Didn't make the king wait too long.

When the bright sun illuminated the surface of the river dazzlingly white, the first warship appeared in his field of vision. Then the second, and then the third, and the hundredth, until Wang You's vision was filled with white sails.

At the end of the field of vision, where the river turned a corner, the mountain blocked his view, so that he did not know how many enemy warships were still on the other side of the mountain.

He swallowed with some difficulty, and the enemy was afraid that there were not tens of thousands.

"Beat the drums of war and get ready for battle!" His fingers pinched vigorously in his palm, and he tried hard to retract the soul into his body, and at this moment, he couldn't show half a bit of timidity.

There are many enemies, but the place where they can land is the place in front of them. Looking around at the heavily guarded position, he breathed a sigh of relief.

It's not that it's not without the power of a war.

Dozens of warships suddenly accelerated, broke away from the huge fleet, and sailed up the river all the way. On top of the battleship, Li Hao raised the monocular in his hand and carefully observed the enemy's defense at the scheduled landing site.

As a veteran of many years, he still greatly appreciates the arrangement of his opponents, and it can be said that if he follows the conventional style of play in the past, he is only afraid that his side will have to pay a great price on the beachhead.

He glanced back at the four swarthy guns on the broadside.

But now it's different.

The advent of artillery will dramatically change the way of fighting.

I think that when Li Xiang began to organize people to develop gunpowder, they never imagined that this kind of thing, which seemed to have no effect, would eventually develop such a terrifying weapon.

Thinking about the swarm of bees, thunderbolts, and things that everyone jokingly called the Sky Monkey based on gunpowder at the beginning, Li Hao couldn't help laughing.

The development of this thing cost money like running water, and there were several deaths along the way, and many people were opposed to this. But as the power grew, the opposition slowly faded.

Accidents are still happening, but the power of explosions is getting bigger and bigger, from the initial accidents were basically fires, to the later accidents were mostly due to violent explosions, and the voices of opposition are basically gone.

Because everyone sees its potential power.

But the appearance of artillery still refreshed everyone's cognition again.

And this was still successfully developed under the auspices of Childe. This thing has the power it has now, and in addition to burning a lot of money, there are really a lot of people who have died!

Touching the cold cannon body, Li Hao thought to himself.

However, all this is worth mentioning, and the lives paid in the process of development will be exchanged for more lives on the battlefield to be saved, of course, this is for their own side, for the enemy, there will only be greater casualties.

"The battleship prepares to shell enemy positions. The assault boat is ready to carry soldiers to land on the beach! After giving this order, Li Hao glanced at an artillery officer standing beside him, and then took a step back.

Next, it depends on the ability of these professional people who operate artillery every day.

Ten warships lined up in the river, and one by one the iron anchors were thrown into the river, securing the ships.

The artillery officer knelt down on one knee behind a cannon, where he was squinting and raising his fingers for a while, and then he stood up, slashed down with his right hand, and said simply: "Fire!" ”

With a loud bang, a puff of smoke rose from the deck, and the whole ship fell backwards, and a black projectile came out of its chamber, crossed the river, crossed the river beach, and smashed on the embankment with a bang, and in Li Hao's telescope, he could only see the deep hole that was smashed out by the cannonball.

"It's close!" He shook his head.

This is a calibration shell, and after the first shot landed, all the gunners on the warship began to calibrate the elevation angle of their guns according to the landing point of this shell.

On the embankment, when the loud noise came, the king was startled again, and watched the black projectile cross the distance of several miles and slam heavily on the embankment, and he was startled again, but then nothing happened.

Somewhat frightened, he immediately sent someone to dig out the black projectile that was deeply embedded in the embankment and sent it to his eyes, and when he saw the iron ball that was still a little hot in blood, the king was silent again.

If this fucking rubbed together, it would have killed him in no time.

What kind of weapon is this and why is it so long? He looked back at the dense trebuchets behind the embankment, and suddenly had a bad premonition in his heart.

The trebuchet was arranged behind the embankment, and the range of the whole distance was only to hit the shallow water above the river, and it could not reach the enemy warships on the river at all.

"Beware of enemy attacks!" As soon as Wang You's words fell, a loud rumbling sound like thunder sounded again on the surface of the river.

But this time, it was no longer a sound, but a continuous sound.

Above the river, a thick fog rose so that the king could no longer see the ships.

But the trajectory of the iron ball that broke through the air was so clear.

