On the battleship Nanjing, the envoy brought back news that the Qing army in Guazhou had refused to surrender. Pen | fun | pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 ｉｎｆｏ

Zhang Yukun said: "Giving the Tartar three hours is already very forgiving!" Since they are obsessed and refuse to surrender, then we will attack the city! ”

The siege weapons of the Ming marines were all made in advance, and when they went out on the expedition, the siege weapons were placed on transport ships. There are basically all kinds of siege weapons on the transport ship, such as shield cars, watchtowers, nest cars and large ladder cars, etc., and the siege weapons of the Marine Corps are all modular, and when transported, they are disassembled and placed on the ship. When it's time to use it, bring the siege weapon ashore and assemble it.

However, after five years of painstaking management by the Qing army, the Qing army built a strong fort in Guazhou, and the city wall was also heightened, and the height increased to about two zhang, although it was still not as good as Xiangyang, Beijing, Nanjing, these strong cities, but the two-zhang high city wall was already good in those years.

Outside the city of Guazhou, the Qing army arranged dense wooden piles to dig the ground into potholes, which could be used to block the advance of the Ming army's siege weapons. At the head of the city, there was a fort higher than the city wall.

The Qing army also built strong forts on the riverside of Guazhou City and arranged a large number of Hongyi cannons to deal with the threat from the river. However, the cannons of the Qing army in Guazhou are very backward, and the cannons of the Ming army imitated by the local method when Huang Taiji was originally outside the pass, these cannons were originally placed in the head of Shengjing City, in order to strengthen the defense of the Yangtze River, the Qing court let people transport these cannons to Guazhou.

Huang Taiji recruited craftsmen that year, and the Hongyi cannon imitated by the soil method weighed more than 3,000 catties, but because the casting process was not up to par, such a heavy cannon could only fire seven to eight catties of shells.

It can be said that these old guns could not pose any threat to the Ming battleships at all, and the shells weighing seven to eight pounds could not penetrate the thick oak planks of the battleships at all, and the shells hit them like tickles. On the battleship, however, there were more than sixty heavy guns, the smallest of which were more than eighteen pounds, and there were twenty-four and thirty-two pounds.

In terms of artillery shells, the Ming army also made great improvements. Although the battleships were not equipped with unreliable flowering shells, they were equipped with a large number of the latest shrapnel shells, which were used exclusively for shore attacks.

The structure of the new shrapnel is somewhat similar to that of the flowering shell, with a cork wooden butt at the tail of the shell, but a relatively large hole is made in the wooden butt of the shrapnel, and an iron pipe is inserted into the hole. This hole, which pours gunpowder gas into the shrapnel shell, is connected to the hole in the tail of the shell.

The shell of the shrapnel was forged from a thin sheet of iron, and the body was filled with iron balls with a diameter of nine millimeters. When the cannon is fired, the gunpowder gas in the barrel is poured into the shell through the iron pipe at the tail of the wooden shell holder and the hole at the bottom of the shell, so that when the shell is fired out of the chamber, the inside of the shell body is filled with high-pressure gunpowder gas. However, because the iron sheet has a certain bearing capacity, it will not disperse immediately after the cannon is discharged, but will only explode after flying about a hundred paces away, and the shrapnel will explode, spraying a large number of iron balls towards the opponent, causing great killing effect.

The Ming army also had a large number of small artillery ships, and the tonnage of these artillery ships that specialized in carrying out attacks on the shore was not large, and they were converted from the Jinlu-class sixth-class privateer, with a displacement of 150 tons, and the original 18 cannons were dismantled and replaced with a 64-pounder mortar and four 12-pounder howitzers.

The artillery ship was specially built for shore attack, this kind of ship is very low-cost, it was originally an old ship built by the British, and after the British began to eliminate this kind of privateer, it was purchased by the Nanyang Company in large quantities. The Ming army had more than a hundred such small warships, most of which were converted into artillery ships specializing in bombardment on the opposite shore.

Howitzers and mortars have less recoil and are suitable for use on small boats, and the reliability of howitzers and mortars is also higher than that of cannon shells, and the attack power on the shore is much higher.

When the huge figures of the five battleships of the Ming army, Nanjing, Guangzhou, Changsha, Wuchang and Hangzhou, came into the eyes of the defenders of the Qing army in Guazhou, the defenders of Guazhou began to regret why they did not accept the persuasion of the Ming army.

"Oh my God! What a big ship! It's bigger than any ship I've seen before! The Qing army defending the city gasped.

However, there is no regret medicine in the world, and by the time the Qing army defenders felt regretful, the overwhelming shells had already smashed into the Guazhou Fort.

Five battleships, with four hexagonal gun fast cruisers, sixteen fourth-class cruisers, twenty-four fifth-class cruisers, and more than a hundred artillery bombardment ships, lined up in a column on the river, sailing from east to west, rows of battleships began to fire from the first battleship Nanjing, and rows of fire erupted continuously on the river, and shells smashed into Guazhou with a piercing whistling sound.

The first salvo of the battleship Nanjing dazzled the Qing troops in the city.

In the first round of shooting, although all the shells fired were solid, more than 1,000 shells fell on the Guazhou battery after the bombardment of more than 100 warships in turn. A sea of shells smashed down on the head and face, and the stones on the fort shattered, and the dirt flew everywhere. With such dense artillery fire, many of the Qing army's artillery positions were directly hit by shells, and the cannonballs that were hit jumped up and rolled in mid-air. The solid cannonball fell in the crowd, stirring up a diffuse mist of blood, and the human body that was grazed by the cannonball was immediately shattered, and the severed limbs were sprayed in all directions.

Some shells simply hit the powder keg of the Qing army, causing a violent explosion, blowing the cannon on the gun position crookedly, and the bones of the Qing gunners at the center of the explosion were gone.

Compared with the perverted artillery fire of the Ming fleet, the counterattack of the defenders of Guazhou seemed pale and weak. The Qing army's 3,000 catties of Hongyi cannons spit out fireballs, most of the shells missed, and a few shells hit the Ming battleships, but the shells smashed on the thick oak planks, leaving only white marks, and the Ming battleships were unscathed, at most only a little paint was lost.

"The Puppet Ming Haikou is indeed a strong ship! Our artillery can't hit them at all! The Qing army guard observed the effect of the shelling with a telescope and sighed.

Artillery ships behind battleships and cruisers swept over the river, mortars and howitzers spewed out balls of fire. This time, what hit the Qing army's fort was a flowering cannonball that exploded on the ground. Especially for the sixty-four-pounder mortar, when a shell hit the ground, a large fireball suddenly swelled on the fort, and countless metal fragments swept over the turret like a sickle in the hands of the god of death, and swept a large area of the clearers in a pool of blood.