There was a roar in the distance mixed with a bang nearby, like a kicked ball. The head of the soldier in front of him was smashed by the shell, and his brains splashed into Li Tianyu's face.
Li Tianyu's throat seemed to be suddenly grabbed, his unfinished words were suddenly choked out, and the palm he raised with encouragement was also fixed in mid-air.
It's the Fran cannon at the top of the city. To be precise, it's a stray bullet from the Fran cannon that exceeds the normal range.
This stray bullet almost took Li Tianyu away five hundred steps away. He cursed and wiped his face with lingering fear. Instead of wiping it clean, he evenly spread the blood and brain matter on his face, making his expression look particularly ferocious and raised.
The arm continued to shout unfinished words to the soldiers.
"From now on, Hehuang will be turned upside down. The survival and decline of the thirteen chieftain clans will all depend on us. Today, we will strive for credit. All local soldiers who die in battle will be buried in the Li family cemetery. They will pay homage every year with incense and pay tribute to their wives and children with ten silver coins."
With two grains and ten stones, one person is allowed to enter the Li family school, and the local officials in each formation will follow me to fill the trenches and attack the city!"
The artillery at the top of the city launched a bombardment at the bottom of the city. Huang Shengxiao at the rear stopped holding his hand and immediately ordered twelve heavy artillery to bombard the city.
Originally, Li Tianyu asked Liu Chengzong that the artillery should not shoot at the top of the city. After all, both the attacking and defending sides were native soldiers. Li Tianyu did not believe that the native soldiers on the city would kill them.
But now it seems that war will look like war. No matter who is caught in the whirlpool of war, there will be no warmth and compassion.
In other words, before these people were released by Ye Guoqi, the defenders in the city might still be merciful, but now that nearly half of the Shatai have passed through the city, those who remained knew what they were doing.
Liu Chengzong immediately waved the command flag, and the artillerymen, who could not contain their excitement for a long time, pushed the artillery fifty steps forward, transported the heavy artillery into the established position, and began to adjust the shooting angle.
Artillerymen like this kind of siege battle. Although the siege distance this time is closer, they are also within the threat of enemy artillery. However, the position has built anti-artillery slopes, and the two sides use different artillery, so the chance of being hit is actually not high.
.
In fact, they were not the most skilled gunners in the Marshal's Mansion. Two years ago, they were just carrying wooden cannons to clear out the defenders' infantry in the fortress.
The most skilled artillerymen in the Marshal's Mansion are all under Cao Yao's command, while Huang Shengxiao's artillerymen are just infantrymen who have received artillery training.
But this artillery team, which consists of twelve thousand-pound cannons and 144 gunners, is far superior to Nangqian's colleagues in terms of experience in using heavy artillery.
In the Battle of Bajiao City, they relied on artillery to offset the defender's city defense advantage to the greatest extent. At this time, they repeated their old tricks and bombarded the city head with a closer distance and more skilled skills.
In fact, a cannon only requires four soldiers to operate it. Even if two substitutes are added, a six-man gun crew is enough.
Huang Shengxiao organized the artillery crew into twelve people to train gunners. If the generalissimo hadn't reformed the system of the Ordnance Bureau and planned a more efficient workshop, which delayed the cannon casting, he would have had twenty-four heavy artillery pieces on hand by now.
.
But it's not bad now. He has gunners who can operate twenty-four heavy cannons. Soon there will be twenty-four heavy cannons.
Thinking of this, Huang Shengxiao raised his arms and ordered the artillery to fire: "Don't worry about the cannons at the top of the city, knock down all the battlements!"
A single salvo of heavy artillery blasted four gaps in the battlements in front of the West Gate Tower. Then twelve heavy artillery were organized into two teams and bombarded the left and right battlements in sequence.
Howling iron bullets passed over the battlefield, destroying the battlements again and again, killing and wounding entire rows of defenders on the city walls along the breaches in the battlements.
The gunners on the city were also like crazy, firing their Fran machine guns at a rapid rate with all their strength, and the iron bullets were sprayed towards the other side of the moat as if they were free.
At first they tried to shoot at the artillery position, but at a distance of 350 steps, any gunner's hit rate in shooting was very impressive.
In the defense of the city, this is a very embarrassing distance for the gunner.
If you go further, you will feel forgiven even if you can't hit the target; if you go closer, whether you are loading shotgun shells to make up for the gunner's lack of skill, or using solid bullets to shoot directly, you can achieve good results. p>
Only at this distance, solid bullets are inaccurate, and shotguns are unable to hit.
Because their cannons are Folan cannons, the five to six hundred pound Folan cannons are very good rapid-fire artillery. They can rely on their rapid-fire advantage to block endless attacks in the defense of the city, but the range is a little shorter.
Being so close caused a huge sense of frustration to the native artillerymen on top of the city.
