After Liao Yongzhong recovered Denglai, he did not continue to move forward......

That's where he meant to be.

The 5,000 army can't do anything, even if it's a flintlock muskeman, all they can do is control Denglaininghai and other states, and they can't even continue to march forward to Ziqing and other places, in fact, he is just a striker, and he just came here to build a springboard, and even fighting the Japanese is an accident. The Northern Expeditionary Army of Wu, with Xu Da and Chang Yuchun as the chief and deputy commanders, had a total strength of 50,000, and this army would be transported to Denglai in batches in the following time, and then from here the second cross-sea expedition would land in Haijin, that is, Tianjin.

And Liao Yongzhong's task is to prepare a sufficient number of flat-bottomed boats for them.

His warships could not enter the Haihe River.

Although Yang Feng theoretically allowed them to enter the Haihe River at the beginning of the design, in practice they could not enter at least for most of the year, and even most places along the Bohai Bay could not be directly reached, whether it was the Haihe estuary or the Liaohe estuary, all of which were muddy and silted shoals. Although the draft of these ships is shallow, they have reached the level of three meters, that is, they can cross the estuary of the river with the tide and then go up a short distance during the flood season, and it is okay to enter in an emergency situation while controlling the line, but it is too risky to use them to transport a large army to attack. Therefore, it is necessary to change the flat-bottomed sand boat, which is also the reason why it is necessary to do a transit in Denglai, of course, in addition, it is also to rest the soldiers, after all, after at least half a month of drifting at sea, unless they specialize in this, it is difficult for those soldiers to have any combat effectiveness at all.

It doesn't matter if you start your journey from Denglai.

If the wind is downwind, it will be a maximum of two or three days.

And it is also a flat-bottomed sand boat, if it is these new warships, it will be a one-day voyage downwind.

Therefore, whether it is to collect civilian ships or to use civilian timber in Denglai to make emergency manufacturing, in short, Liao Yongzhong must go all out to solve this problem, fortunately, these are not difficult, in fact, the larger coastal fishing boats and merchant ships in this area can be used, and as the largest naval base in the Northern Song Dynasty, Penglai also has a certain shipbuilding capacity, and even he captured a lot of pirate ships, most of these pirate ships are flat-bottomed.

All in all, he completed some of the preparations very quickly.

During this period, the Northern Expeditionary Army and the required materials from the south to the north also continued to arrive, and even some of the southern flat-bottomed sand ships began to go north, these southern flat-bottomed sand ships did not dare to transport troops, after all, the Yuan Dynasty used these ships to transport grain by sea has always maintained a certain loss rate, from two percent to more than ten percent, if you really use this to transport troops, it is still a little too risky, but it is okay to use them to transport grain.

Zhu Yuanzhang began to prepare for his final sprint.

Chen Youliang and Zhang Shicheng immediately became vigilant.

Clearly, something is not going well.

It's like a sandpiper and a clam competing and then the fisherman profits! If Zhu Yuanzhang's fleet raided from Penglai and occupied Haijin during this period, then all their previous advantages would be wiped out at once. Although they don't necessarily have to want Haijin Town, as long as the fleet drives to that area, and then attacks Dadu by land, it is only two hundred miles, which is not too far away, but it is on the same starting line as Zhu Yuanzhang again, and even the latter's position is higher.

This is definitely not going to work, and they are not stupid.

It is Zhu Yuanzhang who continues to make each other cheaper.

Immediately after that, Zhang Dingbian and Lu Zhen on the front line stopped attacking each other, and then each launched a fierce attack towards their respective goals, striving to open the passage ahead in the shortest possible time.

Dongchang.

"Push, push!"

Zuo Junbi roared with his whip.

This guy is Peng Yingyu's apprentice, the old White Lotus Sect.

He was one of the first to rebel, but he had been seizing Hefei before, and after the Battle of Anfeng, his territory was robbed by Zhu Yuanzhang, so he voted for Zhang Shicheng, who had a good relationship.

At this moment, countless soldiers in front of him were struggling to push eight huge cannons, struggling forward little by little in the mud, from time to time someone was so tired that he fell down, and then was dragged away, and the substitutes waiting next to him were quickly replaced, and dozens of cattle in front of him were also struggling forward in the sound of whips, and the tight ropes were dragging the eight cannons, but even so, the eight cannons were still slowly moving forward at a speed of no more than one meter per minute.

