The fiercest fighting was in the trenches.

The trench is actually very narrow, in order not to be discovered by the British army, it was dug in a hurry overnight, only enough to accommodate the width of one or two people, and there is a slightly spacious section in the middle, which is used to put a Krupp camp field gun, the caliber is only 75 mm, but they are all fired from howitzers, specially to deal with the infantry arranged in a dense formation in the field.

At this moment, about 500 meters in front of the trench, there was already a sea of corpses and blood, and the corpses of the British troops began to block the path of the British troops behind.

Of the more than 2,000 officers and men of the 6th Infantry Division in the trenches, a small half of them were soldiers from the Satsuma and Higo domains on the former Kyushu Island in Japan, of course, they are now overseas Miao descendants belonging to the Chinese Empire, while the other half are Daur and Xibe from the inner northeast and a small number of Manchus. Because the main force of these soldiers was held by foreign races, they were fiercely determined to fight and were bent on killing the enemy to obtain military merits, in exchange for the glory of becoming official subjects of the Chinese Empire and the corresponding allowances and land.

It can be said that as long as two enemy soldiers are killed on the battlefield, the family does not have to worry anymore. As a result, the soldiers in these trenches are like killing machines, skillfully firing, reloading ammunition, and firing again.

They really don't need to aim too much, because there are black and oppressive enemy troops not far in front, and they don't have to worry about no one counting military merits, because there are their platoon commanders and clerks next to them to record. Moreover, even if the part is not recorded, it will eventually be evenly distributed among everyone. The important thing is to seize the time to harvest the lives of the enemy soldiers.

And the howitzer in the trench is a sharp weapon. Because it was too close to the British soldiers who were charging over, the howitzers fired almost against the ground of the trench, although it was relatively sparse and there were not many shells, but every grenade exploded, causing a lot of British soldiers to be killed and wounded.

And about 50 meters behind the trench, more than 7,000 officers and soldiers of the 6th Infantry Division, lined up in a single row, forming a corresponding battle line nearly 3 kilometers long, while slowly retreating, they opened heavy fire on the British troops on the opposite side!

Of the 7,000 soldiers, nearly 4,000 were Han sons from the Chinese Empire, while the other 3,000 were 1,000 from the Choshu domain and the Tosa clan on Shikoku Island on the Japanese island of Honshu, and the other 1,000 were recruited Korean soldiers. Nowadays, as the territory of the Chinese Empire expanded, the number of land forces increased every year, and the captives began to recruit soldiers not only in the original territory of the Chinese Empire, but also in Japan's main state, Kansai, Kyushu, and Shikoku, Korea, Vietnam, and the islands of Luzon and Java, which had become the direct territory of the Chinese Empire.

Of course, these soldiers were also strictly selected and examined, and to learn Chinese, they must be 100% loyal to the Chinese Empire and want to become good citizens of the Han nation. Moreover, all the grassroots officers must be Han Chinese, and most of the grassroots officers of the Sixth Field Army sent overseas are mostly veterans who participated in the Taiping Sacred Army in the early days of Liangguang and Hunan, so as to ensure that the army can be completely controlled.

A little farther behind the 7,000 people, there were two artillery battalion soldiers, still desperately rushing to the front line. Calcutta was surrounded by bushes and weeds, and the infantry could not march quickly, let alone the artillery. Only the more than ten lightest Krupp camp guns were moved to the trench in advance under the hard support of the soldiers.

At this moment, the firepower of these 7,000 soldiers broke out, which made the British troops on the opposite side begin to panic a little. Fortunately, there was some wind, which blew a lot of smoke away. However, there is no need to see the enemy clearly, and the captive soldiers can just shoot forward.

