On March 20, Chechen led more than 3500 troops to konotop.

This unit included Bratslav\'s troops mentioned earlier and five hundred chief guards provided by vikovsky. They also carried six guns.

As soon as he arrived in konotop, Cherchen met with the highest military and administrative chief of konotop, Cossack company commander hevadeji.

Hwadeki is not young. He is an old Cossack. His head was a lock of gray hair, his eyes were sunken, and his skin was like paper that had been rubbed countless times. His eyes were chaotic, making people feel sleepy at the first glance.

Seeing commander hwadeki\'s appearance, Chechen couldn\'t help shaking his head. Fortunately, vikovski didn\'t expect to defend konotop through such an old man, or konotop might fall in one day.

For Chechen\'s arrival, hwadeki showed due respect. Subsequently, the two commanders, together with their officers, inspected the city of konotop and the fortifications.

Konotop is mainly composed of two parts. One is the residential area, where about 500 civilians live. Most of them are family members of the army and nearby farmers, and a small number are craftsmen. All kinds of craftsmen rely on serving the military area to survive; The second is the military zone, the main body of which is a star Fortress - the Cossacks simply named it konotopu fort.

With rich combat experience, Cherchen and his companions immediately and accurately realized the strategic significance of this small fortress.

Fort konotop is the key to the whole defense. Once the Czar\'s Russian army attacked here, konotopu Fort would be the only fortification that could block the enemy. Only by making every effort to guard konotopu Fort as long as possible can we delay the enemy and buy time for vigovsky to assemble strong enough reinforcements.

"Victory or defeat depends on it," said Cherchen, patting the breast wall of konotopu castle.

Commander hwadeki was not surprised that Chechen could see this. He said: "this konotopu fort was built by the French engineers hired by the poles in those years. After I stationed here, I did not make any changes to the lenburg, but deepened and widened the trenches, and then stored more materials. Because I am a big man, I only know how to ride horses and cut down. I am not good at building fortifications."

"No, commander hwadeki, you have done well enough." Chechen praised.

Chechen hopes that through such praise and affirmation, the old brother Sark can rekindle his fighting spirit. Because in the coming cruel war, every strength is precious.

Then, under the leadership of company commander hwadeki, he inspected the whole bastion. Soon, Cherchen found a weakness in konotopu fort - the north of the fort was very fragile.

The construction level of this section of the city wall is not high, and there is no suitable breast wall.

"If I were Prince Alexei, I would put my main attack direction here, because I could easily break through here," yelishei said to Chechen and company commander hwadeki.

"Not bad." Chechen nodded.

Hearing what yelisi and Cherchen said, dimosev and Jamie Popovich asked how to remedy it.

Cherchen\'s suggestion is to build a flanking fortress as soon as possible - in the terminology of urban defense engineers, this is called "triangular fortress". It is a triangular external fortress used to protect that section of the wall.

"Damn it!"

At this time, hwadeki regretted, "I thought the forts built by foreigners, especially the French, should be perfect."

"Commander hwadeki, it is obvious that the French engineer who built konotopu Fort cut corners in the end," Chechen said.

Perhaps we can\'t blame the unnamed French engineer. Because of the poor financial situation of the Republic of Poland, it is likely that the construction of konotopu fort was not funded until this time, so this paragraph was hastily completed.

In fact, such a situation prevails in the frontier fortresses of the Republic. However, Poland established its country with cavalry, and most wars were decided by field operations, so such problems were rarely exposed.

After the inspection, Chechen said to all the officers, including hwadeki: "in short, from now on, we should go all out to prepare for war. Remember, one more drop of sweat today and one less drop of blood tomorrow."

On the second day of their arrival, konotop\'s war preparations began in a hurry.

Chechen knew that Prince Alexei would not give him too much time to prepare, and his time was running out.

The reinforcements led by Chechen were all put into crazy hard work. They tried their best to repair the triangle fort to strengthen the defense of konotopu fort.

For the residents in the residential area, Cherchen did the evacuation work - although the area of konotopu fort is not small, it is more than enough to accommodate 500 people. However, for a protracted city defense war, sufficient materials are the first. Too many people will aggravate the consumption of materials. Moreover, after all, civilians do not have as strong will as soldiers. They are very easy to panic and shout in the war, which will affect morale and lead to the collapse of the solid fortress from the inside.

There were originally 300 people under commander hwadeki\'s command. Cherchen selected another 100 people from more than 500 civilians to join the team guarding the city.

So he had a force of nearly four thousand men in his hands.

For the 100 new recruits, Chechen handed them over to fedot for basic firearms shooting training.

Fedot stipulates that every recruit should shoot three shots at the target every day. The person with the best performance will be rewarded, and the person with the worst performance will deduct the food of the day.

The gunpowder workshop in the castle is making gunpowder, and the Masons are mining the stones used to build the city wall; Carpenters cut down logs as raw materials to fill the fortification gap in wartime; Blacksmiths are swinging sledgehammers to make swords and lead bullets.

The resources in the fort - fresh water, gunpowder, food and medicine - are in the charge of father spasokukotsky; Cherchen designed a beacon signal and a plan to warn the enemy of approaching and fire artillery. Company commander Jamie Popovich led a team of Cossack Lancers to patrol and guard around; Cossacks who were familiar with the region were sent out to poison wells and other water sources in the countryside, evacuate civilians to forests, collect grain stored in farmers\' barns and gather livestock - in short, strong walls and clear wilderness, and greet the Russians with a piece of barren and barren land.

In order to boost morale, Chechen also ordered German double handed swordsmen to hold a brief military parade in majestic armor.

But immediately, Chechen found that all his actions had little effect, and he was also restrained and secretly resisted.