They're just too big.

The muzzles of these cannons can even allow a small child to climb straight in.

Like a bronze pillar, the huge barrel pressed against the wrought-iron forged gun carriage, pressing the wheels of the same wrought iron deep into the mud, plowing deep ravines behind it, gradually extending towards the top of the mound......

"Fifty pounds of shells!"

Zuo Junbi screamed like crazy.

"I see what kind of wall can hold a fifty-pound cannonball!"

He then yelled.

With the favorable conditions of canal shipping, they do not need to be like Zhang Dingbian, and the maximum can only carry a twelve-pounder cannon, in fact, Zhang Dingbian prefers to carry six pounder and three pounder in the field, twelve pounder is too heavy for him, especially the three-pounder field gun has become the core of the Han infantry, only in the face of the fortified city will use the twelve-pounder cannon, in the final analysis, in the absence of water transportation and no road, even the twelve-pounder gun is a huge limitation on mobility.

But Lu Zhen and Zuo Junbi are different.

Because they had the support of the canal, they didn't care about transportation at all, and they didn't care about the tonnage of the cannon at all, so they directly pursued the power of the artillery to the limit, and then cast eight fifty-pound siege cannons in Liguojian, which was actually equivalent to a sixty-eight-pound cannon.

This is daunting in a crow.

Before the invention of the Armstrong cannon, this was almost the limit of European naval artillery, and it was still a short-barreled Caron cannon, and they were a long-barreled cannon, which was only installed on important coastal defense fortresses even in the nineteenth century European countries, and they actually used this to bombard the city walls, which was indeed crazy, so eight huge cannons were finally pushed to the gun position with the efforts of more than a thousand people, and on the empty plain two miles away, a small city with a circumference of only eight miles stood.

And it's also rammed earth walls.

But this rammed-earth Dongchang City, and there are only 50,000 defenders in the city, which have blocked them for half a year, and even caused them to lose more than 5,000, even if they are now equipped with tens of thousands of flintlock guns and cannons, they have also lost troops again and again in front of this small city, as for the reason is actually very simple, because there is a wide and outrageous moat around this small city.

A moat, to be exact.

Dongchang City was built in the middle of Dongchang Lake.

On the outskirts of this ancient city, there is a vast lake more than a mile wide, and the Yuan army also expanded it before the war, eventually turning it into an isolated island, but also incorporating the canal into the lake, making it an unavoidable point on the canal.

Want to fight?

Let's row a small boat first.

Even a twelve-pounder cannon could not have collapsed nearly ten meters of rammed earth protected by city bricks with solid bullets more than a mile away! And the depth of the lake is not enough for large warships to sail in with artillery and then bombard close to the city wall, and in the end the infantry can only force the landing forward with flintlock pistols, against the trebuchets on the city wall, bed crossbows and even small artillery bombardment, but basically as soon as you set foot on the shore of the lake, you should face the dense feather arrows on the city wall.

It was this kind of environment that made people want to cry without tears that forced Lu Zhen and Zuo Junbi to be ruthless.

In that case, play big.

"Fire!"

Zuo Junbi raised his knife and roared excitedly.

Next to the eight giant cannons in front of him, the gunner quickly put the arquebus into the ignition hole, accompanied by the earth-shattering sound of cannons and the ten-meter-long flames spewed out of the muzzles, the eight cannons retreated fiercely almost at the same time, and then were forced by the cannon hoes that went deep into the earth, and the piercing whistling sound in the air in front of them suddenly came. Zuo Junbi, who was holding a telescope, stared intently into the distance, and the next moment on the Dongchang city wall in his field of vision, as if he had been kicked by a god, a section of the female wall suddenly turned into splinters that sprayed backwards. And not only the women's wall, but even the soldiers behind them were reduced to pieces and spewed backwards, along with the bricks on the top of the wall under their feet, and there was a small gap in the wall in the shape of a dog.

It was clear that a cannonball had plowed directly into the top of the city wall.

At the same time, not far from this gap, with the splash of broken city bricks, a large area of city bricks was shaken off, and a huge round spot appeared, and the rammed earth of the city wall in the round spot also fell off, directly turning into a shocking crater.

"Keep banging, that's what you want!"

Zuo Junbi said with satisfaction.

