FIA: The jews in the unwalled cities fought – what happened in a nutshell is that originally haman wrote 2 letters, 1 saying “be prepared for military action” and another secret one given just to the leaders to open on the 13th to “kill the jews”. Had he just written letters for everyone to kill the jews in 11 months, it would never had happened. Then M & E wrote their own 2 letters “clarifying” that when it said “be prepared for military action” it meant “haehudim” – jews be prepared – they had to do it this way cause a King cant Nullify a decree as explained above.
The second letter, “clarified” to mean “kill” who should kill – the jews should kill – instead of the Jews being killed, they should kill others. Of course a stretch (in some languages more then others) – yes – but this was just a “lawyers trick” to get around the decree without Nullifying it. So when the people got Esters Letter – worse case the jews were prepared (from the open letter) and they then had 2 letters on the 13th of Adar, 1) “kill the jews” and 2) “jews should kill” – so even if they didnt fall for the lawyers trick – the jews were ready and had an advantage of being ready and also were far better off from before cause at least they were on equal footing.
In the walled cities, the gov leaders were getting signals from the capital that the King is with the jews (because M got promoted, H was killed, etc) so they mainly focused on Esters letter – so “veish Loy umad Lifnayhem” – in the lawless unwalled cities, the man on the street only focused on the first – so they fought and the Jews fought back..That is why walled cities and unwalled celebrate differant days “they way they rested” – the walled cities didnt even fight, unwalled did – the unwalled had more of a traditional military win, walled was more hashem behind the scenes. This is also why the unwalled cities celebrated the first year, the walled only the second because they did not see a great miracle happen like the unwalled
There is alot more to say…but this is in a nutshell