Sure enough, the most important thing on the battlefield that cannot be underestimated is the determination of the enemy.

After the rout was contained, the frenzied commander of the Qing army sent out today's fourth wave of charging troops. Thanks to the tireless efforts of this team, which numbered about 1,000 people, the last obstacles of the East Coasters were also cleared or destroyed. Looking at the wooden stakes burning in the blazing firelight, both sides knew that the real siege battle was next. In order to qualify for this siege battle, the Qing army lost a total of nearly 2,000 soldiers and more than 3,000 masters in the past few days, which makes people sigh at the bloody process of this projectile land in Yantai Fort. It's like a life-devouring monster, a flesh mill, constantly wringing fresh humans into all sorts of corpses, and even a man with thick nerves can't be indifferent to such casualties.

The Qing commanders were embarrassed these days, because they probably hadn't been able to kill even a single soldier on the east coast, but they had already paid the price of 2,000 casualties. Although the dead are all cannon fodder, everyone's faces are still very gloomy, and the prospects for this battle have changed from more optimistic to less optimistic. How many more lives will it take to conquer this tiny castle? Where did this group of people come from? Why did their artillery shoot so far and so accurately? Why are there so many types of cannons and so much lethality? No one could answer.

Many people couldn't help but be frustrated at the thought that they hadn't even seen the faces of the enemies who had been killing them with great efficiency. Even those soldiers of the Eight Banners and the Eight Banners of the Han Dynasty who served as the supervising team, although they have not killed or injured a single person in the past few days. But morale has also inevitably suffered.

After four successive waves of offensives were routed, the morale of the Qing army was also weakened. In addition, it was almost noon, and everyone was a little hungry. The two sides stopped the fight very tacitly. The Qing army withdrew to the camp, and the artillery of the people on the east bank also stopped firing. The land was the largest, and the stomach was the largest, and the soldiers on the east coast ate in batches in the public canteen, where wheat cakes, salted fish, and roast potatoes and pork were used as a wartime meal. Officers and veteran non-commissioned officers can dine in the officer's cafeteria, where fresh vegetables are served, including moose, roe deer, wild boar, and salmon meat taken from the ice cellar. There was wine and beer, and even a small amount of coffee beans (only for officers from the rank of second lieutenant and above), and the conditions were quite good.

As for their opponents, the Qing army. Because it was wartime, they would also be well treated with three meals a day, but their staple food would be corn mixed with sand, black beans fed to the horses, and a very small amount of pickles to supplement the salt. And this kind of crude food that the East Coasters will send their logistical staff to the gallows when they see it. For those Ming soldiers who surrendered. It's already unimaginable high-class treatment, they didn't even have enough to eat before.

In this way, the battlefield fell silent again, and the silence seemed to be just an ordinary early spring afternoon.

At noon, a light snow fell in the sky, and the north wind gradually increased, but this could not stop the fiery fighting passion between tens of thousands of people on both sides in the Yantai area.

After lunch, the Qing army launched a new offensive. It shows their urgency. Their strength this time was about 1,500 men, carrying several ladders. At the forefront were a number of sword and shield bearers, who carried thick shields to protect against bows and arrows, but not from the lead bullets fired by muskets.

Zamparini's 104th Army Company was stationed at the southern city wall. This is an irregular salient, the area is not very large, and the area of the six guns placed can only accommodate a maximum of four hundred people. At this moment, the 104th Company of the Army also sent only 120 musketeers to the castle tower, and in addition, 250 soldiers from the 5th Squadron of the 1st Brigade of the Advance Brigade were concentrated here. On the upper floor of City B, another 120 musketeers from the 104th Company were deployed, as well as 250 men from the 4th Brigade of the Advance Team. In the middle of the city wall, the strength was relatively strong, in addition to the 150 musketeers of the supplementary company, there were also 500 men in the 3rd and 6th squadrons led by Junior, the captain of the first brigade of the forward team.

In addition, Pei Qin, deputy captain of the first brigade, took the four squadrons 7-10 drawn from the Zhifu Island military camp to stand by under the city, while the 105th Company of the Army, the 1st Battalion of the Eight Banners New Army, and the Yantai Artillery Company were on standby in the barracks. Now this "small scene" doesn't need them for the time being, they just need to recharge their energy so that they can go to the city at any time to fight in turn.

The 120 army soldiers sat quietly by the city wall in platoons, and their company commander Mao Desheng went to Yichenglou to command, and the deputy company commander Gao Shan who led the team here was naturally Gao Shan. Gao Shan walked around the city wall, and from time to time looked at the movements of the Qing army outside the city through the observation hole above the city wall. All the troops on this tower are under his command for the time being, except for artillery, including 250 people led by Gao Cuihuan, the leader of the 5th Squadron of the Standing Force.

