Another shell flew and exploded on the ground, causing the leaves of the big elm tree to fall. Pen? Interesting? Pavilion wWw. ｂiquge。 info Fortunately, the Prussians aimed too high. The guards almost dragged Napoleon III and Eugène Louis and pulled them away. The general followed them and shouted, "Please go inside the fortress!" The walls there are strong. ”

They walked into a bunker where a dozen or so French soldiers were waiting silently. The window guards were closed, and they peered out through the cracks. Napoleon III saw that there were three flying platoons here.

The heavy gunfire never stopped. The general was alone in the courtyard, and he crouched behind a low wall. The soldiers he placed outside the fortress were fighting step by step and did not give up the land easily. But the enemy's fire forced them not to abandon their hiding places, and had to crawl back one by one. They were given orders to stall for time, not to expose themselves, so that the Prussian army would not know their strength. An hour passed again. A sergeant came in. Saying that there were only two or three people left outside, the general took out his watch and muttered, "It's two o'clock, and we're going to teach them a lesson." ”

Everything was ready, and Napoleon III knew that the French army could put up a powerful resistance. Because the Prussian army was on the other side of the river, there was no need to worry that they would rush over right away. There was a bridge two kilometers away, which they probably didn't know, and it didn't seem likely that they were wading across the river. Therefore, the French officers sent men to monitor the main road alone, and all their forces were used against the direction of the field.

The shootout stopped again. The fortress seemed to die in the sun. Not a single window panel was open, not a sound came out of it. At this time, the Prussian army slowly began to appear at the edge of the woods, and they poked their heads out and grew bolder. Several French soldiers in the bunker had already put their butts on their shoulders to aim, but one officer exclaimed:

"No! No way! Wait a little longer...... Let them come! ”

The Prussians looked cautious and looked suspicious. In this fortress, there was no sound at all.

The Prussian army advanced. When about a hundred people came to the grass opposite, the officer said:

"Fire!"

There was a hail of gunfire, followed by a dense burst of gunfire all around. Napoleon III shuddered, and unconsciously raised his hands to cover his ears. Eugène Louis stood behind the soldiers and looked out, and when the smoke cleared a little, he saw many Prussians lying on their backs in the grass. The rest hid behind willows and aspens. But then their offensive began.

"Attention! Note! The general suddenly shouted loudly at the soldiers who were operating the rifles.

He had just seen a group of black-pressed people come out of the woods. This was followed by a terrible volley of guns, flying like a hurricane. A window guard was knocked off, and bullets whizzed in through the open window**. Two soldiers rolled to the ground, one of them did not move, because he was lying there in the way, and was pushed against the wall. The other bent over and begged others to end his life, but no one paid attention to him. Bullets kept coming in, and everyone hid, trying to find a hole to shoot back. Another soldier was wounded, and he fell silently and staring blankly at a table. The bunker is littered with all sorts of debris, broken weapons, and broken furniture.

The Prussian army appeared in large numbers, and the French platoon shooters left the loading handle and came to the right side of the firing handle of the platoon gun. He can quickly shake the handle for a week and fire all the bullets, or he can slowly shake the handle to shoot one shot at a time. Napoleon III saw the archer's movements, and his heart hung in the air.

The shooters of the platoon were very skillful, apparently trained for a long time, and although their comrades were constantly being hit by bullets fired by the Prussians, they operated in an orderly manner and did not appear to be disturbed in the slightest.

When several flying guns finally fired, Napoleon III saw the shooter slowly shake the firing handle, and the bullets rained out, and the Prussian ranks broke out with a scream, and the Prussian infantry in the front row was swept to the ground like ears of wheat.

"Good! Well played! Napoleon III felt as if his eyes were filled with blood all over his body, and he watched as a Prussian officer was hit, and several blood mist erupted from his chest in an instant, and more than one bullet should have hit it at the same time.

Napoleon III knew that this phenomenon, the Chinese named Lin Yizhe had already proposed in those documents, that the direction of the French platoon guns was very narrow, but their firing rate was relatively fast, the interval between 25 rounds was extremely short, almost equivalent to a salvo, and the projectiles were very concentrated, so they were horizontally distributed densely at long distances and lacked coverage.

In less than a second, a sharp rifle ran out of bullets, and after the last barrel was fired, the shooter shook the reloading handle in reverse to move the tailstock of the platoon back, and then he reversed the firing handle to reset the stopper, and then pulled the reloading plate back, at which point the reloading plate became a shell. He lifted the reloader upwards, removed it along with the empty cartridge case, and then the shooter reloaded a reloader with new shells.

