 This mistake led to the collapse of Chinese defensive lines as the Japanese soldiers which eventually numbered in the hundreds of thousands far more than the original 30,000 Japanese kept pressing the attack from northern China to central China to southern China's provinces as Chinese soldiers deliberately withdrew leading to confusion and collapse, except at the Defense of Hengyang where 17,000 outnumbered Chinese soldiers held out against over 110,000 Japanese soldiers for months in the longest siege of the war inflicting 19,000-60,000 deaths on the Japanese.At Tushan im Guizhou province, the Nationalist government of China was forced to deploy 5 armies of the 8th war zone that they were using in the enture war up to Ichigo to contain the Communist Chinese to instead fight Japan.But at that point, dietary deficiencies of Japanese soldiers and increasing casualties suffered by Japan forced Japan to end Operation Ichigo in Guizhou causing the operation to cease.