On March 10, a spring rain had just fallen. Pen @ fun @ pavilion wWw. ｂｉｑUｇE。 infoAfter the rain passed, the Ming army began to attack the city.

The gongs, drums, and trumpets sounded, and the auxiliaries pushed the shield carts out of the camp and slowly advanced in the direction of the city wall. The auxiliaries in the back carried simple ladders and pushed the nest cart watchtower cart, pushed out from the camp gate, and followed behind the shield cart. On the watchtower car and the nest car stood pro-soldiers holding small flags.

Xu Erxian shouted: "Ming Dog is here!" Get ready to defend the city! ”

The Qing soldiers and people at the head of the city were busy, carrying the tiger squat cannons, small Francophone machines, oil cans and lime bottles that had just been pulled down to shelter from the rain.

When the shield cart advanced about two hundred paces from the wall, it stopped.

The pro-soldiers standing on the nest car and the watchtower car observed the movement of the city head with a monocular, and found that the Qing army's city-defending weapons went to the city, and the pro-soldiers put down the binoculars, shook two small flags with both hands, and reported the position of the Qing army's city-defending weapons at the head of the city to the artillery position.

The artillery positions of the Ming army were all set up in tents, and after the rain stopped, the auxiliaries lifted the tents, lifted the gun jackets, and the cannons revealed the black holes.

"Fire!" With an order, the siege cannon fired.

The first to fire was eight front-mounted hexagonal rifled guns, eight highly accurate guns fired in turn, the shells continued to hit the city, the tiger squat cannon, the Franc machine, the wolf's tooth beat, the yaksha beat, the winch, the grinding stone, the oil canister, the lime bottle and other weapons to defend the city were shot one after another.

The high-speed rotating cannonball hit the city's head artillery, and the Tiger Squat Cannon and the Franc Machine Cannon, which were hit, flew up and landed on the ground again. A cannonball just hit the powder keg, and a large fire instantly rose from the head of the city, and there was a violent explosion, and the surrounding powder kegs and shells rose into the air one after another, and the powder keg exploded in the air and expanded into a ball of fire. Solid cannonballs flew into the sky and smashed into the city, spraying countless sparks.

"Bang" A wolf's tooth slapped a bullet, and the wolf's tooth slapped on the wood suddenly shattered bones, turning into countless broken wooden planks and broken wood chips, flying sideways like shrapnel, hitting the surrounding Qing soldiers and people screaming miserably.

The Yaksha that was shot turned into countless pieces of wood, and the iron nails on the torn Yaksha shot out, like bullets, and blood holes appeared on the bodies of the Qing soldiers and Minzhuang who were hit.

The grinding stone and the blue stone exploded one after another, and the broken stones flew sideways; The winch was shot and shattered; The cannonball hit the canister of oil, and the splash of oil was ignited by the powder keg that had just exploded, and burned brightly at the head of the city; The lime bottle that was hit by the bullet burst, and the quicklime sprayed out of it met the rain at the head of the city, which immediately boiled the stagnant water on the ground, and the city emitted high temperatures.

"Bang" a cannonball hit the burning bonfire, on which an iron pot full of gold juice was torn apart, and the hot gold juice splashed on the surrounding Qing soldiers, and a miserable scream sounded.

The whistling shells smashed into the batteries of the Qing army at the head of the city, and several heavy artillery such as the general cannon and the Hongyi cannon, which posed a great threat to the siege troops, were destroyed one after another.

Ten minutes after the hexagonal cannon fired, the gunners temporarily stopped their attack and brought buckets of water to cool the guns.

But the siege firepower did not stop, after the high-precision hexagonal cannon stopped attacking, the ordinary direct-fire artillery also began to exert power, the twelve-pounder siege gun and the six-pounder field gun continued to spit out tongues of fire, overwhelming the shells smashed on the city, smashed the female wall battlements one after another, and pits appeared on the city wall.

More than a dozen shells hit the arrow tower, and in the deafening loud noise, the brick and wood structure of the Guangji Gate arrow tower seemed to have been hit by a giant hammer, and the masonry tiles suddenly splashed, the roof was smashed through, the walls were smashed, and the windows were directly smashed through.

With a loud bang, the tall Guangji Gate Arrow Tower collapsed in the billowing smoke and dust, turning into a pile of ruins at the head of the city.

Under the dense shell cover, the city could not stand at all.

The artillery of the Qing army was destroyed again, and they were powerless to fight back, so they could only watch the artillery bombardment of the Ming army in a hurry. The artillery fire of the Ming army became more and more intense, and the Qing soldiers and the people all hid under the city, and many Qing soldiers hid in the cave of the hidden soldiers and shivered, and could only pray that the Ming army would stop the shelling as soon as possible.

But the Qing soldiers did not expect the Ming army to stop the shelling, but instead looked forward to the fierce bombardment of sixty-four-pounder mortars!

