When Dai Liliang said that he was loyal to the monarch and served the country, the faces of the officers below were all red, this must not be because of any loyalty to the country, but because of his meritorious achievements, which also means that he was promoted to become rich!

The Datang Army has now passed the stage of blind expansion in the early stage, and in the foreseeable year or two, the size of the Datang Army should remain at about 100,000.

It's not that it's unwilling to expand the army, but there is no way to expand the army, limited by the financial resources and population base of the Tang Dynasty, maintaining a professional army of 100,000 people is almost the limit.

In other words, in the short term, the army will not be expanded, but the emphasis will be on improving the overall strength of the existing troops.

If the army is not expanded, it means that it cannot be promoted as quickly as before, and now it is like climbing up, you have to have the ability, and at the same time, you have to have military merits.

Ability is a personal issue, as long as you work hard, you will always be able to meet the requirements.

But the merits are not so easy to catch, you have to have luck and strength!

Because you have to fight to have combat merits, and the Sixth Infantry Division has to be stationed in the Pearl River Delta, although it cooperates with the navy and continues to fight with the Ming army's naval divisions, but to be honest, the main contribution is the navy, and the army is only cooperating, and it is fighting small-scale battles, so there is not much opportunity to make contributions.

Unlike several units fighting on the Northern Front, there were a lot of Ming troops waiting for them to fight!

Now attacking the Franc man, although the number and scale of the Franc machine in front of him are very small, but the mosquito is also meat, and those big people on the top may not look down on these achievements, but for these middle and lower-level officers at the battalion level and team level, this is an extremely rare opportunity to make war achievements!

Looking at the expressions of his subordinates, Major Dai Liliang also smiled and nodded, and then arrived: "The artillery will fire first, knock down their watchtowers, and the infantry will prepare to advance!" ”

Send another signal to the Navy to get them into action too! ”

Although it is said that the army and navy are not under their own control, and they even look down on each other, and when they compete for military spending, the generals of the two sides even almost draw their swords against each other, but in specific wars, there is still cooperation between the army and navy.

Of course, Dai Liliang, a major in the army, naturally cannot interfere with the actions of the navy, and the navy also has its own battle plan.

Before the war, the army and navy had already coordinated, and the army was responsible for conquering the mirror and clearing the ground of the power of the Francoman, even if they could not be annihilated, they had to be driven into the sea.

As for the navy, it is responsible for naval engagements, containing the enemy's sea forces and covering the operations of the army.

But how the navy fights exactly, that's the navy's business, Dai Liliang doesn't even know the detailed battle plan of the navy, let alone interference!

By lighting smoke and issuing flags, the army sent the message of the official start of war, and the navy received the signal and began to act.

And Dai Liliang didn't care about the navy at this time, in this war, the navy was destined to only play a cooperative role, whether the navy's operation failed or succeeded, in fact, it was harmless, and the focus was on his own army.

Yes, that's right, as in most battles in which the army and navy cooperate, the army generals believe that the protagonist of the war is themselves, and the navy is just playing soy sauce!

As for the admirals, they have almost the same idea, in the eyes of the admirals, the army is only playing soy sauce in this campaign, and is only responsible for driving the enemy into the sea, and after the enemy goes to sea, the navy will be responsible for the main combat missions in the future.

After Dai Liliang's order was issued, the first to act was naturally the artillery unit, which quickly pushed the artillery forward about 100 meters, and then loaded the artillery position that had been constructed in advance.

It didn't take long for those five-pound guns to start firing!

The shells landed accurately on the position of the Franc machine man on the opposite side, and most of them hit the two towers in front, although these towers have not collapsed in a short time, but it seems that they will not last long.

When the artillery of the Tang Army officially opened fire, the rumbling sound of the cannon naturally quickly reached the ears of the Franc machine man on the opposite side.

"These despicable and shameless Tang people have really torn up the treaty and launched an attack on us, we must block them and hit them hard, the glory of great Portugal must not fall in our hands!"

A couple of Portuguese colonial officials shouted so!

"Shoot back, kill them all with our artillery!"

"Kill these damn natives!"

Although the Portuguese had a small military force in Ho Kyo, most of them were temporary or permanent merchants and sailors living here, but their equipment level was not bad, and behind the small hundreds of infantry, they had the support of more than a dozen artillery pieces.

