The Ming army of tens of thousands of horses and horses advanced steadily, sailing on the Xiangjiang River in the middle with a naval division, and the infantry on both sides of the river marched together, and the cavalry protected the infantry on the outside of the infantry. Pen @ fun @ pavilion wWw. ｂｉｑUｇE。 After a long march of eight days, the Ming army arrived under the Qing army fort on May 15, set up camp, set up an attack formation, and prepared for the attack.

The Qing army's fort on the side of the Xiangjiang River was built under the personal supervision of Shi Lang, and the fort on the left bank was garrisoned by Shi Lang's general Lin Xingzhu, and the fort on the right bank was garrisoned by Shi Lang's general Yang Fu.

Shi Lang's two favorite generals, one left and one right, choked the entrance of the Ming army's sailors into Dongting Lake. If the sailor wants to enter Dongting Lake to fight Shi Lang's Hunan sailor, he must pull out these two nails on the riverbank.

The lower reaches of the Xiangjiang River are wide, relying only on the defense of the forts, and with the frighteningly low hit rate of the smoothbore guns against moving targets at long distances, it is difficult to stop the Ming army's naval division from going downstream. However, the problem is that in the middle of the river opposite the fort, Shi Lang laid down a barrage cable, underwater piles, and artificial reefs, and also built three pontoon bridges tied up with iron chains on the river, and the middle of the three pontoon bridges was tied to the fire attack ships, as long as the Ming fleet was stopped, the Qing army attack ships could attack.

There are also a number of small warships in front of the pontoon bridge, all of which are long fast crab boats, and a 100-pound Franc machine gun is installed at the head and tail, which is specially used to deal with the small boats of the Ming army.

Speaking of Shi Lang, there is still a set of water warfare, he skillfully used forts, barrages, underwater piles, artificial reefs, small warships, pontoon bridges and fire attack ships to form a tight defense system.

If the Ming army boat came to throw mines to clear the obstacles, it would be shelled by the Qing army's fast crab boats. If the Ming army used large ships to cover small boats to clear obstacles, the huge ships would become the target of the shore batteries.

Shi Lang's defense line is not only between the fort and the three pontoon bridges, behind the pontoon bridges there is also the main fleet of the Dongting Lake Water Division, if the Ming army breaks through the pontoon bridge, the main force of the Qing army can pounce up, under the cover of their own batteries, on the Xiang River to start a life-and-death decisive battle, and strive to wipe out the Ming army water division in the Xiang River.

Because Shi Lang knew very well that the firepower of the Ming warships was fierce, and their strength far exceeded that of the Qing army's naval divisions, if the Ming army's warships entered the vast Dongting Lake, then the two sides would be completely competing in strength, and the Qing army would definitely not be an opponent.

Therefore, the best policy is not to let the Ming army sailor enter Dongting Lake through the Xiangjiang River, as long as the Ming army sailor breaks through the Xiangjiang defense line, the Qing army sailor will be in a passive situation.

Those two batteries were the key, and Wang Yuyou decided to launch an attack from the shore to destroy the Qing batteries.

The two forts on the shore were carefully designed by Shi Lang, the location of the forts was located at the bend of the river, relying on the river embankment for reinforcement, the outside was a lush protective forest, and the forts were hidden in the woods, and it was difficult for the Ming army outside to find the situation inside the forts; The battery was built of cement and stone, and was quite strong, equipped with heavy guns such as twenty-four-pounder cannons, thirty eighteen-pounder cannons, and sixty-four twelve-pounder cannons, as well as hundreds of eight- and six-pounder cannons.

On the side of the fort facing the shore, a three-zhang high wall was built, a moat was dug outside the wall, and 5,000 Qing troops were stationed in each of the two cities to defend the city.

If the Ming army wanted to besiege the city, it would not be possible at all, because a river was also dug behind the fort, and the supplies of the Qing army could be transported into the city through an artificial river. Unless the Ming army broke through from the river, it would be able to surround the fort. However, the fort echoed the firepower of the river, and it was difficult for the Ming army to break through from the river.

"Shi Lang is really a rare sailor! If we break through directly from the river, I'm afraid our sailors will suffer heavy losses! Liu Guoxuan looked at the map sent by the intelligence officers of the Ming army and sighed.

Wang Xinyu sneered disdainfully: "The role of the sailor is to attack, not to defend!" Although Shi Lang's defense is tight, it is not invulnerable! Our army has strong firepower on the shore, and it is completely possible to storm from the shore and break through the battery! ”

At this time, the Ming army already had sixteen three-pounder hexagonal rifled guns specially used to destroy the opponent's artillery, which could completely suppress the artillery of the Qing army. As long as the artillery of the Qing army was suppressed, it was the moment when the 64-pounder mortar of the Ming army was released. The 64-pound high-explosive shells were designed to deal with the city walls, and blasting through them was as easy as smashing tofu with a hammer.

