The white smoke trail of the cannonball whizzed across the parabola, slamming into the ground, and while kicking up the dust, the gasping effort, the violent explosion swallowed everything around it.

In the midst of the bloody rain, the wounded Qing soldiers were all frightened, wailing and rolling on the ground, away from the shells that dragged smoke trails down from mid-air.

……

Black pillars of smoke rose up in the north and west of Xuzhou, and there were screams of the wounded everywhere, and Abatai, who was located in the west of the city, was even dumbfounded.

At least for a moment, he thought that his artillery team had missed the cannonball, but this thought was fleeting, and the next moment, the cannonballs rained down on the north and west of the city.

"On the river!"

As he watched the smoke smash down in mid-air, he shouted as he sensed the danger of danger, quickly moving his legs and hiding himself behind his mount's ass.

"There are gunboats on the river!"

It must be a gunboat!

As soon as Abatai's shout fell, the iron bullet that fell more than thirty feet away suddenly exploded, and at the moment of the explosion, he could even feel the earth shaking, even through the horse's buttocks, he could still feel the rushing air waves.

"Quick, protect the master!"

The guards around who were taken aback all came over with shields and tried to protect Abatai, but he pushed them away.

"It's all a bunch of rubbish, quick, order the artillery team, go to the river embankment, there are gunboats with bright dogs on the river! Let them blow up the gunboats of the Ming Dog! ”

Abatai, who has experienced a hundred battles, reacted at the first time, and did not forget the Ming Zheng military law.

"Who's in charge of the sentry on the river, cut off his head!"

The Qing army, which was in a hurry to act, did not know their actions, and completely fell into the eyes of others, and a small drone in the air was staring at their movements.

"I actually mobilized the artillery team, and the reaction was quite fast!"

Seeing the movements of the Qing army from the picture transmitted by the drone, Zhu Guoqiang couldn't help but praise it, and then ordered the guards beside him.

"Inform everyone, get as close to the river bank as possible, and continue to reload and shoot!"

When the order was issued, the gunners at the bow of the ship were stuffing shells weighing more than 20 catties into the muzzle of the guns - although the Cao boat was not a warship, Zhu Guoqiang still tried to add arms to the Cao ship, in addition to installing a 12-pounder Napoleon gun gun on the bow of 20 of the ships, he even borrowed the principle of the European "mortar boat" and installed a powerful "mortar gun" in the bow, its prototype was the American M1852 24-pounder mortar gun, which is a weapon that is extremely easy to deploy and move. However, Zhu Guoqiang's mortar cannon is simpler - the barrel is just an ordinary 15-liter high-pressure oxygen cylinder with a cut base, and after simple processing, it is turned upside down on a thick wooden base to become a mortar cannon.

As for the gun mount in the bow, it was only cushioned with thick wood, cables and canvas, and with the ease of arming and manufacturing, Zhu Guoqiang easily installed a mortar gun for every boat in the fleet.

And now, these seemingly humble mortars have come in handy in Xuzhou!

Yesterday, when the fleet had just arrived in Weishan, a righteous man came to report the military situation.

After leading the troops south, Zhu Guoqiang really realized the importance of intelligence in military operations, although he founded the internal guard, but the internal guard was only a sketch, it was impossible to give him much intelligence support, since the southward all the intelligence has come from the "righteous people" to provide, these righteous soldiers are not only ordinary people, but also in the birth of people, as for the local officials...... One by one, they all pretended to be deaf and dumb.

In fact, there are really a lot of righteous people in these years, when guarding Jinan, there are righteous people who are hundreds of miles away to Jinan to send information, of course, their purposes are different, some are for revenge, some are for fame, and some are for profit, but it is undeniable that it is also benefiting from this, so that Zhu Guoqiang will not become deaf and blind.

It was also from their mouths that Zhu Guoqiang knew the movements of the Qing army, knew that Abatai had crossed the Yellow River, and learned that they went south along the south bank of the Yellow River.

It is precisely because of this that Zhu Guoqiang made the decision to go south from Xia Village, through Jingshan and enter the Yellow River from the Zhenkou Gate. From here, you can not only go to Xuzhou, but also go down the river to the east into Huai'an, and the distance is almost far from the Huitong River into the Yellow River through the Zhihe River, and then go to Huai'an.

But the Zhenkou Gate is on the other side of Xuzhou!

Fortunately, Abatai did not deploy troops on the north bank, so the army easily crossed the Zhenkou Gate, entered the Yellow River, and found that Xuzhou City was already in danger through the drone, Zhu Guoqiang immediately ordered the fleet to arrive in a line and line up to Xuzhou with the bow of the ship, and shelled the Qing army outside Xuzhou.

It's just that the mortar cannon not only has a limited accuracy, but also a limited range.

But even so, in a short period of time, hundreds of shells weighing more than 20 catties fell on the heads of the Qing army, still caught them off guard, and the power of those shells loaded with a few kilograms of nitrate was by no means comparable to the black powder shells, which immediately set off a bloody storm in the middle of the Qing army.

This kind of blow beyond the times is undoubtedly fatal for the Qing army, especially compared with the ordinary retreat field artillery, the mortar cannon that does not need to be reset has an extremely fast rate of fire, and with the efforts of the gunners, it even easily hit the firing rate of eleven or twelve per minute - this rate of fire is not even inferior to the "Miss 75" hundreds of years later. Of course, in addition to the short barrel, the whole cartridge integrated with the propellant and projectile in the canvas bag also played an extremely important role.

"It's about five or six seconds a shot, it's a bit slow!"

Looking at the gunners in the bow sweating like rain and desperately reloading them, Zhu Guoqiang, who was holding a stopwatch in his hand, endured the joy in his heart and pretended to say.

"Tell the soldiers, shoot the cannon faster, the faster the cannon is fired, the more Jiannu will die!"

When the gunners who were loading the artillery shells heard this, they all shouted one after another.

"Please rest assured, this time the little ones will definitely beat Jiannu and cry for their mother!"

While the gunners were loading, the boatmen were also trying to keep the hull stable, trying to aim the bow in the direction of Xuzhou City. At the same time, while the gunners were flying sideways and stuffing the shells into the barrels, the gunners at the tail of the guns quickly pierced the gunpowder bag through the pilot hole with an iron drill, and the moment the ignition rope was stuffed in.

"Dongyu artillery team!"

Suddenly, the shouts of the masthead lookers echoed over the heads of the crowd. Everyone looked up and saw a burst of Qing artillery on the river embankment! The muzzle of the black hole pointed directly at the Yellow River!