Yang Fu was already stupid: What kind of cannon is this? How can it be so accurate? Look at the position of the opponent with gunsmoke, at least three miles away! Even a very heavy 24-pounder redcoat cannon can shoot accurately at a range of no more than two miles, and if it is farther away, the shells will not be accurate. Pen @ fun @ pavilion wWw. ｂｉｑUｇE。 ｉｎｆｏ

A cannon capable of accurately hitting a target at a distance of three miles, at least a giant cannon of more than thirty-two pounds.

Judging by the whistling of the shells, this cannon appears to be a very powerful heavy cannon, most likely a forty-eight-pounder cannon. But what is puzzling is that the rate of fire on the artillery position of the Ming army is quite fast, Yang Fu took out his pocket watch and looked at the time, about three minutes can fire two rounds.

At this time, the Qing generals had been equipped with a large number of pocket watches, this kind of Taixi timer was very useful, although the Qing court imposed a sea ban, but could not prevent the Nanyang Company from smuggling Taixilai clocks into the Qing court's jurisdiction.

Not to mention, those clocks that are said to be made in the country of Tessie called Switzerland were very popular among Qing court officials. There are many clocks in the palace, and it is said that there is also a kind of clock, from which a small bird will sing when the time is up, and there are also clocks that can be walked out of a small person to knock on something.

In fact, some of the clocks and watches are Swiss clocks imitated by Nanyang Company, and the unique and extravagant clocks in the palace are all original Swiss imports, of course, Nanyang Company bought them from Westerners through trade, and then sold them to the Qing court. Ordinary local officials buy those special clocks and present them to the royal palace.

Yang Fu looked at the time, two rounds of shelling in three minutes, which was something that was impossible for heavy artillery of more than thirty-two pounds to do, and those huge cannons were difficult to fire one round in five to six minutes, and even ten minutes might not be able to be reloaded.

"Why are the thieves' cannons so powerful?" Yang Fu said to himself.

The Ming army shelled for only twenty minutes, twenty minutes is very short, but these twenty minutes are indeed twenty minutes of hellish torture for the Qing army! Within twenty minutes, the Ming army completed twelve rounds of artillery bombardment, firing a total of seventy-two shells. But the problem is that the hit rate of these shells is very high, and twenty-three Qing heavy artillery pieces have been destroyed, and one hundred and fifty-five people have been killed and wounded on the battery on Yang Fu's side.

The sound of the artillery stopped, and for five minutes the Ming army did not fire again, presumably to cool the barrel.

Taking advantage of the short time when the Ming army stopped shelling, Yang Fu boldly walked to a mess of batteries to observe the traces and shells left by the Ming army's shelling.

Yang Fu walked to a destroyed red-coated cannon, only to see that the heavy cannon of more than 3,000 catties had been crooked to the side, and the barrel was not only recessed, but also had a hole in it. The bricks on the side were in shambles, leaving a hole in the ground, and all the bricks around it were shattered, revealing the dirt underneath. He dug through the dirt with a shovel and found only some fragments inside, but did not find a complete shell.

"Is it a flowering bomb?" Yang Fu knew that the Ming army had a powerful flowering cannonball in his hands. However, the gun emplacements that they had just shelled were obviously not destroyed by the flowering shells, because except for the gun emplacements that hit the powder keg, none of the other shells that landed on the ground exploded.

"Yang Zhentai, I've found a cannonball! Very strange shells! A Qing soldier hurried over with a badly deformed cannonball.

Yang Fu asked, "Where did you find it?" ”

The soldier replied, "Just dug out of the dirt." ”

Yang Fu looked at this strange cannonball, this is a cylindrical long cannonball, not a traditional spherical cannonball, although this cannonball has been seriously deformed, but it can still be seen that the head of the cannonball is a cone, with grooves engraved on the back, and the shape is not completely cylindrical, but somewhat hexagonal.

"It's really strange, what kind of shell is this?" Yang Fu took the cannonball from the soldier's hand, put it in his hand and weighed it a few times, and found that the cannonball was not heavy, about three catties.

"How can such a small cannonball have so much power?" A Qing soldier asked very strangely.

And the other kind of shells, the Qing army can only get fragments, the kind of hollow shells with hollow interiors, which rotate irregularly after hitting the target, causing greater lethality, although not as good as flowering shells, but much more powerful than solid shells.

At that moment, a shrill whistling sound sounded in the air again, and another volley of shells smashed down on the battery with a scream that pierced the air. After hearing the whistling sound of artillery shells, I heard the roar of artillery from the opposite side, and from a distance, clouds of white smoke rose from the artillery positions of the Ming army.

