The day before the Ming army executed Ma Jinbao in Fucheng, the rammed earth outer wall of the fortifications in Anhua Town, the northernmost part of the Jinhua Ming army-occupied area, had been completely destroyed by the Qing army, except for the southernmost side and the part of the city wall near the southernmost point.

Since Chen Wenshuai's army marched westward, Jin Li, who received Chen Jin's request for help, mobilized the first section of the Eight Banners garrison in Hangzhou, as well as the whole army of Fubiao and Biao to cross the Qiantang River and go south. However, when they arrived in Zhuji, the people were coaxing the Ming army to build a dam in the upper reaches of the Puyang River.

At this moment, the Ming army launched an offensive in Quzhou on the one hand, and built a dam in Pujiang County on the other hand.

The Puyang River basin has frequent flood disasters, and has always had the nickname of "Zhejiang Little Yellow River", and the folk widely spread the folk song that "people along the river are poor overnight" is said to be here. Once you think of these, the answer is obvious.

After the destruction of the main force of the Ming army in Dalanshan, Chen Wen's Nantang Battalion was dominant, but the harmless tradition of the people was not only preserved, but also further developed.

It's just that Jin Li and Tian Xiong, these dog traitors, have always maintained the mentality that anyone is a thief as a thief, and the area north of Anhua Town is still occupied by the Qing army, so it is normal for the Ming army to choose the tactic of using water as a soldier.

However, if they wanted to attack Yiwu and Pujiang from Zhuji and did not take the road of Anhua Town-Zhengjiawu Town, they had to go through the mountainous areas, which was too inconvenient for the army of nearly 7,000 soldiers and auxiliary soldiers they brought with them. As a result, Jin Li had no choice but to stop his troops here, and at the same time send a large number of scouts to find out the situation in order to make a perfect plan.

In the next half month, after repeated verification like a nervous feeling, Jin Li and Tian Xiong learned that the construction of the dam was originally just a rumor, a lie that the Ming army could spread to delay the progress of the Qing army in the south.

After getting this answer, the angry Jin Li got the news that the Dubiao battalion had been repelled by the Ming army, and once again transferred a part of the Eight Banners Army from Hangzhou, leaving only Gushan Ezhen Liu Zhiyuan with a thousand Hangzhou garrison Eight Banners and the Hangzhou City Guard Association to continue to stay, while he took this army of nearly 8,000 soldiers to continue south to Anhua Town, trying to break through the rammed earth fortress and enter Yiwu, realize the strategic intention of encircling Wei and saving Zhao, and then encircling and exterminating.

The rammed earth walls were taken down with little effort, but when the Qing army rushed up the walls, they found that there was a strangely shaped fortress inside the city wall, and they could only use it as a target for the inner fortress on the wall.

Barely holding on for an hour, Jin Li and Tian Xiong had to abandon the city wall after realizing that it really didn't make any sense. But as soon as they withdrew from the city, the Ming army came up again.

The terrain there was so unfavorable that the Qing army had to fight the Ming army for the city wall again, trying to burn it down after taking it. As a result, as soon as the Qing army's siege force started a battle with the Ming army again, the probe horse in charge of early warning came with an alarm -- a Ming army appeared on the flank of the Qing army, and if nothing else, it should have been detoured from the area around the mine pavilion to the rear of the Qing army through a short mountain road.

Because the actual situation was not very clear, Jin Li had to suspend the offensive and sent the Fubiao battalion responsible for covering the flank to meet the battle, but the right battalion of Fubiao, as the vanguard team, was easily defeated by the Ming army almost as soon as they met, and they didn't even have the ability to fight back.

This Fubiao Right Battalion was still the local green battalion of the Hangzhou City Guard Association last year, and its combat effectiveness was much weaker than that of the Fubiao Left Battalion drawn from the Dinghai General Soldier Standard Battalion, but it really scared Jin Li that he couldn't even delay the time. Fortunately, this short confrontation also allowed Jin Li to figure out the number of the Ming army on the opposite side, and the banner played turned out to be the Dongyang Battalion of the Jinhua Ming Army.

Since it is in the combat barracks of the number, there is nothing abnormal about the right battalion of Fubiao not being an opponent. However, when Jin Li gave up continuing to attack the city and gathered a large army to gather and annihilate this Ming army, he found that the Ming army had withdrawn.

