As the battleship's 148 mm guns began to bombard, the battlefield advantage once again shifted to the Peruvian side, and the ironclad battleships in the coastal waters roared, billowing black smoke rose into the sky, and the trajectory of the shells flying out of the sky one after another, and the sound of rumbling explosions spread on the ground.

Corpses, mud, and all kinds of wreckage were blown up into the sky and scattered like a torrential rain, and the fortresses that had just been captured by the Chilean army became the focus of the battleship's firepower, and the smoke and flames were in the sky, and the Chilean soldiers who had just rushed in suffered heavy casualties, and the survivors were forced to retreat.

Even if the fragile body of human beings is matched with a strong will to war, it is difficult to shake the enormous destructive power brought about by industrial civilization. The pattern of warfare in the Middle Ages is gradually gone, and perhaps on some specific occasions, those millennia-old war experiences can still achieve some results.

But in the face of the iron and fire of industrial civilization, tradition will be swept into the dust.

The new forces of the Iron Head could not change the situation in front of them, because none of them had effective means to fight the warships, the Chilean Navy had been defeated, and the shore defense batteries at the docks were still under the control of the Peruvian army.

How is this battle fought? I can't fight it...... The strength of a battalion rushed into a block with huge casualties, and just let the battleships bombard two or three cannons, and the entire block had already collapsed countless houses.

A reinforced company of more than 100 men had just rushed into the Iquique tax hall when a 148 shell from a distance followed closely behind it, and after the rumbling explosion, no more than twenty or thirty people survived.

Such a tragic sacrifice made the veterans of the Taiping Army unbearable, but victory was just around the corner, and it was just a little bit closer, and no one could say this sentence if they gave up.

Four of the seven fortresses had been captured, the remaining three could not form crossfire, the city of Iquique had become a dead city, and the batteries at the docks had a maximum of two thousand defenders.

The battle has been fought to this extent, and it would be a crime to retreat!

But what can be done if you don't withdraw, the battleships on the sea are an unsolvable problem, when Britain and France attacked the Qing Dynasty, the backward Manchu Green Battalion soldiers and Eight Banner soldiers encountered such an unsolvable problem.

Just being beaten, there is no means to fight back, this kind of taste is not that those who have experienced it will not feel how much they have at all!

The first to hold out were the indigenous soldiers in the Chilean army, who themselves lacked a sense of belonging to the war and were in their hearts one country, whether Chile, Bolivia or Peru.

They have the same language, the same culture, the free movement of people, and the freedom of intermarriage, and it is difficult to form that spirit of hatred and hatred in this kind of folk atmosphere.

No matter what country a city belongs to, it is just a change in the fluttering flag, and as for the profits brought by those lands and minerals, it has nothing to do with them.

This war is purely motivated by money, the amount of rewards after victory is on the surface, the pensions of the dead and wounded are also open and transparent, and they will give you as much loyalty as you give what price you offer.

But there is a limit to how much money you have, and if you find that victory is out of reach, saving your life is the first task.

The first to secretly flee were the sappers, medical personnel and militia in charge of logistics, who were frightened by the killing in the distance, and the overwhelming artillery bombardment shattered their most illusions of victory, they looked at each other and said nothing, suddenly dropped what they were in hand and turned around and ran.

The deserters spread like a virus, and in the end, the soldiers who rushed to the front inadvertently turned around and saw that the great rout had appeared in the rear, and the cowards had already abandoned them.

The courage inspired by the countless victims was suddenly empty!

"Run! We can't win this battle...... The enemy's artillery is too powerful!" soon the deserters collapsed like an avalanche.

Cirapizo angrily shot into the air, but the frightened soldiers ignored the general's threats, and they ran as fast as the grass and mud horses on the South American plateau.

"Coward!" Silapizo snapped three shots to empty the last few bullets left in the revolver, and the deserter in front of him collapsed in a pool of blood clutching his chest.

"Gendarmerie! Prepare to shoot! If anyone escapes, there will be no mercy...... Oops!" Before he finished speaking, a jet-black stone slammed into his forehead, and blood flowed down at once.

"Run! Let's not sell these white people! We're going home......"

In the face of the tide of thousands of deserters, they did not dare to suppress it at all, and once they were killed, these hundreds of gendarmers would not be enough to fill their teeth.

The Chilean army collapsed, and in just twenty minutes, it was in an avalanche situation, and the veterans of the heavenly kingdom on the battlefield looked at this group of grass and mud horses one by one in amazement, and the grief and indignation in their hearts were indescribable.

"Is this all a bunch of fucking pigs? This is a bullshit fight......"

"Go up to the top! Now that you've escaped, those brothers have all died in vain, and they have died in vain!"

"Brother Weng, your death is so worthless, this is not a group of soldiers, they are all a group of pigs!"

Tietoutuo closed his eyes helplessly, he sighed and said, "Don't sacrifice any more senselessly, save us a little vitality......!

Chen Yonglu yelled, "Our brother will die in vain, opposite is Iquique, our future home!"

The iron head Tuo's eyes widened: "Then what do you want me to do? How are you going to deal with the fleet at sea? Not to mention our more than 10,000 people, what was the Heavenly Kingdom like at the beginning? What about the current Manchu court? Hundreds of thousands of troops can't deal with these ironclad fleets!"

"Brothers! War is no longer an era in which you can win with a single blood, and the prime minister is right! The future battlefield is on the sea, and whoever does not have a powerful ironclad fleet will always be bullied!"

"We're just a temporary transfer, we can't beat the enemy's warships, but we can attack inland, all the elites of Bolivia have already let us eat a bite, now let's kill back the horse gun, cross the desert, and kill to the capital of Bolivia!"

"Iquique, we won't give up, one day the prime minister will come to our aid with an invincible ironclad fleet, and then our artillery will be able to bombard these bastards on the sea!

Chen Yonglu burst into tears in his heart, "Who else can we trust? Who else can we count on? Anyway, there are so many old brothers, one dies and one is missing, the eldest brother leaves first, and we will have that day sooner or later...... I hope before I die, I can see the scene of the ironclad ship you said!"

"I hope the Prime Minister Xiao you said won't deceive people......"