Ye Guoqi quickly realized this problem and ordered the artillery not to aim at the enemy's artillery positions, wasting gunpowder and shells, and instead ordered to take turns firing at the soldiers waiting to fill the trenches.
Although the artillery position is close to the front, it is protected by earth and stone fortifications, so it is difficult for their artillery shells to directly hit the artillery. Even killing two artillerymen will not cause the artillery to misfire.
On the contrary, bombarding the soldiers' formations would more easily instill fear in the siege army.
In fact, the hit rate of the bombardment formation is even more impressive, but the rapid-fire efficiency of the Fran cannon is very high. A blind cat can always hit a few people when it encounters a dead mouse. Some of the cannons will even fly to the bottom of the mountain, shocking the guards to rush to pick them up.
They raised shields and surrounded Liu Chengzong.
Liu Chengzong held the telescope and shouted back everyone. He didn't care about this threat at all. If he came out to fight for the sky and the earth, there would be no absolute safety when he entered the war. Having others protect him would only cause a blow to the morale of the army.
People are more willing to fight under a lion-like leader than a quail.
What's more, if his horoscope is really soft enough to catch a cannonball at a distance of 800 steps, the probability of the cannonball hitting him through the gap in the shield is probably the same as if no one was blocking him.
Huang Shengxiao's strategy was very effective. The defenders' artillery lined up on the west side of the city wall. By bombarding the battlements, they were able to suppress the artillery one by one from near to far. Three rounds of shooting cleared the battlements in front of the city gate tower, and then fired on both sides.
Side sweep.
The defenders also realized that the battlements collapsed from the center to both sides. The soldiers who had been defeated earlier lost their respective leaders and behaved very unprofessionally in the battle to defend the city. They actually pushed the cannons to move to the two wings to avoid the impending attack.
The incoming bombardment.
Taking this opportunity, Liu Chengzong waved the command flag and war drums to alert the officers in front of the formation. Li Tianyu immediately ordered the whole team to push the formation of local soldiers forward quickly.
Scattered artillery shells were fired at them, and the result was negligible. Three of the soldiers worked together, two holding shields and dragging in front, and one pushing the cart behind. They pushed the cart 300 steps at an extremely fast speed. They fought hard.
He was ordered to dump earth and rocks into the trench.
This was also the most dangerous moment. The Fran cannon moat equipped with loose guns in the north and south of the city erupted with large cannons, as well as the lead pellets fired from the bird blunderbuss and the three-eyed blunderbuss, making clanking sounds on the shields, and from time to time
A lead shot passed through the shield and wounded the soldier.
But this only lasted for a moment. Several injured soldiers were picked up by their companions and even thrown onto the Lele cart. Lead bullets were fired at their feet. More soldiers were dragged onto the Lele cart and ran towards the front line desperately.<
/p>
By the time the large number of moving artillery pieces at the top of the city were stopped by Ye Guoqi, thousands of soldiers had already finished their round trip and were sitting behind the formation to rest for a while, waiting for the women and children to add soil to the carts.
Ye Guoqi looked at these Mongolian two-wheeled carts at the top of the city and his teeth itched with hatred. Where did Liu Chengzong, an old thief from northern Shaanxi, get so many Mongolian carts?
But then he felt relieved. The leader of the Western bandits had 12,000 to 3,000 Mongolian soldiers accompanying him to fight. It seemed not strange to have thousands of Mongolian vehicles.
Seeing that the artillery on the city head had just entered the firing position, the enemy's artillery shells had already hit the nearby battlements. Ye Guoqi suddenly realized that instead of watching the artillery on the city being suppressed and destroyed by the enemy, it would be better to simply withdraw the artillery to the north and south.
The city wall specializes in bombarding enemy siege troops.
Anyway, there is only one long ladder, and the enemy can only enter the city from those places. With artillery, there is a greater chance of repelling it with rounds of fire.
As soon as this order was given, the defenders felt like they had been granted amnesty, and they pushed four-wheeled artillery carts to avoid the north and south city walls.
Liu Chengzong on the mountain raised a smile. If he could take one step back, he could take the second step. He immediately waved the command flag, and Li Tianyu once again led the second formation of native soldiers to push carts to fill the trench.
Without the threat of artillery, the native soldiers were full of energy. Li Tianyu also adjusted his deployment, changing one row of native soldiers into two teams, and filling the trench with a narrower width.
Although the gunmen in the city are constantly attacking, the weapons in the northwest are updated slowly. Nowadays, ordinary people in a county in the northeast and southeast can get dozens or even hundreds of bird guns, and they can even select a group of good envoys from the common people.
Shooters of bird cannons, but among the Northwest soldiers, the most commonly used firearm is still the hundreds of years old fire cannon.
Even a shield can block this thing from dozens of steps away.
The artillery on the city was withdrawn and most of the battlements were destroyed. Liu Chengzong immediately ordered to further suppress the defenders. 800 heavy gunners and 60 gun trucks lined up a hundred steps away from the moat.