"The Tartar batteries are condescending and covered by woods, so we can't see the Tartar emplacements, but they can easily see ours. We can't see their gun emplacements, how to shell? Liu Guoxuan asked, "If we can't destroy the heavy artillery of the Tartars, our mortars will not be close at all." ”

Wang Xinyu laughed: "General Liu doesn't have to worry! We have our own way of finding the gun emplacement of the Shi Lang dog thief! When the attacking positions are arranged, you can see how we can destroy the heavy artillery of the Tartars! ”

The Ming army began to arrange the attack position nervously, digging a trench three miles away from the perimeter of the Qing army's fort, building an earthen city, and first arranging the gun emplacements for hexagonal rifled guns.

After two days of construction, the Ming army began its offensive on the morning of 17 May.

The gate of the Ming army's fortress on the left bank was opened, and the wooden fake cannon used as a decoy was pushed out by the auxiliaries and slowly advanced towards the Qing army's fort. In the large camp, six hexagonal rifled guns were lined up, and the muzzles were raised, aiming at the Qing army batteries in front. It was about three miles from the Qing battery, and the hexagonal rifled gun could accurately destroy the target.

Just when the auxiliaries posing as gunners pushed the black-painted wooden fake cannons into place and pretended to set up the cannons, the heavy artillery of the Qing army in Chengtou opened fire, and rows of solid shells flew into the sky and roared towards the fake artillery positions of the Ming army.

"Run!" The auxiliaries threw down their wooden cannons one after another, turned around and ran.

The smoothbore guns of the Qing army were not very accurate, hundreds of shells fell, and only six wooden fake cannons were hit. The dummy cannon that was hit immediately split apart and fell to the side. Some shells fell in the crowd of auxiliaries, and the fleeing auxiliaries were smashed over several people, and some people were hit by jumping shells, and the whole person turned into a canopy of blood mist.

However, the surviving auxiliaries immediately lay down, and some people picked up shovels in their hands and dug desperately in the ground, digging foxholes that could provide their own hiding. As long as the auxiliaries braved the artillery fire of the Qing army for a while, they could dig a trench.

"Tartar fooled! Get ready to release the balloon! Wang Xinyu gave an order.

Those hundreds of fake cannons were placed there, and with the astonishingly low hit rate of the smoothbore guns, it would take at least two or three hours to destroy all the hundreds of fake cannons.

On the artillery position of the Ming army, the furnace of the hot air balloon was ignited, and the scorching gas was poured into the hot air balloon, and the air bag slowly inflated and gradually became larger. After a while, the balloon had already inflated into a ball and slowly rose, but because the weight of the gondola bound the balloon, the balloon could not fully rise into the air.

The Ming soldiers in charge of observation and mapping boarded the hanging basket of the hot air balloon, and these soldiers who were specially responsible for observation and mapping were all professionals who had read some books and had been trained by the Qiongzhou Artillery Academy.

The Qiongzhou Artillery Academy is subordinate to the Qiongzhou Military Academy, and the original recruit training camp in Qiongzhou has been changed into a military academy. Artillery is a high-tech discipline, especially after the birth of rifled guns, the range and accuracy have increased, which requires specialized knowledge of observation, mapping, data and aiming.

Thirty-six rifled gunners and six artillery observers, the first cadets of the artillery academy, were all valuable technical personnel.

The hot air balloon continues to expand and grow, and the gondola gradually lifts off the ground and slowly rises. After a while, the hot air balloon rose into the air, and the artillery spotters sitting in the gondola picked up the binoculars and looked at the puffs of white smoke from the opposite battery, and they immediately took out the map and the feather charcoal and marked it on the map.

The maps were all maps of the Qing army's forts drawn in advance by the agents of the Tiandihui and the Ming army, and after copying, they were handed over to each artillery observer.

Feather charcoal, another masterpiece of Nanyang Company, is to use the charcoal fired from fine willow branches to make a refill, and then insert it into the feathers of the goose, it is made into a feather charcoal, the effect is equivalent to the pencil of later generations, but it is softer, and it is more difficult to grasp than the pencil, but it is much simpler than drawing with a brush.

The observer sitting in the gondola used a feather charcoal pen to mark the location of the Qing artillery on the map, even the height, and marked the numbers according to the order of destruction. After that, the map was loaded into a bamboo tube and hung with a rope.

The hot air balloon does not fly very high, that is, about fifty zhang high. The bamboo tube containing the map was quickly sent to the ground and to the artillerymen.

"Ready to load!" Li Yiyun, the artillery commander in charge of the rifled gun, shouted and at the same time reported the data such as the amount of charge and the elevation angle of the gun to the gunner. According to the coordinates and altitude data sent by the observers, the gunners aimed two guns at a Qing gun, loaded it, and adjusted the muzzle azimuth angle and high and low angles.