So, in the following days, Jin Li began to spend the time in the process of burning, artillery fire, disassembling the rammed earth city wall and dealing with the harassment of the Ming army, until the day before yesterday completely collapsed and cleaned up all the earthen walls on the fan-shaped surface that were conducive to attack, and the Qing army could use the advantage of troops to besiege the inner fortress.

After resting for a day, the army attacked the city today according to the plan, but after a few days of observation, Jin Li found that the Ming army fortress in the earthen wall was completely different from other fortresses of this era, but protruded several corners at roughly the same angle. If he had been able to learn anything about Hinduism, Judaism, or geometry and Western military developments, he would have recognized it as a fortress in the shape of a six-pointed star!

It's a pity that Jin Li and Tian Xiong don't know what a six-pointed star is, and they don't have the slightest understanding of a new thing from Taixi, such as the Fortress. Although it didn't feel quite right, and even realized a certain degree of threat, the siege had been carried out to this point, and today's siege was naturally imperative.

On the morning of June 12, the sixth year of Yongli, before Ma Jinbao came out of the prison where he was imprisoned, Jin Li and Tian Xiong commanded an army composed of most of the Eight Banners of the Hangzhou garrison and the Tibiao battalion to appear in the north of the fortress of Anhua Town, forming a fan-shaped encirclement of it, while the Fubiao battalion continued to cover the flank of the Qing army under the guerrilla power leader of the Fubiao Left Battalion.

The number of soldiers dispatched by the Eight Banners and the Admiral Battalion in Hangzhou is almost the same, but the Eight Banners of the Han Dynasty are also the servants of the Qing Emperor, and the main force of this siege is naturally still served by the Biao Battalion, and even Tian Xiong, the commander of the Levy Battalion, did not feel the slightest wrong.

Since the encirclement and suppression of Siming Mountain nearly two years ago, the Tibiao Battalion has been rebuilt through internal adjustment and recruitment of soldiers when the left battalion is almost completely wiped out. On the whole, even if there is a decline in combat effectiveness, it is minimal. If one of the garrisons in the rebuilt left battalion is counted and trained and organized in accordance with Qi Jiguang's drill code, then one positive and one negative has been improved.

The army formed a siege, and there were no moats, low walls, wooden stakes or other defensive facilities outside the fortress of Anhua Town. After only a short moment of formation, Tian Xiong ordered the auxiliaries to push forward the well-built rush carts and nest carts, and the soldiers of the Levitation Battalion also carried the ladders and slowly advanced, waiting for these siege equipment to distract some of the defenders' attention before they could attach themselves to the siege.

On the high platform of the fortress in Anhua Town, Lin Zhongxiao, a guerrilla general who was a defender, looked at the deployment of the Qing army in the distance.

Originally, during the period when he was a pacification soldier on Dalan Mountain, he once caused Chen Wen to be personally punished for the time of military discipline because he had an extra whip during the punishment, and this lesson not only led to him being demoted by Gu Shouli during the subsequent expansion period, but also made this low-level officer, who was known for his honesty and kindness, feel guilty and take every order issued by his boss more seriously.

Whether it was training and military discipline on weekdays, or fighting against the Tartars, and even Chen Wen's literacy of officers at all levels, he also did his best to complete this "military task" and never slackened in the slightest. It is precisely for this reason that he was selected by Chen Wen as the defender of the vital Anwar Town Fortress, rather than the calm soldier in the eyes of others.

Looking into the distance, the nest car and rushing car of the Qing army have been slowly advancing under the impetus of the auxiliaries, and there are some protrusions on the ground outside the fort, which are the coordinates used to measure the range of the artillery in the fort, under the prompting of the officers, Lin Zhongxiao did not rush to order to fire. This stems from the fact that he has memorized the Fortress Guard Code since his debriefing, which will be revised in the future, but it is an iron rule for him now.

On the battlefield, the Qing army's rushing cars and nest cars were always advancing slowly, until the Qing army's nest cars all crossed the mark of the Ming army, and the Hongyi guns on the artillery position of the fortress took the lead in firing, and the target was those nest cars.

Relying on those marks, the Ming army's Hongyi artillery did not have a lack of range. However, the first round of shooting was not very effective due to the long distance, and only hit a nest car, and it was not even enough to destroy it, which was enough to continue on the way.

Under the return fire of the Qing artillery, after a short period of reset and reloading, the Hongyi artillery in the main position of the Ming army opened fire again in the jaw-dropping of the Qing army......