Not only did the gunners shoot at the top of the city, but the heavy gunners also stood on the cars and fired, retreated behind the cars to reload, and fired projectiles after projectiles at the top of the city, beating the defenders so hard that they couldn't even lift their heads.
At this time, they were not standing up, but lying on the city wall unable to lift their heads. Many three-eyed gunmen had already crawled on the city, stretched out their three-eyed guns and fired them.
Some people want to use a shield to protect the gunman when shooting, but the shield is only inaccurate for heavy guns. As long as the shot is accurate, there is not much difference between having a shield and not having a shield. You may even die faster with a shield.
It missed the bone, and there was still a chance of being hit with a penetrating wound. When the lead shot penetrated the shield, I didn't have much strength left, and it just made a big hole in my body. The lead was still in my body, and I basically couldn't survive.
Once the defenders were suppressed, Huang Shengxiao had a lot of room for maneuver. This guy directly ordered people to push the mortar to the moat. He also personally picked up a slightly deformed shell and loaded it on the Trojan horse. He solemnly said
Leave the matter to the artillery.
This explosive bomb was fired by Mr. Qian from the Banuan Sanchuan Battalion. It was picked up without exploding and replaced with a new message tube. Huang Shengxiao promised the artillery: If you shoot it into the city gate tower, it will definitely explode this time.<
/p>
Huang Shengxiao had deliberately not allowed the heavy artillery with solid rounds to collapse the city gate tower earlier because they needed this building as a bunker when they climbed into the city.
But the inside of the city gate tower must be blown up with explosive bombs to prevent the defending troops from hiding inside.
There was a muffled bang, and a large black bullet visible to Liu Chengzong hit the air in an arc, not very fast, and then came down heavily from above and smashed through the tiled roof of the city gate tower.
Liu Chengzong frowned, he knew that there was a high chance that the ball would misfire.
If it weren't for the high probability of misfiring of the shells, he would have been killed by the flying cannon a few years ago.
But a shell misfired many times... Just as Liu Chengzong was thinking about this, there was a bang, and he saw fire bursting out of the city gate building, iron pieces flying through the windows and doors, breaking through the beams and broken tiles, and large amounts of gunpowder smoke pouring out from the building.
Overflow.
Then he nodded with satisfaction.
Immediately afterwards, the soldiers filled the moat for the third, fourth, and fifth times. The formation became narrower each time, and they moved further forward each time. They gradually filled in a strip of soil on the moat that was wide in the west and narrow in the east.
The way to go.
Until the sixth time, Li Tianyu's soldiers moved the long ladders that the Mongolian soldiers had made last night. The long ladders were erected at the last few steps of the moat that had not been filled in. The soldiers rushed past and gathered.
At the foot of the city.
When the second troop of thousands of soldiers arrived with carts, they put away the long ladder in front of the city gate tower and climbed up one after another.
The musketeers and gunmen outside the city also fired more and more fiercely, and poured down the lead at the soldiers who stood up on both sides of the city gate tower.
In the blood mist, a row of soldiers carried battering poles against the long ladder and pushed outwards. Some people picked up the smashed battlement bricks and threw them downwards. For a while, wood and rocks fell, and lead pieces flew. p>
The soldiers at the bottom of the city were also climbing up the ladder desperately, and some people were climbing from the back, desperately using their bodies to fall down the long ladder.
Liu Chengzong stared at the top of the city until a ladder was held up by the defenders and gradually became unable to reach the top of the city. The soldiers on the ladder quickly jumped down, and then the ladder was pushed down and slammed to the ground.
He sighed slowly, this is where the long ladder is inferior to the ladder truck. The ladder truck has iron hooks at the head and tail of the city, and the ladder body and the city wall can form a stable triangle, making it difficult to push away.
It's a pity that there was no time for him to build siege weapons during the siege, otherwise this battle would have been much easier to fight.
But even so, the defenders could only overturn one long ladder. More soldiers climbed up the ladder and met the defenders in close combat near the city gate tower.
Then the native soldiers spread on the west city wall. At every moment, artillery from the north and south walls bombarded the city wantonly. People could only avoid the artillery causing more damage by running to both sides of the city wall as quickly as possible and fighting with the defenders.
Massive casualties.
However, this dilemma of being passively beaten did not last long. Soon Basang's hunting camp also put up more long ladders on the top of the city, and soon a group of Han army's heavy gunners disarmed and climbed up the city carrying their guns.
, using the city gate tower as a bunker, fired volleys of heavy guns at the top of the city, shooting up pieces of smoke and killing the artillery in turn.
When Basang planted a fluttering Taiping flag on the side of the city gate tower, Liu Chengzong finally felt relieved that it was only a matter of time before the town fell.
There are still strong cities in the Hehuang Valley, but there is no army that can stop him. The only test left for him now is to prevent smallpox from entering the valley.
