The Hongyi cannons I have accumulated over the years in Myanmar are definitely more powerful than the firearms brought by the Ming army over the mountains, and we will definitely be able to defend them!"

This encouragement from the Burmese king did have some effect. Many Burmese army generals finally remembered that the Burmese army still had an absolute advantage in one aspect, and that was city defense artillery!

This is not to say that Burma's Hongyi cannons are stronger than those of the Ming Dynasty. This is impossible. They have been fighting for these few months and have understood the situation clearly.

But the Burmese generals all knew that the really powerful heavy artillery of the Ming army could not be pulled overland over the Kyaukshan Mountains to the city of Ava. Therefore, the Ming army either had no artillery or only had light artillery that could accompany the army over the mountains.

Myanmar's geographical advantage is, after all, the last and strongest trump card of the Burmese army! Even if this war is ultimately lost and forced to cede territory and beg for mercy, Li Dingguo's siege attempt should be defeated before suing for peace, otherwise I'm afraid it will be

The price offered by the Ming army could be so high that Burma would be destroyed!

With the final confidence, the main force of the Burmese army rarely chose to retreat and abandon Ava. Instead, the entire army defended the city and even sent messengers to all parties to order troops to serve the king. They also urgently mobilized reinforcements from the capital Bago in the rear.

…

While the Burmese were relying on artillery to defend, Li Dingguo would certainly not be idle. As soon as he arrived at the foot of Awa City, he first established a strong siege camp, and then relied on the camp to dig trenches and carry out earthwork work.

Extends under the city wall.

The Burmese people couldn't understand what he was doing, so they had no choice but to let him do what he did.

There is no doubt that Li Dingguo’s purpose is to reproduce the Woban siege method invented by the Ming Dynasty at the end of the Ming and Qing wars. And the Woban siege method used by Li Dingguo today is absolutely pure in taste——

Because the thirty-three-year-old General Vauban Sebastien Le Prestre Vauban himself was in Li Dingguo's army and contributed to today's critical battle.

Vauban was recruited by the Ming Dynasty in his weak years about five or six years after Zhu Shuren recruited Descartes. He has been in the Ming Dynasty army for twelve years now.

Just because the peace era has been relatively long, it is not easy to achieve results by serving directly in the army. In the past few years, Vauban was often seconded to the Academy of Sciences to do military engineering research. This year, he finally got the opportunity to fight in actual combat.

The trench construction of the Vauban siege method was relatively slow. It usually required digging more than two thousand yards of trenches close to traffic and thousands of yards of fan-rings to install semi-buried artillery positions, which took a total of one or two months.

However, it is only late November anyway, and the New Year will be just around the corner in a month or two. The weather is not too hot. As long as the Ming army has sufficient supplies of ammunition and medical drugs, they will not be afraid of being unable to take root.

When the Burmese city defenders first saw that the Ming army had reached the fortified city, they actually built high forts and deep ditches, dug various trenches, and tried to make a circuitous route out of the city to counterattack the Ming army's flank and cut off Li Dingguo's supplies.

It's a pity that the Burmese army's previous defeats were too tragic and they didn't have the strength to fight in the field. Anyone who left Awa City was in vain. They were lured and annihilated by Li Dingguo, and they were unable to block Li Dingguo's supply line.

In order to reduce logistical pressure, Li Dingguo used all his transportation capacity to transport ammunition and medicine, and relied on local plundering and supplies for food. Even if Awa City was not broken, the surrounding area of ​​Awa City was already the most fertile agricultural area in Myanmar. In addition, Myanmar

Grain can be harvested three times a year. Seeing that it will be harvested again at the end of the year, Li Dingguo can harvest the grain that is not yet fully mature in advance.

After such a stalemate for a month, as time came to the end of the year, Vauban's siege construction finally began to take shape. The Ming army was able to push the cavalry cannon, which weighed more than a thousand kilograms, to a position more than a mile outside the city wall, and then used

Semi-buried underground firing method, using high-throw ballistics to launch explosive shells to bombard the city.

Until this moment, the Burmese troops defending the city were completely panicked. They desperately used heavy Hongyi artillery that was two or three times heavier than the Ming army's cavalry artillery. But their shells could only hit the half-buried cave carefully dug by Wo Bang.

on the ground of the artillery position, and then bounced away.

In desperation, the Burmese army tried to bomb the Ming army's communication trenches, but the trajectory of the artillery shells also failed to hit the bottom of the trenches, and they all bounced off the side walls and the ground.

It was not until this moment that the Burmese people fully realized how many times the Ming Dynasty's attainments in ballistics and ballistic defense engineering were much more advanced than they, the illiterate Southern Barbarians.

The house leaked and it rained continuously all night. Just when the city of Ava finally began to be bombed by the Ming army, urgent bad news came from the direction of Bago, the capital of the south.

"Your Majesty! It's not good! Zheng Chenggong's fleet attacked at the mouth of the Indra River outside Bago City, and launched a landing operation at the mouth of the river! The Ming warships have already penetrated the mouth of the river and entered the inland river!"

"What? Why did the Ming army come from the south? Hurry! Go back and defend Bago!" Mang Bai felt a burst of blood rushing to his head.

The main force of his army had been exhausted by Li Dingguo's successive annihilation battles, and the remaining troops were stuck in the meat grinder of Ava City.

Now the city of Ava has once again fallen into a state of unilateral massacre and shelling due to Vauban's siege method. The only hope that "the Ming army's supplies can be cut off" has also come to nothing because of the appearance of Zheng Chenggong. Mang Bai has realized

, I completely lost everything.
Chapter completed!