Although there are still many enemies in the Tang Dynasty, Zhang Yue and King Jing in the southwest, King Hui of the puppet Ming in the northeast, most of the Tatar tribes led by Duoyan Sanwei, the Chahar tribe of Tatar, and the Tumut department of Altan Khan, and even the Jurchens in the northeast and Korea on the Korean Peninsula are not dealing with the Tang Dynasty.

But among so many enemies, the one that can make Li Xuan pay attention to it in the long run is Altan Khan.

But even Altan Khan, it can only be a long-term opponent, in the short term, Altan Khan can not pose much threat to the Tang Dynasty, but Zhang Yue's supervision is different.

More than 100,000 people in the southwest region, like an incomparably sharp fish bone, stuck in the throat of the Tang Dynasty, if Zhang Yue's supervision is not completely defeated, then it is impossible to talk about the unification of China.

In order to recover the southwest, Li Xuan mobilized more than 150,000 troops and prepared for half a year, in order to pacify the southwest in a war and not give Zhang Yue any respite!

The Second Army, which is the vanguard of the Southwest Campaign, will take the lead in launching the attack, and will smash the resistance of the Governor in the Qizhou and Huizhou areas with an indomitable attitude, paving the way for the subsequent First Army to cross the river and go north to Hanyang.

After the Second Army reached Susong, Li Xuan's imperial car still had not yet arrived in Jiujiang, and Li Xuan was not in a hurry to advance westward this time, and he did not even take the navy's ships to advance, but took a carriage by land.

From Taiping Mansion to Chizhou, and then slowly enter the Jiujiang range!

When the royal drive of the Son of Heaven arrived in Jiujiang, the general attack of the Second Army on Susong was officially launched!

After many days of preparation, the artillery deployment of the Second Army has basically been completed, and the tunnels and trenches used in the attack have also been dug, and the final general attack will be launched at the first order!

Standing outside Susong City, Wang Chaohong looked at Susong City in front of him, although it was not big, but it was like a hedgehog, and the corners of Wang Chaohong's mouth showed a trace of mockery!

These superintendents have been fighting with their Tang Dynasty for so many years, but they have never wanted to grow up, and they were playing to the death in Hunan and Jiangxi back then, and now they are still playing like this.

Don't they know that the current mode of war has changed, and simply defending the city is no longer able to prevent the attack of the artillery troops!

In the era of cold weapons, a high and thick city wall was enough to make the attacking troops suffer!

But now, all you need to do is dig a tunnel and bury enough gunpowder to send the walls into the sky!

The shells of heavy howitzers are enough to inflict a large number of casualties on any defender trying to defend on the city walls!

And a large-caliber long-barreled heavy cannon is enough to directly collapse the city wall!

The Privy Council of the Tang Dynasty has been referring to the Portuguese fortress in Malacca, and began to build a new city defense system 'Fortress', in order to make the artillery and muskets play a greater role in defensive operations.

And this new fortress defense system, there is a very obvious feature, that is, with many protrusions of the diamond-shaped fortress, instead of the previous city walls are some boxy, straight to the city wall, the role of this protrusion, the purpose is to be able to make the artillery and muskets in each salient can be horizontally fired, to achieve the purpose of mutual support.

At the same time, a large number of trenches and tunnels were built inside, and a thick layer of soil was covered.

Trenches and tunnels are used to defend against howitzers, although the Datang Army has not seen such a thing as a short-barreled howitzer on other opponents, but since the Datang Army can be equipped, it is not a problem for other countries to equip it if necessary, so it must be guarded against now.

The current howitzers can basically only explode on the surface of fortifications, and if they have trenches and tunnels, the defense effect is still good.

Soil layer, this one is more interesting, this thing is used to protect against shells, or more precisely, ricochets of solid shells!

Because the soft soil layer has good energy absorption, the kinetic energy of a solid shell hit on it will be quickly absorbed.

But if it hits a hard stone, these solid shells will ricochet, and these live shells will bounce and be extremely lethal!

The Tang Army was very interested in this new type of fortress, and after wanting to improve the design, it began to build this kind of fortress on the northern border to defend against the attack of the northern Tatars.

However, what is more interesting is that it was not the Datang Army that took the lead in adopting the new diamond-shaped fortress defense system, but the Datang Western Company!

Their trading post in Luzon, their trading post in Banten, was already building this kind of diamond-shaped fortress.

Because of the small number of troops of the Datang Western Company, now the entire Datang Western Company, excluding the gunners and sailors serving on the ships, has a total of 1,000 ground troops who can fight on the ground.

