The enemy's cannon was test-fired, and the solid bullet was dropped, which also formed a ricochet. From the muzzle flame, 19 cannons of different calibers can be clearly counted. They had 6 guns firing in the direction of the Minjiang River, trying to show their presence to the fleet.

Jianzhou is also calibrating the firing range, and in the direction of facing the army, the longest-range artillery shot the ultimate effective range of about 800 meters. The Green Battalion is also using its heavy artillery to assert the scope of control of the battlefield.

Orderly turned the telescope in the direction of the gun, and saw an unusually thick barrel and a disproportionate muzzle. The rough cannon body has obvious slits in the cannon, indicating that the iron cannon did not use the high-cost monolithic casting method, but used the block model method that is convenient for mass production.

If you don't care about weight and scrap rate, it's not difficult to cast a cannon with the block method. This method of casting is commonly used in the so-called assault guns, that is, siege artillery, in the Chinese army. The life of the body tube is only more than 200 rounds, and the probability of exploding is very high, and it can usually be thrown away after a fortified city.

Fujian's artillery casting level is not as good as that of Beijing and Guangdong, and it probably ranks third in the mainland. This imitation of the Shenwei General Cannon represents the highest level of casting artillery in Fujian. Judging roughly from the volume, this iron cannon is about 8 pounds, and the barrel weighs more than 1.5 tons, and it is more than 2 tons with the gun carriage. With the enemy's existing gun mounts, this kind of cannon should not expect to maneuver on the battlefield, and hide in the barracks with peace of mind.

Langemann saluted, "Archon, it's time for me to go down." ”

"Go ahead, be careful."

Langemann turned around and took just two steps.

"Carl," Orderly called to him, "stop trying to lead the charge yourself. ”

A smile crept up the corner of the lieutenant colonel's mouth, "Okay, sir." ”

At the foot of the hill were 10 horses to ride, and Langemann stepped on horseback and hurried to the front with his heralds. Horseback gave the front-line commander a view beyond the infantry, which helped him command the battle.

Amid the smoke rising from the ground, a column of horsemen passed the marching artillery column and soon reached the rear of the infantry battalion.

It was about the regimental commander who went to the front line to boost morale, and there was a cheer from the artillery, as a result of which Jianzhou accelerated the rate of artillery fire, and one solid bullet after another smashed into the ground, marking out their territory in several directions.

Langemann sent horseback heralds to both flanks, and soon the snare drums stopped beating and the battalions stood in place. Yes, Order is not going to go into the range of the Green Battalion's artillery right now.

From a distance, Jiang Feng pulled the flag of the Bendu Empire that belonged to the army, and two indigo phalanxes stood on the battlefield, standing still under the enemy's shelling.

The field artillery untied their horses, and six cannons were placed in the joint headquarters of the Guizhou soldiers, the army, and the Dengzhou soldiers, and the wooden boxes and powder barrels filled with shells were placed in order.

Pull the horse back to the mountain pass. 3 12-pounder bronze guns ceased firing, and along with 4 more field guns, towed gear was hung. The 12-pounder cannon was too heavy to be dragged by a small local horse, and it was necessary for the people to push the gun wheel forward. The civilians who entered the battlefield were also saddled with follow-up ammunition for the artillery.

The green battalion soldiers on the opposite side still did not make any move, but only urged the artillery to continue to increase the rate of fire. The enemy raised the elevation angle of the muzzle and smashed the shells behind the battle line, and whether such an angle of incidence could form a ricochet was completely a matter of luck. Under the fire of more than 10 cannons of the enemy in turn, some of the people in the civilian team were hit by shells, or missing arms and legs, or smashed into a mess of minced meat. Although there were not many unlucky people, the death was miserable and almost caused a riot.

The Taipei Guard Battalion was responsible for maintaining order, and the backbone of the battle was either from the Xiao Yuan Battalion or from the Ming Army in Shanghai, and they were very skilled in handling this situation.

Shou Xuan believed that the two battalions in his core would be able to advance against the artillery fire of the Green Battalion, and even take the wall. But there are too few such soldiers, and each one is precious. He prefers to choose methods that lack the aesthetics of war in the era of linear tactics.

A cannonball smashed into the array of Guizhou soldiers on the left flank, and the blood mist rose, and several stumps flew into the air, almost shaking the formation of the Guizhou soldiers.

Opposite military flags flew and various piercing musical instruments sounded. The Green Battalion moved forward, without the beat of the drum to adjust the cadence, and it didn't take long for the whole front to look uneven.