The first thing fired was a solid cannonball, and the sixty-four-pound ball of iron smashed down from the air, and its power was amazing! Several shells hit the city walls, and cracks immediately appeared. Then another volley of shells fell, the cracks grew larger and larger, and the bombarded walls trembled violently and crumbled.

Heavy mortar shells kept falling, and the bricks shattered one by one, revealing the rammed earth behind them. Then the shells fell directly on the rammed earth, sending the earth flying everywhere.

Immediately afterwards, the Ming army replaced it with flowering shells and launched an artillery bombardment on the already shattered city wall.

Although these flowering shells are also filled with black [gun] powder, adding a very small amount of xiaohua gan oil to the black [gun] can greatly increase the power of the shells. The price of Xiaohua Ganyou, which is completely handmade by laboratory method, is very expensive, and if it is used to make powerful new explosives, the cost is too expensive, so now this kind of thing is mainly used as a small amount of valuable additives to increase the power of ordinary black [gun] powder.

Flowering shells fell on the cracked, scarred city walls, and there was a violent explosion.

Originally, if the perimeter of the city wall was protected by bricks, ordinary flowering shells would not necessarily be more effective than solid shells, unless expensive new explosives were used to bloom cannonballs. But now the stone bricks on the periphery of the city wall have been peeled, and the rammed earth has been smashed into potholes, and a few flowering shells have fallen on it, and the city wall has collapsed with a bang.

After all, the Chaozhou city wall is not the first fortified city in the world like Xiangyang, nor is it a fortified city like Beijing and Nanjing. If it is Xiangyang City, it is estimated that it may not be able to collapse after seven or eight consecutive days. And the city walls of Chaozhou are not so strong.

"Advance!" Liu Guoxuan gave an order.

The auxiliaries who had been waiting in the carriage for a long time got up from the wooden frames of various vehicles, pushed the shield carts and other siege vehicles, and approached the city wall step by step.

On the nest car and the watchtower car, the sharpshooters and sharpshooters of the Ming army were ready.

The front-loading hexagonal rifled gun, which had rested for a long time, was launched again, raising the muzzle. The loaded front-loading hexagonal cannon is aimed at the head of the city, and when the soldiers on the watchcar give a signal, they will launch a fierce artillery bombardment on the head of the city.

"Minggou is here! Hurry up to the city and stop the dog! The Qing soldiers who had been left behind at the head of the city shouted.

The direction of the Ming army's attack was a gap blown open by mortar shells, and the city wall was blown open by a gap about four zhang wide, and the collapsed city wall and rammed earth were piled up into a slope. The Qing army had to organize defenses behind the slope and use men to block the road and block the way for the Ming army to enter the city. Therefore, in a siege war, opening a gap does not mean that the city has been breached.

"Quick, move the stones, the bricks, pile them up in the back! Build me a wall to block the dog! Liu Hanzuo yelled and commanded the Qing army auxiliaries and Minzhuang to build a wall behind the gap.

Wang Xinyu's personal soldiers on the watchtower car found the Qing soldiers who were building a brick wall inside the gap, and immediately sent a signal.

The mortar cannon loaded with flowering cannonballs spewed fire, and the cannonballs soared into the air, flew high into the air, and pulled an arc and fell behind the gap in the city.

The Qing soldiers and Minzhuang were building a brick wall, and a row of mortar shells whistled and smashed down in the crowd. The fire flashed, the cannonballs that fell in the crowd burst into flames, and the air waves flew with countless fragments, and the Qing soldiers and people who were busy suddenly flew with flesh and blood, screaming and falling down a large area.

The 64-pounder flowering shell was very powerful, and it was a specially designed personnel lethal shell, cast from fragile pig iron on the outside and filled with iron balls on the inside. When a cannonball explodes, thousands of iron beads and hundreds of sharp pieces of pig iron can be released, and the killing radius reaches more than three zhang away, and all people in this range are full of flesh and blood. And shrapnel can actually fly farther and cause more casualties. However, the shells exploded on the ground, forming an umbrella-shaped killing surface, so the killing radius could not be large, and the excess shrapnel flew into the sky.

However, one of the 64-pound flowering shells was presumably the result of someone cutting the fuse relatively short, and the shell exploded when it was still five feet above the ground.

This flowering bullet formed an extremely huge killing surface, and within a radius of twenty zhang, it was covered by shrapnel and iron balls! This shell, which was lucky enough to explode in mid-air, knocked down almost all the Qing soldiers in the gap!

"Push forward!" Liu Guoxuan shouted.

This time, because the Ming army's firepower was very well prepared, the shield carts pushed out by the auxiliaries were all modified with wheelbarrows, and the speed of this lightweight shield cart was very fast, as fast as a human run. In the blink of an eye, the auxiliaries pushed the shield cart under the city wall, directly turned the cart sideways, and poured sandbags into the moat as soon as it fell.

