Begging in late Ming Dynasty

Chapter 705 Chapter Seventh White Chapter 49. Fighting is the national strength
It is estimated that this is also the largest artillery battle in the history of classical oriental China. For ten consecutive days, the giant ships of the Ming army and the Wu army fought each other in this narrow Poyang Lake. Qiu Lei rolled and echoed over the Yunmeng Daze like that.

At least [-] giant ships participated in the battle, and four to five thousand guns roared together. Because the combat distance was too narrow, many tactics that could be used on the sea could not be carried out at all, and they could only fight bloody at close range, which also made this war Unprecedented bloodshed, both sides paid an extremely heavy price.

From the fighting to the end of June, the lake between Nanchang and Raozhou was even covered with shipwrecks.

"Turn the rudder 25 degrees to the left and raise the mainsail! What? The mainsail is gone, so I'll fill it up with a secondsail! In short, I must beat the dilapidated ship with the left flag on it!" "

This water battle really satisfies all the romantic fantasies of human beings about war. The cannons come and go, slamming into each other's hulls. In the gun bay, there are sailors' sweat and curses everywhere, and the busy gunners and co-gunners shuttle constantly. , stuffed the gunpowder into the hot gun barrel, pushed the gun out of the gun rail, and immediately blocked the ear, the huge recoil pushed the heavy gun back, and the gun chain rattled, hundreds of meters to several miles Outside, another round of artillery fire was set off.

There are often uninvited guests breaking into the door. Just after Xu Haihouzi shouted this order, his feet trembled violently again. A shell fired from the northeast corner obliquely inserted into the second-floor gun bay, and bombarded from the gun hatch. On the rear deck wall, four people were pierced through the middle, and the blood of the men was scattered in the cabin.

This is simply the romance in the poet's ideal!

It's just that it's not known whether the person involved can have such romantic feelings. He took another breath of gunpowder smoke and bent over to avoid the almost close-fitting building on the opposite side. Amid the splashing of sawdust, Xu Haihouzi personally pushed away the captain of the steering wheel who had died at the rudder, and made a big turn of the rudder himself. With the help of the complicated soft sails and the eight-sided wind from the sky, the heavy sailing ship seemed to be Like a rebellious wild beast, there was a big shake of his head.

It’s a bit like in the movie. The few Wu Jun boats that were close to the Storm broke instantly when they collided with the hull, and a layer of wood scraped from the Storm was squeezed and crushed. Wu Jun on the boat was terrified. With shouts, they fell into the water and were sucked into the whirlpool beside the boat.

Although I don't know who the other party's Zuozi banner is, but 30 of Wu Sangui's army belonged to Zuo Liangyu's old department. is generic.

Like Nelson, the British coach who decided the fate of Britain and France and curbed Emperor Napoleon’s attack on the British mainland in the Trafalgar naval battle, Xu Haihou has been staring at the left flag for several days in the battlefield. , Today is a rare opportunity to start the war. From his own fleet into the enemy's line, he will sink it no matter the cost!

Flying through the enemy lines so frantically, the Tempest also suffered astonishing casualties. The side deck was hit like an unfinished construction site under the continuous bombardment on both sides, even revealing its ferocious skeleton. , More than half of the gun crews were casualties, and on the upper deck, the Ming army fell under the overwhelming gunfire on both sides, almost covered a layer.

But even so, the Storm is still the strongest battleship in the Qihuo fleet. The pride of the Songjiang Navy, in a roller coaster-like rampage, Xu Haihou bypassed the wreckage of two buildings that were sunk by Wu Sangui just before yesterday. Wu Zixu, the water god of the Ministry, rammed a large ship intercepted by a large horizontal line with a sword and steel strike, and staggered backwards. The large ship with the left character finally came into his sight.

There were enemy ships on all sides, and the building boat was also the most powerful in the Wu army, but Xu Haihou laughed wildly while holding the bloody rudder with both hands.

"Sink this little maidservant for me, fire, fire!"

Following his captain's roar, the remaining gunners yelled foul language that only people at sea could understand, and pushed the heavy rifled gun out again.

In the navy of the Ming army, glory and fanaticism have surpassed life. If you can die together with the enemy's flagship in this battle, even if it takes hundreds or thousands of years, you will be remembered!With the fanaticism of the British army at Trafalgar, the Tempest laughed and taunted Death.

However, in the Wu army battleship group that was still aggressive just now, a desolate and frightened horn sounded suddenly, and then, the Zuozilou ship that was still aggressive just now suddenly stretched out more than a hundred oars like a centipede, paddling towards Backed away, not only this one, but the rest of the building boats also swayed and fled backward amidst the creaking of the wood.

"Don't fucking run, fight! Fight!"

As the fastest battleship, the Storm paid a heavy price, and was about to have a heroic duel like a knight, but the opponent ran away, which almost broke Xu Haihou's belly, the old face After a full circle, Captain Storm waved his saber angrily forward, and the gunners under his command also cursed at his mother and poured out the last shells. Far.

At about one o'clock in the afternoon, the warships on both sides completely broke away from contact, and the eleven-day Poyang Lake flood battle came to an end.

No less than 27 battleships sank in the center of the lake, including five from the Ming army and 22 from the Wu Sangui army. The deepest part of Poyang Lake is only 30 meters. You can also see the masts and towers of the half-sunken building ships, and countless corpses floating in the lake. On the lake, the vast majority belonged to the Wu army. It was not that the Ming army was undead, but every corpse was recovered on the largest scale after the war. The rest, like the way Poyang Lake has nourished mankind for thousands of years, gave back nature.