Most of these guns were actually brought down from armed merchant ships, and if they couldn't be defeated, they retreated to the harbor and were supported by the naval guns of the armed merchant ships anchored in the harbor.

As for regular warships, excuse me, they don't actually have any!

In the Far East, neither the Portuguese nor the Spaniards, who had been trying to establish colonies in the Philippines, actually did not have many regular warships, most of them were armed merchant ships.

However, Western-style armed merchant ships were equipped with much more guns than traditional Chinese sailing ships.

If you compare it purely with artillery, in fact, the Tang Army does not have an advantage!

But fighting a war is not simply a battle for artillery superiority, if this is the case, the Ming army does not have to fight, just surrender directly, because the artillery power of the Ming army is even more unbearable.

Dai Liliang also knew that his artillery power was not comparable to the enemy, so he did not risk letting the artillery come forward, and then playing any artillery battle with the enemy's artillery, his artillery was used to deal with the enemy's watchtowers and other improvised fortifications, and at the same time used to deal with the enemy's infantry.

As long as these cannons can clear the way for his infantry battalion to advance, then the next battle will be easier!

An hour later, after wasting a lot of shells, Datang's artillery unit finally smashed the simple defense line that the Franco people had painstakingly built, but they also suffered a lot of casualties when they were hit by the fierce artillery of the Franco, and several artillery pieces were knocked over, and dozens of artillery casualties were killed.

Dai Liliang ignored all this, but decisively ordered the infantry who had already been prepared to attack!

An entire infantry battalion formed a typical line formation commonly used by the Tang Army, and then began to move forward rapidly.

In order to alleviate the casualties suffered in the process of advancing, Dai Liliang also made temporary changes and changed the original standard six columns to three columns, so that he could cover a wider front and give full play to his superiority in troops.

When the infantry began to march in formation, the artillery of the Franco-robot also began to bombard the infantry troops, and the infantry of the Franco-man, who had been dodging the artillery fire of the Tang Army, also began to line up to prepare for the battle.

This is not to say that the Franc Robot is willing to meet the enemy's superior forces with a small number of troops, if they can, they are naturally willing to hide in the castle and fight defensively!

But Haojing, a ghost place, a few months ago, there was still no hair, and they finally used local materials to build a simple line of defense, but now these lines of defense have been beaten to pieces.

So now, they can only defend on their own.

Of course, even if they are defending in formation, it does not mean that they will stupidly take the initiative to rush up to hedge, but still rely on a slope for defensive operations.

If this continues, a typical line-and-shoot battle will break out here and now!

The artillery of both sides continues to fire!

Whenever a shell lands on the infantry ranks on both sides, it can cause more or less casualties!

And a solid bullet falls in the queue, often can directly kill and injure many people, which is also the reason why the queues on both sides are relatively thin, if it is a pure cold weapon of the Ming army, the next dozen rows of thick phalanx combat troops, a shell past, dozens of casualties are possible.

However, whenever there were casualties and shells, the soldiers on both sides would consciously fill the gap, so that the queue in the front row would always be tight.

And after the soldiers on both sides entered a hundred meters of each other, the soldiers on both sides would even be able to see each other's arrays clearly!

After entering the eighty meters, there was also a close queue on the opposite side, and under the cover of more than 100 militiamen, nearly 100 francs of robotic musketeers finally fired the first round of volleys!

At the same time as the guns rang out, many of the officers and men of the 3rd Battalion of the 17th Infantry Regiment who were advancing with guns and spears fell in response, but at this time, the officers who were riding war horses and wandering in the queue shouted one by one while walking: "Keep in formation, keep moving!" ”

It didn't take long for them to endure another round of fire from the Franco-robot musketeers, and inevitably a lot of people fell!

Many of the officers and men of the third battalion were already trembling, but the rigorous training in the past made them form the instinct to obey orders and continue to move forward according to the orders of the officers!

At this moment, the officers also strictly followed the battle plan, did not fire a shot, did not launch a rapid charge, and continued to advance at a normal walking speed, only dozens of archers in the back row fired back, but the command rate of the projectile was originally outrageously low, so the results were very limited!

Sixty meters!

Fifty meters!

Thirty meters!

By the time they arrived only thirty meters away from the Franco, the officers and men of the third battalion had already fallen a lot on the way forward, but at this time, several officers on the front line raised their command knives in unison and shouted:

"All stopped!"

"Salvo ready!"