At the same time, the auxiliaries pushing the trench carts ran quickly and rushed to the moat.

The Qing soldiers at the head of the city braved the fierce fire of the Ming army under the city, desperately shooting arrows at the rushing auxiliaries, and the projectile arrows fell like rain, and the Ming auxiliaries kept falling.

As the auxiliaries approached the city wall, in order to avoid accidentally injuring their own side, the Ming army's mortar and all front-loading smoothbore guns all stopped firing, and replaced them with eight hexagonal rifled guns to continue firing at the Qing army. This kind of extremely high-precision artillery constantly hit the cannonballs accurately at the head of the city, hitting the stones on the city wall and splashing the flesh and blood of the Qing army.

On the watchtower cart and nest cart that approached the city wall, like a volcanic eruption, tongues of fire continued to erupt, and feathered arrows rained down into the city.

This siege nest car is a new type of siege nest car, the top of the nest car has three layers of platforms, the top battlement, and two floors below, all with shooting holes, a nest car can accommodate ten rifled gunners and twenty sharpshooters. It has very strong firepower.

The new nest car is actually modular splicing, which is made up of ten cars. It is usually transported by ten cars, so there is no need to build it on the fly. During the siege, eight of these vehicles could be put together to form a large two-story house with a platform roof; The remaining two cars were spliced together to form a chassis.

Before the siege, the auxiliaries and craftsmen had to cut down the wood, make four tall shelves for the nest car, and after building the shelves, put the house on top of it, so that the nest car was finished.

Usually, this kind of nest car can be disassembled and can also be used as an ordinary transport vehicle.

Twenty nest carts, with two hundred sharpshooters and four hundred sharpshooters, protected by the planks of the nest carts, shot condescendingly, whether it was a compound pulley bow or a rifled gun, the range exceeded that of the Qing army's bows and arrows and bird guns, which was completely suppressed and beaten.

Tongues of fire continued to spit out from the nest cart, shooting random arrows, and the Qing soldiers at the head of the city were knocked down in pieces.

The moat bridge was erected on the moat, and the soldiers took the ladder of the auxiliaries, carried the ladder to rush across the moat, put the simple ladder on the city wall, and then climbed to the head of the city under the cover of the musketeers and archers of the Ming army under the city.

On the city wall, the Qing soldiers and the people braved the rain of arrows and projectiles, desperately throwing lime bottles and oil cans under the city, shooting random arrows and throwing stones.

Because the most powerful wolf tooth slap and yaksha slap have been destroyed, these are the most effective weapons of the Qing army to defend the city.

However, stones, lime bottles, oil cans, arrows and projectiles still caused some casualties to the attacking Ming army. Many people were hit before they could climb the top of the city, and they fell from the clouds and into the moat with a scream.

The canisters crackled and smashed into the city, and countless torches were thrown at the head of the city, and a raging fire was ignited under the city.

The people who carried out the ant-attached siege through the simple ladder were all soldiers who had just turned into regulars, these people were originally prisoners of the Qing soldiers, they were originally auxiliary soldiers, and after turning into soldiers, in order to show their loyalty, they had to be cannon fodder for the siege. Only by making achievements in this battle can they truly become a member of the Ming army.

In the gap opened by the mortar shelling, trench bridge vehicles were also erected.

The Ming army auxiliaries braved the rain of bullets and erected a pontoon bridge over the moat. It is a pontoon bridge covered with wet felt, which also absorbs water from the river and prevents the pontoon from being burned by rockets. However, in order to erect this pontoon bridge, at least more than 100 auxiliaries fell under the random arrows and projectiles.

"Kill!" Elite soldiers in iron armor shouted, rushed across the pontoon bridge, and rushed towards the gap.

Crowds of Qing soldiers rushed up to the gap, trying to drive the incoming Ming troops out of the gap.

"Boom, boom, boom" The Ming army threw a row of grenades, which fell behind the Qing army and exploded. The grenade blew up the dense crowd of Qing troops and dispersed a lot, and the breaches were full of stumps and broken flesh and blood on the breaches.

was blown up by a grenade, and the Qing army's formation was suddenly chaotic. The soldiers in iron armor took advantage of the situation to rush to the Qing army, and slashed with their big swords in all directions, cutting down countless Qing soldiers. But the Qing soldiers in front fell, and the Qing soldiers in the back made up again, desperately trying to plug the gap that was about to collapse.

The Ming army in the back threw grenades at the rear of the Qing army, and some Ming troops climbed the city wall along the edge of the gap.

The auxiliary soldiers who filled the moat also filled a gap in the moat, and a ladder cart was pushed by the auxiliary soldiers and crossed the moat through the passage created by the filling.

The ladder car was erected, and it was the fierce general Wang [Fu] Chen who took on the task of breaking the city. (To be continued.) )