Chapter 397: A Heavy Blow......
The general Motogoro had a white belt on his head, and a somewhat old bamboo armor on his body, waving the sword in his hand, and loudly reprimanded those slow-moving big barrels and light feet, asking them to carry ammunition and clean the gun chamber faster, and in the distance, the fleet seemed to slowly stop a few miles away, and then, a super giant ship and two giant ships broke away from the formation and drove towards this side. [No pop-up novel network]
"Baga, you bastards, hurry up, the other party is already coming towards us. Don't be afraid, it's nothing more than a pile of wood, and our big cylinders can even be smashed into powder. Motogoro's roar made the movements of the big ashitaru move again, but because the speed was too fast, it made the entire fort look a little flustered.
Motogoro was a little helpless, but there was no good way, but he finally let the big cylinder, that is, the artillery, enter the firing state. With Motogoro's order, the seven twelve-pounder cannons that had been prepared finally fired, and the cannonballs that were screaming from the barrels of the gunpowder and flying into the sky after flying for a certain distance, as they gradually lost their thrust, they began to draw an arc in the sky, and began to fall, and then, hundreds of meters away from the three battleships that were slowly approaching, they fell into the sea, only splashing a column of water, and after a burst of white foam, they were smoothed out by the rippling waves on the surface of the sea.
"Your grandmother, who are they firing such cannons?" Wei Wei, the gunner on the first deck of the ship, rolled his eyes, withdrew his gaze from the gun window, and smiled at the deputy gunner next to him.
"When you first became an artilleryman, I'm afraid you weren't much better than these people, right?" The deputy gunner pursed his lips, and after a big yawn, he replied, judging from the fact that the other side did not even know the range of his own artillery, this upcoming artillery battle really made him not interested in anything.
"Fart, I'm not going to mess around outside the range of artillery fire like idiots like they do." Wei Wei said angrily.
At the moment when the two of them were chattering, the battleship had already struck horizontally, and aimed the side of the battleship at the gun on the dock. With Wu Qianqing's order, the roar of the commander of the third-deck artillery made Wei Wei and the others immediately shut their mouths, forcefully pushed the twelve-pound naval gun out of the gun window, and began to correct before shooting.
The second and third floors also pushed the guns out of the gun windows one by one, and the black barrels still looked so cold and gloomy even in the sun.
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The first layer is a twelve-pounder gun, the second layer is an eighteen-pounder gun, and the third layer is all twenty-four pounder guns.
Behind him were two fourth-class battleships with double gunboat decks, likewise with their barrels slowly sticking out of their gun windows, looking from the front like three huge hedgehogs floating on the sea.
"Aim at the target, remember, three rounds of shelling, and after three times, I don't want to see any living creatures on that battery, and artillery that can return fire." Wu Qianjin took off the hat on his head, scratched his scalp, and gave the order loudly.
"Amakasu, ......" was commanding those big shots and light bullets, and the general Motogoro saw that the opponent's battleship had stopped advancing after the artillery bombardment on the other side, and his heart was extremely excited, however, he still asked the ashigaru to reload the ammunition and take strict precautions, but at this time, those behemoths turned slowly like whales in the sea, revealing the outrageously dense artillery barrels, and the sword in Motogoro's hand fell to the ground by mistake. And the big ashigaru were all dumbfounded, like a group of petrified sculptures.
Then, they saw the sides of the great ships begin to spew out puffs of white smoke from front to back, and then, the never-ending roar of rolling thunder in the sky struck their eardrums and fragile minds viciously.
In the sky, black dots as thin as the size of a needle's eye screamed towards this side, and as a strong and brave Satsuma samurai, Motogoro waved his arms and screamed in a somewhat out-of-tune voice, "For the sake of the Shimazu family, for the sake of the Satsuma clan, fight back!" ”
The Satsuma samurai deserved to be the elite of the Wa Kingdom, and before the rain of bullets from the other side hit, they still faithfully followed the orders of the superior samurai, pushed the cannonballs into the barrel and ignited, and soon, the artillery on the turret roared again, and more than a dozen cannonballs also soared into the sky, but compared to the rain of bullets from the opposite side, such a counterattack seemed so weak and insignificant.