I heard the whistling sound of the cannonball first, and then heard the sound of the cannonball, which showed that the speed of the cannonball was very fast, and it had exceeded the speed of sound, but of course Yang Fu didn't know what supersonic speed was.

But when I heard the whistling sound, the shells had already fallen to the ground!

With the sound of metal clashing, two more guns were hit. Yang Fu saw with his own eyes that a cannonball did not directly hit the gun position, but fell on the side of the heavy cannon, and then a column of smoke rose on the ground, countless fragments flew up, and the surrounding Qing soldiers turned around and fled.

"Lord Zhentai! Look over there! A soldier shouted.

Yang Fu looked in the direction of the Qing soldier's finger, and saw that the door of the Ming army's camp in front of the fort was opened again, and the horses pulling the gun carts rushed out of it, coming towards the Ming army who were digging a trench.

"The thieves are going to fire again!" Yang Fu understood, "The number of strange artillery pieces that the thieves hit very accurately is very small, on both sides of the Xiangjiang River, there are only six on one side. If they want to deal with our batteries, they have to rely on ordinary guns! Immediately shell the artillery of the thieves! Can't let them set up their guns! ”

The gunners of the Qing army braved the bombardment of the rifled artillery of the Ming army, and constantly aimed at the Ming artillery who was marching, but because the distance was too far, the shells fired by the Qing army could hardly hit the target, hundreds of artillery salvos, only one Ming army's artillery truck was hit by the shells, the horses pulling the cart fell down screaming, the artillery carriage was crooked to the side, and the two Ming gunners were flying flesh and blood.

However, the damage of the Qing army battery to the Ming artillery ended here, and the Ming army artillery truck pulled by the horses soon reached the back of the trench dug by the auxiliaries, and the piled up earth blocked the Qing army shells.

More Ming army auxiliaries pulled the cart out of the camp, pulling a basket full of sand.

The auxiliaries piled baskets full of sand and pressed sandbags on them.

The artillery shells of the Qing army continued to fall, and many unfortunate auxiliary soldiers were hit by the shells, their arms and legs were broken, and even the whole person was shattered, and a miserable scream sounded on the construction site. However, because the soft sand reduced the bounce of the shells, the heavy artillery of the Qing army actually caused great damage to the Ming army's auxiliaries.

The Ming gunners untied the horses pulling the carts, set up their cannons, and opened artillery bombardment at the Qing army's fort one and a half miles away.

One after another, more Ming artillery trucks rushed over, set up artillery of various calibers, and launched a fierce artillery bombardment on the Qing army's batteries.

There was already rifled artillery to cooperate, and the direct-fire artillery of the Ming army entered the position again, and the gunners of the Qing army did not dare to stand on the gun position to fire at the Ming army. Taking advantage of this opportunity, the mortars of the Ming army were pushed up.

The mortar was erected, first with two rounds of solid shelling, and then with flowering shells. A total of eight 64-pounder mortars and 16 32-pounder mortars continued to fire deadly flowering shells at the Qing army's batteries. Meteor fire-like shells continued to fall on the fort, explosions sounded again and again, and clusters of flames rose from the turrets of the Qing army, and white smoke rose up.

The 12-pounder direct-fire cannon of the Ming army also fired flowering shells, and with the improvement of technology, the technology of the butt-type flowering shells fired by cannons or howitzers was also more mature, and the accuracy of the flowering shells of the direct-shot guns was significantly higher than that of mortars, and the natural power was also greater. It's just that the direct-fire cannon fires flowering shells, and the reloading speed is much slower than the mortar cannon.

"The Tartar battery has been completely suppressed!" The observer standing in the basket of the hot air balloon gives the signal. They could see through the binoculars that there was not even a single person standing on the top of the Qing army's fort, and they were either killed or fled to the hidden soldier cave below to avoid the shells.

Wang Xinyu ordered: "Prepare to launch an attack on the city wall!" ”

The Ming army's mortar artillery was ready to attack the city wall, while rifled guns and direct-fire guns continued to bombard the Qing army's batteries, destroying as much as possible the remaining Qing artillery on the batteries, so as to prevent the Ming infantry from being bombarded by Qing artillery during the siege of the city.

War drums rumbled, trumpets sounded, and groups of auxiliaries pushed their shield carts out of the line and pushed them in the direction of the city walls.

At the head of the city, the Qing soldiers began to counterattack. Bullets and arrows were fired from birds and arrows, and many of the auxiliaries who were carrying sandbags to fill the moat were shot and fell.

"Suppress the city!" Spotters on hot air balloons give signals.

