readx; For the next three days, the officers and rebels launched a fierce positional battle, and the battle situation was in a stalemate. Pen @ fun @ pavilion wWw. ｂｉｑUｇE。 Of course, this kind of stalemate was deliberately done by Zhu Youzhen, in order to attract more rebel troops here, so as to relieve the pressure on Li Dingguo, who attacked Luoyang, as much as possible. In this process, it is also necessary to strive to annihilate as many rebels as possible, after all, the destruction of the enemy's living forces is the most critical factor in the victory of the war.

So when it advanced to a hundred and fifty steps from the south embankment of the Yellow River, the first wave of Meng Gong's 500-foot army stopped advancing, and all the artillery on the river stopped firing. In order not to arouse the suspicion of the rebels, they also deliberately covered it with sandbags and cut a small hole in the frozen and hard river. Then put a rapid-fire cannon on this small opening, remove the sandbags, and fire at the rebels. Originally, the underside of the cannon was already mostly empty, but under the action of recoil, the cracking ice around it intensified, and the rapid-fire cannon was trapped.

As a result, the rebels thought that the officers and soldiers had to stop the shelling because the ice could not withstand the recoil of the artillery, so they made up their minds to hold the South Embankment. The reason is also very simple, the embankment is several feet above the ground, and once the artillery of the official army is mounted on the south embankment, it is equivalent to firing on the city wall, and the rebels are only left to be bombarded. Now that the South Embankment is being defended, there is little left of the artillery superiority of the officers and troops.

Moreover, the officers and soldiers did not transport these artillery back to the north bank, and the rebels moved to seize the artillery. In just one afternoon, they launched three short assaults with cavalry and infantry, trying to seize the positions of the Northern Army in one fell swoop, and take the artillery that gave them a headache for themselves.

Unfortunately, their efforts were completely futile. First of all, the artillery of the officers and soldiers on the ice did stop firing, but the three Yuanrong guns that were erected on the North Embankment and had a longer range did not stop for a moment. After a day of intense construction, the observatory is no longer stacked with sandbags, but has become a six- or seven-story high earthen mountain, and the observation range is even wider. As soon as the rebels were found to be assembled on the south bank, the Yuan Rong artillery immediately opened fire, so that the rebels did not dare to form a dense formation of more than 1,000 people, and could only launch a scattered charge with a limit of a few hundred people.

Secondly, there is a distance of 150 steps from the South Embankment to the forward positions of the officers and troops, and this 150 steps is not a flat river. On the bare riverbed, relatively close to the embankment, the rebels advanced fairly smoothly. But once you set foot on the river ice, whether it is cavalry or infantry, it is impossible to take a big stride. In addition to being slippery, the ice surface is not frozen like a large mirror, but it is uneven everywhere, which is not easier to walk than the mountain road.

In addition to the flintlock guns that have a long range and are used as sniper rifles, the ordinary bird guns are also newly manufactured by military factories and are well-made new flintlock bird guns. Not only is it faster to fire, but the barrel is much smoother than that of the birds, the ammunition is more tightly loaded, and the effective range is longer, generally reaching 80 to 100 steps. In contrast, the rebels used to be officers and soldiers, and they were also equipped with some bird guns, but Zhu Youzhen had long intended to kick Hong Chengchou with the rags that had been in the warehouse for many years, not to mention the range, and he might not even be able to shoot them.

Therefore, when the rebels, who were advancing slowly, forced their way into an attack on the officers and troops who were in tight formation and discharged a dense three-stage formation, the consequences were predictable. As rows of buckshot rained rhythmically down the south bank, countless rebels and men and horses fell in pools of blood, screaming and falling, and the place where they fell was not even within the effective range of their bows and arrows.

After leaving behind a large number of corpses, the rebels had to flee back to the embankment in panic. And the officers and soldiers were not in a hurry to pursue, but only sent a small number of officers and soldiers and civilians to drag the corpses of men and horses back to the position. After the dead were stripped of their weapons and stripped naked, they were casually piled up on both sides. Due to the cold weather, the blood quickly coagulated into ice, and the pile of bare-ass dead bodies quickly froze into two corpse walls, which could be regarded as waste utilization, which played a role in covering the flank of the position.

As for the dead horse, it was even more polite, and it was directly dismantled in eight pieces, sent back to the north bank to roast horse meat, and then brought back to the position to reward the soldiers. For a while, the horse meat was fragrant, and the officials and soldiers were feasting, while the rebels were only gritting their teeth and glaring. However, this also created an illusion for the rebels, that is, the official army was extremely short of food and grass, and it was already necessary to eat horse meat. Therefore, the rebels were even more convinced that as long as they desperately held the embankment, perhaps as long as they held out for another two or three days, the official army would collapse.

Since the rebels want to defend, the officers and troops will attack. Now the rebels did not dare to charge, and they also piled a low earthen wall on the top of the embankment and hid behind the earthen wall. Expecting that the rebels would no longer dare to rush out, the officers and soldiers sent a few people to disperse into seven or eight groups, go out from the front of the position to a place 60 or 70 steps from the embankment, use iron shields as cover, and shoot at the rebels.

This distance was already within the range of bows and arrows, and the rebels finally seized an opportunity to counterattack, and they fired thousands of arrows in unison, trying to kill all these bird-gunners. But how did they know that these bird-shacklers were there to lure the enemy into firing arrows, and in addition to having large iron shields, they were also covered in thick armor, which was difficult for bows and arrows to penetrate. As soon as the rebels released their arrows, they shrank behind their shields; As soon as the arrows stopped, they continued to shoot with their heads out. Anyway, the rebels did not dare to rush out, it was not long, thousands of arrows had been consumed, but not a single officer or soldier was killed, and the rebel generals hurriedly stopped this senseless action.

At this time, the bird-screws no longer pretended to attack, and generously collected the arrows that fell around, and then retreated. At the same time, the flint guns in the position never stopped firing, and all the rebels who popped up on the embankment might be shot in the head at any time, so no one dared to chase them.

By this time it was completely dark, but it was clear that the officers and soldiers had no intention of letting the rebels stop. In addition to the Yuan Rong artillery firing a few shells blindly from time to time, the soldiers on the forward positions also stayed behind and maintained a high degree of vigilance. The rebels did organize a night attack, but as soon as they came down from the embankment, they were found by a volley of birds, leaving behind more than a dozen corpses and fleeing in panic.

The biggest problem facing the soldiers at this time was not the enemy, but the extremely low temperature. It was the middle of winter, and the north wind swept across the ice, making it even more chilly. Meng Gong's countermeasure is to change shifts regularly, rotating once an hour. Although there were only 500 men in the forward position, overnight, 2,500 infantry troops had participated in the garrison, accounting for half of all infantry troops.

And they don't just defend in positions. Under the cover of night, another weapon of the infantry, the grenade, began to show its might!