By the time the battle reached the afternoon, the general in command had already sensed that something was wrong.

It was supposed to be good to set fire to the city by taking advantage of the chaos, occupying the council, and capturing the Mexican party headquarters; The navy also attacked from the docks in the name of maintaining order; The army attacked in the direction of the wharf, and as long as it controlled the wharf, the county guard, the council, and the bank, Mincheng would be considered a drum.

However, after entering the city, there was intermittent resistance, and there were often lead bullets or dropped bombs from nowhere, which made the army's attack extremely slow.

Streets, squares, and the like are simply not open to the army.

In the case of long-range fire, the number of casualties on both sides is directly proportional to the number of your own and enemy opponents, regardless of the level of shooting.

In close combat, the improvised barricades made it impossible for the elite cavalry to perform, and the infantry charges were attacked by various bombs from time to time, and there was even a situation where six young men scared away more than eighty soldiers.

As for the turmoil in the city and the occupation of the docks by the navy, there is not even a shadow to be seen. On the contrary, the citizens here have withdrawn in batches, and those grassroots organizations that usually rely on relief, textile cooperatives, vaccination, and the distribution of two catties of noodles during the New Year cannot spend a few dollars, even if they do not have combat effectiveness, as long as a grassroots backbone engaged in this kind of work comes forward, they can immediately stabilize their emotions and lead people to retreat.

This kind of repression is a situation that the general leading the team has never encountered.

The sporadic resistance at the beginning has also turned into a constant retreat, organized together and stubbornly resisted with barricades.

At half past one in the afternoon, the army had fled in haste before the townspeople had fled to the now orderly retreat, and had entered the vicinity of a tall building.

In the telescope, the tall building reads "Public Water Disinfection Office in Xiafeng Slum", and in the distance, you can see some strange and narrow red brick buildings, which are the low-level houses of citizens with the characteristics of Mincheng.

This public water disinfection site is a dangerous place in the eyes of the general. This place is by the river, and if you control it, it is easy to control the left and right banks of the river, and you can divide the opponent by attacking and counterattacking by the river; A nearby open space is also suitable for the deployment of troops and artillery, and it is a small assembly area, and in this era when fighting a war must be grouped, whoever controls such a staging area can take the initiative.

The general thought to himself that if he said that these people in Mincheng did not have the intention of rebellion, he would not believe it. The building, which appears to be a public drinking water disinfection center, is actually a rallying point for riots in the city.

But the fools who said they were going to make trouble in the city said that as long as the army came in and the navy came ashore from the dock, Mincheng would be able to go down in one go. The general said that their understanding of the war is still stuck in the era of a few decades ago when the city gate could be broken by opening the city gate by a few meticulous works, but the city of Fujian did not even have a city wall, and it was full of squares and open spaces that were obviously deliberate to gather counterattack forces, and the commanding heights were not the city gates but the buildings in the city that could be seen from afar.

Barricades have been built near the building of the public drinking water disinfection office, which is completely based on the surrounding of the building, but fortunately there seems to be no cannon on the building, otherwise I don't know how many people will die if they want to take it down.

Directly in front of you is a dirt slope with a small slope. In the distance, there was a group of citizens who were building barricades there, and when they saw the shadow of the army, they quickly retreated, but they did not flee.

There were more and more strange things in the telescope, and he had seen a lot of strange things in just half a day, but he finally saw the strangest thing in front of this building - there were obviously a few women on the platform on the upper floor of the building.

Apparently the women were not aiming at the cannons in the city to turn off their pants, but were engaged in the battle, as several women could be clearly seen in the binoculars helping to load the muskets and hand them to the men in front.

"The world's ridiculous!"

The general scolded, feeling more and more that Mincheng exuded an indescribable demonic aura, looked at the sun, and said in his heart that if he couldn't capture this place today, he would be busy today. It is impossible for the army to stay overnight in a place where there is not enough open space, and it is better to choose to stay overnight in a neighborhood in a situation like Mincheng, so it is better to commit suicide directly.

…………

The general was not mistaken, it was indeed the women who helped to load the muskets on the buildings, and many of them still had Mexican armbands wrapped around their arms.

These women were members of a nearby weaving cooperative, and because of these women's participation, the reputation of the Mexican Party was not very good.

In Mincheng, no one knows the official name of this weaving cooperative, but everyone knows its nickname - the Wandering Female Weavers Cooperative.

said that they were dissolute because most of them chose to divorce their former husbands, although the law does not allow women to divorce on their own initiative, but they still chose to make a collective statement in the newspaper in name only, and their husbands in the past would harass them and be beaten by these women. They had guns in their hands.

Since they are women, as one side of both sexes, and they are not old age, when there is still a marriage contract but the divorce is unilaterally announced, these women will naturally choose to find a lover. They weave cloth on their own, they have money in their hands, and they can only be equal if they have the ability to make money, and they can only be pets if they don't have the ability to make money.

After a long time, those original husbands either felt that they couldn't raise their heads and took the initiative to divorce, or they went to the central party headquarters of the Mexican Party all day to scold them. The weavers' cooperatives organized by these women are also gradually secretly called the laid-back weavers' cooperatives.

