Valley Emperor

Just like the many tough battles of the King of the Tang Dynasty, this time when they attacked Guangzhou, the artillery was the first to fire!

In order to relieve the infantrymen from being killed by Ming artillery during the subsequent siege, Li Xuan personally ordered two artillery battalions in the siege force, the first artillery battalion and the Guards artillery battalion, to carry out artillery operations on the artillery positions on the city of Guangzhou. Intensive shelling, be sure to destroy these Ming army artillery on the city head.

However, the Ming army on the top of the city was not to be outdone, and also fired back with artillery fire. The two sides launched a vigorous artillery battle across more than 400 meters, and the rumbling sound reached the Pearl River.

But after the two sides fought back and forth for more than an hour, many Ming troops found that although they also fired back, but the shells did not know where they went. After fighting for a long time, few shells fell. On the opposite side of the artillery position of the pseudo-Tang thief army.

However, the artillery on the side of the city suffered heavy casualties, and even a 12-pound naval gun that was purchased at a great price was destroyed.

How is this going?

The Ming army on the top of the city was puzzled. Could it be that the cannons in their hands were not as good as the pirate army on the opposite side? Impossible, this is a cannon purchased from those Flang machines. The governor of Guangdong and Guangxi, Wang Yueyue, even gave these cannons a mighty name: Super Invincible General Cannon!

The fact is naturally not the quality of the artillery of the Ming army is not good, but the quality of the artillery of the Ming army is not good!

This is because there are not many professional artillerymen in the Ming army defenders in Guangzhou city!

Although the Ming army widely used firearms, most of them were small cannons weighing dozens of pounds and hundreds of kilograms, mainly Wankou guns and small Folang machine guns. You don't need to pay much attention to using these artillery pieces. Just load the gunpowder and shells according to the regulations, and then ignite them.

But now they are using large-caliber cannons, and they are still firing solid bullets. If you want this kind of artillery to shoot accurately, you need old artillerymen, especially the gunner. You need to carefully calculate the amount of gunpowder and adjust the angle. to get hit.

But the artillerymen in the Ming army basically did not know big characters. How could they calculate the ballistics?

They just point the muzzle roughly in one direction, and then charge the gun to fire, so it's a strange thing to have a high hit rate.

However, it is different in the King Division of the Tang Dynasty. Li Xuan attaches great importance to the power of artillery. This artillery is specially trained. The artillery commanders in the artillery unit are all battle-hardened, and the officers in the artillery unit are also Proficient in arithmetic, able to perform complex calculations of various ballistics.

The artillery quality of the two sides is almost completely different from one level, which also causes the shelling effects of the two sides to be completely different.

However, even though he watched his artillery units completely suppress the Ming army's city artillery, Li Xuan still frowned.

Because the appearance of these artillery pieces on the head of Guangzhou City made him realize a situation!

That is to say, the Ming army has begun to attach importance to the power of firearms. This emphasis has already made them begin to equip a large number of artillery and arquebuses, and these two weapons are actually not technical. If the Ming Dynasty is determined, it can be Casting a large number of artillery and arquebuses, which means that in the subsequent wars, the Ming army that your army encounters will be equipped with more and more artillery, and it is not the kind of bowl-mouthed guns, Small cannons such as Flang cannons, but regular field guns.

This situation is not very good!

But even worry is no way, after all, he can't stop the Ming army from developing and applying artillery.

His masters of the Tang Dynasty used arquebuses and artillery in batches, and he couldn't expect the Ming Dynasty to continue to fight with him foolishly with handguns and bowl-mouth cannons from the Yongle period.

The enemy will also learn and improve himself in the war.

The only thing he expects now is that the Ming Dynasty's pace of equipping artillery and arquebuses is slower.

But his wish was obviously going to fail. He didn't know that Zhang Yue had already started making guns in Huguang, and he was still directly imitating the guns of the Tang Dynasty. The original Great General Cannon and Flang Machine Cannon will do.

Even on the capital's side, those cabinet bosses saw the threat, and then began to build guns and guns. Emperor Zhengde even gave an order to let the Ministry of Industry imitate and produce arquebuses as soon as possible, and then use them to equip thieves and thieves. Beijing Camp.

And if Li Xuan were to know how many muskets the Ming Dynasty was going to make, he would be shocked!

Because Emperor Zhengde asked the Ministry of Industry to produce the matchlock guns, the first batch was 10,000 shots, and they were to be completed within a year, and then allocated to Huguang's thief-suppressing troops and Jingying. The output was not much lower than that of the Tang Dynasty. .

The production of arquebuses in the subsequent Ming Dynasty will definitely be higher and higher. With the variable of the pseudo-Tang thief army, the era of large-scale equipment of arquebuses in the Ming Dynasty has been advanced for several years.