And there was a counterattack cannonball collided with the opponent's cannonball in mid-air, making a loud noise and explosion, as if this was just a prelude, and then, Motogoro felt that his hearing had disappeared, and in front of him, a ball of fire bloomed on the ground, and the ashigaru on the originally neat fort was like a paper villain, in those fires, it was easily torn to pieces, and even the barrels of the artillery that were so heavy that it took more than a dozen people to move were as light as butterflies with wings, and they actually flew into the air, Then it fell to the ground again, crushing a ashigaru not far away into a pile of plasma.
Shrill shrapnel swirled, shredding anything that dared to stand in their way. A wooden stick that was lifted by the shock wave to clean the chamber of the cannon was like a headless javelin, which was thrown out by a god, directly piercing his lower abdomen, and then stabbed into the sand not far away, and the stick still had the crimson blood that pierced through the lower abdomen of Gengoro, and slowly soaked into the dirt.
Motogoro stretched out his hand to cover the wound on his lower abdomen, and at this time, a piece of shrapnel spun and flew sideways, and the shrapnel that was as light as a butterfly's wings easily lifted Motogoro's skull into the sky and continued to fly forward......
Before the first round of artillery fire was over, the second round of shells came out of nowhere, tearing apart their steel shells on the turret made of earth and sand, and leaving them free to destroy everything.
The thick smoke and sparks completely enveloped the entire fort, and apart from the deafening explosion, even a trace of human despair and screams of near death were completely muffled by the explosion.
Standing about a mile and a half away from the fort, the soldiers of the Satsuma Domain, who had already completed the assembly and set up the fish scale array, were dead silent, or rather, the fear that humans should have had been revealed in their eyes, and the dense bombardment of the artillery that had cracked the sky and the earth had made the warriors of the Satsuma Domain, who had always been brave and daring, and believed in the spirit of samurai and swords, also ooze fear in their souls.
That's not a power that human beings can compete with, even if the knife is powerful, how dare you fight head-on with a cannonball. At such a distance where they can't face the enemy, and they can't even smell the enemy's fart, and the feeling of being violently beaten by the opponent is definitely not the way they want to fight.
The scale formation had loosened, and even some of the soldiers' footsteps were slowly moving back, as if one more step back would make them a little safer away from the site of the horrible shelling that looked like a volcanic eruption.
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Standing in Honmaru and observing the battle situation, I should have admired the scene of the tyranny of the opponent of the fort built by the Shimazu family with a huge amount of money, which made everyone's hearts rise in despair from Shimazu Shigehao to Ashigaru.
The faces of the samurai retainers around Shigehiro Shimazu were so pale that they looked like they had been collectively brushed with lime water, like a group of ogres with big sticks beating their beloved toys, but they didn't dare to say a word.
Shimazu Qixuan's face was relatively normal, because his complexion was pale, and now he only had a tendency to turn blue. "Is this really a Qing warship?" Shimazu asked himself quietly.
Although the opposing warships were still miles away, the power they displayed had already weighed on the hearts of all the Satsuma clansmen. Inside, it is full of a series of negative emotions such as despair, failure, pessimism, and disbelief.
"My lord, please give the order immediately, withdraw from Kagoshima Castle, and retreat to the area of Taniyama to set up a formation. Waiting for the enemy. At this time, an important minister of the Shimazu family shouted loudly.
"That's right, my lord, we can't stay here any longer, the opponent's big barrel is really powerful, the fort has been lost, with the defense of Kagoshima Castle, it is difficult to defend, and the range of the opponent's big barrel seems to be far beyond our imagination. Please give the order, my lord. Another important minister also chimed in.
Although the Satsuma samurai spurned all acts of desertion, now, in the face of such a catastrophe against which manpower could not be resisted, anyone with a modicum of sanity should understand that the best option was to leave Kagoshima Castle, which was only about two miles from the coast, and retreat to a place where the Qing warships could not attack and wait for an opportunity to counterattack.
"Understand, gentlemen, let's do it, let the full strength and the samurai leave first, and then the others will leave." Shigehiro Shimazu closed his eyes, and although his voice was still calm, a gloomy aura was gradually emanating from his body.
"My lord, please ......" the samurai of the Satsuma clan knelt on the ground and pleaded with Shigehiro Shimazu and Saishi Shimazu.
(To be continued)