Under Yantai Fort, the sound of cannons shook the sky, arrows and stones flew sideways, and a large group of masters who were forced up by the Qing army rushed over like locusts.

The moat was less than a hundred and fifty meters from the city walls, a distance that was already within the range of some short-barreled howitzers at the head of the city. Therefore, they quickly accepted the ravages of two 8-pounder howitzers above the frontal walls. The explosive shells fired from the howitzers exploded in the air above their heads, a force far more lethal than those solid iron balls, and groups of masters were knocked down by the shells, and then trampled mercilessly by those behind them again.

The masters began to accelerate violently after entering a distance of fifty meters from the trench, shouting meaningless syllables in their mouths and rushing forward with sandbags on their shoulders. The fastest group of people were about to throw the sandbags on their shoulders towards the river, but the people behind them crowded and smashed them into the moat along with the sandbags. The icy water quickly soaked them through, and they wanted to make a sound, but their mouths were full of muddy water, and they wanted to climb ashore, but above them were sandbags that rained down and people who fell from time to time. Soon, the first group of masters to fall were gradually submerged by the river, and together with the sandbags, they became the filling of the trench.

The ditch was gradually filled, the riverbed was raised, the river overflowed everywhere, and the ground became muddy after countless people trampled on it. The moat at Yantai Fort was only five or six meters wide and only two meters deep, so the more than 200-meter-long trench facing the southern city wall was quickly filled in by the masters who rushed over. Of course, they also paid the price of blood, in the chaotic and disorderly operation that lasted for more than an hour to fill in the trenches. More than 1,500 people died when they trampled on each other, those who were shot by guns, and those who fell into the river by pushing and falling into the river. If you add some people who scattered and fled but were chased and cut to the ground by the Qing army's horse team, the number of people is more than 2,000.

It took 2,000 lives to fill a short trench, Dong Xueli felt a little frightened, nearly half of them were killed by the artillery of the yellow-clothed thief army on the east coast. By the time the troops of themselves and others began to charge and attack the city, God knows how many lives they would have to take. Dong Xueli clearly saw that the artillery team of the Yellow Bandit Army on the east coast was not doing its best, or that it had not yet entered the area where all of their artillery could exert its maximum power.

Dong Xueli squinted his eyes at the slightly folded section of the city wall on the front of Yantai Fort, as well as the prismatic polyhedral protrusions with city towers on each side, and felt that his heart was constantly sinking. He has been fighting for more than 20 years, and he is not the kind of villager who has no knowledge. He knew very well that the yellow-clothed thief would place his artillery on those two salient towers. Then the Qing army that is attached to the ant and besieging the city will inevitably be attacked from three directions at the same time. In fact, whether it is attacking the city wall or attacking the salient towers first, the attacking Qing army will inevitably suffer from the enemy, which is extremely unfavorable to the attacker.

I'm going to have to explain it here this time. Dong Xueli looked at these subordinates who came here from birth and death in Henan with him. The uneasiness in my heart is getting stronger and stronger.

……

"Boom! Rumble! The rumbling cannon resounded throughout Yantai Fort.

First two 18-pounder long-barreled cannons. This was followed by four 12-pounder long-barreled cannons. The solid iron balls fired by these cannons every two minutes splashed only a few small waves in the crowd of Qing troops, and then quickly disappeared into the surging crowd.

"The Qing army is really anxious, and there is still an artillery battle in the morning. In the afternoon, the ants will be attached to the siege of the city. The siege equipment is not very sufficient, so they rushed over. Li Wenchang, the captain of the Yantai Fortress garrison, looked at the dense flow of Qing soldiers in front of him and said speechlessly.

"It's useless to have more siege equipment. The width of our city wall is so large, and we can't expand it if there are too many. Stuff a bunch of people over, and that's to deliver food. Mo Ming, who was wearing a bearskin coat, slowly paced around the city, and the orderlies and staff officers behind him had been persuading him to go to the next city tower to observe the enemy formation, but the city was still too dangerous. However, Mo Ming believed that the Qing army could not cause him any harm at all, so he refused to go down to the city.

"At present, these siege equipment should all be brought by them, and they should have been prepared from the beginning. In this way, the news of the lack of food in the Qing army is not entirely a rumor, there should be no major problems with food in a short period of time, but it can't support it for a long time. Mo Ming looked at the Qing army camp that had been going out far away from the city, and continued, "You see that they were in a hurry to repair the camp and fortifications on the first day, and after the arrival of the main force, the camp was not completely completed, so they started to attack directly, and it is really enough to rush like this." What does it mean to have an unstable foothold, this is it. It's a pity that he calculated the huge disparity between the enemy and our forces, and we don't have the ability to attack, so that's how it is. Well, now all the people who come up are cannon fodder sent to death, and the real Manchurian Eight Banners, Han Eight Banners, and even the Jiaozhou Town Army led by the Han Eight Banners have never seen a human figure. This battle, let's fight slowly. ”

The Qing army that rushed over was still dominated by the newly surrendered Ming and Shun army foot soldiers, and the unarmored auxiliaries carried a long ladder and walked forward like ants braving artillery fire. They are not fast, as they need to maintain enough body to be able to charge quickly after entering the last hundred or so meters of fire-intensive area. Behind each ladder was a large group of soldiers, and the proportion of these people wearing armor was not high, and even if there were, most of them were wearing tattered leather armor, cotton armor, and iron armor were almost invisible. At the front were a group of strong men with shields and tomahawks on their backs, as if to clear the barbed wire and other obstacles set up by the East Coasters. But they probably didn't realize what the barbed wire ahead of them was. Perhaps it will take them to pay a great price in casualties before they understand how much trouble such a gadget can cause to their offensive operations.

