But behind the stubborn and tenacious front of the Mongol army, it was already a mess. The basic casualties of the Song Dynasty fell on the rear ranks of the Mongols, and their arquebusiers fired at the Mongol formation behind them in the gap between the infantry phalanxes, although there were only six formations, but the firepower of the Song musketeers was continuous to create casualties, and in view of the dense and large phalanx of the Mongol army, almost every bullet was not wasted. In the wave of musket fire, the Mongol phalanx, which had rushed up from the rear to join the battle, suffered heavy losses before engaging in the battle. The more terrifying blow came from the fire of the Song artillery, generally speaking, if it was not a mortar cannon, or, according to the folk saying, the short cannon, which could use a curved trajectory for projectile, the general fire gun and artillery could usually only be deployed in front of the large army for direct fire, because the ballistic trajectory of the artillery was straight and could not set up any obstacles in front of the muzzle.

However, the Song people apparently used a new method of shooting, tilting the muzzle of the cannon up at a certain angle, so that the cannonball could fly over the head of the infantry of their own side, forming a shallow arc, and falling directly into the enemy formation on the opposite side, because its trajectory was more elegant than the rough straight line fire or obscene curved fire, and was given a rather poetic name by the literati of Lin'an, "Rainbow Fall".

Although the name is beautiful, if you use the usual solid shells, Rainbow Fall will become a useless tactic, because iron projectiles can only achieve the best lethal effect if they are fired horizontally, and the shooting technique similar to Rainbow Fall can only smash a large hole in the ground at most, and if it cannot cause direct damage to the enemy, then the power is very limited.

Obviously, the Song Dynasty did not only pursue aesthetics and invented such shooting methods, but they also had a more practical need, which was to give full play to the power of new shells.

The idea of grenades for actual combat almost began to appear from the moment the artillery began to appear, but in the past 20 years, the Song Dynasty has continued to invest manpower and material resources in the development of grenades, but usually with little success, and the developed grenades are either not powerful enough or difficult to apply to the artillery in service. However, Zheng Yunming still stubbornly insisted on the development of this weapon, and insiders inside and outside the government and the opposition all regarded it as one of the rare failures of the wise and wise Zheng Xianggong, because the grenade envisioned by Zheng Yunming must meet two contradictory conditions, one is that the shell of the grenade must be solid enough to resist the ultra-high pressure caused by the deflagration of gunpowder in the barrel, and the other is that the shell of the shell must be fragile enough to allow the explosive contained in it to explode and immediately break into countless small fragments to increase the lethality.

This seems to be a pair of contradictions that cannot be reconciled at all, and it is no wonder that even the emperor himself complained to his attendants when he was chatting: "If this can be done, wouldn't it be a salary to fight the fire and keep out the cold with ice?" Zheng Yunming has been reasonable all his life, why is this matter so confused? ”

Naturally, the research of grenades is not without profits, at least the research of grenades provides trebuchet troops with an extremely effective siege ammunition, that is, trebuchet grenades, also known as flowering bombs. Before this war, the Song army in Yunnan had used trebuchets to throw flowering bombs in the Battle of Longshouguan, with remarkable results, and secondly, the research on grenades derived an incidental new invention, that is, hand-held grenades, with a lead, which needed to be ignited and thrown by hand, and soon with its huge lethality and shock effect, it eliminated the old-fashioned throwing firearms such as thistles terrestris and ten thousand enemies, and quickly won the popularity of the Song Dynasty soldiers. The rapidly popularized grenade became more and more used by the Song army in close combat, although the effect of this weapon was not as exaggerated as the folk boasted, and even the soldiers on the front line gave the hand-thrown grenade a nasty nickname called "go and return" Lei, because if the time of the throw and the length of the lead did not match perfectly, it would not explode immediately when thrown into the enemy's bushes, and the enemy often built grenades that had not exploded and threw them back, but caused their own casualties. Despite this, after all, the advent of hand-thrown grenades provided an extremely effective means of close combat and offensive and defensive battles in cities. It is precisely because of the good performance of trebuchet grenades and hand-thrown grenades that the military department was able to endure Zheng Yunming's application to push forward the project of artillery grenades when the investment was thrown into the water again and again.

Now, 20 years of consistent perseverance have finally borne fruit.

Although this result is not as perfect as Zheng Yunming expected, after all, the final result is inevitably the product of compromise, in order to launch the grenade, all the artillery can only reduce the propellant by two-thirds, only use about 30% of the original propellant to fire, and the range is far more than the close range of the solid bullet, in order to ensure that the shell can withstand the huge pressure of gunpowder in the chamber, the shell of the grenade has to be made thick, resulting in the limited charge of gunpowder is not enough to blow up the iron shell, and at most it is only blown in half. For a grenade, this is not even the minimum standard in Zheng Yunming's mind.

