According to the Art of War, when the attacker's strength is ten times that of the defender, the storming of a city is no longer a losing act. With the continuous improvement of siege methods and weapons, it is theorized that the ratio of attack and defense suitable for strong attack has been reduced to three to one: that is, in the ideal state that both the attack and defense have sufficient equipment, sophisticated equipment and correct training, as long as the attacker's strength reaches three times that of the defender, then when the city is attacked, the loss of the attack and defense will be basically equal, and if the attacker's strength is further increased, the loss of the defender will begin to exceed the attacker.

The armor soldiers of the Ming army lined up in the distance to prepare for battle, and some auxiliaries kept loading the catapults and throwing stone bullets to the imperial camp, and Deng Ming rode on his horse, carefully observing the effect of the attack.

Although the roaring stones were amazing, most of them still failed to cause casualties to the Praetorian Guards, many flew over the camp wall of the imperial camp, and most of the stone bullets that hit the wall also smashed at the bottom of the wall, although they caused some shaking to the camp wall of the imperial camp, but did not have much killing effect on the Praetorian Guard soldiers at the head of the wall.

"Wu Baoping, they built the camp wall too strongly." Deng Ming said as he reached out and picked up the gourd next to the saddle, and raised his head and drank a few large sips of water. This complaint is just a casual mention, Deng Ming also knows that the camp wall of the imperial camp must be built very strongly, although the Eight Banners are paralyzed, they are not blind, if the camp wall is repaired weakly, then they will definitely not let Shunzhi move in.

The Praetorian Guards on the wall kept shooting at the Mongols, and Deng Ming saw that some Mongols had fallen, but until now, he had only seen a stone bullet hit the shield on the camp wall, probably knocking two or three Praetorian Guards away, and it was still doubtful whether they had been killed.

Smoke rose from both sides of the gate of the imperial camp, which was the bird guns of the Praetorian Guards firing, compared to bows and arrows, bird guns against heavy armor, the Mongols who were slowly moving forward were now more threatening, and a few rounds of bird guns made four Mongol soldiers fall to the ground.

At this time, the bronze cannon of the Ming army also began to participate in the battle, and it made a thunderous sound much louder than the bird gun on the opposite side, but Deng Ming did not see where the cannonball hit.

"It looks like I need to train specialized artillerymen." These trebuchets and cannons were operated by auxiliaries, and they were not transported to the Ming camp for a long time, and the auxiliaries did not have too long to train, and the limited training time was mostly spent on how to quickly disassemble them to keep up with the large army. Moreover, in the eyes of the Ming army, artillery and trebuchets obviously belonged to auxiliary arms, and were only used to break down the camp walls, and the main work was also strength work - dismantling, carrying, and loading - similar to the work of auxiliary soldiers rather than the fighting of armored soldiers, and the requirements for courage were not as high as those of pushing carts, so they were all handed over to auxiliary soldiers to take care of.

Although Deng Ming felt that artillery should not belong to auxiliary soldiers, there were no soldiers under him who were proficient in artillery, and Deng Ming felt that there was no need to transfer a team of soldiers who were proficient in combat tactics to serve these siege equipment, so he did not interfere much.

"After I return to Sichuan, I should still train artillery and classify it as a standing army." Deng Ming re-tied the gourd in the saddle. The movement of the cannon is much larger than that of the catapult, which will undoubtedly attract more attention, but Deng Ming knows that at least today is absolutely safe, and he can use the cannon without hesitation: "The battle must end today, and it will be a little unsafe to drag it out until tomorrow. ”

Being in the enemy territory south of the Yangtze River, Deng Ming tried his best to avoid any battle that might lead to heavy casualties.

Several more Mongol squads were sent out to attack several other parts of the imperial camp. As soon as they saw these Mongols approaching the camp wall with firewood on their backs, a large number of Janissaries immediately appeared on the camp wall opposite them, and began to block and shoot at these assault teams.

"How many archers has the enemy dispatched? How many firecrackers are there? Deng Ming turned around and asked the officer beside him. The Mongol death squads attacked the imperial camp from several directions, so he could not see the number of enemies on each front.

The guards immediately reported to Deng Ming that the total number of Praetorian Guards appearing on the camp walls everywhere had exceeded 500, of which more than half were archers, and they were taking turns attacking more than 100 Mongolian death squads approaching from several roads.

"Hmm." Comparing it with the numbers already known, Deng Ming knew that the Death Squad had attracted the Praetorian Guard's main long-range attack force and dispersed them: "Let's send our shooters. ”

Two thousand Ming army auxiliaries were ordered to step forward. These days, they also have basic shooting training, and they are not required to be able to shoot accurately, as long as they know how to shoot the bow, how to avoid hurting the arm by the bowstring bounce, and how to shoot from the back. Each of these Ming auxiliaries carried a pot of arrowheads with feather arrows wrapped in grease and a torch in their hands, which they stuck in the ground, ignited the feather arrows, and then attached them to the bowstring.

"Ready-go!"

As soon as the officer gave the order, 2,000 rockets flew into the sky in dense clusters and scattered down towards the imperial camp.

"Ready—"

"Put!"