"Fire!" Li Yiyun roared.

The six hexagonal rifled guns roared almost simultaneously, and a puff of white smoke rose from the artillery position, and the shells with a piercing screeching sound rotated in the air at high speed, at a high speed exceeding the speed of sound, and whizzed towards the Qing artillery position.

At the same time, on the Ming artillery position on the opposite bank, there was also a roar of hexagonal rifled guns, and the shells rushed headlong into the Qing artillery position at an astonishing high speed.

"Bang" a shell fell on the side of a gun position of the Qing army, although it did not hit the target, but the high-speed rotating shell hit the stone wall, the hard stone as if it had been blasted by explosives, it was torn apart, and countless fragments were dissolved, like shrapnel shot out in all directions, and the surrounding Qing soldiers screamed and fell.

Another cannonball whistled and smashed over, and the cannonball fell directly on the ground paved with city bricks, and the high-speed rotating cannonball was like a thick drill bit, smashing the bricks on the ground one after another, and the pieces were lifted into the air, and the fragments flew in all directions, hitting the gun position of a Qing army artillery.

Finally, a cannonball hit a 24-pounder cannon, and the three-pounder shell hit the Qing artillery because of its extremely fast speed, and with very strong kinetic energy, it lifted the Qing artillery from the ground in one fell swoop. At the same time that the shell itself was smashed into pieces by the iron barrel, a huge hole was left in the artillery body of the Qing army, and the fragments of the shell and the fragments that were rolled off the cannon body flew sideways in the air, and several Qing soldiers fell in a pool of blood.

Another cannonball landed, and the cannonball landed on the ground and did not hit the hard city bricks, but a very strange thing happened, this cannonball actually bounced out in the dirt again, and broke in mid-air, and the iron beads in the cannonball flew in all directions, like a shotgun that swept the surrounding Qing soldiers.

This is a new type of cannonball, although it is not a flowering cannonball, but it adopts the principle of a dum shell, the inside of the cannonball is cast hollow, a thin iron plate in the middle is blocked, the front is hollow, and the back is poured with iron balls. In this way, after the shell hits the object, due to the principle of inertia, the iron ball placed in the rear will break through the iron plate and shoot forward. The hollow warhead will be deformed, and even if it rotates on soft ground, it will change its course due to the change in the shape of the warhead, and it will bounce up from the ground, and the iron ball inside will break through the shell of the shell, killing the surrounding targets like a shotgun.

Then a shell hit a powder keg next to one of the Qing army's gun emplacements, immediately triggering a powder keg explosion. I saw a huge fire rising from the fort, and the surrounding Qing soldiers were lifted up by the shock wave, dancing in mid-air, and falling to the ground with a miserable scream. By the time they landed, they had stopped breathing.

"Target No. 2 destroyed! Target number three destroyed! "Observers on hot air balloons signal with small flags.

The Ming gunners, who had completed a round of shooting, continued to reload the gunpowder and shells, and the gunners cleaned the chambers, loaded the cartridges, stuffed the shells into the bottom, reset the cannons, and adjusted the direction of the muzzles.

About a minute later, the second round of shelling began.

"Boom, boom, boom" was another round of gunpowder smoke rising from the artillery positions of the Ming army, and the shells smashed accurately on the Qing army batteries with a tooth-sour scream.

However, this round of artillery bombardment does not seem to have a very good effect, and the salvo of six cannons destroyed only one cannon of the Qing army.

The Ming army only had six guns on the right bank, and the Qing soldiers knew it by listening to the sound of artillery, only six guns were firing, and looking at the place where the white gunpowder smoke was rising, the Ming army's artillery position was very far away from themselves, obviously outside their own range. However, only six guns were so accurate, but two rounds of shelling had already destroyed three of their gun positions, and one of the guns was hit by someone and exploded in a powder keg, the entire gun position was gone, and the cannon was blown aside.

"The thieves' cannons are too accurate, aren't they?" The Qing gunners were dumbfounded.

"What's going on? How can the thief's cannon hit so accurately? Yang Fu, the chief soldier of the Qing army, also ran out.

Before the words fell, another round of shelling began, and the shells, which were so fast that they could not be seen by the naked eye, flew over with a whistling sound that pierced the eardrums, and the Qing soldiers on the fort could not see where the shells were at all.

In the case of the previous smoothbore guns, the speed of the shells was much slower, and the naked eye could see the shells flying towards them.

Solid shells and dham shells fell to the ground, and the Qing army battery immediately sprayed a piece of blood red, and more than a dozen Qing soldiers who were shot screamed and fell in a pool of blood, one of the Qing soldiers was directly hit through the body by the shell, and the whole person was immediately shattered, and a canopy of blood mist flew in the air outside. (To be continued.) )