"They killed and wounded 20,000 people in their previous two attacks, and this time we waited for the attack, and killed and wounded 350,000 more of them, hmph, I'm afraid they will collapse without a fight!"

Mei Zixiao didn't plan to fight, but before leaving, the top officials of the empire told him that the tasks of the army and the navy are different, the task of the navy is to seize the control of the sea, but the task of the army is only one, that is, to keep the Bowa military base.

As for the counter-offensive, it is not feasible to enter the territory of the Republic of Kean, and as for the direct attack along the coastline to the Gafia Empire, it is even more impossible.

No matter how scummy the army units of the Gafia Empire are, there are hundreds of thousands without mobilization, and there are more than a million troops mobilized at will, just these tens of thousands of people are okay to defend a Bowa military base, as for the initiative to counterattack and kill the Republic of Kean, then don't expect it.

Even if the combat strength of these 30,000 or 40,000 imperial troops exploded and could be pushed all the way through, it would be difficult for the empire to maintain a large-scale offensive of 30,000 or 40,000 troops thousands of miles away, and the counteroffensive would cause the scale of the war to expand.

The empire came to the southwest continent to reap benefits, not to bleed, and the expansion of the war was not beneficial to the empire.

This is also even if Mei Zixiao led reinforcements, so that the number of defenders in the Bowa military base reached more than 40,000, but there was still no idea of taking the initiative to attack.

In the Beauva military base, which is thousands of miles away from the mainland, it is enough to rely on the fortress for defensive operations, and don't do anything else in a mess, it's too risky.

As Mei Zixiao expected, the army of the Gafia Empire was not willing to be straightforward, and in late June, after replenishment, they launched the third general attack of Bowa.

Due to the limited area and the fact that it was impossible to accommodate too many troops to attack at the same time, the Gaphians decided to attack by polemic, with one division coming up in line, and when they were crippled, they were replaced by another division.

In order to prepare for this general attack, they specially drew part of the train artillery and a large number of heavy artillery.

The total number of troops reached 180,000.

The battle officially broke out on June 23, and as soon as it broke out, the defenders of the Great Heng Empire, that is, the Southwest Dispatch Army of the Great Heng Empire, were under tremendous pressure.

Relying on the fortress to defend the battle, and at the same time with the support of the fleet ships and guns, the southwest dispatch army of the Daheng Imperial Army fought so hard, and the Gafia Imperial Army on the attacking side undoubtedly fought even worse.

On the first day of the war, in the fourth hour of the general offensive to be exact, the general of the Imperial Army of Gafia, the commander of the Third Army, Andy Brown. Haldane hurriedly left the headquarters in the rear on horseback and went to the front line of the attack to watch the battle.

Because not long after the start of the battle, the front urgently reported that the 27th Infantry Division, which was subordinate to the 3rd Army, the main attacking force of the left flank front, had lost more than half.

Andy Haldane naturally didn't believe it easily, and he personally commanded the previous two general attacks, but the casualties were certainly heavy, but there was never a situation where an infantry division of the main attacking force was completely disabled within two or three hours of the battle.

However, when he arrived at the front line, he was shocked when he looked at the attacking troops of the 27th Division.

His 27th Division, which had dug in the distance, charged forward, and was attacked by almost countless shells on the way, which was the curved artillery fire of a large number of mortars of the Great Heng people.

On the other hand, the opponent's shells, especially those large-caliber shrapnel shells with huge lethality, can kill and injure all the people in an area after their explosion.

It was not easy to rush through the enemy's artillery interception area, and as soon as they entered the combat area several hundred meters larger, the attacking troops were intercepted by dense heavy machine-gun fire, and the road ahead was covered with all kinds of barbed wire.

In the past, although there were barbed wire and heavy machine guns in this place, there were far from so many!

Holdan naturally didn't know that Mei Zixiao's reinforcements this time were not actually the 30,000 people, but more than 600 eleven-year heavy machine guns, which were specially developed for smokeless gunpowder small-caliber bullets and just finalized last year.

In fact, the combat effectiveness far exceeds that of the previous heavy machine guns.

Even in the army units stationed in the country, there is not much equipment, because of the Liej incident, the Imperial Army has distributed almost all the existing new machine guns to the reinforcements.

At the same time, they also carried a lot of bullets and barbed wire

Coupled with the original heavy machine gun fire and barbed wire in the Bois Fortress, it is enough to wrap the entire Bois Fortress in dense barbed wire.

The firepower intensity in the Bowa military base now is not several times stronger than when only one southwest mixed brigade was stationed before, but more than ten times.

Such dense firepower has never even appeared in the history of the Blue Star War, the Battle of Jingshi in the Unification War of the Great Heng Empire, and several highland battles in the Orr War, their firepower intensity is not worth mentioning compared to the current Battle of Bowa.

Hit by such a dense firepower, coupled with the fact that before the battle, the Gafia Empire underestimated the firepower of the defenders, so much so that after continuing to attack, it was actually devastated.

Patches of Gafia soldiers fell under artillery fire and bullets, so that the battle began for only a few hours, and the Gafia army suffered heavy losses in almost every one of the three main directions of attack.

The 27th Division, which suffered the heaviest losses, suffered more than 6,000 casualties in just three hours of the battle, and more than half of its front-line combat infantry were killed or wounded, excluding non-front-line combat units such as artillery and baggage.

Even shortly after the start of the war, the superiors did not have time to order the offensive to stop, and the commanders of their front-line troops were already forced to stop the offensive and continue the offensive.

When Admiral Haldane saw this, he was forced to give the order to stop the offensive and the troops to hold on to their existing lines and wait for the next order.

At noon, a simple count came out, and from the beginning of the infantry charge at 6:50 a.m. to about 12 p.m., the total number of casualties in the three active directions exceeded 13,000 people.

The casualties were too great, and Admiral Haldane naturally did not easily launch another general attack, but sometimes a purely military decision does not become the final decision.

Not long after Admiral Haldane stopped the third general offensive, the news was transmitted back to the Gafia Empire, and the top brass of the empire believed that in the case that the navy had been practically defeated and part of the mainland was blocked, not to mention that the war was won, but if it wanted to end the war in a more dignified way, then the army side should win and take the military fortress of Beauvois.