Another piece of rockets flew away, and with the shooting again and again, the Ming archers around the imperial camp gradually lost their synchronicity due to the inconsistent frequency, and this synchronicity became worse and worse over time, and finally completely lost order, and every moment a rocket was shot into the sky, and every moment a rocket fell towards the camp.

Finally the Ming officer gave up command, and after each auxiliary had finished shooting a pot of arrows in his hand, he would leave the torch on the ground, turn around with a bow and walk back to the rear, and then another auxiliary soldier would come forward with a pot of arrows, take the bow from the retreating companion, and walk to the position of the torch to start his ten shots.

"Don't let the thieves get near the camp wall!" Soltu screamed hoarsely. Rockets fall from the sky all the time, and these rockets are not neat and blindly fired, so the threat is not very large, and as long as you are careful, you can easily dodge it. But the terrible thing is that they are numerous and do not stop for a moment, and the soldiers of the Praetorian Guard cannot keep an eye on the six roads all the time, and from time to time someone is hit by cold arrows. If you are shot in the armor, it is fine, just frightened, but there will always be arrows that pierce the weak link that lacks armor protection, and the hot arrows shoot into the body with flames, leaving the wounded Praetorian Guard soldiers in pain.

The area of the imperial camp is not large, so sometimes there are rockets flying from behind, and Suo Etu was startled several times by the bow and arrow that flew from the back of his head and plunged into the ground in front of him.

Experienced officers knew very well that the correct way to defend such an enemy was to concentrate a group of well-trained archers, use the cover of the camp wall to line up on the inside, and then launch a counterattack against the enemy archers outside according to the command of the camp wall. Since the enemy does not know the position of the defender's archers, and the enemy's movement can be clearly seen by their own people on the camp wall, the defender will have a great advantage in such a confrontation.

But the problem now is that the Ming army has an overwhelming advantage in numbers, and the Praetorian Guard does not have the extra forces to attack the opposing archers. To make matters worse, the area of the imperial camp was not large, and the open space inside suitable for archers to counterattack was limited. Just now, there was an imperial officer who wanted to organize a hundred archers to counterattack, but he gave up before he could start, and a large number of rockets and stone projectiles had been falling in several suitable open spaces - the Ming army who designed the Qing army's camp was well aware of the Qing army's counterattack methods, and knew the internal structure of the camp well, so Deng Ming arranged for thirty percent of the catapults and archers to constantly greet these places - this was of course a great waste of firepower, and the accuracy of the attack team composed of all auxiliary soldiers was also a mess. However, the Ming army could not resist the overwhelming numerical superiority, and the Ming army could not only tolerate this waste of firepower, but also basically ensure that arrows and stones would always fall on these available positions. In addition to those units that were ordered to carry out continuous suppression, rockets that were supposed to be fired at the camp walls also frequented these sites due to accuracy problems. The Janissaries observed for a while and decided that this attrition was unbearable and had to abandon the counterattack plan.

Suo Etu dodged another oncoming rocket, poked his head out of the camp wall, and observed the battle outside the camp gate through the gap in his shield. There were already dozens of Mongols lying on the ground, but new Mongols were always being sent forward, and the rushing carts were pushed down by the Mongols who came one after another, and they were slamming against the gate of the imperial camp.

"Archery, archery!" Suo Etu roared loudly, many of the Praetorian Guard officers and soldiers guarding the camp gate were newcomers who had just entered the flag, but they all bravely leaned out and attacked the Mongols who did not know whether they were alive or dead.

"Ahh

A Praetorian Guard soldier was preoccupied with leaning in to attack when he was caught off guard by a stray arrow, screaming and falling off the camp wall.

Another Praetorian Guard soldier stepped forward without hesitation, leaning out desperately and continuing to attack the Ming army's death squad.

No matter what rumors there were before, now there were tens of thousands of Ming troops outside the camp, and if this camp wall between the Praetorian Guards and the Han people was lost, none of the Manchus thought they could survive, and they couldn't pin their hopes on those after-dinner chats!

There was a cannon sound on the opposite side, and the camp wall shook violently, and the position of the camp wall hit by this shell was not far from Suo Etu, and he subconsciously reached out to hold the wall, so that he was not shaken down. Then another stone bullet whizzed, and instead of flying over the wall or smashing into the ground, as most cannonballs do, it swept into both shields and smashed them to pieces. The two Praetorian Guards, who were holding their shields vigorously, were sent flying out by the huge momentum, swinging their limbs and falling backwards.

"Archery!" Suo Etu's face was also scratched by flying debris, but he did not feel any pain at all, and seeing that there was a gap in the rotation of archers, he flew forward without thinking, picked up the bloodstained iron bow from the ground, leaned forward, and shot an arrow at the rushing car.

However, Suo'etu's arrows did not pierce the Mongols' shields, but only added another to the large cowhide shield that was already full of feathered arrows. The Praetorian Guards did not expect a defensive battle here, so they did not prepare the stove, oil pot or other equipment in advance.

"Stone!" Soetu took a step back and turned back to the camp and shouted that the Mongols were still banging on the door, and he needed his soldiers to find all the heavy objects in order to attack.