They drew a red-fiery arc in the air and fell behind the embankment.

What they attacked was the numerous trebuchets behind the levee.

Compared with the silence of the first projectile, after the dozens of projectiles that flew over this time landed, a violent explosion suddenly sounded again.

The iron balls actually exploded.

Where it fell, the wooden trebuchet collapsed as if it had been hit by a strong wind and waves, and then burst into flames, and the soldiers near the trebuchet were swept to the ground as if they had been cut leeks.

Wang You's mind went blank.

After the whole embankment, it was all messed up at once.

The Lingnan soldiers, who had never seen such an attack, were stunned, panicked, and scared.

Is this Grandpa Lei manifesting?

The dead soldiers were scattered, the wounded soldiers screamed, the frightened soldiers ran wildly, and of course, there were some people standing there carved in wood and clay, not because they were bold, but because they were so frightened that their feet could not move.

The unknown is always the most frightening.

While there was still chaos on the embankment, the second round of shelling began again above the river.

Ten battleships loaded with artillery lined up, and for each attack, forty shells flew in unison. Not every shell is a flowering shell, and there are solid shells inside. And these solid shells mainly attack those trebuchets.

Not far behind Wang You, Teng Jian, who was watching the battle above the head of Ezhou City, reacted like Wang You at this time, lonely and helpless, they really couldn't think of any effective way to resist such an attack from their opponents.

After a long time, Teng Jian finally reacted.

"Come, go and tell General Wang again at once, withdraw and withdraw to the city."

He said in a trembling voice.

Above the river, the third round of shelling began, and this time, their target was the embankment, on which there was a dense network of strong crossbows and Lingnan soldiers scurrying around.

"Assault boats rush to land!" Li Hao gave the second order with satisfaction, and at the same time patted the artillery officer vigorously: "Good fight, go back and remember it!" ”

The artillery officer grinned.

Hundreds of small boats rowed out from behind the battleship, each carrying eight or ten soldiers, their oars fluttering, and the boats were like arrows from the string, speeding towards the shore. In a moment, they reached the shallow water, at this time, it should have been those trebuchets behind the embankment to play a blocking role, killing and injuring a large number of opponents in the shallow water, but now, these trebuchets have been blown up to the ground, and the remaining few are still barely firing, but the sparse stone shells are almost no threat to these ships that have landed on the beach.

The boat came out of the water, and after a long glimpse of the river beach, it stopped, and the soldiers on board quickly rolled over from the boat, and took their shields, spears, and broadswords from the boat, and quickly approached the embankment.

Above the river, the artillery did not fire again, the battleship slowly sailed away in the direction of the upstream, and a large number of merchant ships transporting soldiers took the place of the battleship and approached the river beach.

Sailing into the shallow water, from the merchant ships, the soldiers rushed into the river, flowing with the water, approaching the embankment.

Wang You's soldiers on the river embankment were completely chaotic at this time, some were running, and some were still thinking about resisting, and the large number of crossbowmen originally arranged, less than half of them could play an effective role at this moment, and the casualties caused to the Northern Tang soldiers who rushed to the beach were extremely limited. On the contrary, it was the thistles they had previously placed on the river beach that played some role, allowing many Northern Tang soldiers to be recruited.

But compared to the Northern Tang soldiers who rushed ashore, this level of killing and injury is not worth mentioning at all.

The king who had returned to his soul looked at the Northern Tang soldiers who rushed across the river beach and grabbed the embankment, and then looked at the chaotic and completely lost the effective formation of his own soldiers, sighed, turned around and left.

In less than an hour from the arrival of the Northern Tang warships on the battlefield to the defeat of Wang and his escape back to Ezhou City, the first line of defense arranged by the Southern Alliance army collapsed.

There were still many soldiers who returned to the city, except for those who died, who fled to where in a panic, and the Lingnan soldiers who fled back to Ezhou with the king, there were still more than 3,000, but they lost all the trebuchets, crossbows and a large number of arrows.

The soldiers of the Northern Tang Dynasty began to pack up these captures without hurry, dismantled them one by one, and then transported them to the city of Ezhou and reassembled.

In the evening, all the main forces of the Northern Tang Dynasty went ashore, and they also transported more than ten artillery pieces to the city of Ezhou.

Ezhou City Insurance, Zhu Youzhen suffered a lot last time here. However, the Northern Tang army was obviously not ready to fight with ants, and they were ready to use artillery to knock directly on the door of Ezhou.