The members of the cooperative composed of these "prodigal girls" are the earliest female pioneers in Mincheng, they chose to use labor to gain their own power, and they turned a deaf ear to the scolding of the outside world.

As a cooperative, they were also the first organization to establish a nursery school, and they strongly agreed with what Lan Qi said in her reply to them three years ago that she would "participate in socially recognized labor and turn family labor into social labor in an employment relationship."

As a weaving cooperative, it is also a model of the Mexican Party's attitude towards women, and the price of wide plain weave has been stable in recent years, so their cooperative has become a cancer of the old thinking of Mincheng, and it is difficult to remove it.

Of course, it has also become an important reason why the Mexican Party has been attacked, and it is also an important reason why it is difficult for some petty bourgeoisie to carry out its work. However, the Mexican Party chose to stick to the bottom line rather than choose to change it according to the situation, which was unanimously adopted, and bluntly pointed out that the Mexican Party is in favor of a two-party free divorce, for which the Mexican Party is also called by many people in Mincheng "the party of the destroyers of tradition, the wanderers, the degenerates, and potential prostitutes".

On the building, several men with guns were smoking the last cigarette before the war, even though smoking was explicitly forbidden at this time, but in the face of the enemy on the opposite side, the person in charge here still turned a blind eye, as long as a few non-smokers were sent to the gunpowder area behind.

There was a young man who was a dock hire and played meat jokes with these women a little out of bounds, and the women didn't care about it before the big war.

"I said, you just dig the barricades, run over here, have you ever seen blood?"

When he said blood, the young man deliberately accentuated his voice, and several people next to him also laughed loudly, obviously hearing the meaning.

A woman with an armband wrapped around her arm glared at the young man and scolded back: "Nonsense, we saw blood when we were thirteen or fourteen, and you still wiped your nose at that time." ”

The young man glanced at a woman next to him who was loading a musket, and said with a smile: "I can't see it, but I can still fill gunpowder?" I thought you'd put buckshot in it and then gunpowder. ”

Not to be outdone, the woman did not stop in her hands, but said on her lips: "Fill gunpowder? Tsk, the last time I used to go to the man after drinking again, I didn't say a word and shot at the door next to me. He didn't bleed, but he peed his pants, which made our sister's room smell of urine. ”

The young man shrank his neck in fright, and peeked for a while and didn't know whether it was true or not, so he didn't ask anymore.

Next to her, a woman who looked good-looking, but had some vicissitudes on her face, was covering her mouth and smiling. Holding a piece of fire rope in his hand, it was a little familiar, but it was different, like a yarn that had been put down many years ago, but there was not much smile at that time.

The woman's family was once well, her father broke down due to illness, she bought orchids and was robbed, she was taken in by a soy sauce factory, she worked as a spinning worker, she received relief after the spinning workshop went bankrupt, and she was forced to work as a prostitute to keep herself from the almshouse, until she became a member of the cooperative by chance.

I used to laugh, but then I forgot to cry, and now I feel like I'm back to covering my mouth and smiling like I did when I was a girl thirteen years ago.

The hands holding the arquebuses have held flower pots, held brooms, stolen beans, spun yarns, and pulled woven ......

Originally, the pot could change her fate, but it didn't change, and then it was picked up by the dead body, and the orchid that was no longer related to fate but found it beautiful, is not dead now, but has been divided into many branches, planted on the wall of the cooperative nursery, and is blooming beautifully.

I always have to gently pat the hands of a few naughty children, and I am reluctant to hurt them, but I pity the flowers that are pinched by the naughty children and have left the branches and roots.

Originally, I thought that flowers would not survive without branches and leaves. Later, she learned that she couldn't live without nutrients.

Luckily, the land next to the cooperative's nursery is fertile, so it is alive and well.

When she covered her mouth and snickered, a sturdy man next to her said to the leader of the group of "prodigal weavers" and female diehards of the Mexican Party: "Seriously, you guys go down." Fighting a war is not a woman's business.

"Judging from the appropriate division of labor, you are right. But as our party song sings, there is no right without obligations, and there is no obligation without rights. It is precisely because of this obligation that you have the right to be superior to us. ”

The stout man frowned and said, "There is no need for you to have such an obligation in the party. ”

"What about Mincheng? Do you see the agenda of the Emergency Council? Participating in the battle can obtain the lowest number of votes of the countrymen. We want to make our voices heard, the voices of our own gender. Even if it is our party, in the council, after all, it is still a man's proposal for a free divorce, which is a kind of charity after all. We must use our own efforts to win this right, to win the power to speak out, to make our voices heard. In this way, we can free ourselves and stop being dolls and pets. Being able to support yourself is only the first step. And this battle is when we change the way those people think. ”

The stout man stopped talking, but the woman said, "Give us a box of your matches." ”

"Why, you still have to learn how to smoke a cigarette?"

The woman shook her head and said indifferently: "Men will die in battle at most, but if we are captured, we will have to bear another kind of insult." ”

After the man turned it out, he covered the words on it, shrugged his shoulders helplessly, and said: "Phosphorus sulfide, not yellow phosphorus." You can only have a rash, but you can't die. Let's go down. ”

As he spoke, there was a muffled sound of arquebuses below, and the army's first attack officially began.