taking the two counties. How could he give up easily?

Seeing Han Jinlong fleeing into the town, he was not in a hurry to attack, but only ordered people to build fortifications outside the town.

Several hundred people were assigned to treat the wounded, capture prisoners, and collect weapons and ammunition dropped on the road.

Of course, he couldn't let the enemy have it too easy, so he picked out hundreds of people with good marksmanship, and took advantage of the range and accuracy of the Mosin-Ganna to continuously carry out precise shooting at the enemies on the town wall in order to put pressure on the enemy.

When Han Jinlong saw that his men were becoming more and more panicked, he immediately understood what Jiang Li meant, so he also followed Jiang Li's method.

Select one or two hundred people, concentrate the few ammunition in hand, and let them shoot at the enemy, hoping to stabilize the morale of the troops.

Speaking of which, Han Jinlong and his men had the cover of the wall, and could shoot from a high position, killing some enemies from time to time. This really helped him stabilize the morale of the troops, and for a while the two sides were in a stalemate.

As for Jiang Li, he ordered people to build fortifications while sending people to transport cannons.

The two sides fought intermittently all night long, until the next morning, when the six field guns were finally transported to a small mound and set up.

Without saying a word, he ordered his men to adjust the muzzles of the guns and fired a round of salvos. Six shells directly made several gaps in the earth wall, and the people in the town panicked again.

But the gunfire outside the town stopped, and thousands of people shouted in unison, "Surrender and no killing, surrender and no killing!"

Han Jinlong's soldiers immediately became concerned when they heard this. After all, they had suffered heavy losses and had no reinforcements. The key point was that they had almost used up all their bullets and could not continue the battle.

But Han Jinlong naturally knew that they wanted to surrender. Those soldiers could live if they surrendered, but he himself would surely die if he surrendered, so he concentrated his bullets early on to prevent this from happening.

Now only these two or three hundred of his trusted confidants have bullets. Even if the others want to surrender, they have to consider whether they can get out of Asakawa Town alive.

Things turned out just as he expected. Due to Han Jinlong's military intimidation, the soldiers did not dare to go out and surrender. They could only let Jiang Li's men shout outside.

As for Jiang Li, seeing that there was no response from the town after he had shouted for a long time, he knew that this matter might not be easily resolved, so he could only order the artillery to continue.

But this time it was not fire coverage, but the assistant gunner used a telescope to observe the reported point and then carried out precise strikes.

As for the cavalry company, they had almost recovered after a night's rest. Jiang Li simply asked them to patrol the surrounding area to see if the enemy had any reinforcements or supplies.

After fighting for another morning, Jiang Li heard the enemy's gunfire becoming less and less frequent. He knew that their ammunition must have been almost used up, so he decided to launch a general attack now to end the battle.

The main force of the general attack was the captured enemy troops, all of whom were Liu Zhen's subordinates, numbering more than 300 people.

Although he was still frightened after being backstabbed by his teammates, there was also a hint of anger in his heart. Under Jiang Li's coercion and inducement, he picked up his weapon again and joined the battle.

As for Han Jinlong, after such a long battle, the ammunition was very limited. He had repeatedly ordered his people to shoot carefully to avoid running out of bullets and turning the guns in their hands into fire sticks.

But when he saw Liu Zhen's hundreds of remaining soldiers being driven onto the battlefield again, he felt disheartened. It seemed that the Jiang man was determined to kill him.

There was no other way. He certainly could not hold the town, so he quickly gathered his less than 200 trusted confidants, gave an order, and quietly led them to escape from the back of the town.

Liu Zhen's 300 or so remaining soldiers easily broke into Qianchuan Town. All they saw were more than a thousand defeated soldiers surrendering, as well as the townspeople and shops with their doors closed.

So they immediately realized their passive position, ignored the defeated soldiers, rushed into shops and houses and started looting, causing the whole town to complain and be angry but dare not speak out.

When Jiang Li saw that they had successfully entered the city, he thought that the enemy was going to engage in a street fight, and he couldn't help but sweat in his heart. Once the street fighting began, casualties among the civilians were inevitable.

But they had been inside for several minutes and did not hear any sound of gunfire. He thought suddenly and realized that the enemy had probably escaped, so he immediately sent half of his men to chase them.

He ordered Asan to lead several hundred people to pacify the people and clean up the battlefield.

But when Asan entered, he saw a large number of disarmed enemies squatting on the ground, and the defeated soldiers who had entered the town were robbing the people of their property.

This made him so angry that he immediately fired a warning shot, but by then the defeated soldiers were already accustomed to looting and did not care about the gunshot at all, and continued to rob and commit crimes.

Ah San frowned upon seeing this, and finally waved his hand, "Catch them all, and kill any who resist!"

At that moment, hundreds of soldiers with high morale rushed out and quickly controlled the defeated soldiers, but they were still quibbling, "Why did you arrest us? We were always like this under Marshal Liu. When has anyone ever told us that we were wrong?"

Asan didn't care about that. He tied them up along with Han Jinlong's men and waited for Jiang Li to decide their fate.

As for Han Jinlong who escaped, he wanted to return to the county town quickly, pack up his belongings and escape quickly to find an opportunity to make a comeback, but not long after leaving the town, he encountered a patrolling cavalry company.

After a round of exchange of fire, both sides suffered casualties, but it was just this delay that allowed the pursuers to arrive. With the help of the cavalry company's encirclement from the front and back, Han Jinlong was soon killed by a bullet shot by someone unknown.

When the others saw him dead, they had no choice but to surrender.

By the time Jiang Li received the news, it was already two hours later. He had already pacified the people, and the defeated soldiers who had looted were detained and would be dealt with later.

Upon hearing the news that Han Jinlong was dead, Jiang Li did not care about anything else. He immediately summoned his troops and spread out to occupy all 26 towns in Dongshan County and Qinghe County.

After occupying these places, he once again used his three tricks, quickly judging the landlords and gentry, collecting their taxes, grain and land, and distributing the right to use them to ordinary people.

Half a month passed in a flash, and the situation in each town stabilized. He could finally reward the three armies.

Holding the battle report in his hand, Jiang Li couldn't stop smiling.

According to statistics, in this battle, our side suffered 208 deaths or serious injuries, 531 minor injuries, 320,000 bullets, more than 400 grenades, thousands of grenade launchers and field artillery shells, and the loss of 200 to 300 guns of various types.

Because it is a long-range shooting, grenades cannot reach, so they are not used much.

As for horses, "uniforms," ​​and other weapons, there were also considerable losses, which I will not detail here.