The battlefield was filled with gunsmoke.

After the 12-pounder gun was fired, the next speaker was the terrifying 18-pounder long-barreled heavy gun. When a dull roar rang out from the barrel, the rusty 18-pound solid iron balls struck their targets with lightning speed. Their target was not the artillery of the Qing army, but the infantry of the Qing army lined up behind the artillery. These people are more than a thousand meters away from the east bank wall, and this distance is relatively safe in their cognition, because few artillery can hit here, and even if they can hit, it is the end of the crossbow, and it will not cause much damage to them. And they did not dare to line up too far from the artillery position, because they might not have time to protect the artillery in case the enemy army came out of the city.

However, the two 18-pounder guns on the castle tower have an effective range of 1400 meters (the maximum range is 2000 meters, and there is a distance bonus when shooting at the walls) let them know that it is not safe here. The solid iron ball that flew in the roar caused terrifying damage in the Qing army's formation, although they had tried to widen the interval as much as possible, but the 18-pound iron ball that crossed the entire formation diagonally knocked down more than a dozen people like a devastation, and then bounced on the ground several times, and rubbed several people in a row before finally stopping.

"Die immediately in the middle" and "die if you stick to it", Li Wenchang's mind suddenly appeared in the words of the literati in the late Ming Dynasty to describe the red-clothed cannon. Two 18-pound shells caused thirty or forty casualties of the Qing army, or thirty or forty "deaths" is more accurate, because even if they were not killed, most of them were taken away from their arms and legs, and it was difficult to survive in this era.

After the 18-pounder gun was fired, the first two 12-pounder guns were almost ready again. Behind their backs, several artillery trainee staff officers were responsible for observing the landing point, calculating the trajectory, and then consulting the artillery commander with the parameters that needed to be corrected. The gun commander immediately adjusted the gun after adopting it. Then fire again. This time the shell still missed. But it didn't miss much, and one shot hit the crowd of people who were working, and one shot passed by the Qing army's artillery position.

Although none of the four shells hit the lucky Qing gun position, the Qing gunners were scared enough to be sent to them, so their return fire soon came. Six plumes of black smoke rose five hundred meters to the south, and six shells whistled over the moat, over the barbed wire, and then planted headlong under the city walls.

The charge is not enough. Lack of kinetic energy! Li Wenchang smiled secretly in his heart, it is estimated that the quality of the Qing army's artillery is not good, and it should be blown up from time to time in peacetime, so they don't dare to load a lot of propellants, and it is no wonder that their shells are so weak and powerless.

After the Qing firing ended, the two 12-pounder guns on the salients on both sides of the east bank also roared and spoke.

This time, the East Coasters finally have a catch! In addition to one shot that continued to deviate to the rear of the crowd to dig in the ground, the other hit the gun carriage of a redcoat cannon. The cannon was directly scattered, and the heavy barrel was tilted to the side, directly overwhelming the two Qing gunners, and Li Wenchang, who was observing with a telescope from far away at the head of the city, mourned in silence for these two squashed guys. It's too embarrassing to die.

The people on the east coast had fired ten shells until now, and only then did they get a single hit. This result can only be described as so-so. You must know that every area outside the city has been accurately measured before, and each artillery has also carried out a large number of test firing on each area, and the number obtained from the test firing is mathematically processed by the staff officers, and then the firing table is derived. This meter has taken into account many factors that affect the measurement, such as wind speed and temperature, and it can be said that theoretically, the artillery of the people on the east coast should be aimed at where it hits. But now that so many shells have been fired to hit one shot, and maybe it's still luck, it's really not a good result.

The Qing artillery was too slow to reload, and they looked nervous, because the artillery of the Yellow Thieves was surprisingly accurate, and although most of them missed, all the shells were circling around them without exception. It is not known when a shell will fall on their heads, and this mental pressure is not ordinarily great, which will naturally cause them to move out of shape and reload work more slowly.

The 18-pounder gun continues to shoot! This time, one shell hit the gap between the two infantry formations of the Qing army, allowing them to escape, but the other shell smashed into the crowd again, taking the lives of seven or eight people.

The two sides engaged in an artillery battle like this, and after about ten minutes of bombardment, the Qing army finally couldn't hold back. With a trumpet, the Qing troops lined up behind the red-coated cannon slowly retreated to 1,500 meters, but it was still within the range of the 18-pounder long-barreled cannon. This terrifying artillery may have an effective range of more than 1,500 meters on the city wall, and the maximum range has reached more than 2,100 meters. With the density of the Qing army's array at this time, the 18-pounder cannon with a hit rate of more than 70 percent could kill six or seven people with one shot, and if it was lucky, it would be okay to kill and wound more than 10 people.

