When Zu Dashou, the chief soldier of Shanhaiguan, was awakened from his dream by the rumbling artillery god, he thought that the Dashun army led by Hao Shaoqi had begun to attack the city, so he hurriedly got up and gave an urgent order while letting people drape himself.

"Let the people of Nancheng guard it, don't let the rogues succeed. If he dared to lose Nancheng, the old man would ask him for Qi Wentai's head. ”

Qi Wentai is the defender of the southern city of Shanhaiguan.

But as soon as the words fell, I saw a figure rushing in in embarrassment, kneeling down in front of Zu Dashou and crying loudly: "Dashuai, it's not good, the Jiang family army has begun to attack the city, the artillery fire is extremely fierce, and the brothers in Beicheng have suffered heavy casualties, and they can't parry." ”

Zu Dashou was a little stunned after hearing this, wasn't it Hao Shaoqi's Dashun army attacking the city? Why did it become the Jiang family army attacking the city again? How could the Jiang family army start to attack the city inexplicably? Could it be that Jiang Chuan has already raised the anti-flag?

Zu Dashou had countless thoughts in his mind for a moment.

However, he was a veteran after all, and he quickly calmed himself down, and asked the soldier kneeling in front of him in a deep voice: "Tell me slowly, what the hell is going on?" ”

The soldier was Wu Sangui's personal soldier, the person who was sent by Wu Sangui to Shanjia to spread the word, and when he heard Zu Dashou's question, he hesitated all of a sudden, and began to speak.

Zu Dashou is such a person, where can he not see the strangeness in this, and suddenly shouted: "Tell me quickly, does it have anything to do with Wu Sangui?" ”

Zu Dashou has been a general for many years, and he shouted loudly, which frightened the pro-soldier and suddenly trembled like chaff, his face was pale, and he hurriedly told the truth of the matter.

After hearing this, Zu Dashou was immediately shocked, and scolded angrily: "The erector misunderstands me!" He kicked Wu Sangui's personal soldier on the heel, then grabbed the sword next to him and strode towards the outside of the mansion, and the captain of the personal soldier behind him hurriedly followed with someone.

Outside the Shanhai Pass, fifty field guns bombarded the city. Every time the artillery commander's command flag was waved, a round of shells whistled towards the head of the city at Shanhaiguan.

Although these field guns were not upgraded, they still belonged to the front-loading smoothbore guns.

But after Egawa became king, the system gave a reward building - the arsenal.

This arsenal has two functions, in addition to producing muskets, artillery and grenadiers' bomblets, and also has a very important role, which is to develop and upgrade various military technologies.

For example, the technologies that can be developed at present include technology that can increase the degree of gunpowder combustion, and sights that can increase the accuracy of artillery shooting.

The increased burning of gunpowder means that the range of artillery and muskets increases. With the addition of sights, the power of field artillery increases a lot.

Another technique is to improve the melee combat ability of musketeers, which can be used to add bayonets to muskets.

The overall length of the musket with the bayonet is not much different from that of a normal spear, which also improves the battlefield survivability of the musketeer.

Another technology is to improve the breastplate protection of melee cavalry, which is essential for improving the survivability of cavalry on the battlefield.

Although these technologies are expensive, Jiangchuan is now considered wealthy, so he does not hesitate to choose all the R&D upgrades.

Through the addition of these technologies and equipment, the attack power of the firearms unit of the entire Jiang Army has been greatly improved.

Now this improvement is reflected in the current siege warfare.

Although there are also a lot of artillery pieces at the head of Shanhaiguan City, most of these cannons are old-fashioned tiger squat guns.

These tiger squat cannons have short barrels, and they are fixed on the city wall, and the gunpowder used is still the kind of yellow powder with poor combustion efficiency, coupled with the overall backwardness of the sighting equipment, the shells fired out cannot reach the Jiang army artillery under the city.

Moreover, the most important thing was that there were not many shells and gunpowder in the hands of the defenders of Shanhaiguan, because these shells and gunpowder had to be transported from the gunpowder bureau in the capital. Now that Li Zicheng's Dashun army has cut off the road from Jingshi to Shanhaiguan, gunpowder cannot be transported at all.