Two cannons aimed at the south have long since begun to fire. The sweaty gunners were busy, but with a relaxed look on their faces, their cannons were as terrifying as ever. The soldiers of the standing team were a little nervous, their squadron leader Gao Cuihuan was reprimanding the Korean soldiers who were stiff because of fear, while some other Shandan or Shunjun veterans looked at the North Koreans with contemptuous eyes, muttering to themselves that the North Koreans were only worthy of being soldiers, and they were not qualified to be soldiers.

"They're coming! High School Captain, Act as planned! 104 Lianlian Deputy Gao Shan roared violently and ordered Gao Cuihuan. As soon as Gao Cuihuan heard this, he immediately began to give orders to his squad leaders, only to see a squad of archers (50 people) immediately step forward, they took the bow from their shoulders, and then wound the bow and arrows and aimed them at the right front.

The Qing army had already rushed to a distance of about a hundred meters from the city walls. The long-barreled cannons on the head of the city had given up their blows and continued to bombard the front, where the second wave of Qing troops of more than 1,000 men was pouring out of the earth wall, as if to carry out a continuous offensive. The two short-barreled howitzers facing the front right have been reloaded with grapeshot shells, and they don't need to aim or bother correcting their trajectory, they just need to aim and shoot straight ahead.

The scattered grape shells hit the crowd of the Qing army, causing a lot of casualties immediately. Some unlucky sword and shield bearers were completely split with their shields, and the bloody scene was shocking. But the Qing army continued to attack, they had entered an area of fifty or sixty meters, at this time the Korean firecrackers on the front wall had already fired their birds, and some Shandan archers with superior arm strength also drew their bows and shot heavy arrows forward.

After they fired, the archers of the upstairs on both sides also fired their arrows at the city. At this point, they don't need to aim, in fact, most of them are very poor at archery, and many of them are learning how to draw their bows on the fly, so you can imagine how to be accurate. However, the crowd of the Qing army was relatively dense, and they only needed to shoot the arrows roughly at the crowd of the Qing army, and they could basically get something.

In this way, under the blows of six howitzers in three directions and about three or four hundred bird-fired soldiers and archers, this Qing army of about 1,500 people soon could not hold out, and those who were still alive fled to the rear almost with a nervous breakdown. They left nearly 600 corpses on the battlefield, but in exchange for only the opportunity to put the ladder on the wall of Yantai Fort. A handful of their archers made a limited counterattack, inflicting few small casualties on the east bankers at the head of the city. The main reason for such minor casualties was that the soldiers of the defensive advance team were temporarily assigned a cuirass, and the bows and arrows fired by the Qing archers could not effectively break through the defense of the high-strength curved steel armor. Therefore, as long as it was not the unlucky bastard who was shot in the face and arm, basically no one would be killed or injured in the shooting with the Qing army, and this undoubtedly greatly increased the morale of the officers and men of the forward team.

But that's what the East Coast people can be so extravagant. You must know that in this era, the cost of purely hand-made armor is staggering, and any army can be called elite if there are two or three percent of the people who have iron armor. And this is mostly some chain mail, if it is this kind of light full-body plate armor on the east coast, only nobles and knights can afford to play in Europe, and the quality is probably inferior to that of the east coast. In this era, only the strong productive forces of the Eastern Republic can equip the front-line soldiers with such extravagant equipment, this is the power of technology! The Qing army must use flesh and blood to fill the power of technology!

It's that easy to fight! Gao Shan, the deputy commander of the 104th Company, also relaxed his tense spirit a little, and any Qing army that rushed to the city had to face blows from the left and right and the front, and there was no place under the city to hide, so he was quickly killed and wounded. The army on the east coast didn't even make a move, and it was too easy to rely on artillery, the crappy archers who had just learned to shoot arrows, and some of the bird's gunners to push back the Qing army.

The second wave of Qing troops collided head-on with the retreating Qing army, and they suddenly became a mess on the narrow frontal battlefield, and were seized by the artillery on the east coast and bombarded hard. After inflicting heavy casualties on them, the two waves of Qing troops simply joined forces and retreated backwards together, making the people on the east coast of the city laugh.

The Qing army suffered about 600 casualties in this offensive, but what about the casualties of the people on the east coast who were their opponents? In addition to the five who were shot by the Qing army's bows and arrows (two died), there was only one soldier who was seriously injured by the use of inferior firearms...... (To be continued......)