Although the city wall of Liping Mansion is thicker than the city wall of Xingquan Mansion, strictly speaking, it is still only a small city in a remote place, and its urban area is not much larger than a county in the prosperous land south of the Yangtze River, and its city wall is not as thick and tall as the city wall of the northern border city.

The walls of such a small city are actually powerless in the face of artillery and other siege weapons.

Solid bullets hit the city wall, although there will be no problems in the city wall in a short time, but the cracks on the city wall are more and more, and no one knows if the city wall will collapse completely if the bombing continues.

Once the city wall collapses, it will be difficult to block the pseudo-Tang thief army.

The defenders of the Ming army at the head of Liping Mansion were worried, while the new troops of the Tang Dynasty outside the city were observing the shelling with great interest, and the middle and senior officers were discussing with each other from time to time.

Obviously, they were also curious about the effect of this shelling.

Because this attack on Liping Mansion is the first formal siege operation since the establishment of the Tang New Army, and it is also the first time that artillery is used in siege operations.

In the previous battles between the Tang New Army and the Ming Army, although they also successively conquered the two county towns of Zhengtai County and Lianhe County and the capital city of Xingquanfu, as for Bailin County, it was attached to Guo County, and the county government was located in the city of Xingquanfu.

But the three places conquered, in fact, there was no large-scale regular siege warfare, Zhengtai County has fought twice, the first time was Su Jiakang used Zhengtai County as a temptation, so there were not many Ming troops in Zhengtai County at that time, and the second time was that Zhengtai County had been surrounded by the new army of the Tang Dynasty for several months, and most of the troops gathered by Su Jiakang had been annihilated.

Therefore, the two attacks on Zhengtai County actually did not encounter much resistance.

The same is true for the attack on Xingquan Mansion, the troops of Xingquan Mansion were brought out by Song Zhiwen, and all of them were buried in the two Lanjiang battles, and later there were people in the city who took the initiative to surrender and opened the city gate to welcome the new army of the Tang Dynasty into the city, so the attack on Xingquan Mansion, in fact, there was no large-scale offensive and defensive operation, the only battle was the outbreak in the direction of the city gate and the clearing operation after the new army of the Tang Dynasty entered the city.

It was a little more regular to conquer Lianhe County, but at that time, Lianhe County was isolated and helpless, and at the same time, there were not many regular troops of its own, and in the face of the Fifth Infantry Battalion led by Wang Danxu and other affiliated troops at that time, it was impossible to resist at all.

If you analyze the battle examples of the Datang New Army in such detail, you will find that the Datang New Army has really not fought even a large-scale siege operation in a dignified manner.

And this attack on Liping Mansion is very likely to be the first large-scale formal siege battle encountered by the new army of the Tang Dynasty.

This is the first time to play this kind of regular siege operation, many officers up and down the first step corps, and even Hao Bonian himself are a little nervous, although they guess that the strength of the enemy army in the city cannot be too strong, but they still made the most adequate preparations.

For example, the shelling has not stopped since noon, and the three 500-pound guns continue to fire at a slow rate of fire.

At present, the rate of fire of this suppressive artillery bombardment and the emergency rate of fire in battle are one in heaven and one on earth.

At present, the artillery of the Datang New Army is almost not much different from the bronze front-loading artillery used in the next few centuries, and at the same time, in order to increase the rate of fire, the gunners of the Datang New Army have been training day and night, in order to turn many actions of firing artillery into the instinct of the gunners.

For example, some people specialize in loading artillery shells, some people specialize in loading propellants, some people specialize in cleaning the chamber after firing, and some people specialize in resetting the artillery after launching.

When a cannon is fired, it takes a full eight gunners.

With so many people working together, the rate of fire has been greatly increased.

However, in addition to the cumbersome or simple firing process, the more important thing that limits the rate of fire of a gun is the quality of the gun itself.

After the artillery is fired continuously and rapidly, its barrel is continuously subjected to huge pressure and high temperature, and the quality requirements for the barrel are quite high, and the barrel of the gun with poor quality is easy to explode.

Unless the most critical moment of the battle, the artillerymen will completely ignore whether it will explode or not, and in peacetime operations, especially in the current only suppressive firing mission, the artillerymen will greatly reduce the rate of fire of the artillery in order to protect the artillery.

It often takes five or six minutes to fire a shot, and after half an hour of continuous fighting, it will stop for half an hour.

Therefore, the artillery of the new army of the Tang Dynasty outside the city of Liping Mansion always fired a few shots at intervals, but this intermittent shelling was endless, from noon to near late afternoon, and the city wall was also damaged by continuous shelling.

The gunners of the Datang New Army naturally would not fire their artillery indiscriminately, let alone hit a point in the east or a point in the west, they were all staring at one place to fight.

Moreover, the distance of more than 300 meters is completely within the effective range of these guns, and the hit rate can be controlled within a considerable range.

The same part of the city wall was constantly shelled, and this time there were too many of them, and naturally there would be more serious damage.

For example, near the north side of the East City Gate Tower, one of the sections of the city wall with a width of no more than five meters was concentrated by the two artillery pieces of the Tang New Army from the beginning of the shelling, and was beaten from noon to evening, with countless bullets, and the shells falling under the city wall can almost be piled up into a small hill, and this section of the city wall is also because of the concentrated shelling, first the outer wall fell off, and then the wall cracked, and finally began to collapse in a small area.

Although it has not completely collapsed, if it continues to be shelled like this, it will collapse sooner or later.

This situation made the defenders in the city panic, but the generals of the new army of the Tang Dynasty outside the city were a little dissatisfied.

It had been fighting all afternoon, and hundreds of shells had been fired from the front and back, but it was still not able to destroy the enemy's walls.

This reminded Hao Bonian of the 800-pound guns in the artillery barracks.

"The power of these 500-pound artillery is still too small, if we had a few 800-pound artillery, this afternoon, their city wall would have collapsed!" Huang Xueren, deputy regiment commander and commander of the 1st Infantry Battalion, sighed.

Don't look at the difference between 500 catties and 800 catties, it seems that there is only a difference of 300 catties, but the power of the two is actually very different.

Hao Bonian said: "Now there are not a few 800-pound guns on the side of the artillery battalion, I'm afraid it will take a month to be able to make up an 800-pound artillery team!" ”

"By then, we will be able to use these 800-pound artillery, and the workshop of the Ministry of Industry is working on 1,300-pound artillery, so maybe we will be able to use these 1,000-pound guns at that time!" When Hao Bonian said this, he couldn't help but look forward to the Ministry of Industry being able to provide those thousand-pound heavy guns as soon as possible.

If there were those 1,300 pounds of heavy artillery, I am afraid that the city wall of Liping Mansion in this district would collapse if it could not stop a few cannons!

And Hao Bonian, who was outside the city of Liping Mansion, did not know that now the artillery workshop established by the Ministry of Industry of the Tang Dynasty in the city of Xingquanfu had already started the trial production of 1,300 catties of artillery, and the first prototype gun had already been built, waiting for the live fire test.