A herald on horseback left Langemann's side and found Wang Yunlun, who was in command of the garrison. Soon, most of the people scattered behind the battle line dropped their tools, holding their heads in their hands or crouching, or lying on the ground. Wang Yunlun stood on the side of the marching 12-pounder bronze cannon, and the garrison battalion began to assemble with him as the center.

The two 6-pounder guns and the four 4-pounder guns that had been placed were test-fired at the new battle position, and the Zhuyuan was simply calibrated.

The Green Battalion entered an effective range of 500 meters, and the 6 guns fired a much faster rate of fire than the arquebus. One by one, the shells hit the hard ground, bounced up, flew into the enemy formation, and opened the gap in the corresponding position.

The two positions of the Green Battalion Army Formation facing the field artillery were quickly recessed, and the battle line was immediately divided into three sections.

Clouds of gunpowder smoke rose from the artillery columns, obscuring part of the view. Turning his gaze to the right flank, the prominent Dengzhou soldiers fired the Fran machines and arquebuses they carried, and the Green Battalion responded with similar weapons. The soldiers of both armies on the front line fell one after another. At the stage of firing artillery and guns from afar, it is not possible to see the difference between the border army and the inland army for the time being.

The Guizhou soldiers on the left flank had not yet made contact with the Green Battalion, and a notification ship of the Navy at the tail of the squadron risked running aground and dropped anchor near the riverbank. The five four-pounder guns with the windows rolled out of the window would probably allow the general on the right flank of the Green Battalion to carefully consider the speed of his advance.

There was a relatively neat salvo of tiger squat cannons from the right flank, and the flying shotguns caused a relatively obvious killing effect since the start of the war, and the residual value of the minced meat was scattered all over the ground, making the order look sideways.

At this time, the Jianzhou army was strictly disciplined, perhaps because of the bloody effect brought by the ugly braid, and after the Ming army changed the flag and gown of the green battalion army, the combat effectiveness skyrocketed.

This is an invisible effect, and the Green Battalion soldiers believe that even if they are temporarily defeated, they will be defeated by the soldiers of the inner court of the Manchurian Taijun, and the final victory belongs to them. If he dies in battle, Jianzhou will support his family. If they survive, they will be able to reap the rewards of the people. But if you run away, you will definitely die if you are caught, and your family will be harmed.

The establishment of states was barbaric, but they brought with them a barbaric order, a set of effective military and political systems. The Ming army was incorporated into this system after surrendering, and there was a world of difference from the previous indiscriminate fight like headless flies.

If this system cannot be shaken in a short period of time, it will not be able to shake the confidence of the Green Battalion soldiers in the Manchurian forbidden army. This needs to be proved to the world again and again, year after year.

In part of the right flank, the Dengzhou soldiers and the green battalion soldiers threw down the tiger squat cannon that temporarily became an iron rod and entered hand-to-hand combat. This difference was soon manifested, the army trained in Liaodong was much stronger than the hand-to-hand combat ability of the southern green battalion, and the situation was almost one-sided.

In the central battlefield, after several rounds of attack and fire, the straggler line withdrew from the opening of the line infantry battalion, and Wang Yunlun commanded the garrison battalion to regroup the light infantry.

The field artillery shifted its muzzle slightly, firing a round of grapeshotfire diagonally at the enemy, and another bloody mist filled the air. The enemy forces are still advancing. The halo effect brought by the establishment of the state is very obvious, and the Ming army, which transformed into a green battalion soldier in the Southern Ming Dynasty, fought several times to win more with less, and the corpse mountain was as tragic as a river of blood.

Behind the front line of Jianzhou's advance, there was also a cavalry unit of nearly 200 people and infantry on the second line. They gathered around the commander Yang Yufan, according to the habits of the army in this era, those soldiers are the core of today's green battalion soldiers.

The infantry battalion fired two volleys, and the almost uniform rows of guns on the noisy battlefield lifted people's spirits. The gunners in the third row raised their weapons and held back for the time being, while the gunners in the first two rows retreated and reloaded.

The Mushkert heavy arquebuses, which were once heavily armed in the Americas, were too large for use in Asia and were somewhat overpowered for use in Asia, and had been eliminated from the front-line troops, either sold or given to allies. The arquebus used by the Army now is a lighter version of the Swedish downsized one, eliminating the need for gun carriages.

The reloading of the arquebus is extremely cumbersome, and you don't have to look over there to imagine a rush to do so.

The Federal Infantry Training Drill was an improvement on the Dutchman's Weapons Exercises, and the arquebusier's 25-step procedure for reloading was too streamlined to be streamlined. Because the reload speed is so slow, even a well-trained army can only fire a salvo in 1 minute at its best level, usually every 2 minutes. If you want to form a dense firepower, you have to form a horizontal formation of 5 rows like an enemy army.

