Near the inner city of Youzhou, the last remaining remnants of resistance and a large number of enemies have been basically wiped out. At the price, this is a city square that has been demolished and demolished, and there are ruins and embers after the fire of the source; After all, as a blocking position that the Pinglu Army had spent a lot of effort to prepare, compared to other opponents who could only rush and prepare a long time ago, there had already been enough firewood and oil carbon here; Once the current situation is impossible, he will decisively set fire to the jade and burn the stone.

But there are pros and cons; As a result, the ring of buildings and residential areas surrounding the inner city was easily emptied, and became a position for the Huai army to continue to besiege and attack the inner city.

At present, although the Huai army has not yet begun to formally attack the city, it is only piled up under the city with various large and small cannons, bombarding the city wall day and night; But the trembling walls beneath their feet, and the remnants of the plates, battlements, and towers that were mutilated and submerged in the rubble of masonry, were enough to reflect the mood of the majority of the people who were in danger of dying.

And what is desperate is that as the Huai army gradually mastered the gates of the outer city and cleared more and more passages, the artillery forts and artillery arrays that were bombarded under the city were also increasing day by day, and there is no end in sight. Even the opponents of the Huai army were able to stand on the edge of the high artillery forts piled up everywhere in a grand manner, and kept shooting and suppressing the city in turn.

And in the roaring artillery fort, Zhou Laoqi, who is the deputy general of the artillery regiment, feels that he may not have talked about so many cannons in his life, large artillery, small artillery, long artillery, short artillery, light artillery, heavy artillery, field artillery, mortar artillery, mountain artillery, and cavalry artillery; City defense artillery, scattering artillery, revolver artillery, sub-mother artillery,。。。

It seems that because the preparations for the waste of great efforts before the war were extraordinarily sufficient, coupled with the fact that the advance of the army along the way was through the flat plain area with few obstacles, and the road was vigorously improved and strengthened by opening roads and encountering water in the mountains, so that the rear transportation and transshipment were exceptionally smooth and sufficient, so a large number of various artillery pieces produced and equipped in Huaidi were gathered and sent to the front in batches.

Hundreds of artillery pieces of various Huai armies were concentrated in the besieged camp on three sides of the city wall, which was only six or seven miles in circumference; There are more than 20 numbers of the artillery regiment alone, and the daily consumption of sub-medicines is calculated by car, and the water for cooling the cannon barrel alone requires thousands of exclusive laborers, and an additional temporary diversion canal is dug from the branch of the Gaoliang River that passes through the city.

Personally, it may seem to him that there will not be much opportunity to gather so many artillery pieces together for a long time to come; It is also this extraordinarily majestic and magnificent Youzhou City that is worthy of doing so, and it also has the conditions to do so.

However, the effect achieved is also particularly significant, only on the fourth day of attacking Youzhou City, the inner city wall has been basically smashed and flattened, and with the degree and efficiency visible to the naked eye, there is no longer anything superfluous to stand and move. As for the counterattacks and sneak attacks from the inner city, they were also easily blown into powder or destroyed on the spot under the sufficient density of artillery frontal stacking.

In the end, the only ones who can pose a threat to them are those throwing cars and stone cannons that hide behind impenetrable walls, relying on unpredictable and observable parabolas to create a limited probability of killing and damage and a symbolic return fire; But apparently in the eyes of the commander of this site, this is not enough,

So now, he was standing next to a heavy siege gun with a flat barrel that was taller than him, carefully examining every detail up and down; I don't know how the even-lost battalion of the Jiansheng Army in the rear transferred this daunting big guy from Huaidi all the way and into Youzhou City.

Just lining up among the first large and small gun carriages and preset gun forts seemed to stand out from the crowd and was particularly eye-catching; And this big guy who is stereotyped as a Yuan-style siege cannon is obviously still a battlefield trend, so he specially transferred a senior veteran artillery leader like Zhou Laoqi, who was already responsible for command and coordination in the rear, to be responsible for the corresponding supervision matters.

Because of his age, according to the originally arranged life trajectory, he should have been transferred to the second-line army a long time ago, and began to teach himself the experience of operating artillery in the army as an artillery instructor, so he settled down in the rear Yuxin Silla mother-in-law; However, this time, the call for the expansion of the Huaizhen army and the northern expedition still made him take the initiative to give up the daily life that he had been initially accustomed to settling down, and once again devoted himself to this new great cause of conquest in the name of the Beiping Metropolitan Governor's Office.

Because he has a feeling and intuition about this, if he misses this campaign, maybe he will be able to go to the battlefield again in the future, and it will be relatively rare. With such emotions and thoughts, he meticulously completed the careful inspection of the cannon up and down again, and then blew the whistle in his mouth.

