When several people heard this, they all left the military tent and looked over there, only to see a thick smoke rising straight up, but it was the direction of Jiangjiazhuang. Pen? Interesting? Pavilion wWw. ｂiquge。 info Li Changsheng saw it, and just smiled slightly: "Sure enough, as Mr. Tong expected, those natives really went to attack our Jiangjiazhuang." ”

"Leader Li, do you want the brothers to come back for help?" An officer asked.

"No, there is Mr. Tong in Jiangjiazhuang, they are there, is it so easy to fight? There's no rush. Tell everyone that this is really our strategy, so don't worry. Then get everyone ready to retreat. Tomorrow morning, we will withdraw a little bit, and I don't think the natives in this stockade, nor the Spaniards who gave them advice, will let us retreat like this. They're going to come out after us and hold us back. Give that side time to buy. When the time comes, we will ......," Li Changsheng said with a smile.

"We're going to kill the guns, beat the natives outside the stockade, and then take the stockade down." Said an officer.

……

It was almost dark, Aquino stood on the mound on the bank of the river, looking at the Jiangjiazhuang not far away, this Zhuangzi originally belonged to Aquino's family, the original owner of the Zhuangzi was Aquino's cousin named Aguinaldo, and later those Chinese claimed that when he slaughtered China in Spain, he plundered a lot of Chinese wealth, and put forward a sky-high compensation claim, and then ...... Aguinaldo's stockade became Jiangjiazhuang, and his body hung on a flagpole at the entrance of the village for several days.

In the afterglow of the setting sun, Aquino noticed that the walls of Jiangjiazhuang had been significantly thickened and heightened, but the walls were still straight and straight. This shows that those Chinese did not think about how to confront an opponent with artillery. Aquino knew that the walls of the Chinese villages closer to Manila had been converted into thick, low bastions to protect against the Spaniards. But in Jiangjiazhuang, the Chinese are obviously too underestimated.

"They didn't know we had such powerful artillery in our hands. With such a city wall, I'm afraid that it only takes a few shells to hit it, and there will be a large-scale collapse, right? Aquino thought with pride as he turned his head to look at the four six-pounder cannons that were slowly moving forward under the tow of a few oxen.

These bronze cannons are the most old-fashioned six-pounder guns, and there are naturally no techniques such as forging and drilling, double-layer barrels, and slow gunpowder, so in terms of weight, they are much heavier than the 6-pounder guns of the Model Army, and they are naturally inconvenient to transport. Aquino had no horses in his hands, and the Spaniards were reluctant to hand over their precious horses to unprofessional mercenaries, so it was up to the buffalo to tow the cannons.

There are paddy fields near Jiangjiazhuang, and the position of the cannon can only be placed far away, which of course will increase the difficulty of hitting, and those Chinese do not blindly defend it. Upon discovering their ranks, the Chinese immediately lit beacons, sent communications cavalry to other strongholds, and sent their mounted infantry to launch rounds of harassing attacks on the natives and mercenaries. They rode small Mongol horses, quickly maneuvered to the flanks, and then attacked the natives who were not yet equipped with arquebuses (muskets or something, the Spaniards did not produce them in large quantities in Manila, and more had to be shipped from Europe, so the number was very limited). Many natives still only have cold weapons in their hands. ）。

In order to cope with the harassment of these mounted infantry, Aquino had to constantly move his musketeers from front to back, from left to right. However, as soon as Aquino's musketeers appeared, the Chinese cavalry infantry would immediately stop firing, mount their horses, and then use the speed of their horses to quickly change positions and launch another harassing attack. As a result, Aquino's musketeers were completely exhausted, and the cannon fodder troops, armed only with cold weapons, were panicked and demoralized.

And this kind of harassment also greatly affected the advance speed and offensive preparations of the entire army. It was not until the afternoon that the artillery team barely arrived, but by this time it was already dark, and it was obviously not realistic to launch an attack overnight, and in the dark of night, the artillery could not effectively attack distant targets at all. So, mercenaries and natives began to set up camp. Naturally, the artillery was not able to be deployed to a firing position that could reach the wall.

The tents of the noble Caucasian mercenaries were naturally to be placed in relatively safe places that were not too susceptible to attack, so as to ensure that they could sleep well and be able to devote themselves to the battle in full spirit. So they were placed in the middle, and the natives were placed in the periphery.