Under the big tent of the Qing army, Jin Li and Tian Xiong glanced at each other, and couldn't help frowning. At the moment just now, with the beginning of the second round of artillery bombardment by the Ming army, a company of three nest cars was destroyed on the spot, and the shooters on it either jumped down first, or fell to the ground along with the collapsed nest cars.

At this moment, the distance between the two sides is at least more than 200 meters, and there is a good chance that such a range is caused by the Hongyi artillery. In fact, the Hongyi artillery is not terrible, and the Eight Banners garrisoned in Hangzhou are also available, and the artillery of the Qing army has just counterattacked. It's just that the distance is very long, and the shooting from the bottom up, almost doesn't hit the city wall and the ground, or I don't know where it flew.

However, the comparison between the two was only a slight one, and the reset and reloading speed of the Ming gunners were only slightly slower, and the hit rate of this shot after the test launch was also quite amazing, all of which exacerbated Jin Li's uneasiness.

The Eight Banners of the Hangzhou Garrison are still composed of the Eight Banners of the Han Dynasty, and the predecessor of the Eight Banners of the Han Dynasty, Wuzhen Chaoha, was positioned as artillery in the Qing army. Although the current Han Eighth Banner Army is no longer just that "heavy army", artillery is their biggest reliance. This Ming army is obviously from the righteous army called the Dalanshan Ming Army, and the vast majority of the soldiers in it have not even eaten food for less than a year, even if these gunners are veterans, they have approached these gunners under his command since the Apocalypse and Chongzhen Dynasty in terms of shelling intervals and hits, but it is still very unbelievable.

"The training intensity of this Ming army has always been frighteningly high, but I didn't expect it to improve so quickly."

Jin Li knew that Tian Xiong's subordinates had fought a big battle with this Ming army in Siming Mountain, but the result made people fall through the glasses. For this reason, Tian Xiong had vigorously studied the commander of this army and the composition, training and combat methods of the army, and later arranged a garrison to copy its tactics, so he knew them far better than other Qing generals.

At this time, as Tian Xiong spit out this incredible sentence from his mouth, a large number of rushing vehicles of the Qing army also entered the range of the Ming army's Franc machine gun. An instant later, a series of artillery sounds rang out on the fortress of the Ming army, and dozens of shells erupted from the smoke and flames, covering the route of the Qing army's rushing vehicles in an instant.

One by one, the rushing vehicles were blown to the ground and could not continue to advance, and those Qing troops who were alive began to move to other rushing vehicles that were not attacked. At this time, the musketeers and archers of the Ming army also aimed and shot.

As the nest chariot and the rushing chariot continued, the Ming archers intended to kill and wound the Qing troops who had lost their protection, and the Qing army continued to advance and approach the city while surviving. As a result, the Qing army, which was lucky enough to escape, also began to play a game of "hide and seek" with the Ming army shooters at the head of the city.

Whenever a rushing vehicle is destroyed, except for those Qing troops who have lost their ability to move or are directly hit by the aftermath of the cannonballs, most of the Qing troops will choose to leave the siege vehicles that may collapse at any time at the first time, but there are also some veterans who are not so anxious, but wait for the Qing troops who rushed out to find new cover because of fear to withstand a round of Ming fire, and then take advantage of the time of loading and winding to renew their strength to run towards the destination. The Ming army at the head of the city only selected targets to shoot according to the orders of the officers, so that some more experienced veterans of the Qing army escaped.

The wailing on the battlefield has become louder than when the nest car was destroyed one after another, but this level of firepower is not unprecedented, at least when attacking Dalinghe, Jinzhou and even Ningyuan in western Liaoxi, the intensity of the artillery bombardment of the Guanning army there is much greater.

Time on the battlefield was moving rapidly, and it was impossible for the Qing army to endure the shooting of the Ming army all the time. When the first nest car entered a range large enough to attack the head of the city and began to suppress the shooters of the Ming army, the Qing soldiers who followed behind rushed to the city with loud shouts at the moment of the sound of drums.

The Qing army's nest car was almost parallel to the Ming army's city wall, and the Qing army shooters on it had a strong interference with the Ming army after entering the firing range, and the Ming army also chose to change the target to the shooters on the nest car after suffering an effective counterattack, and even part of the Franc machine guns were lifted up by the Ming army and stuck on the battlements to return fire.