Although the sixty-eight pounder cannon was not the invincible general of Yang Feng after all, it was enough to destroy any city wall that blocked it, and the bombardment of the eight cannons concentrated at one point destroyed the city wall of Dongchang at a very fast speed, and in less than half an hour, a huge gap of nearly ten zhang wide had appeared. At this time, hundreds of cannons of various calibers that had already been erected on the shore of the lake also began to bombard the inside of the gap, blocking the defenders' blockage of the gap, and at the same time emptying the buildings near the gap in the city. The eight 68-pounder guns adjusted their aims, separating them and continuing to bombard both sides of the gap, widening the gap while killing the Mongols who tried to block the gap by throwing objects from above.

At the same time as more than 100 cannons of various calibers were bombarded, the Iron Man Army, which had long been assembled on the lake, began to charge, and soon landed under the cover of artillery.

The shelling immediately turned to the walls on both sides.

The Iron Man Army, with a giant sword in hand, stepped on the wreckage of the city wall and rushed into the city in a blink of an eye, and the Mongolian soldiers on both sides who had long been assembled on standby immediately launched an attack on them, and the two sides launched a hand-to-hand combat with pure cold weapons, but the whole body plate armor of the Iron Man Army was not an ordinary weapon that could be shaken, and as commandos, they were almost the most capable of Zhang Shicheng's subordinates. These heavy-armored giant swordsmen, who are equivalent to the German double-pay swordsmen of the European Renaissance, or the Tang Mo Sword Team, constantly waved the steel two-handed giant swords more than one and a half meters long in their hands while resisting the enemy with their full-body plate armor, frantically slashing and slashing the Mongolian soldiers in front of them. The latter's armor and chain mail could not stop the heavy greatsword, and their scimitars and spears could not really hurt the Iron Man Army protected by polished wrought iron plates, and despite the best efforts of these Mongol and Semu soldiers, they could not stop the Iron Man Army's advance.

Immediately after the arrival of the subsequent flintlock musketeers.

Behind the walls of the Iron Man Army, the surging flintlock musketeers raised their guns, and in the dense sound of shooting, the Yuan army, which had been forced to retreat step by step by the Iron Man Army, fell one by one, and then the Iron Man Army stepped on their dead corpses to expand the breakthrough.

Then the flintlock musketeers followed.

Then groups of flintlock musketeers continued to pass through the lake, and the same steady stream poured into Dongchang, and the bloodiest and most brutal street fighting in the city began. However, the end of the Yuan army was already doomed, they did not reinforce, a total of 50,000 defenders, and after the previous battle, there were less than 40,000 left, and outside Dongchang was 150,000 Wu Yue Northern Expeditionary Army, of which more than 30,000 were flintlock pikemen, and on the Qianli Canal south of Dongchang, Zhang Shicheng's armed recruits and various supplies were still coming.

In the final analysis, no matter which general in this era, there is no old fritter who has not been tempered by more than ten years of war and crawled out of the pile of dead people, they are just too sudden to adapt to the transformation of firearms, but as long as they are given a little time, none of them are good at stubble, and people who have no real skills have already been eliminated by more than ten years of bloody wars.

"In the future, the war will fight whose cannon is bigger!"

Zuo Junbi looked at the eight cannons that were still shooting and said to Lu Zhen.

"Stop shooting!"

Lu Zhen said.

"This cannon is not cheap!"

He then added.

Of course, this cannon was not cheap, the shells alone were fifty pounds of iron, and a lot of gunpowder had to be consumed, and behind each cannon was a huge system of transport teams from iron ore and coal mines, factories, and even as far as the Japanese sulfur miners and merchant ships at sea.

"In the future, the war is not that we will fight with a knife, there is no mine, no factory, no transport team, no reserve soldiers, and then want to kill the Quartet with a knife as in the past, it is impossible to ride a horse to run rampant in the world, any farmer who just knows how to shoot, can also easily put down a fierce general, and then the war in the future is to fight who has more people, more factories, more military supplies!"

He said as he looked at the soldiers who had stopped shooting and cleared their chambers.

The advent of the era of firearms, so that these rampant guys have a sense of loss, after all, this represents the complete end of the era of personal force, even if the overlord is resurrected, in front of the platoon gun is no different from an ordinary soldier, and they are all outdated, the monarch who controls the resources, population and industrial system, really has the absolute right to rule, after all, without the support of these, the generals can do nothing.

"That's better, you can live an honest life!"

Zuo Junbi said.