However, it is obvious that the infantry formation of the Qing army cannot retreat any further, and any further withdrawal will not play the role of protecting the artillery position. The horses of the Yellow Thieves could be killed at any time, and if they didn't have time to gallop to the artillery team, then they couldn't afford to blame them.

In the fifteen-minute artillery bombardment just now, the Qing army fired only three rounds of fire, and only four of the 18 shells hit the wall of Yantai Fort. However, this kind of thick city wall made of bricks and stones was obviously not something they could shake lightly, and a few shells only knocked off the outer layer of cement, and the damage to the city wall itself was limited. If the Qing army wanted to really break through the walls of Yantai Fort, it would be better for them to move their artillery forward for another two or three hundred meters, but this was really difficult for the heavy and sluggish red-coated artillery. For fifteen minutes, the artillery of the east coast fired at a constant rate of two rounds, but only one shell hit, which wounded several Qing gunners, but the artillery itself was not damaged.

Taking advantage of the retreat of the Qing army's array, the gunners on the east bank also seized the time to cool down the artillery. They covered the barrel with a large clump of clammy towels, on which a large cloud of steaming mist suddenly rose. This method of cooling is strictly damaging to the barrel, but at this time it is in the middle of the engagement, so it is understandable that the cannon can be cooled down quickly so that it can be used in battle.

The Qing army on the opposite side seemed to have dispatched a horse team. After paying the casualties of one or two hundred worthless new annexed troops, the Qing army was finally willing to transfer out the precious Manchurian Eight Banners and Han Eight Banners horse teams, but they were still stationed outside the range of the East Coast artillery, which was regarded as a distant deterrent to the cavalry troops of the East Coast. As long as they make the move of going out of the city to attack the Qing artillery, then they will pounce on it with a thunderous force and completely wipe out this enemy horse team.

But in fact, they are likely to be disappointed. Mo Ming, who had just come to the city to watch the battle, scoffed at the range, rate of fire, accuracy, and destructive power of the Qing artillery, believing that the damage they had done to Yantai Fort at a distance of 500 meters was quite limited. This is not a city wall with an inner layer of rammed earth and an outer layer of bricks, but a solid city wall made of large city wall bricks and stones, with a thickness of no less than 3.5 meters, and the thickest point even reaches 6 meters. You backward artillery also want to collapse my city wall more than 500 meters away, you are dreaming! Therefore, he didn't plan to send cavalry out of the city to attack the Qing army at all, so he used artillery to bombard each other to see who couldn't hold it first!

So far, in addition to consuming dozens of shells, the people on the east coast have not been injured in a single hair. On the other hand, the Qing army on the other side, those infantry formations that mainly surrendered to the Ming army had been killed and wounded by the artillery on the east bank, more than 100 people were wounded, one artillery was damaged, and five or six gunners were killed, not to mention those who were scattered by the artillery. At this time, those Eight Banners were stepping forward with a hard head and a hairy heart, begging for the cannonballs not to fall on their heads, and at the same time viciously forcing those masters to the front with knives and guns, and continuing to build those artillery positions that had not yet been completely completed.

The artillery battle continued. The cooled east coast artillery once again fired several rounds of rapid fire at a rate of fire of two minutes, and in these rounds of artillery bombardment, the Qing artillery was finally destroyed by another one, which was also a red-coat cannon, and two gunners were reimbursed. The Qing army's counterattack was still weak, their rate of fire was extremely slow, and the shells that finally hit them were not at the same point, and the destructive power on the slightly folded city walls of the people on the east bank was hardly worth mentioning. According to this style of play, it will take the year of the monkey for the Qing army to break the wall of Yantai Fort!

Perhaps seeing that the role of his artillery team was limited, the commander of the Qing army no longer asked for the remaining artillery to be transferred to the front line, because it was useless to go. After they sent someone to communicate with the commander of the artillery team, the power of the Qing army's artillery immediately increased suddenly, and it seemed that they were specifically asked to increase the amount of gunpowder loaded. However, it is obviously tragic to do this, although the quality of the Qing army's artillery is much stronger than that of the Ming army, it obviously has a limit. After the two shells hit the wall of Yantai Fort fiercely and knocked down a large area of cement and brick chips, the Qing artillery team, which had not had time to be happy, was very happy and sad, a cannon suddenly exploded, and the broken cannon body flew straight up more than one meter high, and seven or eight gunners nearby were either killed or wounded, which can be described as extremely tragic.

So far, three of the six artillery pieces of the Qing army have been destroyed, one of which has been completely destroyed, one has been damaged, and one gun carriage has fallen apart, and the gun body has also suffered slight damage, and it can no longer be used in a short time. However, the people on the east coast did not intend to let them go, except for the two 18-pounder guns that were still looking for Qing soldiers within range, the remaining four long-range cannons continued to hit the Qing artillery team with heavy artillery fire, and the Qing army's counterattack interval was getting longer and longer, and the accuracy was also declining. (To be continued......)