In the evening of the same day, the Chinese group launched some harassing attacks on the natives, and under the cover of night, they used donkeys to move several wooden boxes near the natives' positions, and then several people dragged the wooden boxes themselves, and dragged them to a place only about 30 steps away from the aborigines' camp in a crawling attitude.

The contents of the wooden box are actually very simple, but they are just a swarm of bee rockets made by some local Chinese. These rockets are actually a cupola strapped to the shaft of an ordinary arrow. Some rockets are also strapped to a small whistle that makes a whistling sound when flying.

The structure of such a thing is asymmetrical, and the aerodynamic characteristics are a mess, so the range and accuracy will naturally not be too good, and this time, in order to increase the efficiency, the team drills tied some cotton soaked in fire oil to the front of the swarm of rockets, intending to use them to set fire. In this way, the range, accuracy and so on of these rockets are even more problematic.

A group drill carefully opened the lid of the wooden box, turned the lid over and propped it on the ground, just so that the wooden box had an angle oblique upward. He pointed the crate in the direction of the Aboriginal camp, then opened the lid on the bottom of the crate, revealing the fuse that was tied together.

He turned his head to look at the other two, and with the help of the faint moonlight, he saw that they had also pulled out the fuse. So the group nodded, took out the fire sickle, and began to light the fire.

The sound of striking the fire sickle was not very loud, but it could be transmitted far away at night, and the natives were at the wall of the barracks, and there were also people on duty at the night watch, and when they heard this sound, they naturally paid attention to it, and shouted: "Who is it? ”

The group drills ignored him, and just continued to strike the fire sickle, and in the flash of the fire, the fuses in the three wooden boxes were ignited.

With the help of this flickering fire, the night watchman had already seen the group training of the Chinese, but before he could make any meaningful reaction, several Chinese ran directly backwards into the darkness, and then he saw a series of fiery snakes emerging from that place and shooting towards him.

None of the wooden boxes had one hundred and twenty rockets, as mentioned earlier, after these rockets were fired, they immediately began to move in Brownian motion, some flew forward, some suddenly turned in a direction and flew sideways, and some rockets simply flew out and turned one hundred and eighty degrees and shot directly to the back.

However, the rockets were only about thirty paces away from the camp, so most of them were fired at the natives' camp. Propelled by gunpowder, these rockets could shoot a hundred and fifty paces away without playing Brownian motion. Of course, the regimental trainers added cotton balls with fire oil to it, which inevitably led to a decrease in range.

The rockets flew diagonally into the air, and then, when the gunpowder ran out, the cotton ball on top was ignited, and hundreds of rockets rained down like a rain of fire. At this time, the Brownian motion caused by the lack of precision played a good role, and these rockets covered a fairly large area, covering a large area of the boss.

The lethality of these rockets falling from the sky is actually very limited, and even if they are shot, as long as they are not hit by the vital point, most of them will not be able to kill people. It's just that these rockets fall on the top of the tent or something, and it is easy to cause a fire, so the whole camp is suddenly in chaos.

As soon as chaos ensued, Olsen put the mercenaries on alert - he really didn't have much confidence in the natives outside. If the Chinese take advantage of this opportunity to launch more attacks, there may be some kind of moth. However, maybe it was because it was difficult for everyone to grasp the night battle, or maybe it was because the Chinese didn't expect that these rockets could cause such an effect, so the Chinese didn't launch more attacks that night.

Because of the chaos of the night, Aquino's army was not ready to attack until almost noon the next day. The mercenaries' four cannons were pushed out first and began to fire at Jiangjiazhuang.

After two rounds of test firing, the shells began to hit the wall accurately. Sure enough, although the near-vertical wall was thickened a lot, it was still difficult to block the attack of the shells. Almost every shell that falls can cause the wall above the impact point to collapse in a large or small way. After a noon shelling, two gaps had been opened in the wall of Jiangjiazhuang. Aquino commanded his men and launched two rounds of attacks on the two gaps. It was only because these two gaps were not large that Aquino's numerical superiority naturally could not be exerted, and as a result, several volleys were fired by the regiments who had already prepared behind the gaps, killing dozens of people, and then retreating.

The reason why Aquino was in a hurry to launch the attack was largely because he felt distressed by watching the mercenaries keep firing their cannons and consuming gunpowder. Gunpowder could only be bought from the Spaniards, and gunpowder from the Spaniards was not cheap. But at this time, he could only grit his teeth and order: "Just fire the cannon and hit a few more gaps, I don't believe that they can hold every gap!" ”