With the whine of the special whistle, dozens of stacks of fire-paper wrapped medicine cakes were filled with thick and deep inner tubes one by one, and then the thick cannons hoisted by the turntable machine also slid into it along the oblique warped muzzle, but unlike the spherical cannons of the past, the cannons used in this siege cannon were barrel-shaped round-headed cylindrical, and finally stuffed into the air-tight wooden cover plate and compacted over and over again.

Then, from the wedge-shaped hole above the cannon body, a portable lamp-like striker was inserted, and among the terms and passwords reported by the sight, the thick oil-filled axle was rotated to finely adjust the direction and firing boundary, and finally Zhou Laoqi, who was left alone, personally pulled down the fire rope on the cannon body.

The momentary delay was an extremely heavy thud, making him feel that something had been shattered invisibly, and in an instant, all the sounds of everything in the world were lost, and the huge fire and clouds of smoke that covered the sky and the sun erupted in an instant, almost filling and obscuring everyone's vision in front of him; Then there were countless waves of smoke that rolled upside down, and the ground shook up and tossed dust and rubble, which in an instant flooded the lower half of his body, and shook him from the top of his feet to the roots of his legs.

Zhou Laoqi even felt that he could no longer control his urine and was about to become incontinent, as if he was rebuilding the flowing stagnant time, all kinds of sounds and hustle and bustle seemed to come back suddenly, the roar of the city from far and near, the clamor of the city being smashed and peeled off or splashed, mixed with the slogans and heralds around him, and the faint wails and screams in the distance.

There was a moist feeling in the nose and ears, but when I touched it, it was my own blood. Then, in the midst of the remnants of the hum, he remembered to search for and probe his results, and saw that in the distance, at the top of the city gate, there was a large opening missing, and a slightly deformed cannon was deeply embedded.

"It seems to be a little off."

Old Zhou couldn't help but sigh a little, and continued to order to adjust the angle to prepare for the next round of artillery.

"Prepare for special bombs. Straight to the city gate. ”

Before he could finish his words, the viewer holding the instrument beside him couldn't help but scream.

"Look, it's falling."

Subsequently, Zhou Laoqi saw that in the gap that was larger than the ordinary cellar pond and pit on the edge of the field and cracked like a spider's web, the cannon suddenly fell down, and the circle of masonry on the side of the door collapsed piece by piece, and a large area of dust and smoke was built between the falls, and the rammed earth inside and the thick gate frame column head were faintly exposed.

However, it was like an invisible signal and a sudden beginning. In an instant, the doorway of smoke and dust suddenly opened from the inside out in a hurried frame, and there was a fierce roar and the sound of horses' hooves like thunder, but it was the cavalry that had gathered in the city at some unknown time, and I saw them rush out of the city gate like a rushing wave, and spread privately like mercury.

I saw these cavalry quickly scattered into groups of three or five, flying over with superb riding skills and tacit understanding, the obstacles and uneven ground of the battlefield under the city, and the reflection of countless men and horses running and galloping in armor, like a school of fish flashing and swimming, and in an instant towards the preface of the culling.

The vibrations and rattles of the horse's hooves, the smoke and dust, even interrupted and overpowered the bombardment of the forward artillery for a time, and made it obvious on some of the nearby gun positions that the morale was shaken to varying degrees and signs of turning and fleeing, and they rushed straight to within fifty or sixty paces.

Then, the small cannon and long cannon arrays that had been lacking a corresponding sense of presence because of their relatively small size and lightness in front of the artillery position suddenly seemed to come to life in an instant, and suddenly they rushed to fire in unison. In an instant, these cavalry, who rushed forward and were within reach of only a few breaths, only to feel that the sky suddenly darkened, and the overwhelming spray of coarse-grained bullets and iron pellets had already swept and raged among most of them like a fierce wind.

The blood mist that bloomed one after another and the limbs that pierced and tore one after another suddenly tore a long blood-colored storm out of thin air in the not very regular cavalry cluster, and the pungent smell of blood lingered in front of the battle for a long time.

Although these small artillery columns in the front row only had time to roar once, and were slashed and destroyed by the remnants of the cavalry rushing in, the outcome of this raid and encounter was basically predestined from the beginning; As more columns of guns poured out from behind the forts, quickly filling these knocked down and overturned columns with the spikes of the guns, the remnants of the cavalry, who had lost their degree and mobility by stopping and chopping, were in a sense caught in the urn;

In the end, none of these fish who slipped through the net could get rid of them, so they were desperate and powerless to be assassinated and forced in an alternate and orderly manner; The mounts that were knocked over and mixed with one after another were killed, assassinated, and even stunned and captured on the ground.

(End of chapter)