Ma Bao woke up from the dream, and as soon as the cold wind blew, he realized that he still had something to do, so he immediately led his troops to the city wall to check.

Five miles outside the city, the flags were unfurled, and groups of Chinese soldiers were flowing endlessly, carrying all kinds of materials, advancing in formation, and after reaching the front of the defense line outside the city, they set up artillery positions, and the shells smashed on the first line of defense outside the city like hail.

On the first line of defense, the Lu army still has nearly 10,000 troops on the defensive, the Lu army has not waited in vain for more than ten years, and has built this area like an iron bucket, using the Huaxia army to defend them, and learning all the tricks that caused them to fail, and it has changed a lot, which is more conducive to defense.

Fort is lined up, this is the tactics that extend from the era of cold weapons, the trenches are crooked, and the troops are stationed in the trenches and anti-artillery holes, which is the tactics learned from the Chinese army, and the camp is established again behind the trenches, responsible for material supply, personnel transfer, and support trenches, which is the tactics of the cold weapon era combined with the Chinese army to defend the Qing army, and then the three lines of defense are all like this, which is learned from the Taixi people, and the Taixi people learned from the Huaxia army.

Artillery is deployed at various key nodes, and the Huaxia Army to start a battle, new artillery, old artillery, open artillery, Qing artillery, the Lu army imitates the cannon of the Huaxia Army, the Lu army's own development of artillery, thousands, all for professional artillery operations, this aspect of the Huaxia Army is not as good, even if the Huaxia Army has more than 200,000 soldiers and horses to besiege the city, but the artillery of the Huaxia Army is scattered in the various armies, each army has a lot of small artillery, but the artillery, heavy artillery is not much, a brigade is only a dozen heavy artillery, ten brigades are only 200 heavy artillery, and they are all eighteen pounder guns, and then lighter artillery, Twelve-pounder guns, four hundred, nine-pounder guns, six-pounder guns are many, but nine-pounder guns can't play a role in front of the Lu army's nearly 1,000 heavy guns to defend the city, because of the range.

Six hundred heavy artillery cannons fought against the enemy's more than 1,000 cannons, and suffered a slight loss, because when divided into three sides, each side was much smaller than the enemy's cannons, nearly half of the number.

The Lu army has studied the Huaxia Army for so many years, it can be said that it is almost the same as the Huaxia Army, if it were not for the muskets of the Huaxia Army that were several generations worse, maybe they could play chess with the Huaxia Army in the field to meet their opponents, and now if it is in the field, the Lu Army has the advantage of strength, then it is really difficult for the Huaxia Army to say that it can win, but it will not fail, and it can get out safely, but now the enemy's cannons, although they do not have an advantage in terms of quality and mobility, can be used for defense, in a stable position, on the city wall a few meters higher than the enemy, on the camp, These cannons, which could not be dragged in the field, were still much more powerful than the eighteen-pounder guns of the Huaxia Army in terms of range and power.

Of course, the Huaxia Army was not unprepared, the Golden Qi Corps was the main combat unit, and they could disassemble 24-pounder cannons or even 32-pounder cannons from warships at any time to forcibly demolish enemy fortifications.

However, the Huaxia Army still has a special cannon for bombarding the enemy, a 24-pounder field gun, which is not used in peacetime, and this time it crossed the river and transported a lot, and it is still on the way to be transported, not much, only 60 guns, but these 60 guns can overwhelm the enemy's camps and city walls.

Zhang Qiang stood on the watchtower and watched the artillery engaged with the enemy and the infantry advancing in formation.

Eighteen-pounder guns, twelve-pounder guns, and nine-pounder guns fiercely bombarded the enemy's trenches five miles away, and the enemy's trenches were crowded with people, and from time to time the enemy was crushed to death by solid shells, but this was a half-hearted for the enemy, and it could not hurt its muscles and bones, and the trenches bore a lot of damage, and the role of artillery was just to suppress, and the soldiers of the Huaxia Army who were advancing were hit by the enemy's artillery, and had to evacuate the formation and advance rapidly.

The attack was carried out by two field brigades, behind which were hand-to-hand soldiers of a militia brigade, who rushed into the trenches to fight hand-to-hand while the fire of the field brigade suppressed the enemy.

The fast-advancing field brigade with six-pounder guns and three-pounder guns approached the enemy, and would set up artillery positions six hundred meters in front of the enemy's position to attack the enemy's trenches, and suppress the bows and muskets of the enemy's infantry with firepower.