Moreover, the characteristics of overseas colonies also determine that it is difficult for Datang Western Company to maintain a large number of troops in all colonies, and it is good for a place to maintain a few hundred troops, and only in very important areas will more than 1,000 troops be deployed.

On the Luzon and Banten side, the Tang Western Company did not have many troops, the Luzon side had 300 people, and the Banten side had more, but it was only 500 people.

In the distant overseas colonies, it was not feasible to rely on only 500 men to resist the counter-offensive of the local natives, and even resist the attack of the colonial forces of other countries, so they were the first to apply this kind of diamond-shaped fortress.

Even though it would take a lot of effort and wealth to build these diamond-shaped fortresses, the investment would be more cost-effective than maintaining a large army.

After all, in the final analysis, Datang Western Company is still a commercial company, even if it has military and trade monopolies, it is still a commercial company in essence, and earning profits is the meaning of its existence, so it is very important to control costs.

Although a small fortress costs a lot of money, the Tang Western Company will not be stupid enough to hire workers from the local area to transport building materials to build the fortress, and the materials can be obtained locally, and the workers who build the city can completely requisition the local natives, and they do not need to pay wages.

What, the natives are unwilling, and the natives are forcing wages?

Ma Dan, are you doing charity when you are a Datang Western Company?

Or do you think that the armed forces of thousands of people of Datang Western Company are decorations!

Also pay salary, think too much about you!

So in this way, if the Tang Western Company built a fortress in an overseas colony, the price it needed to pay was only a little time, and a small number of shells and bullets!

The rest can be completely sourced from local materials, and you don't need half a penny!

However, Datang Western Company can do this overseas, and the Datang Army must not do this at home, and the Datang Army can requisition domestic people to build fortresses, but it will not pay wages or rations?

Keep a bunch of people impeached!

Therefore, to some extent, in fact, Datang Western Company is more free and convenient than the domestic army and navy, and there are not so many restrictions.

The fortress has begun to rise in Europe, and now it has been introduced by the Tang Dynasty in East Asia, and is ready to be carried forward, but the Susong City in front of you, or other cities in the southwest region, is not these fortresses.

If it starts, Wang Chaohong can completely use the old methods: shelling, blasting, and heavy infantry assault!

Under normal circumstances, if such a three-plate axe is cut down, the city will generally be broken!

Before the Tang Army conquered many cities of the Ming Army, regardless of whether it was Changsha or Yangzhou or Anqing, it was basically this routine.

The superintendent on the opposite side also knows this routine, but knowing this routine does not mean that they have a way to deal with it!

In the absence of a fortress, it is very simple for the defending city to deal with this routine, as long as the defender's artillery can suppress the attacker's artillery, then it will basically hold most of it.

But then again, if the defenders have so many artillery, what are they still defending, and it is not even easier to fight a decisive battle in the field!

Although there are a lot of artillery of the Ming army in the city, there are more artillery pieces of the second army!

Once the assault began, the rumbling of artillery was not heard, and one shell after another flew from outside the city to the city, and occasionally a huge cloud of white smoke and explosions were released from the city, which was a grenade fired by a heavy howitzer.

And some of the solid bullets hit the battlements, and the flying rubble harvested the performance of countless people, and some hit the city walls directly!

Especially those fourteen-pound shipborne cannons, each of the huge solid shells accurately landed on the city wall, and they were also concentrated in one place.

The huge kinetic energy of the cannonballs put the small city walls of Susong City under tremendous pressure!

Even if the superintendent has strengthened the thickness of the city wall, the foundation is still too weak, only three or four meters thick of the city wall, which can not stop the continuous bombardment of fourteen catties of artillery.

Not to mention, the Second Army has also prepared two blasting points!

On the first day of the general attack, it was the world of artillery on both sides, and the second army fired 8,000 shells on the first day, directly collapsing several sections of the city wall, but the Ming army defending the city also reacted quickly, and the first time was to start repairs and send additional troops to defend.

In addition, there were still a lot of artillery in the Ming army at that time, and if he rashly launched an attack, although there was a great hope of entering it, the loss was estimated to be not small, so Wang Chaohong chose to wait and let the artillery fight for two more days.

Anyway, in this battle, the Privy Council promised the Second Army that the ammunition, especially the shells, would be absolutely enough!

Wang Chaohong hasn't had a chance to squander ammunition like this for a long time, this time he has a chance, so he has to have a good time, if he can directly extinguish Su Song with cannonballs, he doesn't mind shooting out all the 30,000 cannonballs he brought with him!

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