In fact, during the day, the Ming army auxiliaries went to the jungle to cut wood, which was to create this special wooden strip. www.biquge.info The long wooden strip used by the auxiliary soldiers to confuse the Qing army was about a zhang long, and in the middle was a shoulder part as wide as a flat shoulder, and the two sides were wider, and holes were drilled in it, and torches were inserted into the holes and fixed with ropes. A single wooden bar can hold six torches in place, so that each auxiliary can pretend to be six siegers.

In the dark, the distance was far away and it was impossible to see the truth and the void clearly, and as a result, the Qing army was confused for a night.

It was not until the early hours of the morning that the soldiers of the Ming army, who had slept enough, got up one after another and prepared for the attack on the mountain.

The breakfast before the attack of the Ming army was two steamed buns for one person, rice porridge for one night, an egg, a plate of pickles and a large piece of braised pork.

In this mountain attack operation, Wang Xinyu did not use the Fujian army and the Guangdong army as cannon fodder in front, but directly went to his elite mountain soldiers and infantry. After breakfast, the gate of the barracks opened, and the Ming troops with torches left the camp in groups, lined up in a neat formation, and advanced steadily.

Behind the infantry, the gunners of the Ming army carried mortar cannons, followed closely behind the mountain attack infantry, and advanced step by step. From the barracks to the foot of the mountain, there is still a section of the road that is flat, and it is not very tiring to carry mortars. After walking about a mile, it began to go uphill, the Ming infantry walked on the hillside, still maintaining a neat formation, and the mortar gunners behind continued to follow, walking a distance up the slope, and the gunners put the mortars on the ground one after another.

In the camp of the Ming army, the sound of rifled artillery firing sounded again, and eight rifled guns smashed the whistling shells into the Qing army's position on the mountain. At the same time, the howitzers that the Ming army had arranged overnight also began to wield.

Eighty smoothbore howitzers emitted a deafening roar, the muzzles of the guns constantly spewed smoke from the flames, and flowering shells using wooden buttresses and cork fuses were sent out of the muzzles. The scorching gunpowder gas in the barrel ignited the fuse in the cork fuse, and the fuse burned, and the shells flickered in the dark night sky, like meteors raining down the mountain.

The grenades kept falling on the Qing army's positions, exploding a ball of fire. The exploding shells unleashed scorching waves of air and sharp fragments, and the wooden fences, deer barricades, and earthen forts on the hilltop collapsed with the sound of the explosion.

Some unfortunate Qing soldiers happened to be blown up by shells that fell in the trenches, and the sharp shrapnel tore people's bodies to pieces, and their limbs, heads, and bodies flew into the sky.

The shells landed on the wooden fence and exploded on the left and right, and one by one the wooden fences were uprooted and fell to the ground. Some of the makeshift forts, piled up with sandbags and dirt, were hit by flowering shells and were immediately blown into countless pieces.

However, these flowering shells filled with black [gunpowder] were still not powerful enough, and they could not penetrate the fortifications when they hit the solid stone fortifications, and the shells exploded outside the fortifications, only smashing the fortifications into shallow white marks. But it doesn't matter, the rifled guns of the Ming army are specially designed to deal with those strong fortifications.

The two powerful six-pounder rifled guns opened fire in turn, and the gunners, taking advantage of the opportunity of the explosion of the flowering shells to illuminate the Qing position, found the position of the fortified fortifications, and beckoned them with the six-pounder rifled guns.

The muzzle of the six-pounder rifled gun erupted with a shrill whistling sound, and the high-speed spinning shells crashed against the fortifications. Because the cost of rifled artillery is too high if it wants to use flowering shells, the vast majority of rifled artillery shells in the Ming army use solid shells or hollow shells. To deal with fortification groups, solid shells are used. When the cannonball accurately hit the fortifications, the high-speed rotating cannonballs drilled into the stones, and some of the fortifications were directly penetrated by the cannonballs, and the powerful kinetic energy collided with the stones, and the fortifications exploded like eggs.

The mortars erected by the Ming army also fired, and more flowering shells fell on the heads of the Qing army like hailstones. Mortar shells landed on the hill and exploded. Because the caliber of the mortar cannon is larger, and the shell can hold more gunpowder, the power of the mortar shell is much greater than that of the howitzer shell.

Countless shells landed, and fireballs rose up, and waves of air swept over the Qing positions, raising up dirt, and then falling like rain, filling in the trenches.

The artillery bombardment of the Ming army was very fierce, but the losses of the Qing army hiding in the trenches and fortifications were not large, and the shelling was mainly to destroy the fortified defense line, and the real killing effect was very limited. In this kind of positional warfare, the real annihilation of the enemy still depends on the infantry.

Guo Weifan was indeed shocked by the fierce artillery fire of the Ming army, but he was not afraid, because the outer defense line of Wuchang was an impregnable iron bucket array. There are trenches outside these iron barrel arrays, and inside they are hidden bird guns, self-fired guns, and spearmen, and then they build walls and arrange artillery shields, and behind the shields are hidden swordsmen, players, and pikemen.

"Although the Ming dog shelling is ferocious, the killing effect is not very good. If you wait until Minggou goes up the mountain, you will inevitably let Minggou accumulate corpses in front of our army's iron bucket array! Guo Weifan laughed heroically.

The sky was already white, and on the bright hillside, the Ming army all over the mountain poured up like a red wave. Between the red torrents, there are scattered green figures, jumping agilely between stones and bushes, and those green figures are the stragglers of the Ming army.

As the number of rifled guns increased, the skirmishers became a workhorse that complemented the line of shots. If you fight against the Qing army on flat ground, the role of the stragglers is to hit the Qing army's lined up and shoot them from a long distance, beating them timidly, and then the smoothbore gunners of the Ming army lined up pressed up again, and used the platoon guns to eliminate the Qing soldiers.

In fact, the cooperation of skirmishers and cardinals is also a tactic of the British in the eighteenth century to the beginning of the nineteenth century, everyone only knows that the lobster soldiers line up to shoot the invincible in the world, but the lobster soldiers of the British army also have skirmishers to cooperate, the British use the skirmishers to shoot the enemy's flintlock formation, and then use the lobster soldiers to press up and line up to shoot.

Now the stragglers of the Ming army are also used to shoot the musketeers of the Qing army, and are used to cover the attacks of their own sword players and musketeers.

In fact, the main force of the Ming army attacking the mountain was still the bombardier knife soldiers, and in front of the Ming army's formation were knife players, and the knife players were part-time grenadiers, throwing grenades at the Qing army's formation. Followed by the musketeers, they output their firepower and strike at the musketeers and pikemen of the Qing army.

The distance between the two sides was shortened, and the Qing troops hiding in the fortifications couldn't wait to pull the trigger one after another, and puffs of white smoke rose from the mountain, and bullets rained down on the hillside. However, the distance is still relatively far, and the Qing army's smoothbore gun bullets have not had much power after flying for nearly a hundred steps, and even if they hit, they were blocked by the shield.