Xinshun 1730

Chapter 1238
The soldiers who found the backbone were quickly organized. After regrouping on the salient fort, they finally waited for the follow-up troops and officers.

After finding familiar officers from each company, the soldiers on the salient fort finally came to life, as if they understood what they were going to do next.

This is different from the slope. Fighting on the slope requires more personal courage, and there is no way to have an organized command, and the fighting conditions do not allow it.

The corpses on the slope were piled up here and there, and there were still some that were not dead, wriggling in the trench.The dark mud inside made Zhao Lisheng involuntarily think of the scene of looking down in the dry toilet in summer, like writhing maggots.

The blood from the battle just now didn't make him feel sick.For some reason, seeing this scene of wriggling like maggots in the mud made his stomach churn.

The sound of gunfire and shelling was still intermittent, and the pungent smell of sulfur wafted from not far away, as if the brimstone prepared by the British had been ignited in the battle just now.

As a specialized siege force that has been trained for many years, Zhao Lisheng is well aware of the various routines of defending the city.Now the pungent sulfur smell is used to prevent them from digging tunnels to approach.Once the movement of digging the tunnel is discovered by the defenders, the defenders will choose to face the inside and continue digging. After digging through, they will fill the inside with burning sulfur to suffocate the attackers to death.

Smelling the pungent sulfur smell, Zhao Lisheng's stomach gradually stopped churning. Looking at the wounded soldiers squirming in the mud of the trench, he thought that he would rather be a maggot in the trench than dug a tunnel and be choked to death with sulfur.

I was lucky enough to survive, and the wound on my leg was very shallow. The most disgusting slope battle was over. It seemed that I had survived this battle.

The officers who rushed up did not disappoint his expectations, and did not direct them to attack the city wall along the narrow troop corridor, or directly along the city wall to attack the fort facing the coast in the east.

Instead, let them check the gunpowder and re-balance the grenades, let them control the salient fort, and build parapets on both sides to prevent the British army from counterattacking.

When they were building the parapet here, the people of the company behind were under their cover, and at the position below them, obeying the command of the officer, digging holes for burying explosives.

Zhao Lisheng spat into the palm of his hand, gripped the shovel tightly, dug up the thick soil covering the protruding fort, which was used to prevent artillery, and skillfully planted the soil in front of him to make a simple parapet.

Er Gou was next to him, swung his shovel for a while, and shouted at the soldiers of the brother company in the ditch below who were digging holes under the command of the officer: "Dig, dig, dig, dig hard. Anyway, we are killing and not burying." , Don’t care about the bombing, don’t care about repairing. When the time comes, new explosives will be stuffed in, and a pile of earthwork will be blasted out with a bang. After the attack is over, it will have to be dug out by those fugitive soldiers.”

The soldier holding the pickaxe smiled and said, "It's better to dig a hole than let us go to the fort. I'd rather dig a hole or go back and fill it with soil."

The officer next to him scolded: "Nonsense, if you want to fill the soil, you can do it yourself. See if you want such a high military salary. Dig quickly!"

Although they belong to grenadiers in a broad sense, they are officially called combat engineers after all.Throwing bombs and standing on slopes to fight the most disgusting battles is their job; digging holes everywhere, using explosives, and digging tunnels are also their job.

Now that they rushed to the salient fort, they did not choose to continue along the scientific name "Zhongdi", which can be understood as the city wall between the gate forts, and let these combat engineers continue to attack and seize the remaining salient forts.

Then their mission as grenadiers is considered complete after rushing up the slope and embankment.

The remaining task is to drill the embankment, blast a passage through the inclined embankment, trench and salient fort, and pull the cannon up after leveling.

After many years of training, these soldiers may be confused in battle, but once they calm down, when lead bullets and shells are not whizzing around their ears, it is easy for them to understand what they are doing and what their purpose is.

Ergou's gloating is that it is easy to blow up and difficult to dig up.These combat engineers are responsible for the bombing, and the fortress will have to be used by itself in the future, and then the bombed place will have to be replaced.

Moreover, it is very likely that after the completion, it will have to continue to be reinforced and expanded on the original basis.

After all, Fort St. George is only the best-defended bastion of Britain in South India.Rather than a theoretical complete body bastion.

Theoretically, the complete bastion is three-dimensional and layered, and the interior is not hollow and has a space, but a layer-by-layer structure like a multi-layer cake.

Theoretically, there should be several main forts with higher heights, but not too high, behind the protruding fort, which is the center of the bastion.

Artillery and shooting holes should also be deployed on the main fort, so that the team that took the salient fort after all the hard work will still be shot by high-level firepower, making it impossible to gather the team.

Only a small number of troops can continue to attack along the middle embankment wall until the main fort is completely taken down. Only then can the entire defense system of the bastion be truly destroyed.

But obviously, the cost of such a bastion is too high, and the British investment in India is not enough to support such a theoretical complete bastion.