In order to fire the second shot quickly, the infantry set the arquebuses they were carrying on fire at both ends, which caused the arquebuses on the battlefield to deplete quickly. Because it relied on naval shipping and did not leave the supply center of Mawei Harbor, the problem of spare arquebuses was not obvious in this battle. If they were to fight inland, they had to carry heavy spare arquebuses in addition to ammunition.

The effect of the salvo can only be said to be average, in order to avoid the flying arquebus igniting the medicine bottles of the comrades, the distance between the arquebusiers should reach about 1 meter, and the arquebus is not a very good weapon for a battle that needs to exert firepower in a short time. The battle on the central battlefield is still not far from the real standard of queuing for shooting.

Most of the Jianzhou troops on the left flank had not yet entered the range of the weapons of the Guizhou soldiers, and the supporting notification ships fired naval guns and fired at the enemy battle line from the flanks. Two shells hit the target, and dozens of green battalion soldiers fell screaming, it was simply two alleys of flesh and blood. The naval guns opened fire rapidly, and the effect of the fire was terrifying, and in just a few minutes, the greatest casualties since the battle were made.

The Jianzhou cavalry pressed forward for some distance, and a sharp signal to retreat sounded. The enemy forces on the entire front disengaged, dropped their weapons in the way, turned and fled.

The retreat is probably where the gap between the two armies is the greatest. The attacking formations of the Ming army and the green battalion soldiers roughly looked the same, but every time the battlefield retreated was a disaster, and the soldiers who turned around and fled were not in a queue at all.

It was not a tactical retreat, the scattered soldiers ran from the sides of the cavalry to the rear, and the officers cut off some of the heads that ran around, which frightened the officers and soldiers who came back, and they had to regroup.

The enemy artillery resumed firing, and the Dengzhou soldiers chased them out for a while, encountering direct cannon fire, resulting in some losses. The enemy cavalry threatened the flanks and did not attack. Jin Shiying had no choice but to withdraw the pursuing troops. To defend against cavalry, the infantry had to form a dense formation, so that they would encounter artillery casualties when attacking. The combat effectiveness of the Dengzhou soldiers could not be achieved, and they advanced in formation at the risk of being crushed by artillery.

It's a pity to keep order, if there is cavalry, now if you put into the attack, the enemy army will be completely defeated. The cavalry quickly passed through the battlefield, engaged the enemy cavalry, covering the infantry pursuit. As long as a few cannons are captured and the gun doors are nailed, the balance of battlefield strength will undergo a fundamental change.

Since there was no cavalry, and the order did not want the infantry to suffer too heavy losses, it was only necessary to use some troublesome methods. The superiority of the enemy's forces was not obvious, and he was unable to attack again in a short time. The soldiers who participated in the battle sat on the ground and took out the prepared dry food to replenish their strength.

A herald rode to the rear, and Langemann gave the following order.

A garrison battalion carried 800 men into the battlefield along the road opened by the infantry. The people carried bamboo baskets and rattan baskets full of earth, and the formation was slightly chaotic. The leather whip and the reward inspired the selected people, under the command of the engineers, they laid down the bamboo baskets at the marked places and quickly built improvised artillery forts.

Artillery barricades were piling up at a rate visible to the naked eye, and the remaining 12-pounder and 6-pounder guns had reached the front line by this time. In Changle County, various containers that could be used to hold soil, such as cloth bags and bamboo baskets, came in handy, and in several key positions, the sappers instructed the people to start extending the breastwork.

The water of the Min River is low, and the notification ships on the riverside can only leave their combat positions. The substituted flat-bottomed boats had some large Francs, which were inferior to the cannons they had just had.

The enemy troops were also having lunch, and there was no movement for the time being. In their opinion, the current behavior of the Federation is quite strange. As the side that took the initiative to provoke the battle, it actually stopped halfway to build artillery forts and breastwork, which is usually a sign of temporarily giving up the attack.

Because of the presence of artillery, there was no large-scale engagement in the afternoon, only some lightly armed troops exchanged fire in the center of the battle line, and the main forces of the two sides still maintained a confrontational posture.

The mystery was unfolded near evening, and the first-line infantry withdrew to the gradually forming artillery support points. The men who built the fortifications were exhausted and withdrew one after another to rest. A group of 12 12-pounder guns dismantled from the Raphael were towed by a group of people who did not enter the battlefield, and appeared in the enemy's field of vision.