national surname chiming

Chapter 368 It is easy to shake the mountain, but difficult to shake the city of Nanyang

The smoke and dust brought by the heavy artillery bombardment covered the battlefields on the northwest sides of Nanyang City for a while, so that you can't see your fingers——

The city walls of Nanyang County, under the temporary reinforcement of Zhang Huangyan, many key protective parts, especially around the city towers and turrets, were thickly sloped with rammed earth just like the bastions.

The quality of these rammed earth is not very good, and it is softer than the rammed earth used for normal city walls.It can be regarded as rushing to catch up with materials, and the radish is too fast to wash the mud.

Now under the impact of the heavy artillery, large pieces of wall soil are splashed several feet high, and then scattered, the dust and smoke are very powerful.

Tong Tulai in the distance looked through the binoculars, and at first glance, he was very satisfied with the effect of his strikes: Our artillery in the Qing Dynasty, after the baptism of Taiyuan, Luoyang, and Kaifeng in the three fortified battles against thieves and fortified cities, their artillery skills seem to have improved. Sophisticated!Nanmanzi's city wall really cut corners, the material is so soft, it can definitely be blasted away in a whole day!

So the main force of the Qing army attacking the city in the distance continued to line up and wait in the distance, just waiting for some eyebrows to be raised——

Don't think this style of play is negative. In fact, in the 17th year of Chongzhen/the first year of Shunzhi, the Qing army seldom attacked the city directly by climbing ladders and flying ladders, and forcibly climbing walls with huge casualties. To break the city wall, at least a low gap must be blasted, and then they will rush up.

In history, when Duoduo took down Shi Kefa's Yangzhou City, it was like this. At the beginning, he didn't fight much. He just blasted a place with long-distance firepower. After bombing for a whole day, Yangzhou city wall was broken, and then it was like a tide. Upwell.And Shi Kefa in that time and space was helpless in the face of such an attack by the Qing army.

However, after wasting a lot of shells, Tong Tulai finally gradually realized that something was wrong.

On the opposite side of the city wall of Nanyang, although the soil is very soft, the slope looks gentle, and there is a big hole with just a shot.But the soil in these big pits only flowed down for a while, and stopped again because the slope was too slow.

Sometimes, with great difficulty, another shell landed not too far from the impact point just now, which was supposed to expand the results of the battle and completely collapse the loose area.

But now, the shells from the heavy artillery just sank deeper into the soil and stayed there. The soil that was blown up into the sky fell again, basically covering the original position, almost exactly the same.

Judging from the color of the deep soil turned up, the color is relatively dark, even a bit dark brown, not the usual earthy yellow rammed earth used for city construction.

This kind of soft clay combined with a relatively gentle slope can easily absorb most of the impact of the shells.

He is strong and he is strong, and the breeze blows the hills.He is horizontal by him, and the bright moon shines on the river.

The more Tong Tulai looked at it, the more he frowned. He knew that Zhang Huangyan on the opposite side, Xiucheng was really skilled, and even the selection of materials was unreasonable.

To build a city wall normally, the first thing to do is to make sure that the material is not easy to collapse and must be compact, so loess-like clay must be used as the core.It is also necessary to prevent the city walls from being loosened by water soaking. This means that the black soil with humus must be banned, and the walls must not be allowed to ferment and produce holes after being soaked.

For example, the case of city construction with the most stringent quality inspection standards in history books, Tongwan City built by Helian Bo in the Southern and Northern Dynasties, in order to prevent black soil, all the soil in the city was required to be steamed (in fact, it is sterilization, and organic humus was sieved as much as possible), After the repair, the iron awl was used to pierce the soil during the quality inspection. If the awl penetrated more than an inch, the hard labor in charge of this section would be executed!
And Zhang Huangyan's selection of soil for the city's construction, these two aspects are completely contrary to the most sophisticated quality inspection standards in ancient times!

He sacrificed the strength of the city soil when it was soaked in water, and even sacrificed its compactness. It would be a disadvantage if the city was dug into the city, or if it was digging a hole and scratching a hook to climb.

But this kind of material pursues the cushioning effect to the limit, but it is very resistant to shelling!

In fact, Tong Tulai didn't know that it was also Zhu Shuren who taught Zhang Huangyan.Let him let go of his mind, be eclectic, focus on artillery defense, and sacrifice everything else!

In the Western world, by the end of the 17th century, and even throughout the 18th century, with the popularity of bastions, the soil on the outer walls of many bastions would later grow into lawns, which shows that these lands can be used directly with black clay!The material selection is completely different from the yellow rammed earth for the old oriental city walls!

Before the demand for anti-bombardment appeared, if the wall soil grew grass, it was a representative of poor quality engineering!

But after the demand for anti-bombardment arises and is raised to the highest priority, the wall soil that grows grass is the best wall soil!
Tong Tulai's engineering thinking was two centuries behind, so he was naturally dumbfounded.

