The war letter stipulated that at noon on 16 May, the Daliang gunboats would cross the Jiangxin line on time to shell Jinghaimen to announce the continuation of the Liang-Chu war, but it did not mean that nothing would be done and nothing would happen before noon on 16 May.

It's already midsummer in May, and the weather is getting hotter and hotter by mid-month, so wearing heavy breathless armor will soon be soaked with sweat. Even well-trained and strong soldiers can't last long under the blazing sun, and their physical strength will be exhausted.

This is by no means a good time to go to war.

The Yangtze River has entered the flood season, but it has not yet reached the peak of the time, the blue and yellow gurgling river water has not yet been completely turbid, and it flows from west to east, as if it has been the case for hundreds of millions of years.

“…… Hey, the Liang army has a battleship out of the estuary! "The soldiers on duty on the west wing of Jinghai Gate, the first to find a large number of warships sailing into the Yangtze River from the Fuxian River estuary on the east wing of Tangyi City on the north bank, saw that the warships of the Liang army did not cross the position in the center of the river to the south, the military attache on duty resisted the urge to beat the war drums, ran down the tower, and rushed to the Northern Army Command Tent set up in the Jinghai Gate City Tower in the Governor's Mansion of the Guards and the Governor's Mansion to inform the Liang army's abnormal movements today.

The Jinghaimen Tower was destroyed by the fire of the Yanyou Palace Change, but it was rebuilt soon after the Palace Change.

The three-storey heavy eaves rest on the top of the mountain, the brick and wood tower is more than four zhang high, is located on the Jinghai Gate that is more than six zhang high, in front of it is a solid urn city, and the open city gate hole of Jinghai Gate is integrated, can hide three thousand soldiers, used to go out of the city to counterattack the enemy; The urn city is strong enough, there is no need to use the moat to isolate it from the outside world, and even the outer part of the imperial city passes through the outside of the urn city, and the river body is sharply narrowed to more than zhang, and then the bridge is built with a solid stone slab to make the inner and outer passages run through.

In addition to the outer hao of the imperial city, there is also an inner hao on the inner side of the city wall.

Because Neihao is usually used as a sewage ditch for discharging domestic wastewater, every time the weather is hot, it is difficult to avoid a sour smell in the imperial city from time to time, and some people have written in the early years suggesting that Neihao be transformed into a culvert, but after the Jinling rebellion, most people in the DPRK and China still feel the need to ensure that the military value of Neihao is not weakened.

However, in terms of military value, in addition to the majestic and magnificent tower, the brick and wood structure is very easy to be destroyed by the whirlwind cannon, and the guards and pro-army governor's palace are also very aware of this, after learning that the Liang army has won the great victory in Jinnan, they began to build wooden sheds on the city wall so that the defenders can avoid the arrows.

Although the interior of the castle tower has also been reinforced, the military attache of the West Tower still has a trembling feeling when he walks in. Although no one had ever seen the divine power of the Liang army's new weapons, it was expected that as long as it was not slightly weaker than the whirlwind cannon, the city tower might be collapsed at any time.

However, from a traditional military point of view, from Jinghai Gate, there are only 1,200,300 steps to the bank of the Yangtze River, and such a narrow space is generally far from enough to land troops and horses to line up and set up troops, let alone have the opportunity to set up heavy cyclone guns.

However, can Liang Jun's smoothbore cannon really be as far as the war book says, and directly attack the Jinghai Gate on the river warship one or two thousand steps away?

The military attache of Xiqiaolou walked into the city tower and saw that all the generals and officials were on the second floor of the viewing platform, and he didn't need to report it, and the generals and officials were staring at the Liang army warships that were slowly persecuting Jiang Xin.

The Liang army's warships were only seven or eight miles away from Jinghaimen, and they could vaguely see the style of the new gunboats in their formation.

The main structure of the new gunboat is not much different from the previous row-of-oar sailing ships in Xuzhou, and there are three masts of different lengths to support the sails raised high in the cabin or deck.

The biggest difference is that the previous row-oar war sailing ship, the bottom two cabins should have sixteen to thirty-two large oars stretching into the river, so that this kind of row-oar war sailing ship can fight at close range and can form a faster impact speed, but although the lower cabin of the new gunboat still retains the black holes, there are no big oars sticking out.

In addition to the iron armor that wraps more areas on the side and deck of the new gunboat, the bed crossbows, scorpion crossbows and other weapons that should be squeezed out of space and deployed on the top of the cabin are all gone, and only on the decks of the bow and stern of the ship, a bottle of unnamed weapons wrapped in linoleum cloth is squatted on each side, which looks very huge.

"Liang Jun won't be untrustworthy, so he will shell Jinghaimen today, right?" Gu Xiongchang asked his father Gu Zhilong, who accompanied Shen Yang, Du Chongtao, Zhou Bingwu, Yang En and others to Jinghaimen to inspect the defense at this time.

Gu Zhilong glanced at his son unhappily, they just came over to inspect it, and they had to retreat to Jingjiangmen after a while, if they didn't even have this bit of courage, how could they expect the generals of Jinghaimen to hold on.

"Liang Jun really wants to be untrustworthy in his words, and he will not engage in such simple tricks if he uses any tricks." Fu Gengwen turned to Gu Xiongchang and said.

Shen Yang, Du Chongtao, Zhou Bingwu, Yang En and the others did not speak, and they didn't seem to hear Fu Gengwen and Gu Xiongchang's words at all, but frowned and stared at the river with a look.

At this time, Gu Zhilong noticed that two warehouse ships broke away from the Liang Army's naval fleet.