Due to the distance, Mo Ming couldn't see the expressions on their faces, but it was conceivable that they should be in a state of fear, hesitation, and nervousness at the moment. The origin of these people is complex, and their combat effectiveness is generally not high, including the squire armed in Denglai and the second place, the bandit armed by Zhao Yingyuan and other troops who have been recruited, and the Shun army of the Ming army who have surrendered. What they have in common is that their training level is poor, their equipment is poor, and their morale is poor, and among them, the more than 3,000 people in Dong Xueli's department may have the strongest combat effectiveness.

After all, Dong Bu had just fought with Dashun on the battlefield in Henan, and although Dong Bu lost more than 1,000 elite veterans in the Mengxian Breakout Battle, nearly 2,000 people still managed to escape. Later, after he incorporated and annexed some local miscellaneous armed forces in Henan, his strength swelled to more than 3,000 people, which was one of the more capable troops in this Qing army.

But what's the use of being able to fight, as the so-called relatives and relatives are different, even if you can fight better than Li Shutai's Han Eight Banners, the Manchu masters will not treat you as a human being. Why? Because you're not even someone else's coated minion, why do people look down on you? And you Dong Xueli is not like Ke Yongsheng of the Jiaozhou Town Army, he is an authentic Han Eight Banner, and the officers and backbones of the Jiaozhou Town Army are also from the Han Eight Banners, this is the descendant of the Eight Classics. You Dong Xueli is still far behind them, you can only be cannon fodder, at most a high-level cannon fodder, you can be qualified to be put into the battlefield at the most critical time, and you don't have to be sent to the front line to consume it in vain at the beginning.

The 12-pound solid iron ball smashed into the marching Qing army column with a scream of air. From time to time, a cannonball hit the auxiliary team carrying the ladder, and the bouncing shells could often take the lives of several people at once, and then the Qing army auxiliaries carrying the ladder suddenly lost their center of gravity and fell to the ground. What's more, the 18-pounder artillery crew on the tower of Jiacheng stuffed a chain bullet that hit the mast of a cavalry or ship into the barrel, and then picked up the Qing army carrying the ladder to fight, and one of the several rounds would inevitably hit, beating the Qing army column to the point that the people were on their backs, and the gunners on the east bank of the city laughed when they saw this.

The width of the frontal battlefield of 200 meters was crammed into a full 2,000 men, and they were faced with six long-barreled heavy guns that fired non-stop. However, this is not the most tragic moment for them, when they enter the area of three or four hundred meters, six howitzers will join in one after another to fire explosive bombs at them, and then the death will increase dramatically, and it is still very questionable whether their morale can withstand this kind of blow.

You know, the striking power of 12 light and heavy guns is not covered. Especially in such a situation where the width of the frontal battlefield is small, the density of the attacker's forces has to be greatly increased, and the casualties will also be doubled. According to the firing frequency of the artillery of the East Coast, it is about ten minutes to cool down every ten shells, which means that each cannon can fire ten shells within half an hour (in fact, the first twenty minutes), and 12 guns are 120 shells. Assuming that the hit rate is 60% (in fact, it is more than that, because the Qing army is dense, the width of the battlefield is small, and the hit rate will increase significantly the closer the distance), about 72 shells can hit the enemy every half an hour, considering that about half of the explosive shells fired by the six howitzers fail to explode, then there are about 50 shells that can really kill the enemy every half hour. These more than 50 rounds included solid iron ball shells, explosive shells, and even a small number of chain shells and grapeshot shells, which were conservatively estimated to kill and wound more than 500 Qing troops. In fact, judging from the actual combat effect, it is likely that there will be more than that, and the actual result should be 20%-30% greater than this, that is, more than 600 people.

The damage was horrific enough to break a force of two thousand men on the spot. Considering that the Qing army was starting from a distance of two thousand meters, which was another resentment, because otherwise they would not have been able to avoid the continuous attack of the two 18-pounder guns at the head of Yantai Fort - and at the same time, in order to ensure that they could not move too fast in order to ensure their body and formation, it would normally take them about seven or eight minutes to rush under the city wall.

But the reality was far from so rosy, and due to the crowding and the chaos caused by the shells on the east bank, it could take them about ten minutes to actually rush to the barbed wire fence under the walls of Yantai Fort - although it was more likely that they would break up in the middle of the process. In this case, they would still lose about 300 men on the way to attack, a number that no chaotic village warrior force could bear. (To be continued......)