The bombardment continued until the afternoon, and the Qing army wasted a lot of ammunition. There were also several artillery pieces that were slightly red because of the continuous firing. Dry thick wooden sticks of sackcloth, slowly clean the inner chamber for maintenance.

Although the artillery of the Ming army was small at the beginning, the deployment was extremely delicate. The design of the shooting angle of the fort was far superior to all the Ming Dynasty cities that Tong Tulai had seen before, and it was much better than the fort on the city wall of Shanhaiguan.

In the morning, the Ming army only relied on the crossfire of six cannons to cause a lot of casualties to the Qing army's artillery positions. If it weren't for the artillery accuracy of this era, it would be difficult to directly hit the enemy at least two miles away. Cannons, I am afraid that there will be many cases where Qing army artillery was blown up by direct hits.

Even so, the Ming army still caused at least three-digit casualties to Qing army gunners by relying on a small amount of time-delayed fuze bombs (that is, igniting the fuse of the shell before firing, and then shooting it out).

It is not easy to train a gunner with accurate shooting skills, and the casualties of hundreds of good people are enough to make Tong Tulai feel distressed.In terms of strategic value, it is almost equal to the loss of thousands of elite cavalry of the Eight Banners.

In addition to the gunner, the casualties of other loading and escorting auxiliary soldiers will only be several times more than the gunner.

The largest Hongyi cannon of the Qing army weighed more than 3000 kilograms, which is about the level of 12 to 18 pounds in the Dutch naval guns when converted into the Western standard they imitated.

The heavy cannon on the Mingjun City Corner Fort, although its own weight is only more than 4000 kilograms, is made of high-quality steel, and the amount of ammunition that can be loaded with the same cannon weight is much larger, which is equivalent to a Dutch 32-pound naval gun. It is [-]% to [-]% heavier than the largest ammunition of the Qing army.

During the confrontation in the morning, the mobile artillery on the second line of the Ming army had not been deployed yet, and the Qing army was not under great pressure. As the artillery battle lasted for more than two hours, the mobile artillery of the Ming army was deployed, and the Qing army The artillery positions became increasingly unable to hold their heads up.

Quantitative changes have resulted in qualitative changes, even though the accuracy of the artillery technology at that time was low. With such a continuous pile of numbers, the Qing army still had a [-]-jin largest heavy artillery that was hit directly before noon, and it was blown into scrap iron.

Shortly after noon, the second door and the third door were hit directly, and more were more or less damaged by near-miss bombs.Faced with this level of loss, even Azig couldn't sit still. He sent a total of [-] cannons to bombard them. On the first day of the battle, three gates were completely blown up, but the city wall did not collapse. beat?
He couldn't help but personally came to Tong Tulai's position, and sternly reprimanded him for the inefficiency of fighting, and he didn't care about the conciliation and win over after the factional struggle.

Tong Tulai was insulted, but he didn't dare to complain. He knew that he was not strong enough, so he could only analyze and explain desperately, and let Azig know that it was the Ming army's fortifications that were specially prepared to restrain the artillery battle.

"My lord, it's not that the slaves don't try their best, it's that the barbarian civil servants on the opposite side are too cunning! The city defense he supervised is particularly resistant to shelling, but it's weaker than climbing, and it can't resist digging and flooding the city.

This is clearly sacrificing other defenses in exchange for shelling resistance!The servant has followed his uncle to cast cannons and commanded the artillery team for many years, but he has never seen such a countermeasure!Please forgive me, my lord! "

Azig was furious: "The outer slope of the wall is built so slowly, and black clay is used to sacrifice the defense against chiseling, climbing and flooding, to strengthen the defense against shelling?
According to what you say, this king still has to find a way to store water and flood the city?Now in the twelfth lunar month of winter, the water volume of the Baihe River and the Feishui River is so shallow and narrow, where can our army store such a high water level to flood the city!Doesn't that mean that Daqing Erlang will fill the city with his life? "

Tong Tulai didn't dare to answer, but just knelt down and confessed.

Azig is helpless, he also knows that he has no choice, although Yancheng is said to be very restrained by this kind of wall, but the river has too little water in winter!

He couldn't wait that long, so he had to use the long-lost pile of human lives to climb directly.You can ask the soldiers to bring more shovels and chisels, and stick them directly into the city wall when climbing the wall. With this kind of slope, as long as you shovel into the wall soil with a shovel and dig a small hole where you can put your hands and feet, you can go straight up. If you don't climb the walls, I'm really sorry that these walls are so easy to climb.

After a while, as the sun set to the west, the Qing army finally began to press down with the whole army, preparing to climb the city everywhere.Because this kind of city that is not too steep does not even need ladders, the advantages of the large number of Qing soldiers can just be used, and every section of the city wall is likely to be climbed. The army's strength is not allowed to stay in the reserve team to focus on defense.