The intensity of the fortress's firing against the city entered a declining range, and the officers of the Qing army were obviously very experienced in this, and hurriedly ordered the Qing soldiers who were already shouting and charging to the sound of drums to reach the city and set up a ladder to climb the city.

The Qing army besieging the city mainly came from the right battalion of the standard where Xu Lei once served, and nearly 1,000 people launched a tidal attack in multiple echelons, while there were only a few hundred people in the Ming army's fortress.

However, just as the ladder of the Qing army began to be erected at the head of the city, with Lin Zhongxiao's order, the Ming army defending the city began to divide into several parts: most of the artillery continued to bombard the Qing army's marching chariots and soldiers; A part continued to attack those nest carts to prevent the Qing shooters from inflicting further casualties; The other part began to follow the normal pattern of defending the city and began to attack the Qing troops who used the ladder to climb the city, in order to remove the threat in this regard; The last part took advantage of the grooves between the protrusions of the six-pointed star-shaped fortress to attack the Qing army who had ascended the city on the opposite wall. Under the technical level of this era, three-dimensional defense has been realized in a real sense.

At this moment, for the first time in history, the Qing army faced the bastions on the battlefield in China and the Western soldiers of the same era had the same confusion.

On the one hand, they have to endure the attack of the defenders in the traditional sense of the word, and on the other hand, the defenders of the opposite wall can attack their backs, even more conveniently than the defenders on the wall they are attacking, because they are climbing like slow-moving targets in the defenders' line of sight, which makes them feel extremely uncomfortable.

But there is no way to adapt to it, the defenders and reserves of the Ming army are enough to support the defense of this fortress, not only the Qing army that is attached to the ant to attack the city is attacked on the opposite wall, even those rushing cars are no exception.

Soon, the Qing army's limited ability to reach the range of the nest car was also bombarded by the Ming army's artillery, without the interference of the shooter, the Ming army immediately threw more firepower on the Qing army attacking the opposite city wall, so that those Qing troops who were killed in echelons like a tide soon fell into the dilemma of adding fuel.

The decline of the Qing army has been undoubtedly revealed, not only the commanders of the Qing army who are old in military affairs such as Jin Li and Tian Xiong, but even Yin Yue, who was in the camp in the mountainous area on the flank, also got this information from Tanma's report.

The defense system of the Ming army on the northern front is to take the Anhua Town Fort as the head, the Zhengjiawu Town Camp as the tail, and the Mine Pavilion Advance Base where he is now located as the wing, which is the defense system designed by Chen Wen in advance before taking Jinhua Mansion, and the Anhua Town Fort is the core of this defense system.

Like Jin Li, Tian Xiong and others, Yin Yue has never heard of any fortresses, but in history, the Zheng family will encounter the early fortresses in Taiwan a few years later, and the Manchu Qing will also see them for the first time in Yaksa a few decades later, and they did not capture it at the first time, like Jin Li at this moment: one was after a half-year siege thanks to the information of the defecting enemy army, the blockhouse collapsed and the defenders lost the determination to hold on; The other was besieged by more than ten times the enemy's army for more than a year before he reluctantly captured the fortress with the help of illness, and the result was the signing of the "Treaty of Nebuchu" in exchange for peace, which can be regarded as a precedent for the descendants of the slave chief Xuanye, and he really lived up to the temple name of "Holy Ancestor".

"Second brother, this fortress was conceived by the lord?"

The person who spoke was Yin Yue's younger brother, and with his physique, it was not enough to be a soldier, so his brother recruited him to his side as a personal soldier.

"No, the marshal said he saw it from a military book that explains Taixi's weapons and guards."

In the last years of the Ming Dynasty, it was fashionable for scholars to study Western studies, especially in the context of military science, which was highly regarded by the authorities. And there are not only Hongyi cannons in this, such as "Xifa Divine Machine", "Shou Yuan Quanshu" and other books have recorded the structure of the fortress, and even in the early Qing Dynasty, some people built simple fortresses, but this military technology has not been popularized.

Yin Yue's answer caused his younger brother to think deeply, but Yin Yue did not leave his younger brother time to continue thinking, but pulled his younger brother closer when he was sure that there was no one around the big tent.

"I followed Da Shuai in Dalan Mountain, I have seen too many similar things, and such an amazing and brilliant character is by no means something that can be easily shaken by a clown who jumps off the beam. I just haven't heard those words you said before, if you say such stupid things again, go home and farm, don't beg our mother to let me take you out to see the world! (To be continued.) )