Darha noticed that some of the soldiers had already begun to trot, which was not a reasonable approach under normal conditions, and the distance between the two sides was still far away, at which point they began to enter the trot, which was a great drain on physical strength. Pen @ fun @ pavilion wWw. ｂｉｑUｇE。 info What's more, the formation is hard to maintain during the trot. However, Darha also knew that this was a last resort, and if he continued to move slowly, with the speed and accuracy with which the cattle on the opposite side opened fire, he did not know how many more people would die.

At this time, the cannons of those guys on the opposite side fell silent, and they did not hit the front like arrows again. Darha didn't know why the cannon on the other side had stopped, and he didn't think much about it, he just knew that he had to take advantage of this time to hurry closer.

……

"Their cannon must be too hot." Sha Zilong said. Sha Zilong has also seen the Ming army use artillery. Although the cannon is powerful, the ability to continue fighting is not good. After continuous firing, the heat of the gun body will get higher and higher. Later, it will even be so high that when gunpowder is poured into it, it will spontaneously combust. In this way, the cannon naturally could no longer be used. You have to wait for it to cool down before you can use it again. What the? Why don't you just use cold water to cool it? When the heated barrel encounters cold water, the outer layer shrinks violently, but the inner layer shrinks much more slowly. This creates a huge internal stress that causes cracks in the gun, and then when you ignite the next shell, there is a high chance of an explosion, which not only kills the gunner, but also leads to the loss of expensive guns.

In Sha Zilong's opinion, the artillery of the army below had already fired so many rounds of shells at an alarming speed, and it was thought that their barrels should have been hot as a mess. However, he did not know how different the artillery of the Model Army was from the ones he had seen.

My Daming, even including the real Taixi people, because they did not master the technology of multiple barrel self-tightening, did not master the technology of forging and drilling, and the technology of low-firing gunpowder, so in order to ensure that the bore was not exploded, they had to make the barrel wall very thick. Although this has the advantage of having a larger heat capacity and slower heating, it also causes the problem of too slow heat dissipation. The end result was that the Model Army's cannons were far more sustained than the ones that Sha Zilong was familiar with.

……

A model soldier stuffed an iron bucket into the barrel of the cannon and lit the guide under Zhang Qingxi's command. Fire. Demand. Then he quickly ducked to the side, and immediately after that, the cannon fired.

More than a dozen shrapnel grenades were fired at a relatively high trajectory, as they were heavier than spherical solid shells, so their muzzle velocity was lower. Zhang Qingxi can see these shells with the naked eye.

The shells flew into the air in Zhang Qingxi's eyes, and then the speed slowed down, and they seemed to stop at high altitude, but Zhang Qingxi, who had received a basic education, knew that it was just an illusion caused by the angle of sight. Then the tin buckets fell headlong into the ground, and then burst into the air with a puff of white smoke.

Zhang Qingxi frowned slightly, there are still problems with the reliability of these shrapnels. Of the more than a dozen shrapnel shells, only half of them really exploded, and in this half, only a little more than half of them really exploded at the most suitable height, and the other few were either blown up a little higher, or the position of the explosion was lower, in short, it was impossible to achieve perfect coverage.

"I heard that the gun factory is working on a thing that can be ignited without a pull, and is going to be used on it. Maybe that thing is done, and this kind of shell will be easy to use. Zhang Qingxi thought so.

……

In Zhang Qingxi's opinion, this kind of shell is quite imperfect and not easy to use, but in Darha's opinion, this kind of shell is simply a nightmare. The shells exploded in mid-air fifty or sixty paces away from Darha, and hundreds of iron balls were thrown out. All Darha could hear was a crackling sound, like the sound of a hailstorm crashing into a field of wheat in the summer. Then he saw a cloud of dust rise from the ground around him, and his mouth and nose were filled with the smell of dust. At the same time, the armor soldiers around him, whether they had just become a soldier and were novices who had entered the battlefield for the first time, or Bai Jia, who had fought an old battle, or the raw Jurchens who had just been captured from the deep mountains and old forests, all fell to the ground like wheat in hail. Some of them were hit through the head by the sudden iron beads that fell from the sky, and they died before they could snort on the spot, while others were unfortunately hit in other parts. Although they were all wearing thick armor, some of the stronger white-armored soldiers even wore two layers of armor on themselves. But such a defense is useless in the face of these inconspicuous little iron beads. The shotguns easily pierced through the armor and blasted a bowl-sized hole of blood in their backs. The men fell to the ground, but they were not dead for a while, but they kept screaming in pain, making Darha wonder if he was still in the world.