Zhang Huangyan on the opposite side waited for a long time. After winning the artillery battle, he finally waited for the Qing army to climb up regardless of casualties.

Several sections of the wall that were slightly collapsed by the artillery bombardment of the Qing army were naturally the most important points for climbing. The height of the gaps on the top of the wall in several places was only more than ten feet above the ground. You can rush up directly.

Countless dead soldiers of the Qing army wearing iron-coated cotton armor—mainly the veteran Han army banner infantry, those who were traitors before the Qing Dynasty entered the customs—under the urging of the siege warlord Man Dahai, formed a wave The wave rushes upwards.

"Rifles line up! Block the gap!" Following Zhang Huangyan's command, hundreds of confidant troops armed with the latest "Made in Wuchang" rifles, also wearing forged steel breastplates and red robes, blocked up to those few on both sides of the most dangerous gap.

As soon as the death squads of the Qing army entered the effective range, the crossfire of the left and right new muskets directly covered them.

The various performance indicators of "Made in Wuchang" can almost be compared with the 1763 Charleville rifle made by the French after the Seven Years' War, and it is also specially equipped with paper cartridge case fixed ammunition, and double warhead front and rear stacking design——

The last subtle design is something that the 1763 Charleville rifle does not have. The advantage of this design is that it can change the rifle from loading a large caliber slug to the Packed with two slightly sub-caliber slugs.As long as the armor-piercing lethality is sufficient, the firepower density can be doubled, which can be said to be beneficial without cost.

This kind of trick has been used in the Western world until the American War of Independence in the 1780s. Under the leadership of General Lafayette, the French aid army was found out through the summary of actual combat experience, and it was quickly discovered by the British army and General Washington. The independent military school went.

For Zhu Shuren, these small innovations at the application level are just a matter of piercing a layer of window paper. Of course, he will call his ordnance design craftsmen without reservation.

Anyway, as long as the slug is enough to penetrate the Qing army's Tieza cotton armor, it doesn't need to be too redundant.The performance of the redundant part still has to be tilted towards the firepower density!This can be regarded as the persistence of a shotgun believer.

The gun technology of the 1760s, coupled with the level of applied techniques and tactics of the 1780s, is not enough to deal with the Qing army!

The death squads sent by Mandahai were quickly met with cross-fired by Wuchang. The side-firing firepower from the bastion-shaped protruding faces on both sides knocked out rows of Qing army's heavy-armored elites rushing to the gap. fall.

Seeing this scene, Azig and Man Dahai were also dumbfounded - it was not that they had not rushed through the fortified city of the Ming army, but even if they rushed to the Shanhaiguan Pass, they would not be able to do so unless they were blocked by Hongyi cannons or Frangji. There is almost no chance of winning and rushing in.

Otherwise, as long as you catch the gap between the artillery firing and are only blocked by dozens of firecrackers, the density will definitely not be able to stop the swarming dead soldiers.

But today's Zhang Huangyan did it.

Man Dahai didn't believe in evil. After the first batch of casualties were heavy, he immediately adjusted his deployment. The second batch of dead soldiers even put on double armor!

Not to mention, this kind of attempt is quite common among the dead soldiers of the Qing army.Just like their Jurchen ancestors, when using armored heavy cavalry, they like to use iron pagodas with double armor.In the later stage of the battle with the Ming army, the Qing army liked to stack armor when it encountered that the heavy armor was not heavy enough to carry other firearms except cannons.

However, this trick failed again today. The stacked armor only worked for a short time, but it still failed to gain a firm foothold after rushing to the top of the wall. down.

After seeing the loosening of the ground, Li Dingguo, who was in charge of fighting on the front line, immediately reported the news that the Qing army had used armored death squads.
Zhang Huangyan also quickly gave instructions to replace and adjust, so that the soldiers who used Wuchang made and other new Lumi and Turtledove guns could use single-shot large slugs again.

Finally, the extra protection brought by the stacked armor of the Qing army was useless again.Even if some were not penetrated by the bullet, the impact of the heavy projectile hitting the body and the pitting of the iron armor was enough to break a person's tendons and bones, and hematemesis due to internal injury to lose combat effectiveness.

The fighting lasted until late at night, when the corpses of dead soldiers in heavy armor were piled up under the walls that looked relatively easy to climb, Man Dahai finally couldn't bear the loss, and begged Azig with a mournful face. Allow troops to withdraw.

"Uncle, you can't fight like this anymore! We have already lost thousands of children today, and there are probably more than three or five thousand pairs of cotton armor left behind the city!"

Azig's face was ashen, and he could only admit his failure, gritted his teeth bitterly and ordered the attack to stop.

Seeing that the Qing army finally retreated, the morale of the Ming army at the top of the city was bursting, the whole army cheered and cheered, and Zhang Huangyan's prestige among the defenders reached a new high point. Even the surrendered generals like Li Dingguo felt that they had finally stood up There is light on the spine and face.

(End of this chapter)