According to the agreement between the two sides in advance, after the surrender of the defenders to which Nguyen Jing belonged, he himself would personally carry out the task of leading the way, guiding the Haihan militia to launch an attack on the south of the city.

As Nguyen Ching Gui had promised beforehand, the leading party in the city had arranged a safe march to the south of the city. There were even people who were more active than Nguyen Ching, and the militia army had already gathered its troops before it arrived, stacking all its weapons together and waiting for surrender. In just over an hour, the Haihan side received more than 2,200 defenders. Without firing a single shot, the militia entered the southern half of the city under the guidance of the party leading the way.

The defenders of the city had known a few days earlier that the Haihan had breached the northeastern corner of the city and established a defensive position in that area, but the Haihan had been besieged by the defenders for the next few days, making little progress. This reborn hope in the hearts of many people, believing that they could use the narrow terrain and military superiority in the city to suppress the Haihan militia in the area in the northeast corner, and use time to slowly drag down the opponent's victory. However, while these people were still daydreaming, nearly 3,000 soldiers of the Haihan militia had quietly marched into the city and advanced south along the city wall to the core of Hue City.

When the militia soldiers in gray uniforms appeared at the Imperial City Garrison Division, which was only two blocks away from the Imperial City, the South Vietnamese Imperial Forest Army stationed nearby immediately blew up the nest -- the Haihan militia had attacked here without any warning, could it be that the entire northern half of the city had all been killed?

At this juncture, the general of the defending army made a very strict mistake, he did not immediately raise troops to attack the small vanguard of the Haihan militia, but chose to wait and see while gathering troops, and as a result, the fighter plane was missed, so that the Haihan militia had enough time to transport the artillery that was dragging behind the team to the front line for deployment. By the time five guns lined up in the street and aimed at the gate of the garrison division, the outcome of the battle was already sealed.

Five guns roared one after another, and shells flew over the empty streets, smashing the gates of the garrison division and the dense barricades outside them. Some of the South Vietnamese soldiers who tried to launch a counterattack between the shelling were also stopped 100 meters away by the dense musket lead bullets, and they could not get close to the camp of the Hai Han militia.

After four rounds of artillery bombardment, the gate of the garrison division and the walls on both sides had been reduced to rubble, and dozens of casualties were also killed in the courtyard behind the gate. Qian Tiandun gave an order, and the soldiers lined up with rifles and launched an attack on the garrison at a steady pace. Any attempt to engage in hand-to-hand combat with individual prowess is futile, and soldiers will not skimp on their bullets against such a fearless resistance.

Although some of the defenders withdrew from the battlefield with the commander through the back door of the garrison division, the fall here still paralyzed the command system of the Royal Guards immediately. Thousands of defenders deployed on the outskirts of the imperial city could only organize small-scale sporadic counterattacks without command, and this was a godsend for the Haihan militia who were known for their battlefield command. By noon, the walls of the Imperial City had entered the range of muskets of the vanguard, and at this time, most of the Imperial Guards guarding the Imperial City had abandoned their garrisons outside the city and chose to retreat to defend inside the Imperial City without command.

The actions of the Imperial Forest Army directly led to the confusion of the defenders in other parts of the city, and due to the limitations of their status, they could not retreat into the imperial city, and they did not know what the battle situation was, and rumors immediately spread in the city. There are even rumors that the Haihan militia has surrounded the imperial city and is stepping up its attack, and the city is about to be broken. However, the Imperial Forest Army, which had lost its command, did not send messengers in time to inform the defenders in various parts of the city to return to defense, which led to the repeated delay of the fighters, so that the Haihan militia could calmly demolish the houses outside the imperial city that blocked the artillery fire boundary and establish siege positions.

The dense houses outside the imperial city caused a great obstacle to the next offensive of the Haihan militia, and the officers had to stop their progress and organize soldiers and people to carry out forced demolition, but this action was not in the original battle plan.

"Tear down the fence of this courtyard on the left! Hurry!" Yu Tiezhu, who was ordered to clean up the site, gave a loud order to his soldiers and people. He was ordered to remove all the houses and walls on the left side of the street before dark, which was obviously not an easy task.

Seven or eight soldiers joined forces to hold a long wooden pillar and slammed into the wall one by one. These are the beams that were just removed from another house, and now they are using them as a tool for demolition. Several groups of people carried the wood and continued to hit it, and soon the brick wall collapsed towards the courtyard. There was a cry of surprise from inside the courtyard, and several men with knives and guns tried to resist, but they were immediately beaten into a sieve by the musket team that had come up to fill their seats. At such times, no one cares whether these people are good citizens or defenders, as long as there is an attempt to attack the militia, it is enough to shoot back.

The demolition slowed down the militia's offensive so much that Qian Tiandun had to stop his follow-up battle plan and wait for the militiamen to clear a large enough open space in front of the position. However, fortunately, most of the artillery of the South Vietnamese defenders was placed on the outer city walls, and the walls of the imperial city had no long-range weapons, and some of the defenders who dared to expose their heads and bodies to shoot the people outside the city with bows and arrows were also named by the snipers who squatted on the roofs of various places nearby.