Hundreds of three-pounder guns and six-pounder guns spewed out clusters of fire, and the shells flew over more than 300 paces and landed accurately on the top of the city, causing heavy losses to the Qing troops defending the city. The artillery batteries set up by the Qing army in the back were suppressed, and they could not fire artillery counterattacks, so they could only watch the Ming army launch artillery bombardments on themselves.

Several tiger squatting cannons at the head of the city spit out fire, several shield carts were torn apart, wood was splashed, and several auxiliaries behind the shield carts fell.

However, the Qing army's tiger squat cannon was almost a one-time weapon, and the Ming army's six-pounder cannon shells flew up immediately afterward, smashed on the city wall, and fell in the position of the Qing army's tiger squat cannon, smashing out a bloody flower. One of the Tiger Squat cannons was directly hit by a cannonball fired from 300 paces away, and the whole cannon flipped out of the battlement and landed under the city wall.

The Ming musketeers also followed up, aimed at the head of the city, and kept shooting, so that the Qing soldiers at the head of the city could not show their heads and shoot arrows.

The auxiliaries, under the cover of heavy siege fire, quickly filled three sections of the moat.

"Shelling the walls! Pop the gap! Wang Xinyu's order was conveyed to the mortar cannon.

Plumes of white smoke rose from the artillery positions, and the mortars continued to roar, and the shells rose into the air and landed on the city walls. First, the solid shells bombarded, smashing the city wall one after another, revealing the rammed earth behind, and then the flowering shells bombarded, the shells fell in the soil and exploded, blowing the rammed earth into countless lumps, and splashing in all directions like rain.

After another half an hour of shelling, the mortar artillery unit finally blasted three gaps in the city wall.

"Kill!" Crowds of Ming soldiers shouted and charged the walls of the fort.

The first to rush forward was Li Tianzhi's men. After several battles, these Cantonese officers and soldiers have also become elite soldiers. Li Tianzhi was wearing a rattan armor, a six-petal helmet, and a mask on his face, and took his soldiers to kill the city wall. The hair on his head has grown, originally a big bald head after cutting off the braids, but now the hair has grown almost to the shoulders, and he has also tied up his hair and restored the hairstyle of the Ming Dynasty.

However, many soldiers are accustomed to short hair, and when their hair grows to a certain length, it is relatively less hot, and it is easy to treat injuries sustained in battle.

Li Tianzhi rushed through the filled section of the moat, and shot feathered arrows in front of him. He picked up the rattan card and blocked the arrows that came as they were fired.

The archers and musketeers behind him pointed at the Qing soldiers at the gap in the city wall, and rows of muskets roared and spewed white smoke, and the thrown arrows flew over the rocks and pierced into the crowd of Qing soldiers.

Li Tianzhi's soldiers had already rushed to the gap, and the sword and shield hands took out their grenades, pulled the strings and threw them.

These Cantonese troops are no longer cannon fodder, and every sword and shield hand is also equipped with grenades, which are a very powerful offensive weapon that can destroy the opponent's formation and make it impossible for the opponent to fight in formation. In siege warfare, grenades were also a powerful weapon, capable of blowing back the Qing army that blocked the gap.

Rows of grenades flew over and landed in the gap, sending up clouds of white smoke.

The flesh and blood of the Qing soldiers who had not had time to retreat at the "boom" gap flew sideways, and the violent explosion was mixed with a burst of screams.

The living Qing soldiers all retreated, they knew that these explosive things were powerful, and how could they dare to huddle into a ball and be bombed in vain. However, as soon as the Qing soldiers retreated, the blocked gap was immediately loosened.

Li Tianzhi led the soldiers into the gap, and he slashed down a Qing soldier with a knife: "Brothers, kill the Tartars!" ”

"Kill the Tartars!" The gap resounded with the sound of shouting and killing all day.

It's already evening, and it's getting dark late in the summer, but it's still very bright. The Ming army poured into the gap, and with their sturdy armor, powerful grenades and sharp steel knives, they quickly repelled the Qing soldiers who blocked the gap. The musketeers in the back followed, shooting as they went, and the steps leading to the fort were littered with corpses.

"Brethren! The thieves are coming! All follow the generals and kill the thieves! Yang Fu pulled out his knife and pretended to live and die with the fort.

"Lord Zhentai, Minggou has already attacked! We can't hold it anymore, let's go! Several pro-soldiers tried to persuade each other.

"Hey!" Yang Fu was held down by his own soldiers and sat on the ground, "Your Majesty, Shi Junmen, it's not that the last general is incompetent, it's really a thief!" ”

"Run for your life!" There were constantly Qing soldiers who fled in embarrassment running over.

"Let's go!" Yang Fu stood up and took his soldiers to the horse pen.

By the time the Ming army attacked the fort, Yang Fu had already fled on horseback with his own soldiers. (To be continued.) )