Tazib had already jumped off his horse, because the British army had already rushed closer, and the smoke of gunpowder had dispersed, and he could even see the painful appearance of the British army on the opposite side, and many British soldiers were either sideways or half-crouched and fired at their own side. The Imperial soldiers in the trenches ahead also began to suffer a certain degree of casualties. Even, the main force of the 6th Division, 50 meters from the trench, had a small number of soldiers hit. Tabuzi hurriedly ordered his soldiers to lie down and prostrate on the ground to open fire on the opposite side, but he was careful not to shoot his own soldiers in the trench in front of him.

However, Tazib was also very impressed by the fact that the British troops on the opposite side could still advance and shoot at his side when the casualties were so huge, and that these foreign soldiers could watch the people around them bleed and fall, and they could also maintain a dense formation like a mountain to advance.

But Tazib didn't want his men to be shot so stupidly. It has long been explained in military academies that lying on the spot can reduce injuries by 80 percent. Moreover, the Mauser rear-loading rifled rifle used by the officers and men of the 6th Infantry Division, coupled with custom-made metal bullets, was easy to reload even if he was lying down, which was convenient and fast, and he shot out with a slight aim forward.

Maybe what Tazib didn't expect was that the British army used not such an advanced Mauser breech-loading rifled gun in the hands of the imperial soldiers, but also a metal custom bullet, these British troops in India used advanced European rifles, but they were still the kind of Enfield rifled rifles used in the Crimean War a few years ago, all of which were front-loading rifled guns, and the Mini bullet had to be pushed into the chamber from the front barrel with a pusher lever, and the length of the rifle was more than one meter, so that it was impossible to lie down to load ammunition. In addition, the arrogance of the Britons and the chivalry of Europe, did not bother to shoot lying down.

Tazib also shoots at the enemy, and although he doesn't know if he can hit it, he has a deeper understanding of this kind of warfare. His high martial arts can be said to be useless in front of this kind of musket. Only then did he realize that if the Manchu army and the Hunan army had encountered the British army, they really had no chance of victory, let alone a well-equipped infantry like the Chinese Empire.

It was all about the strength of the entire force. Dense soldiers, shooting in rows and rows, shoot tens of thousands of bullets and hit everything in front of them, no matter who it is, no matter what it is, as long as it stands in front of them, it will eventually be shattered.

However, it is the same dense formation, and it is also a face-to-face shooting, but because the firing area is different, and the range and accuracy of the guns are different, in this way, the loss gap between the two sides is more than a little.

On the British side, more than five or six hundred people were lost in each major round of shooting, while on the side of the Chinese Imperial soldiers, only dozens of soldiers in the trenches and twenty or thirty unlucky soldiers lying on the ground in the rear were shot, and the ratio of nearly ten to one was violently consumed. In this way, the two sides exchanged fire for some time, and in front of the trench, the corpses of the British soldiers were piled higher and higher.

Without waiting for the order of the British officer, the British soldiers automatically slowed down their attack, but hid behind the natural fortifications made of corpses, filled ammunition and fired. But at this distance, it was simply difficult to shoot the Chinese troops behind the trench, and the soldiers in the trench were all obedient and no longer showed their heads, so the British soldiers who hid behind the pile of corpses and fired guns one after another were simply meaningless.

The British commander Campbell saw that the situation was not good, and he was remorseful, and by this time he had already lost more than six or seven thousand soldiers. What he regretted most was not waiting for the artillery to attack together, but charging directly with the infantry. At this time, the artillery in the rear had already arrived, and Campbell could only grit his teeth and bear huge losses, allowing his four infantry brigades to withstand it.

The war is unusually cruel! That is, the British army should always be ordered and well-trained, otherwise it is likely to collapse under such huge casualties.

The two artillery battalions had already entered the rear field of vision, and two cavalrymen came over quickly to report that several artillery companies had begun to set up 9-pounder field guns, and the six 24-pounder howitzers were still rushing to the approaching front because of their short range. For the timely arrival of the artillery, Campbell was satisfied.

As he waited for the soldiers to calibrate their guns and give the order for a heavy bombardment, a deafening rush rang out from the streets of Calcutta to the north.