The Lifei Platoon consists of 25 barrels, and the loading tool is a steel plate with 25 round holes, into which a bullet is inserted, and the position of each bullet corresponds to a barrel. The firing mechanism is driven by a handle, and by turning the handle clockwise, all 25 rounds will be fired in less than a second (although the shooter can also make each barrel fire sequentially at any speed by controlling the speed of the crank handle if he wishes). After the reloading plate is inserted into place, the bullets will be aligned with their respective barrels, after which the shooter will shake the reloading handle with his left hand, and the tailstock of the platoon will move forward, pushing the feeding plate forward until the bullet in it is inserted into the corresponding barrel, at this time, the round hole of the feeding plate becomes the chamber. At this point, the platoon gun is locked, and the spring-driven firing pin is also backward and stuck in the arresting iron, ready to fire the bullet. The firing pin cannot be placed backwards until the platoon is locked, thus avoiding accidental misfire. Since the cartridge case used in the platoon gun had a constricted neck, this part protruded into the tailstock of the barrel, which played a good role in sealing the gunpowder gases.

The shooters quickly finished reloading and started firing again. It may have been that he had noticed that the first round had not worked well, and this time he slowed down the firing speed, and after the bullets were gone, they skilfully repeated the reloading motion.

Napoleon III noticed that in just one minute, the French shooter with the closest platoon of guns actually fired 12 salvos, firing 300 rounds!

The Prussians were surrounded by the terrible fire of the French platoons, and bullets buzzed at them in the distance like flies, or flew near with terrible snorts. More and more, ringing right next to their heads, noses, eyes, and shoulders, in the thousands, beyond count.

"Jesus!" Someone screamed, followed by an order: "Attack!" Don't stop! Then there was another groan: "Oh God! Then the groans became more and more frequent, the commands became more urgent, and the Prussians attacked more and more tightly. The whistling of bullets became more sudden and urgent, and it made people shudder. There are dead people everywhere. It seems like the end of the world.

On the grass in front of the fortress, there were large swaths of Prussian infantry corpses, and countless wounded soldiers groaned among the corpses. The Prussians, who had not died, did not retreat, but one by one they fell to the ground, with a look of horror on their faces, and stopped charging forward.

Now it was the Prussian army that became a shrunken turtle, and it was the turn of the French army to counterattack. As soon as the French offensive began, the fire was fierce. It didn't stop for half an hour. Suddenly, there was a heavy explosion, and a French cannonball broke a branch of a large elm tree by the river. The French army had artillery. The artillery positions were right on the edge of the battle line, and they bombarded the opposite bank of the river. The Prussian artillery began to return fire, and shells flew from here to there, and from that side to this side. The fortress was hit, two walls fell. Especially on the side of the river, the destruction is so sad that people can see it. Ivy rose from the shaking wall and hung like strips of rags, and the river carried away all sorts of rags. Although the Prussian artillery fire was still fierce, the French forts withstood the terrible blow, providing effective protection for the French soldiers hiding inside, especially the shooters of the platoon gun battalion, so that they could continue to inflict terrible damage on the enemy with their weapons.

The Prussian army finally showed signs of collapse, and then the French army launched a counteroffensive. A crazy white-knuckle fight. Under the rust-colored sky, the eerie valley was littered with dead bodies. The vast pastures were full of isolated trees and aspens that cast shaded shades like curtains, which looked murderous, and the forests on the left and right sides were like walls of the jousting grounds, surrounding the people who were fighting. Springs and rivers also whimpered in the horrors of the battlefield.

The Prussian army was finally completely annihilated, and Napoleon III could not help but shed tears.

Since the outbreak of war, this was the first victory he had ever seen the French army win.

He saw a French officer rushing into battle with a hundred times more spirit, his tall body straight, and smiling very cutely like a handsome and beautiful man. He saw some of his men still looking at the smoking ruins, and he stood among the corpses of the Prussians, gave them a military salute with his saber, and shouted: "Victory!" We've won! Long live France! ”

Looking at this exciting scene, Napoleon III remembered the advice in the secret letter given to him by the Chinese, and at this time he no longer stayed here to watch the battle, he was in a hurry to return to the headquarters, and ordered his pedantic and stubborn generals to correctly use the platoon gun, the weapon he had loved for ten minutes.

――――Dividing Line――――

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