Darha's luck was good, because the detonation time of several shrapnel grenades was off, so he happened to be in a gap that was not covered by the iron balls dropped by the shrapnel grenades, and under the blow of such a hail of shotguns, he was unscathed, but such a blow also made him stop moving forward. But soon a voice woke him up. It was the drumbeat of the charge coming from the rear.

"Quick, rush forward! Their shells are slow to load, and if they don't rush up quickly, another guy will die! A Niu Lu Zhangjing shouted, and at the same time rushed forward.

Now there were still about three hundred paces from there, and Darha, as well as the other surviving soldiers, were wearing heavy armor, and rushing directly at the distance was a considerable drain on physical strength. But if you don't rush at this time, if you let those guys over there fire two more rounds of such shells, it is estimated that the whole army will collapse without fighting. Probably because of this, the drum of the charge was beaten later.

Darha came to his senses at the sound of the drums, and though he was now terrified of the cannons in front of him, habit and reverence for the law of martial law led him to rush forward.

……

"Mother, what kind of cannon is this? One guy can kill so many! Wang Sansheng's tongue was almost unable to retract.

"No wonder they dared to come out and fight. No wonder ......," Sha Zilong muttered, "This is also Jianxuan, if you change someone else, I'm afraid you won't need other soldiers at all, these cannons are enough!" ”

……

Now the ranks of the Qing army are completely chaotic, and they are still rushing forward only because of the habit of always winning for so many years, as well as the confidence in their numerical superiority and hand-to-hand combat ability. Including Darha, all the Eight Banners soldiers believed that although those guys' artillery was really powerful, as long as they could rush to the front, Barutu of the Eight Banners could beat eight of those guys.

On the way to the charge, the opposing artillery carried out another round of shelling, but this time all the shells fired went over Darha's head and fell behind. Darha didn't bother to look back, he continued to lunge forward with his shield and sword. The distance between the two sides was getting closer, and he could already see the faces of the Nikan gunners who were operating the guns on the other side, and after the Nikan artillerymen had fired the last shot, they dropped their cannons and ran towards the rear through the gap left by the musketeers' ranks.

Now that he was only about fifty paces, Darha saw that the other artillerymen had run away, so he slowed down, and while he was catching his breath, he took his great bow from his back, bent his bow and arrows, and shot at the musketeers on the other side.

The arrow hit the chest of Chang Le, the regiment commander who was now standing at the front, but it failed to penetrate Chang Le's breastplate, and only made a dinging sound and fell to the ground.

"Raise your gun!" Chang Le gave the order unmoved. The musketeers raised their flintlock pistols.

A few arrows flew over, clanging at Changle's breastplate before falling to the ground.

"Prepare ......" Chang Le dragged out his voice, and at the same time raised his handcuff with his right arm.

Another arrow came and hit Chang Le's left arm. For ease of movement, the musketeers did not have much protection on their arms and calves, only some of them were wrapped in iron nets made of wrought wire. This kind of thing still has a certain effect when defending against knife slashes, but it is better than nothing when dealing with piercing attacks. So this arrow worked, and the conical arrow easily pierced the iron net and stuck it in Chang Le's left arm.

"Prepare ......" Chang Le gritted his teeth and judged the distance, and the pair was already only thirty steps.

"Fire!" Chang Le shouted, and at the same time, a puff of white smoke came out of the handcuff in his right hand.

……

More than a thousand flintlock guns on the opposite side roared at the same time, and at such a distance, the flintlock pistols could already provide a very high accuracy of hit. This round of salvo almost swept away the group of Qing troops that rushed to the front. Darha suddenly found that the armor soldiers who had been running in front of him had suddenly fallen. Thirty paces ahead of him, the musketeers had already crouched down and began to reload their ammunition.

Darha shouted wildly, and rushed forward as hard as he could, knowing that it would take time for the musketeers to reload, and that they could rush forward and then completely eliminate the musketeers through hand-to-hand combat.

Darha spotted an officer-like guy with an arrow missing from his left arm, and he was now loading his handcuff with ammunition. Darha shouted and rushed over, but the officer just glanced at him and continued to concentrate on reloading.

Darha had already rushed to the officer, who was only a little more than ten paces away. By this time, the officer, too, had loaded his ammunition, stood up, and then raised his handcuff and aimed it at Darha.