The battle with the elite strikers of the Ming Army on the South Road made both Li Zicheng's troops and Zhou Yuji and others dare not slack off in the subsequent confrontation. Fortunately, the enemy troops that had been increasing along the summer canal south of Dongchang Province were no longer as fierce as before.

Most of the firearms used by the enemy infantry on the canal posed no threat to even a simple shield at a distance of thirty paces. The only kind of second or third general artillery that could pose a threat often did not have time to be effective on land was the attack and assault under the cover of cavalry, and the firearms deployed in small boats, because there were no longer as many sophisticated bird guns as before, often caused the ship to shake violently when firing sideways, and there was no accuracy at about fifty paces. But whether it is the three-tael musketeers equipped by Zhou Yuji and others or the rockets used by Li Zicheng's department, they can deal with most of the very simple boats.

If it is the elite of the Ming army in the northland, there may be a large number of elite cavalry to bring a lot of trouble, but although the Ming army reinforced from the south also has some hundred-man horse teams, they are often not subordinate to each other and are afraid of the consumption of casualties. The 200,000-strong army, including 100,000 soldiers, had to retreat south after a series of defeats. They successively abandoned many places such as Xuzhou and Jining, and retreated to the area from Fengyang to Huai'an Mansion to defend along the Huai River.

The width of the Huai River in summer is not small, and many warships on the Huai River of decent size can finally use light artillery such as the second general and the third general to effectively deploy firepower. The rumbling cannons of the flotilla on the surface finally blocked Zhou Yuji and Li Zicheng's troops along the canal after repelling the enemy forces on the river north of Huai'an Province.

Xiao Xuan had actually been prepared for a long time before, and he had some ideas: at this time, Yangzhou, as the general rear of the money and grain logistics of the entire Ming Army on the South Road, must have hoarded a lot of materials, from gunpowder to grain. If he had led a light army to swim across the river on a sheepskin raft that had been prepared long ago, and attacked the city by means of night blasting, would it be possible to capture enough large ships and other supplies? It's just that at this time, Xiao Xuan suddenly remembered a nightmare he had a few months ago, and couldn't help but feel alarmed. I always feel that I am the protagonist of the story, and even if I take risks, it is not a good phenomenon that luck must be on my side.

"Along the way, how has the team gained?" After the team gathered on the other side of the Huai River for many days, Xiao Xuan asked Zhou Yuji and the others who had assembled.

"There seems to be a lot of food, and the captured grain is more than 300,000 stones, enough for the consumption of 200,000 troops for several months. In addition, there are more than one million taels of silver equivalent to wealth... It's just that although more than 300,000 catties of gunpowder have also been seized, I am afraid it will take a lot of effort to meet the gunpowder standard requirements on the team... After Zhou Yuji answered, he also seemed to understand some of Xiao Xuan's plans: "Does the Holy Lord plan to cross the river to attack Yangzhou?" ”

"It's better to return to the army as soon as possible, don't let the boiled duck fly, it's only right to eat the strong enemies in the Dongchang area. And I'm really worried that there will be chaos if there is no army stationed in the capital for a long time. . . After thinking about it for a long time, Xiao Xuan finally gave up his plan to cross the Huai River to the south. Because Xiao Xuan knew the energy of the Haikou at the end of the Ming Dynasty, no one dared to guarantee that a big river like summer would encounter any unpredictable risks. In addition, the Ming army on the southern route looks like it has a dangerous attack, at least in the short term, and it will not cause much trouble. In this way, the troops he led also had enough time to plunder enough money and grain along the canal, and to strengthen the hoarding around the capital as much as possible while the Grand Canal was still full of water in the summer.

Just when the main force headed south led by Xiao Xuan drove most of the remnants of the enemy across the Huai River and began to escort many ships full of goods north. The main force of the Ming army in Dongchang City, which was heading north, also launched a fierce breakthrough.

At first, under the influence of those Western gunners, it was still said that Zhu Xieyuan did not think that the heavy artillery captured by the enemy had the same threat to his side as before. The real difference between the West and the East in terms of artillery skills is very clear to both Zhu Xieyuan and Yang Sichang. In particular, the strength and defense line of the enemy army outside Dongchang City, which is only more than 10,000, seem to be very weak, even if the forces left in Dongchang City cannot be defeated, there is no reason to be trapped in the city.

Therefore, when the scouts who went out to investigate discovered the strangeness of many large camps outside the city, they decided to break through directly during the day, and with more than ten times the force, they first attacked the remaining 2,000 troops defending south of Dongchang City.

However, what the defenders in Dongchang City, who were more influenced by traditional military thinking, did not expect was that the times seemed to have changed slightly. Although the besieging force remaining outside Dongchang was only about 10,000, this 10,000 people included most of the artillery strength of the Teaching Brigade and the Guards Brigade. In addition, there is an artillery corps that has been rearmed with a lot of captured artillery. In addition to the 18 2,000-pound body-barreled heavy artillery pieces and 30 thousand-pound body-barreled heavy guns, there are more than 200 general's cannons of various kinds of 3,500-pound body-barreled guns. Because the gunners of the teaching brigade and the newly formed brigades, even the baggage personnel, often possess considerable operational training and gunnery literacy, so the captured firearms can be effectively used after only a little testing.

Defending in the south, where the number of troops was not very large, the formation seemed to be very thin, and the siege force of about 2,000 was also equipped, and it was also equipped with four 2,000-pound body-barreled heavy guns and six thousand-pound body-barreled heavy guns, in addition to 40 general-level guns. The total amount of body tubes reached a total artillery strength of about 30,000 jin or 18,000 kilograms.

Most of the 30,000 defenders who rushed out of the city did not carry any decent armor in this hot and rainy summer. At most, the people in the front row were holding leather and wooden shields. When firing at the re-forged one-two-four-penny or so shotguns, almost every round of artillery salvo could fire 10,000 or thousands of light shotguns with a few hundred joules of initial kinetic energy, bringing casualties of at least about 200 or 300 people in the enemy group.

If the defender's armor level is better, or the casualty tolerance is the same as that of a normal main force, then this level of firepower may not be able to easily thwart the defender's breakthrough, but most of the breakout teams are not very good soldiers. In just a few minutes, with two or three thousand casualties in ten rounds of fire, the dense army was still torn apart, and only a handful of brave men approached the seemingly thin defensive line.

However, at this time, the defenders' various light firearms combined with the fierce bombardment of light shotguns of about two or three cents fired by the general's artillery finally broke the morale of the attacking enemy and made the enemy defending the city give up the plan to break through during the day.

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