The Imperial City of Hue imitates the imperial city design of the Ming Dynasty, and it is also a central axis of one hall and one square pattern, which has the palace buildings such as the Qinzheng Palace, the Qiancheng Palace, the Kun Tai Palace, the Guangming Palace, the Gongguang Palace, the Taihe Palace, and the Imperial City is surrounded by four city gates, namely the Meridian Gate, the Peace Gate, the Xianren Gate, and the Truong Duc Gate, which is basically a miniature version of the Forbidden City. At this time, the position set up by the Haihan militia was facing the Peace Gate in the northeast.

The Forward Command wanted to clear an area outside the Peace Gate as much as possible, and then set up artillery to storm the Imperial City in a simple and brutal way to break through the last line of defense of the South Vietnamese defenders. However, because there were far more and more densely populated houses here than expected, this battle plan had to be postponed.

During the afternoon of demolitions, the militia encountered even more resistance than during the morning march through the city. A large number of scattered South Vietnamese soldiers and civilians carried out spontaneous resistance actions, which caused some trouble for the militia army and greatly slowed down the speed of the forced demolition, so that the officers in charge of directing the demolition of the houses later applied to Qian Tiandun to directly bombard the wall with artillery, so as not to catch up with the progress of the operation required by the command.

By nightfall, only about two-thirds of the demolition area requested by the command had been completed, and the rank and file officers believed that at the current pace, it was likely that tomorrow's demolition operation would take half a day to complete the task.

Thankfully, the liquidation of the occupied areas after entering the city proceeded very smoothly, and there was almost no decent resistance, which is of course directly related to the fact that almost all the defenders in the occupied areas have chosen to surrender. In areas where there have been no forced demolitions, the local people have little willingness to resist, and most of them have chosen to close their doors and seek more blessings.

"We have more than 30 wounded and four dead when we demolish a house?" Yan Chujie, who had just arrived from outside the city, couldn't help but be angry when he saw today's casualty report, he had been busy outside the city this afternoon to arrange for the thousands of South Vietnamese troops he had received in the morning, and he had not entered the city to supervise the battle, and the results he had achieved in the afternoon obviously did not satisfy him.

"Mr. Yan, although the defenders were broken up by us, it is true, but basically they are still trapped in the city and have not escaped, you haven't seen today's scene, just knock down a wall, and there are one or two hundred people on the other side of the wall who rushed directly over and fought hard, if it weren't for the well-trained brothers, the casualties would really be more than that. Qiao Zhiya was one of the on-site commanders of today's forced demolition operation, and at this time he took the initiative to stand up and defend himself.

"At first we didn't expect to encounter so much resistance, but then when we got the armed forces to cooperate, there were fewer casualties. Qian Tiandun, as a front-line operational commander, also opened his mouth to defend.

Yan Chujie probably also realized that his tone just now was a little too heavy, nodded and said: "It's not that I care too much about casualties, but our troops are too small, and if there are too many battle losses, it will easily affect the overall combat effectiveness!"

At the present stage of the battle, the shortcomings of the Haihan militia in terms of strength have become more and more obvious. In this expedition to Hue, the Haihan side dispatched a total of more than 4,000 people, including nearly 1,000 heavy people, and excluding the navy, there were actually only more than 2,000 troops who could enter the city to fight. If such a small number of people were to be scattered in Hue City, it would basically be like sprinkling pepper noodles, so the combat strategy chosen by the command was to attack only one road and never divide the troops. However, even so, the distribution of troops was already stretched, and even hundreds of naval soldiers had to be transferred ashore to take up the task of guarding prisoners outside the city.

In exactly one month since the start of the war on 22 last month, the number of casualties in the Haihan militia has exceeded three digits, and the number of wounded soldiers who need to retreat from the firing line for recuperation is even more than three times, which means that in this month's fighting, the Haihan militia has almost lost three companies of combat personnel. This kind of combat attrition of Cheng Dù will undoubtedly have a very obvious impact on the militia group, which is not strong in strength. Some non-important posts have to be filled with personnel with reserve militia qualifications in order to maintain the normal combat effectiveness of the troops. According to the pre-war estimate of the Military Commission, if the number of battle losses doubles and the war is not over, then the militia army will probably have to consider whether it is necessary to withdraw its troops in advance.

If the situation really develops to that point, it will undoubtedly be a failed expedition for the military. The elimination of the South Vietnamese regime was the primary goal of the military campaign, and if this operation failed to achieve this goal, it would probably take several more months for the militia to build up strength before launching the next offensive, which was obviously not the situation that the Military Commission and the Executive Committee wanted to see. Yan Chujie was so anxious, but he was also worried that the battle damage would be too high and affect the next battle.

"Tell me about the current battle situation in the city!" Yan Chujie also felt that it was useless to talk too much about this topic, so he took the initiative to shift everyone's attention to the analysis of the current battle situation.