In fact, after the Ming Dynasty came into contact with Western and Japanese arquebuses during this period in history, they also started the research and development and imitation production of arquebuses, and finally came up with shotguns, and the output was not small. The first batch of 10,000 pieces Shotguns were produced and equipped for the army within a year.

This is the strength of a great empire. Although their efficiency is lower, they cannot withstand their great heritage. When the Tang Dynasty worked hard to collect craftsmen, but the income was only hundreds of thousands of craftsmen, Ming Dynasty The dynasty can mobilize tens of thousands or even more than 100,000 related artisans to produce at any time.

In this era of manual production, craftsmen are productive forces, and the more craftsmen, the greater the productivity!

Li Xuan is too lazy to think about the future, anyway, the most important thing now is to win Guangzhou!

The artillery battle between the two sides continued, and there would be rumbles of artillery sounds almost every moment. As the artillery battle progressed, the artillery of the Ming army on the city head gradually became misfired.

This does not mean that the heavy artillery of the army was destroyed. In fact, these big guys who move thousands of pounds or even several kilograms are not so easily destroyed. It is the artillery battery and artillery that are destroyed.

To set up the artillery, you need a turret or a gun carriage to fix it. To make the artillery successfully fire the shells, you need artillery.

When the fort was destroyed, the artillery was naturally unusable, and the large number of artillery casualties made the Ming army lack enough gunners to operate the artillery.

Even if the gunners of the Ming Army are not very good, they can still reload and fire. These things are impossible for ordinary soldiers to do.

At the same time that the artillery of Guangzhou Chengtou was gradually suppressed, the artillery units of the Datang King Division also suffered certain losses. However, the quality of the artillery of the Ming Army was too poor to be accurate, so they fought for a full two days. The two artillery battalions of the two 5-jin artillery pieces were destroyed in total, and more than 20 artillerymen were killed or injured.

Seeing that the artillery force at the city head had been successfully suppressed, Colonel Lei Wan, the deputy director of the Operations Department, said to Li Xuan, "Your Majesty, is it time to take the next step?"

Li Xuan nodded slightly: "Let the sappers start to act, and the musket troops and artillery must provide good fire cover!"

Lei Wan immediately nodded and said, "This minister follows the order!"

As the order was issued, the soldiers in the two engineer battalions began to act!

Their main task is to continue to dig the traffic trench from the traffic trench about 50 meters away from the Guangzhou city wall!

According to the battles of Liuzhou and Wuzhou, the generals of the King Division of the Tang Dynasty had already fully issued that during the tough battle, the traffic trenches could effectively cover the advance of their army and avoid a lot of losses on the road.

Using the traffic trench, it is completely possible to go out to a place about 20 to 30 meters away from the city wall and then launch an attack!

Therefore, in the preparatory stage of the early stage, the engineers of the Datang King Division had already dug a large number of traffic trenches. The closer the distance to the city wall, the stronger the counterattack firepower of the Ming army.

So this time, when they were 50 meters away from the city wall, they stopped involuntarily, because if they continued to move forward, the shotguns and even the archers of the Ming army would be able to cause intensive damage to them.

Without the cover of a large artillery force, it is impossible to continue the excavation operation.

Now, with the cover of artillery and even musketeers, engineers and even ordinary soldiers began to dig against the firepower of the Ming army, trying to extend the traffic trenches to the vicinity of the city wall.

Facilitates subsequent landfill moats.

In this process, although engineers and ordinary troops suffered casualties, such casualties were still within an acceptable range, and they were considered relatively smooth. In the case of multiple heads, they were basically close to the moat.

The next step is to fill the moat and establish a passage for the army to attack the city wall!

However, in the stage of burying the moat, although there are traffic trenches for cover, during the burying operation, the soldiers will inevitably be exposed to the multiple firepower of the Ming army. In order to avoid a large number of casualties of the regular army, the troops responsible for filling the moat will It will be the garrison troops.

At the same time, in order to appease these garrison troops~www.wuxiaspot.com~ Li Xuan personally ordered that all garrison troops participating in the landfill battle will receive double pay this month, and the food this month will be compared to regular troops.

And also let the regular army continue to provide them with fire cover!

To a certain extent, this also greatly improved the morale of the garrison, but the high morale was also unable to fill the large number of casualties in the moat stage.

On the first day of the landfill moat operation, that is, the third day of the Guangzhou campaign, more than 300 people were killed or injured by the garrison troops participating in the war, making it the first mass casualty for the King of the Tang Dynasty!

But even though the casualties were not small, the battle continued!

On the fourth day of the Battle of Guangzhou, when Master Wang of the Tang Dynasty paid more than 200 casualties, he finally filled in several sections of the moat.

In this way, the infantry of the Datang King's Division can directly rush over and launch a battle on the city!

On the fifth day of the Guangzhou campaign, according to the predetermined plan, the King of the Tang Dynasty was about to launch a forcible wall-climbing operation to attack the city in the most straightforward and direct way!