I want to be emperor

Chapter 421 The Fortress System Outside the City
Outside Yangzhou City, Luo Zhixue's imperial command headquarters was set up on a low hill outside the city. It is actually more than 2000 meters away from Yangzhou City. Too much distance still has a certain impact on Luo Zhixue's observation and command, but in order to Considering safety, Luo Zhixue's imperial headquarters could not be set up too close together.

After all, strictly speaking, a distance of about two kilometers is not an insurmountable distance for a field artillery weighing more than nine catties. The nine catties field artillery in the Chu army can have a maximum range of more than 3000 meters, but the hit rate will be very touching. That's all.

In actual combat, it is absolutely impossible to fire at the maximum range, not to mention the maximum range of more than 3000 meters, even if it exceeds 1000 meters, the artillery of the Chu army will not fire easily... For the accuracy of contemporary artillery As far as the bombardment is concerned, even if it is only about a thousand meters away, it can only be a covering bombardment, and the lethality is not very good.

In actual combat, the best range of the nine-pound field gun is within 800 meters, especially between 500 meters and 800 meters, which can give a good balance between lethality and hit rate.

It is true that at a distance of more than 1000 meters, the population rate is negligible for contemporary field artillery, including those old Hongyi artillery in the Ming army, but one should be careful, so the Chu army sent the imperial headquarters outside Yangzhou City directly It was established on a low hill more than 2000 meters away.

In addition, a solid artillery defense system was built to prevent the artillery units of the Ming army on the opposite side from jumping over the wall in a hurry and directly shelling more than 2000 meters away, and to prevent the artillery units on the opposite side from getting lucky and directly hitting the shells at the headquarters.

Therefore, when Luo Zhixue observes the battle in this headquarters, he always observes with binoculars behind the artillery bunker.

Thanks to the monocular in his hand, the crystal lens was carefully crafted and polished by experienced glasses craftsmen. Therefore, even though it is more than 2000 meters away, Luo Zhixue can still see the city of Yangzhou on the opposite side better. Case.

At this time, the Yangzhou City in Luo Zhixue's sight was no longer as prosperous as it used to be. The large buildings and dwellings outside the city were either bombed into ruins or were forcibly demolished by the Ming army itself. Miri is in ruins.

Except for a few large cities such as Jinling City and Youzhou City, most of the other cities, even many provincial cities, cannot make the area of ​​the city too large because of the cost of building the city and taking into account the defensive performance.

But as time goes by, the effective area of ​​the city is impossible to meet the more and more crowded population, so a large number of residential or commercial buildings will be built outside the city walls, so you can see a lot of cities. Outside the city walls, there are actually still large areas of residential buildings...

However, with the development of time, some cities have more and more buildings outside the city. In order to protect these places, the government often adds a city wall on the periphery to form the outer city, and some simply build new cities to form a juxtaposition of old and new cities. pattern.

Yangzhou City belongs to the pattern of juxtaposing new and old cities. There is an old city built in the late Yuan Dynasty, which is generally used as the residence of the government and the residence of the gentry. The new city is the commercial center, and most of the salt merchants live there.

However, even after the establishment of the new city, with the passage of time, there are still a large number of ordinary residential buildings, commercial warehouses and other buildings outside the city wall.

And these folk buildings outside the city walls are often greatly damaged in wars.

Neither the attacker nor the defender has a good impression of these buildings.

For the attacker, these buildings outside the city will affect their own attack. This place is occupied by a large number of messy buildings, and the attacker's forces cannot be deployed...

As far as the defender is concerned, these buildings will also affect the shooting range of one's own artillery and muskets, and are more likely to be used by the attacker.

Therefore, in many cases, the defenders will temporarily demolish these buildings outside the city...

Unfortunately, the attacking side often also violently demolishes.

During the battle of Jinling before, because of the battle between the Chu army and the Ming army defenders, a large area of ​​buildings along the Qinhuai River was directly smashed to pieces, and even the many painting boats on the Qinhuai River had to bring many young ladies to embarrassment Escape from the Qinhuai River...

As a result, for a long time after the war, the bustling and bustling Qinhuai River in the past was extremely depressed...

The city of Yangzhou is no exception. Since Song Zushun led his troops to retreat to Yangzhou last year, he has begun to build Yangzhou's city defenses.

Many of the various buildings outside the city that were in the way were demolished by the Ming army defenders themselves...

Then dig trenches on it, build civil fortresses, and arrange various firepower points.

When the Chu army started shelling Yangzhou City half a month ago, the fierce artillery smashed the remaining buildings outside the city to pieces...

So much so that the area outside the city of Yangzhou now looks like ruins.

But people with a little military common sense will be aware of the danger when they see this ruin.

