The Qing Dynasty

Chapter 266: Can We Fight Again?
When the Japanese army first rushed into the city gate, in order to cover the Japanese army that was trying to seize the horse road to the upper city, they occupied several courtyards on the streets outside the city gate. Now, these courtyards have become a safe haven for the remaining Japanese army.

The six Maxim heavy machine guns on the city wall blocked the city gates tightly. Not to mention the Japanese soldiers who wanted to rush back into the city wall to escape, even a mouse could not escape from the dense rain of bullets.

The Japanese army had tried before. After discovering that they had fallen into a trap, the Japanese commander near the city gate first thought of rushing into the city wall, controlling the inner and outer city gates, and opening an escape route for the Japanese troops in the ambush circle ahead.

It was easy for them to rush in, but it would be extremely difficult for them to get out.

After several desperate attacks, they were unable to control the city gate, let alone get close to it.

The corpses of Japanese soldiers piled up near the gate of Wengcheng City, forming an arc-shaped mountain of corpses near the gate. Some Japanese soldiers even lay on the pile of corpses and fired at the city.

Not to mention the positions formed by the corpses, even the sandbag positions could not withstand the continuous close-range fire from the Maxim heavy machine gun. Not only were the Japanese soldiers who attempted to use the corpses as cover quickly killed, but even the corpses of the Japanese soldiers were quickly shattered by the Maxim heavy machine gun and turned into balls of minced meat.

Seeing that they could not rush out, the Japanese soldiers who were lucky enough to survive near the city wall had to crawl and hide in the courtyards they occupied, the alleys around the courtyards, and the blind spots of the soldiers of the Third Mixed Brigade on the city wall.

The Japanese soldiers who were still alive on the street were thrown into complete chaos under the crazy fire of the dense Maxim heavy machine guns and the fierce explosion of cluster grenades, as well as the volleys of fire from the roofs and houses on both sides of the street.

The Japanese army's chaos was not entirely due to the fact that their commander was killed by the dense rain of bullets, but because these Japanese soldiers were completely stunned by the fierce attack.

Although the Japanese army could be considered veterans, they had almost no actual combat experience using new modern weapons. Only some veterans of the Fifth Division had participated in the First Sino-Japanese War, which gave them valuable opportunities for actual combat.

But they were only limited to the experience of fighting in the Korean Peninsula and Liaodong during the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895 and with the Beiyang government. They had never seen such fierce and intensive Maxim heavy machine gun fire and the attack of large numbers of small bombs exploding right next to them. They were already frightened out of their wits, and the terrified Japanese soldiers turned around and ran away.

Thousands of desperate Japanese remnants who fled to the city wall also wanted to rush into the city wall, but when they saw the broken corpses on the ground near the city gate, they knew that their hope of escaping into the city wall and then rushing out of the city was shattered, so they had to run to these courtyards and surrounding alleys.

A large group of terrified Japanese soldiers, although being killed or wounded one after another by the dense rain of bullets from all directions, still fled there frantically as if they had seen a life-saving straw.

The charge was sounded, and teams of new recruits, still wearing the uniforms of the Boxers, the Green Camp, and the training troops, poured out from the streets on both sides.

Each of these teams was led by several officers from the vanguard army. Some of them participated in the pursuit of the Japanese troops fleeing to the city, rushing into the chaotic Japanese troops who were only concerned with escaping and slashing them madly, killing almost everyone with blood all over their bodies.

Some, led by officers, charged into the courtyards on both sides of the main street whose walls had been knocked down, and joined in the hand-to-hand combat to kill the remnants of the Japanese army who were still desperately resisting;

Others had already begun to clear out the wounded Japanese soldiers who were unable to escape on the main street.

Among them, the Boxers and soldiers who retreated from Beicang, Langfang, Tongzhou and other places were the most hardworking and the most ferocious.

The division of labor among these people was very clear. For those Japanese soldiers who could still shoot, they would first shoot with rifles, and then rush forward and chop with bayonets and swords. Even if the Japanese soldiers' bodies were still intact, they would stab them with two bayonets or chop them with a sword before they would stop.