The warehouse ship is a ship built in Xuzhou for loading bulk materials on the Yangtze River, and the structure is relatively simple, but a warehouse ship can be enough to hold six or seven thousand stones of grain, cotton yarn, cotton cloth or baled cotton.

Although the hull of the warehouse ship is large, the internal compartments are simply separated, and it is not suitable for transforming into a warship equipped with soldiers.

Gu Zhilong looked at Shen Yang and Du Chongtao suspiciously, looking at their appearance, he didn't seem to be able to guess why there were two warehouse ships alone that broke away from Liang Jun's ship formation.

"It seems that Liang Jun was worried that we did not have enough understanding of the power of artillery, so he deliberately pulled two target ships to the center of the river to bombard, so that we could see the power of artillery first?" Fu Gengwen lowered his voice and pretended to guess and said to Gu Zhilong.

There was a depressing silence in the atmosphere above the city tower, although Fu Gengwen's voice was very low, but Shen Yang, Yang En, Du Chongtao, and Zhou Bingwu could still hear it clearly, and couldn't help but glance back at Fu Gengwen; Fu Gengwen bowed his hand to show that he had spoken in vain.

The development of events soon proved that Fu Gengwen's "guess" was accurate.

At a distance of four or five hundred paces away from the two warehouse ships along the river, the four gunboats in the Liang army's ship formation crossed sideways, and the barrels of the guns stretched out from the hole, and from a distance, it was seen that the four gunboats had only one gun, and at this time, the fire was sprayed away with thick smoke.

In the blink of an eye, it was as if four chain bullets were like giant meteor hammers, and they swept sideways towards the masts of the two barn ships. Everyone standing on the tower of Jinghai Gate, seven or eight miles away, seemed to be able to clearly hear the sound of the giant wooden mast being torn off, looking at the two barn ships from a distance, the mast and half of the sail were directly broken by the chain bullet fired.

As soon as the mast and sail broke, the barn could only drift with the river, and the speed decreased, and then four gunboats fired solid shells from different angles and different distances, destroying the two barn ships.

It was not until the two warehouse ships completely sank to the bottom of the river that the Liang army fleet collected its troops and returned to Tangyi Shuiying Dazhai from the mouth of the Fuxian River, as if all this was just a drill before noon.

There was silence above the tower.

Although Jinghai City was much thicker than the Cangchuan with its outer walls and rammed loess inside, what the Liang gunboats displayed today was their ability to shoot accurately at a distance of 2,000 to 3,000 paces and their ability to kill at a distance of 4 to 500 paces.

Even if they misunderstood the actual power of the cannon firing solid bullets, after all, after the solid bullets directly pierced the wall of the cangship, it seemed that the damage to the cangship was not as good as firing large stone shells from the wind cannon at close range, but they still realized that the smoothbore cannon equipped with the Liang warship was an epoch-making new weapon.

The ability to fire at a distance of two to three thousand paces makes it impossible for a conventional warship to approach from the front; It is no wonder that the new warships of the Liang army have withdrawn all the oars.

With such a large gap in range, the Liang Army's new warships no longer need to consider conducting rapid assault operations at a distance of two or three thousand paces, and the follow-up water battle mainly considers shelling enemy ships in a roundabout way.

And this kind of warfare is used in land warfare, if there is no counterbalance of warfare, two or three thousand steps away under the Liang artillery strike, whether it is a field battle or a defense of the city, it will be at a huge disadvantage.

Without waiting for this signal, dozens of large and small warships that had entered the Yangtze River from the left and right wings of the water camp Dazhai before all returned to the water camp in a gray manner at this time.

Everything in front of him seemed to indicate that the Liang army would launch an artillery attack on Jinghaimen on time tomorrow afternoon, and Shen Yang, Yang En, Du Chongtao, Zhou Bingwu and others all left Jinghaimen, and it seemed that no one was interested in going to the Privy Council or Shangshu Province to discuss the matter of defense, and it seemed that the defense strategy was perfect, and there was no need to discuss it anymore, but only to implement the plan agreed upon yesterday.

When Gu Zhilong returned to the mansion, he was also a little depressed, and Fu Geng Wen called him twice in a row before he came back to his senses and asked, "What did Geng Wen say just now?" ”

"Oh, I didn't say anything," said Fu Gengwen, "the Liang army demonstrated the power of artillery by shelling target ships, and I saw that the generals of Jinghaimen were quite frustrated, they may want to dodge when the Liang army shells, but they are afraid of the punishment of the cardinal government, and they are quite in a dilemma. I also thought that if the soldiers of Jinghaimen could not avoid the shelling, and waited until the Liang army rushed to the beach and landed on the quarry, I don't know how many Xuanzhou disciples would die under the shelling before they could engage the Liang army......"

Gu Zhilong did not succeed Zhou Bingwu as the Privy Council at this juncture, but served as the secretary of the military department, but some of the soldiers and horses of Yongjia were deployed in the quarry rock on the west wing of Jinling City, and the generals and military attaches were mainly from the original Xuanzhou state soldiers who had followed Gu Zhilong for many years.

Even if Gu Zhilong didn't have the mind to fight for power at this time, he always had to think about the old things that had followed him for many years.

Hearing Fu Gengwen say this, Gu Zhilong said: "If the Liang army does not land tomorrow, but simply bombards Jinghai Gate from warships, of course the generals do not know the reason to defend Jinghai Gate and do not know how to dodge - I will mention this matter to Shen Xiang and Zhou Shufu tomorrow......"

8)