But no matter how fast the horse is, there is no cannonball fast, and Wang Qi can be regarded as a general of a hundred battles, and he doesn't need to be reminded by others to know what to do at this moment, so he didn't fire the cannon when the cavalry rushed over, but waited until they dismounted to move the siege crossbow before giving the order.

After two rounds of shelling, the artillerymen found the firing point and fired more accurately, the time-delay ignition device was more accurately controlled, and most of the shells exploded near the trebuchet.

So the trebuchet position, about 300 paces from the west bank of the Qingshui River, was once again enveloped in a cloud of smoke, dirt, flying iron filings, and a loud noise. The powerful wave of qi threw the human body, broken wood, parts, and horses into the air, and flew dozens of meters away from the heels before falling hard.

Many of the war horses of the Tangut people have been trained in thunderbolts and are not very easily frightened, but thunderbolts are like the difference between fart and marsh compared to cannonballs.

I didn't hesitate to be shocked for a second, and many of them ran away from the riders themselves, and many of them ran away with the riders, and a few of them even rushed to the river, and then they were killed one by one by the soldiers who were lying on the high ground on the shore and holding a soul chaser gun that was much longer than the soul chasing gun.

This is a new class in the new army, snipers! They used a rear-loading rifled gun made by Wang Datou, which was different from the soul chasing gun in that it fired hexagonal pointed bullets, and the gun was also equipped with a quadruple scope, and the effective range could reach more than 600 meters, and some soldiers could hit a sheep with a 50 percent hit rate from 700 meters away.

However, there are not many soldiers who specialize in long-range killing enemy generals, only about thirty. The reason is very simple, but none of the things that Wang Datou made were worry-free.

The production process of this rear-loading rifled gun was too complex, it had to be completely hand-built by highly skilled craftsmen, and the scrap rate of the barrel remained high, and a large number of equipment could not be made up in another ten years.

But its shooting accuracy is indeed much higher than that of the soul chasing gun, and the range is also long, and after the barrel is lengthened, to put it mildly, as long as the target can be clearly seen with the scope, there is basically the possibility of being hit.

So Hong Tao simply used it as a sniper rifle, what is the effect...... It was the first time it had been on the battlefield, and even the navy and marines on Jeju Island had no experience.

This is not just opened, the distance of more than 400 meters is almost a gun hit, as long as anyone dares to give orders on the battlefield, or wear armor that is brighter than others, they will soon become a live target for snipers.

The sniper rifle shot was not as earth-shattering as the field artillery, and the crisp crackling sound was also muffled by the noise of the battlefield, and the Tanguts did not realize that artillery was not the most terrible thing, and that there was a more insidious weapon that secretly sprayed venom.

The first group of cavalry to rescue was repulsed, and only two siege crossbows were carried back, which was obviously not satisfactory, so the second rescue followed.

This time it was changed to infantry, all of them ran wildly, and after getting closer, they were divided into several groups, one group rushed up and was killed, and the second group went up again, which was really a bit of a fierce force that was not afraid of death.

Wang Da had been standing on the high slope closest to the river bank and holding a telescope to observe the battle situation, and when he saw this scene, he simply stopped the shelling and allowed only sporadic fire from sniper rifles, and the battlefield was calm for a while. Compared with the earth-shattering sound of artillery and the constant sound of explosions just now, the sniper rifle is indeed very quiet.

However, when the Tanguts rescued dozens of siege crossbows, the five pontoon bridges of the new army were also built. Taking advantage of the favorable condition that the riverbed was lower than the riverbank, groups of soldiers of the New Army quickly crossed the Qingshui River in line and on their waists, and then crawled on the ground and climbed onto the opposite riverbank, slowly squirming forward.

By the time the Tangut people found that the enemy had crossed the river, there were already 3,000 new troops crawling on the banks of the river, and the original attempt to fight a war of attrition between the Qingshui River and the new army completely failed, and they immediately fell into a dilemma.

Let's continue to attack, the opponent's terrifying weapon is obviously farther and more powerful than the siege crossbow, and the loss of the attack will be great. It doesn't seem to be possible to wait here, once that weapon also crosses the Qingshui River, it is still yourself who will be beaten passively.