But all this was enough for today's decisive battle, the Mongols followed the Song Dynasty's large phalanx formation, and even a grenade that exploded in half could cause terrible damage to a dense crowd, and the only problem was that the accuracy of the overshoot was too poor to cause such damage on a regular basis. But the occasional explosion of grenades falling from the sky is already a blow to morale, and for those recruits who have just been recruited, it is not something to be taken lightly by witnessing red-hot pieces of iron flying sideways in the crowd of comrades and breaking their bones. Even if there are hundreds of Mongolian households in custody, it is inevitable that someone will secretly throw down their weapons and escape.

Although the loss of these newcomers did not make Li Hub care much, as long as the territory was there, similar young and strong people could be levied as much as they wanted, and the most barren places in the Han land were far more populous than Mobei. But what really hurt him was the loss of cavalry as an elite force, in order to ensure the stability of the front line, the Mongol army must constantly outflank the two wings with cavalry, in order to involve the infantry of the Song army to attack, the Song army flank threatened, in the past when the Mongol army purely used cavalry, often used this tactic, with the use of a large number of firearms, after the infantry became the protagonist of the battlefield again, this tactic almost became the standard of the Mongol army. But it was also evident that the cavalry flanks were not flanking as easily as they used to be.

The light cavalry wearing leather armor or simple iron armor, regardless of the formation of the swarm rushing forward, is the traditional tactic of the Han cavalry, but such tactics in the face of the well-prepared infantry of the Shenwu New Army, encountered layers of strict fire interception, first the direct interception of the grape bullets of the tiger cannon, knocked down a group of brave men who rushed in front, and then the musket volley of the musket team, although these veterans followed Li Hub to life and death, and participated in the expedition to Goryeo and Lingbei, But in the face of unprecedented firepower, the corpses of men and horses piled up all the way but could not get close to the enemy's position is the first time to see, in the face of such heavy casualties, these veterans still muster up the courage to desperately carry out two or three attacks, which is a commendable thing in itself, but such a successive charge, huge casualties are naturally unavoidable.

There was no expression on Alihan's face, and he asked coldly, "How many people have died?" ”

Li Hub said anxiously: "In less than an hour of fighting, more than 2,000 people have been killed and wounded!" ”

"Good." Marshal Alihan replied with a blank face: "Come and tell me when you die to five thousand!" ”

Li Hub suddenly changed color, and his whole body trembled and shouted: "Take me to the hood!" When he was young, a personal soldier brought a weapon, Li Hub put on a helmet and turned over on his horse, and shouted: "All the sons and daughters come with me!" "Immediately take his relatives and kill him.

On the other hand, Zhang Sheng was also surprised that the Mongolian army was so willing to fight to the death, usually, the Mongolian Han soldiers' fighting will was not as high as that of their own people, although the combat effectiveness of several Han soldiers and their elite troops was not weaker than that of the Mongolian elite, but the combat effectiveness and morale of these conscripts were usually not high, and it was unprecedented to fight like today.

Fortunately, Zheng Xianggong also made up his mind to win in this battle, and before the war, he issued an order to the whole army: "Those who leave the team will be killed, and the team will be killed, and the whole team will be killed!" Defeated today, although he survived, he was also a slave of another race, and life was better than death! Defeat today, the treasure is ten thousand times, and the world is tied! Go all out and win the merit of eternity! Under such encouragement, the Song army moved forward without forgetting to die, and forced the desperate enemy back step by step.

But what is the reason why the Mongols are so desperate to resist? What Alihan wanted to fight for at the expense of casualties was not space, but time. While death and blood were piled up in front, thousands of people were dragging heavy beasts with difficulty on the avenue behind, moving forward inch by inch. The existence of the Shenwu cannon has become one of the spiritual pillars of the Mongolian army, seeing that the firearms that the Song people used to be proud of have become their own nightmares, turning into powder in the fierce artillery fire, the Mongolian army all feel angry, even the Ezhou city wall built of stones and bricks has turned into powder in front of the Shenwu cannon, is it true that Zheng Yunming's subordinates are all incorruptible bodies of King Kong!

With such a New Year, Alihan ordered Li Hub to lead the army to fight to the death to buy time for the transfer of Shenwu's artillery. Of course, after all, he still hid his heart and let the Han people go to serve as cannon fodder in the cushion field, and hold the elite proton army in his hands to preserve his strength. It is important to know that these protons are not only the young nobles of the Mongolian tribes, but also the children of the wealthy families of the Western Regions, and the children of the powerful people of the Han Dynasty, the value of these people is far more than the death of the battlefield, or in other words, it is a waste to spend their lives on the battlefield at will, they will become seeds, sown in the vast Jiangnan and Nanyang lands that are about to be conquered, take root and sprout, grow into towering giant trees, and protect these flowing gold and jade lands for the Mongol Empire forever.