If the Chu army still foolishly let the infantry line up and directly attack the city wall like the traditional cold weapon army, a large area would fall in minutes.

Because these seemingly ruins outside the city of Yangzhou are actually full of trenches, parapets, forts, and firepower excavated by Song Zushun's troops.

I dare not say that it is airtight, but it is definitely not so easy to break through.

At this time, Xu Zhixian was standing beside Luo Zhixue, and introduced the situation on the opposite side to Luo Zhixue: "After more than half a month of our firepower testing, we can basically confirm that the defensive tactics adopted by the defenders outside Yangzhou City are the same as those in the previous ones." Like the state, with the city wall as the commanding height, the fort outside the city, and the moat as the support, long-barreled artillery is arranged at the high point, while a large number of short-barreled artillery are deployed in the many moat fortresses outside the city to form complex crossfire. "

As Xu Zhixian spoke, he pointed to a piece of ruins on the east side and said, "Please look, Your Majesty, that is their main position over there, and that slightly raised hill is where their fortress is located. They surround this hill and Some of the ruins of the surrounding buildings have built a complex system of trenches and parapets, and also set up relatively hidden firepower points."

"During a previous tentative attack, we discovered that the opponent had at least six long-barreled cannons and more than 20 short-barreled cannons firing here!"

"However, the solid shells fired by our field guns have basically no effect on their fortifications, and the mortars, because of their poor accuracy and short range, cannot fire at too long a distance."

"Because the terrain within a few hundred meters is open and the field of vision is good, if our mortar troops try to get closer, they will be attacked by the enemy's long-barreled artillery. Therefore, the last time the test attack did not achieve good results!"

"The artillery and engineers have already discussed and formulated a new combat plan. They are going to use part of the recovery terrain to build an artillery traffic trench, so that the mortar troops can smoothly reach within 300 meters and fire nearby. Large-caliber mortar shells pry Open this turtle shell!"

Luo Zhixue looked in the direction indicated by Xu Zhixian, and there was indeed a slightly raised hillside on the east side. It was said that the mountains were too much, and that thing was only 30 meters high at most.

But just such a small hill with a height of 30 meters has now become the focus of contention between the two sides in the Battle of Yangzhou.

The Ming army deployed heavy troops here, and there are traffic trenches to connect with the city, so that it is convenient to obtain soldiers and ammunition supplies.

At the same time, the terrain here is wide and the view is good. If the artillery is deployed here, it is enough to cover a large area around it.

If the Chu army wants to further threaten Yangzhou City, they must take it here first, otherwise it will be very uncomfortable to be attacked by the enemy.

Luo Zhixue just glanced at it, and knew that this thing was an evolution of the fort outside the city in the Battle of Jiujiang.

When Shi Kefa deployed in the direction of Jiujiang, he referred to the experience of the Wuchang Battle and other experiences, and came up with this defense system from the fortress outside the city.

The core idea is to build fortress protrusions outside the city walls, connect them with trenches or trestle bridges, and deploy artillery and infantry in these fortresses outside the city. Multiple protrusion fortresses can form a certain crossfire, which in turn will cause damage to the siege troops. huge threat.

In essence, it is somewhat similar to the European bastion defense system, but it is more radical than the bastion defense system and focuses on grenade resistance.

European counterparts are not as perverted as the Chu army, directly pulling hundreds of mortars, risking the death and injury of many artillerymen in every battle, spending a lot of ammunition money to attack a city...

Therefore, European counterparts basically don't have to think too much about the threat from grenades.

But the Ming army was different... In addition to being threatened by a large number of solid artillery from the Chu army, they were also threatened by a large number of mortar artillery from the Chu army.

This means that the fortress must have a roof... The trench must be deep and narrow, not too wide. Even the sandbags on the gun emplacements must not only be piled up in the front, but must be in the front, back, left, and right sides.

Because the grenade explodes after falling on your buttocks, there will also be shrapnel flying towards your buttocks...

At the same time, this kind of protruding fortress outside the city often has thick anti-cannon earthworks, as well as trenches, parapets, etc., which can effectively resist the bombardment of small and medium-caliber solid shells...and to a certain extent resist the shelling of mortars .

During the Battle of Jiujiang, this kind of fortress defense system outside the city really brought a lot of trouble to the Chu army.

But the Chu army quickly came up with a solution: use siege cannons weighing nine catties or even more than fourteen catties to suppress the enemy's artillery firepower, and then get a lot of large-caliber mortars to go up and bombard them indiscriminately. This kind of violent shelling is actually not for the purpose of killing or injuring many enemy troops, but for suppressing the enemy infantry and creating favorable conditions for the infantry to attack.

After the shelling, the Chu army would directly dispatch commandos to rush up to fight and forcibly seize this kind of fortress outside the city.

(End of this chapter)