Retreat, retreat to where to go? Once Lanzhou City learned that reinforcements were coming, it was a situation where the inside and outside should be combined. Large-scale shifts on the battlefield are troublesome, and sometimes if you don't get it right, it can turn into a large-scale rout.

After hesitating for less than a quarter of an hour, the Tanguts still chose to take the initiative to attack. I'm afraid, but it's useless to be afraid. This battle must be fought, even if the weapons of the new army are consumed with human lives, the final victory will still be on your side.

If you don't fight, you will lose everything, even if the new army does not retaliate, you will not grab a fart after spending military rations in vain, what will you eat and drink when you go back? If you don't need others to beat yourself, you have to have civil strife first.

Half-crossed! This is the battle cry issued by the Empress Dowager Xiaoliang. This is the only way to boost morale, and if the enemy can be suppressed on the bank of the river and prevent the follow-up troops from continuing to cross the river, there is still hope.

The Western Xia army did the same, and carried it out very thoroughly, not only the infantry in front of them lined up in dozens of columns, pushing the shield carts like door panels and began to charge. The cavalry on both sides was also launched in advance, one to the north and the other to the south, to cross the river in a roundabout way to attack the part of the new army that had not yet crossed the river.

"My lord, isn't it too thin to shrink the front so tightly?" At this time, Xiao Wuna suddenly appeared beside Hong Tao, and his broken troops also received an order to withdraw and were digging trenches on the east bank.

"Listen to the general, she naturally has her deployment. You see, Lao Qi has come to support you personally with artillery, I'm afraid of hair! ”

Now the new army is divided into two parts by the Qingshui River, the east bank is an infantry position composed of artillery positions and trenches, and the west bank is more than a dozen horizontal formations lined up by thousands of pure infantry.

But Hong Tao has no other way, he has too few people and no reinforcements, but he can't cross the river and the muskets and artillery are within range, there is no difference. It takes time for artillery positions to be arranged, and a hasty crossing of the river is even less conducive to the accuracy of shooting.

Wang Da's arrangement made it clear that he wanted to fight hard with the other party, and if the enemy could really lose more than half of it and not collapse, then they would win. Because the ammunition carried by the new army is not enough to kill all the enemies, it is an extraordinary performance to be able to kill half of them.

It was Wang Qi's artillery who was the first to speak, and the ten field guns accurately knocked out seven or eight shield carts at a distance of 500 meters, and blew up the people around them. Before the enemy could charge, a second round of artillery bombardment returned, targeting the sluggish shield wagons.

If the Western Xia infantry could grit their teeth and endure the passive beating, build more shield carts to push them forward regardless of life or death, and add the cavalry that was crossing the river, sooner or later they could run out of shells for the new army.

But having said that, people who have never seen artillery before have seen their colleagues fall one by one and be blown to pieces.

When they found out that whoever was close to the shield cart would die first, the rest of the shield carts immediately became suspicious. They would rather charge ahead of time than go near the god-cursed broken wooden board.

Immediately, the crowd became a live target for the musketeers. More than 3,000 rifles fired at an average rate of five shots per minute against a crowd running face to face at a distance of about 300 meters, and even if they only had a one-third hit rate, nearly 1,000 people would fall in one shot. Moreover, the accuracy of the two sides will increase dramatically as the distance between the two sides closes, and almost no one can get close to the effective range of the steel plate crossbow.

After three rounds of free fire, the Tangut infantry frightened their comrades who were slumping like grass in front of them. As Xiao Wuner said when he first saw the rifle: this is not something that human beings can resist!

They couldn't think of any weapon that could be so powerful, the only thing they could think of was the gods. He was abandoned by the gods, and the new army on the opposite side was once again favored by the gods.

No matter how strong the enemy is, they are all human beings and can be defeated. But no one wants to fight the gods, knowing that if they go, they will die, they can't even touch people's hair, and if they die, they have to be blamed by the gods, so why should they go?

The rout followed, and more than 30,000 elite Western Xia archers with steel crossbows turned around and ran towards the starting point after throwing down thousands of corpses, faster than the charge.

The steel crossbows in their hands had been thrown away, the skins with the crossbow arrows on their waists had been thrown away, and even their armor had been taken off, and anything that hindered their speed was thrown away.