The other three sides of Yangzhou Mansion are feints, only suppressed by artillery, sending a regiment of soldiers to attack, on the other side there are nearly 40,000 troops of the enemy to defend, where there is the first fleet's warship artillery suppression, solid shells, flowering shells, all with heavy artillery shots, bombardment of the enemy, and then the warships of the Yangtze River Garrison Naval Division with their small hull and fast speed, advance to the shore to attack the enemy, and at the same time open the gap to put down the infantry to attack the enemy.

Besieged the city on all sides, Zhang Qiang never thought about letting the enemy break through, for more than ten years, he wanted to completely destroy the Lu army and eliminate the trouble in his heart.

The eighteen-pounder cannon may not be able to fire at the enemy's thousands of pounds of artillery and suppress the enemy, but the enemy's heavy artillery due to the inferior rate of fire, so that the firepower is not as good as the field artillery of the Huaxia Army, and the advantage brought by the rapid shooting firepower, the enemy is still harassed, at least the artillery on the camp is destroyed one by one, and the occasional casualties in the trenches make the enemy's morale drop, plus the general trend, the enemy's morale can not be with the Chinese soldiers who are in the limelight. The high morale of meritorious service is on par.

So one side is demoralized, even if one side suffers a little setback, it must be injured for meritorious service and reimbursement to the country, so that the Lu army is at a comprehensive disadvantage, the Huaxia army quickly advanced to its own position, with the six-pounder cannon joining the bombardment, the casualties of the soldiers in the enemy's trenches intensified, and when the three-pounder gun reached a hundred meters position, the enemy suddenly came out to shoot arrows, when shooting, every bombardment of the three-pounder gun can make the enemy kill and wound a large area, not to mention the platoon gun salvo of the soldiers of the field brigade of the Huaxia Army with arquebus, When the militia brigade rushed up, the trenches immediately fell into a bloody battle, and more and more militiamen jumped into the trenches and captured the enemy's trenches.

At the end of the day, the trenches of the enemy's first line of defense were occupied, the camp was destroyed, and the Huaxia army gained a firm foothold on the enemy's first line of defense, braving the artillery fire of the enemy's second line of defense and the city's head to continue to push.

After that, twenty-four pounder siege guns arrived.

Ma Bao looked through his telescope from afar, and the enemy was already approaching more than three miles, attacking the second line of trenches, and the camp and fort behind the second line of trenches were facing the threat of twenty-four pound siege guns.

Sixty siege guns lined up six miles away were divided into three groups, one group of solid shells, one group of flowering shells, and one group of specially named large camps, and twenty cannons were fired together, and one or two cannons always hit the walls of the camp.

The walls of the camps outside are very thin, one cannon and one hole, two cannons collapsed, and the three cannons go down to the camp basically without danger to defend, and the soldiers fled.

Which group of the flowering bullets bombarded the arquebus soldiers in the trenches on the second line of defense, and exploded together in many places, the scene was spectacular, of course, the casualties were heavy, and before they saw the enemy, they were killed and wounded in a large area, and when the Huaxia army advanced to a distance of 200 meters with torches, they didn't need to aim, a salvo, immediately lay on the ground, and continued to load, the second row stood up and took turns shooting, and the Lu soldiers in the trenches who wanted to counterattack immediately wanted to be electrified, and they threw away the guns in their hands one after another, trembling, and fell to the ground softly.

In less than half of the night, the Huaxia army overcame two frontal defense lines in a row, the Lu army collapsed and fled to the third line of defense, the trench three hundred meters below the city wall, and the moat at a hundred meters behind the city wall, some of the routs jumped directly into the moat, and some went to the city gate through the drawbridge, but now how dare to open the city gate, so many people were shot to death by the soldiers on the city head, and the others were frightened back to the third line of defense to block the enemy.

The twenty-four-pounder siege artillery soon began to clear the enemy's cannons one by one, and the flowering bombs exploded one by one at the head of the city, and the cannons of several thousand pounds were overturned, and as the enemy got closer and closer, the other three Lu troops fled one after another, and many people retreated to the city.

At dawn, the first line of defense was lost, Ma Bao no longer cared about the battle, and as the twenty-four pounder cannons bombarded the city wall, the city wall collapsed, and the Huaxia army swarmed in, and the killing began.

(End of chapter)