Qian Tien Dun pointed to the Hue city defense map on the table and explained: "At present, the area from the northeast corner along the city wall to the southeast has been cleared, but there are still a large number of South Vietnamese defenders in the west and south of the city, and according to the information provided by the surrendered South Vietnamese officers, it is estimated that there are about 10,000 to 15,000 defenders in the city." ”

"Does this number include the defenders in the Imperial City?" Yan Chujie asked with a frown.

Qian Tiandun shook his head and said, "There are about four thousand defenders in the imperial city, and they are not included in the number I just mentioned. ”

"Is there any good news worth taking it easy?" Yan Chujie was obviously not happy about this situation, so he could only ask half-jokingly.

"The good news is that the South Vietnamese army guarding the imperial city does not have too many heavy weapons available, and the few heavy artillery pieces in the imperial city are said to be arranged on the side of the noon gate facing the Xiangjiang River, and it is estimated that they will not be able to move their nests for a while. So at least in the next two days, the artillery we deploy outside the Peace Gate will have an overwhelming advantage. Qiao Zhiya paused and added, "But there is also bad news. ”

"What's the bad news?" Yan Chujie's love was not easy to settle down, and he was hung up by Qiao Zhiya's words again.

Qiao Zhiya continued: "According to what we know now, the imperial city's city defense is very strong, and the fortification of its walls is no worse than that of the outer city, and with the blessing of the moat, I am afraid it will be a little troublesome for us to attack it in a short time. ”

The "bad news" that Qiao Zhiya mentioned is undoubtedly a very real problem, due to the small area of the imperial city, the layout area of the city's defense forces will be relatively dense. It may be difficult for the militia to break through a point to establish a forward position when attacking the outer city, because the area of the outer city is large, and it takes more time for reinforcements to reach the gap in the city wall, and the area of this imperial city is small, if thousands of people are in place at the first time, it will definitely cause great pressure on the vanguard troops attacking the city. Although they have 100% confidence in the combat effectiveness of their own troops, if it is not a last resort, the top brass is not willing to use the elite troops that have been trained so hard to fight the monkey soldiers of South Vietnam.

The situation facing the command is a bit of a dilemma, if it wants to speed up the battle process and end this battle as soon as possible, it is likely to attack the imperial city in a hard-fought way, and this will inevitably cause more casualties on its own side. If you want to fight more safely and slowly consume the combat effectiveness of the defending troops, you will be able to win this battle sooner or later, but I don't know how long it will last, maybe ten days and half a month, maybe it will be longer. The longer the battle drags on, the greater the burden on the militia groups fighting across the sea, and their own combat effectiveness will continue to decline due to the extension of the combat period.

"I personally have a plan, but I'm not sure it's feasible. Qiao Zhiya saw Yan Chujie frowning and staring at the map for a long time, so he took the initiative to come up with a new idea.

"Let's hear it first!" Yan Chujie looked up at Qiao Zhiya and said.

"Actually, the blasting method we used to break through the outer city was very good, and I think we could do the same thing again. Qiao Zhiya saw Yan Chujie's disapproving look on his face, so he continued: "I know what you want to say, if the gap in the city wall that we tear down with blasting is too small, of course it will be blocked by the defenders in the city, we might as well play bigger and tear down the entire Peace Gate!"

Qiao Zhiya said quickly, leaned over and pointed to the map: "You see, about three hundred meters behind the Peace Gate, is the central axis of the imperial city, our artillery does not need to cross the river, it can directly hit the imperial palace from the current position, and then what will the defenders in the city use to resist our artillery bombardment?"

Qian Tiandun interjected: "We can also bombard the palace in the city now, as long as the artillery firing angle is increased." ”

"But that's not accurate, and there's no way to directly verify the effectiveness of the shelling. The most important thing is that those in power in the city can intuitively see how the artillery positions outside the city are hitting their heads, which will definitely be more shocking!" Qiao Zhiya looked excited, as if he had already made up the scene of the defenders and dignitaries in the city scrambling for their lives to avoid the shelling.

"After all, you kid just want to play explosives! Are you nicknamed Michael Bay?" Yan Chujie unceremoniously pointed out Qiao Zhiya's bad taste. However, he could not deny that the combat plan proposed by Qiao Zhiya did have a certain degree of feasibility. If the tower of the Peace Gate can really be eliminated, then this gap in the city wall with a length of more than 100 meters cannot be repaired by the defenders in the city. "When we blew up the outer city wall, we used hundreds of catties of explosives to blow up a gap of four or five meters, and you want to blow up the tower of the Peace Gate, are you sure that the explosives we brought are enough?" Qian Tiandun was not very interested in the battle plan proposed by Qiao Zhiya. "The explosives made after crossing must be a little less powerful, but I still have some stock in my hand!" Qiao Zhiya showed a smug smile on his face: "The TT we bought before the crossing was shipped this time, and it just came in handy." Of course, the TT explosives that Qiao Zhiya said were not materials purchased by the group, but the private property of the North American Gang. They procured a large amount of military supplies before the crossing, including hundreds of kilograms of TT explosives and detonators for detonation. Although it is not known if it will come in handy, at the insistence of Jozhia, a bomber, Wang Tom still transported these dangers to the Hue front line by boat.