And this bastion, which had its foundations built when Li Zicheng and Zhang Xianzhong were still fighting Hong Chengchou, obviously followed the concept of a "city" similar to the armed colonization before the Spring and Autumn Period, rather than a simple military fortress.

The interior needs to use open space for warehouses, colonial governments, and financial and accounting institutions.

Compared with the concept of "city" in the Chinese sense, it is smaller and there are not many buildings inside.

Compared with the theoretical concept of "fortress" of the bastion, it is a bit bigger, so that there is no higher-level main fort structure inside, and it is too empty.

Therefore, the shortcomings of this kind of fortress are also obvious. Once one corner is breached, the defense system of the entire fortress will be disintegrated.

And if it is not a "city", but a "fort" in a purely military sense, capturing a corner will not disintegrate the entire defense system.

When the No.13 engineer battalion boarded the salient fort on the south side of Fort St. George, the entire defense system on the south side of Fort St. George collapsed.

The only thing that could threaten the firepower of the Thirteenth Battalion occupying the Protruding Fort was a section of shooting area extending southward near the sea, but it had been suppressed and damaged by the fleet bombardment just now.

The low-intensity wars before the British in India, and Liu Yu said that "British capital will not be willing to invest too much money, even if they know that Dashun's military power has risen, they are more inclined to assume that Dashun will definitely not participate in the war." problem, making the defense of Fort St. George very problematic.

This is also the basis for Du Feng's plan to realize the plan of attacking a corner with professional combat engineers from the weak point of defense on the south side, using unusual long-term shelling cover.

Now, No. 13 and the [-]th Engineer Battalion only need to hold the salient fort, build artillery positions, build parapets, blow up the high slope from the trench to the salient fort, and then level the road so that the cannons behind can go to the salient fort That's it.

Du Feng didn't want the combat engineer battalion to suffer too many casualties, because he would continue to fight. Once he took Fort St. George, he would immediately go north to Calcutta to capture Fort William.

The sooner the better, it's not that you don't prepare time for the British, but that you reserve enough time for yourself to move around.

Moreover, the order of the Privy Council is here, and it is impossible for him to play the method of "siege the city and destroy the city with scurvy", which is directly related to the next stage of combat next year.

The engineers and soldiers on the salient fort don't know the general idea, but they also know that the more sweat they dig, the less blood they bleed.

Dry off your sweat and bring the guns up by 01:30.There is no need to worry about the British army's sneak attack at night.

So, soon, several calculated holes were dug out.

Digging is still easy, because the bastions are covered with thick soil, the purpose is to prevent artillery.If it is a masonry structure, then the defenders will definitely scold their mothers when fighting. The flying gravel and shells bouncing will make the defenders cry.

The soldiers above were ordered to retreat to the side, and several officers held some new explosives the size of large watermelons and placed them in the embrasures.

According to the officer's order, Zhao Lisheng performed a movement that he had practiced many times on weekdays. He covered his ears with his hands, opened his mouth, and squatted halfway on the ground with his head almost inserted into his crotch.

He didn't know how long he waited, but he felt that the ground shook suddenly, and a pile of gravel fell on his head like rain.

His chest seemed to be hit with a hammer, and his heart almost spit out from his stomach.

Pulling the head out of the crotch, the officer signaled them to return to their original position and continue to defend. The soldiers of the [-]th Battalion will be responsible for leveling out the blasted area.

The power of these new explosives was so great that the original trenches had been covered by clods of soil. The soldiers of the [-]th Battalion, holding shovels and shovels, came running from a distance, waving their arms.

The planks, logs, and other things that can be used to pave the road are continuously passed forward.

A proposed parapet of earthen baskets had been erected from the Goowum River to Fort Lux to keep out bullets or shells that might fly from the east.

Professional engineers also quickly repaired a road that can easily transport cannons. On the pontoon bridge of the Old Worm River in the distance, several heavy cannons have been dragged across the river, clinging to the simple road under the parapet, heading towards the fort. This moves.

…………

Inside Fort St. George, the commander of the British army was stunned by Dashun's rapid attack.

At the beginning, he didn't think that Fort St. George could be held, because the navy didn't have it, and the reinforcements were missing.There are more than 600 people in my hands, and half of them are Indian soldiers from the 101st Bangladesh Regiment.

Dashun's attack was not France's. The number of cannons was several times higher than the previous French siege.Moreover, the skills of siege can be clearly felt to be much stronger than the previous French colonial army.

The heavy artillery on the north side came step by step in accordance with the siege regulations, and soon suppressed the fort on the north side.

But the British commander felt that at least another month could be maintained.According to the rules of engagement at this time, the captured officers must be released. As for whether they will be shot after release, it depends not only on whether a scapegoat is needed, but also on how long they can stay.

As long as they can guard for a month before surrendering, as long as Dashun doesn't put them in a black jail, and as long as they don't need to be used as scapegoats, then at least they won't be sentenced to be shot by their own court if they stick to it for so long.

(End of this chapter)