The battered storm ship also limped back to the Double Harbor Dockyard. Almost immediately, countless shipwrights mobilized from Yingtian boarded the ship with tons of replacement planks and started repairing it. The medical team of the field hospital with red gourds painted on it boarded the ship with a stretcher, transported the wounded one by one, and sent them to the field hospital in Panyang.

This is also the reason why Song Qingshu's subordinates are desperate to fight. Even if they are injured, they can get the best medical treatment. Most people can return to the battlefield again. Even if there are serious injuries and die, these red gourd angels can still let you go very peacefully. , without too much horrible pain, even disabled amputees will have a good resettlement, this is the benefit of industrialization, even if it is just the beginning of industrialization.

After getting off the ship, Xu Haihou doesn't need to worry about it. His crew and the ship will receive the best healing. At this time, what he needs to do is his duty as the Chief of Staff of the Imperial Navy.

His immediate boss Shi Lang, Vice Admiral He Bin who is a soy sauce player, Hong Xu who has officially transferred from the Zheng Sen Army to the Navy, and ten other squadron commanders were all present at the meeting, as were Shangshu Sun Chuanting and Marshal Song Qingshu. Take the lead.

As soon as the meeting was held, Xu Haihouzi couldn't wait to stand up while supporting the table, and asked in astonishment.

"Everyone, Wu Jun still has the strength to fight, why did he retreat?"

Although Wu Sangui's losses are much greater than Song Qingshu's these days, the two armies have completely different attitudes towards the navy. To Wu Sangui, the navy is just a temporary tool for the battle of Poyang Lake and the downstream attack on Jinling , what he likes the most is his army of about 40, so even if the navy is exhausted, Wu Sangui just feels sorry for it.

But for Song Qingshu, his navy not only dealt with the immediate battle, but also defended his tens of thousands of kilometers of sea area and colonies, and also shouldered the mission of global exploration to the east, west, and south. Nearly [-]% of his West India Company's trade, the emerging bourgeois interests, so although the loss is relatively small, Song Qingshu fights leisurely.

With this attitude, Wu Sangui would come out in full force every time, while Song Qingshu had to resist passively, but Wu Sangui, who did not fight until dark and did not withdraw troops in the past, took back the battleship early today, which is really puzzling.

With the political reasons last time, everyone's eyes were on Sun Chuanting again this time, but this time, he also shook his head innocently.

"Recently, everything is fine in Jinling, there is nothing special, and I don't know anything about it!"

In the absence of information, random guesses could not guess that Zichou would play Mao. This military meeting dispersed without any results. In the next two days, the whole battle situation seemed to return to a stagnant pool, and the Wu army once again retreated in Nanchang River. Song Qingshu didn't order an attack. He even ordered Bayintu's cavalry to scout to the southeast to see if Wu Sangui took the opportunity to use his powerful cavalry to attack Jiangsu, Zhejiang or Fujian.

It wasn't until July [-]th that the information bought from inside Wu Sangui's army came.

It was lunch time, and a large group of generals gathered at the joint meeting of the chiefs of staff while picking and pulling the cans. Listening to the report of the intelligence personnel in charge of the investigation, Xu Hai's mouth opened wide while biting the tail of the tuna, and the tail of the fish fell off. Even without noticing it, Song Qingshu also shook his head in surprise.

The reason why Wu Sangui stopped attacking couldn't be simpler, he ran out of ammunition!
It really surprised the generals of the Ming army. They never had to run out of shells and gunpowder loaded on the ship, and they never encountered a time when the logistics supply could not be met. No wonder Xu Haihou couldn't understand how this became the reason for the truce
The current situation is similar to the battle of Nomonkan in the Soviet Union and Japan in the later generations. In order to invade and occupy Mongolia, the Japanese army mobilized the largest ammunition base in history. As a result, after only a few days of bombing, the Soviet army did not feel anything. The Japanese army could not stand the consumption. In the end, the one who was repaired by the Soviet tanks and artillery had no temper at all, and desperately prayed for an armistice agreement.

In order to support this war, more than [-] merchant ships flowed upstream from Japan and Southeast Asia, transporting food, medicine, ammunition and supplies to the front line of Raozhou. Song Qingshu's supply line did not go by land at all. Wu Sangui?
Relying on Huguang as a logistics base, it can supply 50 troops with rations, and at the same time put together more than 100 large boats, four to five hundred small warships, and more than 2000 cannons. This typical agricultural society, the power of feudal manors, Hongyi A cannon consumes tens to dozens of catties of gunpowder for a single shot. In eleven days of fierce fighting, thousands of cannons have to be fired every day. This is like a monster that eats gunpowder. It consumes [-] to [-] tons in a short period of time. tons of gunpowder.

It is said that once the cannon is fired, ten thousand taels of gold is true, Wu Sangui really cannot afford it.

After the initial astonishment, the officer corps holding the cans aroused unprecedented pride. I just have guns and gunpowder, so I will be capricious, what should I do!Especially Xu Haihouzi, who is known in the navy for his temper, the pirate's son stood up excitedly and clasped his fists.

"Commander, since Wu Sangui's thieves are short of ammunition, it's time for us to attack! The last general, please be the vanguard and destroy the Wu thieves' fleet in this Poyang Lake for the Ming Empire."

Hearing these impassioned words, Song Qingshu opened his mouth and wanted to agree, but before he could say anything, he looked at the canned food under his eyes, and suddenly shook his head again, a mysterious smile bloomed on his face.

"Why destroy Wu Sangui's fleet?"

(End of this chapter)