The Central Route Army led by Zhou Dayong still gained a lot of manpower and material resources in the Central Plains, and as the elite main force to the south, it also carried a lot of firearms and ammunition. After deduction and calculation, the only way to plan to open a wide enough gap in front of such a fortified city in one fell swoop was to use a blasting attack.

Because this method has been used many times from attacking fortifications to field battles before, the defenders are certainly not unprepared for this. Just like back then, at this time, the head of Xiangyang City, which stretches for fifteen miles, is completely wrapped with professional wood. In many places in the north, it was difficult to collect enough timber on a large scale around the city at this time, but Xiangyang City at this time was an exception.

"What was the result of the test launch?" When he saw the return of several officers from the pro-military camp who had a tentative confrontation, Zhou Dayong asked solemnly.

"Even if the six taels of bombs are projectile and hit the city head at a distance of about two miles, it seems that it will not be able to break through the overlay on the city head. Of course, our army also tried rockets, but it didn't seem to work very well. The captured timber was covered with enough mud to quickly suppress the occasional flame under the control of the defenders. Later, our army used seven-pound artillery shells to bombard the city, and it was necessary to throw them at a distance of more than one mile, and to use lead bullets, so that there was any hope of breaking through the cover on the city and bringing some damage to the defenders in the city. It's just that in this way, the hit rate and efficiency of the shelling are obviously not a small problem... ”

Zhou Dayong, as a former model in the teaching team, is not too bad in arithmetic, and he has a rough mental arithmetic estimate. If the bombardment is carried out from a distance of about 7 pounds of bombs, although the ammunition carried by an army of about 20,000 people is not small, it can only temporarily cast 30,000 shells up and down, and at a distance of about 500 meters or more, even if the method of reducing the error along the city head is adopted, there will be at least a 100-meter error, and the violent coverage of tens of thousands of bombs of seven or eight pounds can temporarily open a gap at a distance of about half a mile. Under such circumstances, in order to achieve effective coordination between the explosive attack and the offensive force, it is probably inevitable that the necessary and large-scale accidental damage will be inevitable. Because if the interval between the demolition attack and the subsequent attack was too long, the defenders at the head of the city could easily regain their defensive line without a shortage of troops.

However, after only a moment of weighing, Zhou Dayong still made up his mind: "Convey the battle plan to the Third Division of the Provisional Volunteer Army, and tell the officers and men everything and the facts, as well as the risks that our army may face in this offensive." This time the operation is more special, because of the relatively large risk of accidental injury, if you are unwilling to perform the task, tell people that our army will not punish or expel the volunteer army system... ”

As Xiao Xuan made up his mind to decentralize power from the beginning, not only the left-behind forces in Xuzhou, but also the relevant organizations of the Datong Society of the Central Route Army have also begun to preliminarily prepare for the framework of the volunteer division.

Of course, Zhu Xieyuan also felt a lot of pressure at this time, especially some feints and test firings carried out by the strong enemy under the city seemed to be very uneasy, so Zhu Xieyuan finally made up his mind in the military discussion: If the enemy army outside the city has no intention of attacking the city in the short term, the defenders will have to launch a counterattack. You can't wait for the attacking opponent to accumulate enough troops or material resources to attack.

Although it is difficult to imagine that a concentration of more than 100,000 or more shells can be effectively suppressed by artillery fire from two miles away, it is better not to bet on whether the opponent can do this by relying on artillery fire, but for the opponent who already has most of the northern area, it is better not to bet on whether the other party can do this.

What Zhu Xieyuan did not expect was that the enemy army near the city only prepared for about two days and began to concentrate their forces, first attacking the southwest of Xiangyang.

Because of the wide moat and even the protection of the Han River, only the attack from the southwest encountered slightly fewer obstacles. From the very beginning, the besieging army was affected by the continuous fire of shotguns from the naval ships along the Han River. The artillery fire and trebuchets in the city were also intensively deployed, and the sufficient forces to deploy the bullet fire during the key defense allowed the attacking team to approach not too far from the city with a small tortoiseshell formation to avoid serious casualties, and it was difficult to effectively deploy even the simplest siege equipment such as ladders and hooks. The besieging team failed in a series of tentative daytime offensives of grenades and blasting mines, as well as hooks.

Far from the improvised bed boards and door panels of the northern cities, the city's head is covered with protection, which greatly reduces the effectiveness of firearms such as blasting rods or black powder grenades. The explosive devices of 10,000 enemies thrown from above the city posed a great threat to the team.

Although a few men occasionally attacked the city, they were soon either lost or forced to retreat under the fierce fire from the inside of the city to both sides of the city, and even bows and arrows.

In order to avoid casualties and losses, it seems that the attacking team can only use more scattered formations to find opportunities, but it is clear that Xiangyang City at this time seems to be difficult to easily break through with this method.

Just when a large-scale attack by the attackers still ended in defeat and had to retreat dozens of paces away, something unimaginable happened to the defenders. Smoke and flames of continuous explosions rose from a place about a mile away from the southwest of Xiangyang near the corner of the city, as if a huge explosion had occurred in the powder magazine of the defenders.

However, because it was attacking in the daytime, it was quickly realized that it was not an explosion of the enemy's arsenal, but a blasting attack on an unimaginable scale. There were tens of thousands of black dots that were not too small, and they bombarded the southwest corner of the city in a radius of only about half a mile.

In fact, even if seven or eight catties of cannonballs fired from a distance of about a mile are thrown, they may not be able to effectively break through the protective cover on the head of Xiangyang City, but when there is an average of one drop per square meter, and this kind of attack is still carried out in a very short period of time, everything seems to be fundamentally different.

The rain of shells and shells that fell from the sky like a mudslide completely flooded the city within about 200 paces almost instantly

(End of chapter)