This posture shows that they are not going to let a single Japanese soldier go alive.

More officers and soldiers of the Third Mixed Brigade rushed out from their ambush positions and chased the Japanese troops, killing and annihilating the Japanese troops they intercepted one by one. However, as these Japanese soldiers fled for their lives, many of them still fled to the vicinity of Wengcheng and joined the remnants of the Japanese troops there.

Thanks to the shelter of these courtyards, the thousands of terrified Japanese soldiers who fled here finally had a place to temporarily hide from bullets, giving them a chance to catch their breath and their officers a chance to reorganize their troops.

Soon, amid the desperate howlings of the Japanese officers, the Japanese troops gradually began to regain command, and then switched from offense to defense, taking advantage of the terrain such as courtyard walls, house and street corners, and even corners of walls, and began to shoot at the chasing vanguard officers and soldiers.

However, since the large group of vanguard officers and soldiers who came to pursue them had already achieved the goal of blocking the gate of the city wall, the vanguard soldiers and Gansu soldiers on the city wall could free up their hands to suppress the Japanese troops under the city by shooting from the city wall. This made it very difficult for the stubborn remnants of the Japanese army to defend themselves, allowing the vanguard officers and soldiers who came to pursue them to quickly rearrange a new encirclement outside the courtyards occupied by the Japanese troops.

Because the Maxim heavy machine guns had lost the best opportunity for strafing fire and a new encirclement had been established, the Maxim heavy machine guns that were fighting vigorously on Wengcheng had all been transferred to the inner city walls to deal with the large number of Japanese troops who had broken through the artillery blockade and were still rushing into the city.

It was only a matter of time before the remnants of the Japanese troops trapped in the city were completely wiped out.

"Good fight!"

Although the battle was not over yet, Teng Yuzhao could not help but cheer loudly for fighting such a beautiful ambush in less than half an hour.

Looking at the broken bodies all over the street, Teng Yuzhao estimated that the number of Japanese soldiers killed in this main street of several hundred meters alone would not be less than five thousand, not counting the Japanese soldiers killed near Wengcheng and the Japanese soldiers in Wengcheng.

When he thought of the five or six thousand Japanese troops who had fled to the vicinity of Wengcheng and were still resisting, Teng Yuzhao was shocked.

The number of Japanese troops rushing into the city this time will definitely exceed 10,000.

Listening to the booming artillery explosions and intensive heavy machine gun fire outside the city, as well as the rifle fire and grenade explosions inside and outside the city wall, Teng Yuzhao knew that not only had the remnants of the Japanese troops suppressed in the city wall not been completely eliminated, but the most important thing was that the Japanese troops outside the city, although they should have known that the Japanese troops inside had met with an unexpected disaster, were still desperately trying to rush into the city and help the Japanese troops in the city to evacuate.

"Contact the headquarters." Teng Yuzhao ordered without turning his head.

Teng Yuzhao was thinking nervously about whether to immediately eliminate the Japanese troops in the city so that the exhausted soldiers could have a good rest.

It would be better to keep these Japanese troops for the time being so that the Japanese troops outside the city would rush into the firepower network he set up at the city gate like moths to a flame, so as to inflict as much casualties as possible on the Japanese troops.

Moreover, Teng Yuzhao was also worried about the battle at Guangqumen. The number of British and American coalition forces there would not be small, at least five or six thousand people.

Have Li Xianze and Liu Shijiu successfully surrounded the remnants of the British and American Allied Forces there?
Did they succeed in blocking the attack of the British army outside the city?

The combined number of troops in these two places is more than 10,000. The total number of troops he can mobilize in the city is only about 30,000. He has to deal with the coalition forces outside the city who are trying to rush into the city to rescue like crazy, and he has to besiege and destroy the remaining enemy forces in the city. It is really beyond his ability.

A famous saying suddenly flashed through Teng Yuzao's mind: "It is better to pursue the enemy while they are strong."
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(End of this chapter)