Even if it can be transported, the emperor will not let it be transported. Jingshi is now unable to protect itself, and all materials must be supplied to Jingshi first.

Therefore, although the defenders of Shanhaiguan have artillery, they also have to use it leisurely. Otherwise, if you accidentally run out, these cannons will really not be much stronger than burning sticks.

On the other hand, the Jiang family's army brought enough cannonballs and gunpowder with this expedition, and the vanguard army of Shanjia alone carried fifty artillery pieces and more than enough cannonballs and gunpowder to conquer three cities.

Moreover, the barrel of the Jiang army's field artillery is much longer than that of the tiger squat cannon, which means that the firing range is also much higher.

Coupled with the improvement of gunpowder combustion technology and the addition of aiming instruments, the consequence is that the artillery of the Jiang army can easily fall on the head of Shanhaiguan City, while the shells of the defenders of Shanhaiguan can only fall on the open space outside the city.

This is embarrassing, everyone is artillery, but one side can fire the cannon to its heart's content, but on the other hand, it can only shrink its neck to be artillery.

What's even more embarrassing is that Rao is like this, the defenders of Shanhaiguan still have to calculate and open artillery, while the artillery of the Jiang family army can fire without any scruples.

There is another point, which is also an incomparable advantage of the defenders of Shanhaiguan.

The artillery of the Jiang family army is all produced by the fortress base, and naturally has the attributes of high-quality products. According to the attribute description, these guns can fire more than 10,000 times per gun without being damaged by external forces.

This unexpectedly means that the artillery of the Jiang family army can shoot as much as they want, and they don't have to worry about the danger of exploding.

And the Shanhaiguan defenders can't do it. The quality of the artillery of the Ming army was okay when the imperial court was still strong in the early stage, but later, as the imperial court became more and more corrupt, and all aspects of financial supervision became more and more erosive, the quality of the artillery, gunpowder, and shells manufactured by the Gunpowder Bureau became worse and worse, and cutting corners became a common phenomenon.

Moreover, the craftsmen of the Ming Dynasty were treated very poorly, which led to the quality of the artillery, gunpowder, and shells that were made.

The most direct consequence of the quality problem is that on the battlefield, when the Ming army is playing with the enemy, there is a loud bang next to him, and then he finds that his hands, head, feet, or his whole person are flying into the sky.

Because the artillery blew up.

Many muskets were the same, the enemy came up, and the musketeers hurriedly opened fire. Seeing that the medicine was loaded and the enemy was in front of him, a little fire, bang.

Well, the enemy was fine, his hand flew out, his face turned pockmarked, and then he was killed by the enemy with a knife when he was confused.

So later, many Ming soldiers began to wonder if there was a traitor in the gunpowder bureau, and the firearms they made did not blow up the enemy, but only bombed their own people.

As a result, many Ming soldiers ended up preferring to use old-fashioned broadswords and spears rather than deadly muskets and artillery.

In just a short while, there were already three tiger squatting cannons on the head of Shanhaiguan City, and more than a dozen soldiers were injured, three of them were directly seriously injured, and they couldn't survive.

Although Wu Sangui, the initiator, was far away, he was still knocked off his helmet by an iron foot that flew over. If he hadn't dodged quickly, he would have been afraid that the heads would have flown out.

Rao is like this, he has also become embarrassed, his face is black, there is blood on his arms, and the original handsome and dashing young general image has become similar to that of a charcoal burner.

But he couldn't take care of these at this time, he never thought that because of his whims, he would be able to let the Jiang family army open artillery and attack the city without any scruples.

He never expected that the Jiang family's artillery would be so sharp, so long-range, and so accurate, although the artillery on his side was condescending, it was completely suppressed by the other party, and he had no power to fight back at all.

He is now full of remorse in his heart, and he doesn't know how to explain to his uncle Zu Dashou, and he doesn't know how to clean up this mess.

But if he wants to get him out of the city to surrender now, he can't do it, so he can only continue to resist.

At this time, the head of Beicheng City was already full of corpses, and there were countless wounded soldiers wailing and screaming.

This was an unnecessary and unprepared battle to defend the city, all because of Wu Sangui's willfulness.