The speed of the Frenchman's small gunboat was only about 7 knots, and the speed of the river was not fast, and the bow was equipped with a gun with a gun profile, but after observing the ratio of artillery to man, he determined that the caliber of the French ship's artillery was definitely much lower than that of the battery, which reassured him a lot!

The Red River in autumn is calm and beautiful, at this time, Captain Körner, who was standing in the command cabin of the gunboat "Marku", also held a French-made monocular to observe the Vietnamese battery that had only recently emerged on the bank of the Red River in the distance.

But...... He has seen a lot of Vietnamese artillery, all of which are old-fashioned bronze cannons and cast iron cannons, as long as the cannonballs don't hit people directly, they don't have much power at all! Moreover, their expedition against the current was an expedition that France could carry out in accordance with the content of the Second Treaty of Zigong!

However, there was a Black Flag Army stationed in the upper reaches of the Red River, and this army never cared about the agreement between France and the Vietnamese Dynasty, and the Chinese bandits who had always been hostile to the French army were also the excuse for France to go to war and attack Vietnam many times.

At the bend of the river, the two abrupt batteries, it is obvious that it is still a little dangerous to force a breakthrough in the bombardment of the two batteries, it is better to take advantage of the French artillery and drive away the enemy first! Captain Köllner thought for a moment and gave a loud order, "Later, if the Vietnamese fire artillery, immediately counterattack, shell the Vietnamese battery, the Vietnamese artillery is complete garbage, completely destroy them!" ”

There were two other ununiformed Frenchmen in the waiting cabin, the explorers Goodin and Villeloa, who had been commissioned by the governor of Cochinchina, Lu Mei, to organize a new expedition to go up the Red River in search of a waterway into South Asia and the interior of western China, and they were only one of several teams with the same mission.

A year ago, Guding and Villeloa had penetrated into the North Vietnam Road from another land route in the direction of Laos, but due to the mountains and jungles on land, they could not find a suitable way to enter China, and finally had to give up, this time they confirmed that there was still a river to the north of the Red River based on the news of the French spies in North Vietnam, and it was said that it could lead to the border between the Qing and Vietnam!

Therefore, the French ** team once again applied to the Vietnamese horse stationed in Hanoi, Hoang Zuo Yan, in the name of adventure, and the Vietnamese did not dare to refuse head-on according to the last contract, so they put down their words, the Red River in the south is not very peaceful, there are often bandits, and the Vietnamese army is powerless to sweep away the bandits......

The French ignored this excuse and immediately ordered the 7th Company of the Cochinchina Expeditionary Force, the 2nd Company of the Algerian Army, and the 3rd and 4th Companies of the Vietnamese Indigenous Infantry, which had been amassing troops in the Ha Tinh Pass for a long time, to go up the Red River under the pretext of an expedition deep into North Vietnam and take the opportunity to assist in attacking the important towns near Hanoi.

The 90mm cannons on the four small gunboats have been loaded and rotated, and the soldiers in the gun silhouettes are using improvised sights for final aiming, which is a French M1776 rear-loading rapid-fire gun, firing blasting shells, although it can't collapse the thick city walls, but for small fortresses, it can definitely be easily penetrated.

Captain Körner, who had been involved in the violent colonization of Africa for more than a year, was promoted from a private soldier to a captain and transferred to the Cochinchina Expeditionary Force. Obviously, the shape of the Far East is very different from that of the completely uncivilized African continents, so he did a lot of work before setting out, and learned about the enemy's weapons and artillery.

The effective range of the M1876 90mm guns on the French gunboats reached more than 2 kilometers, while the small bronze guns and cast iron guns of the Vietnamese had a range of far less than 2 kilometers, so when attacking, two kilometers was an absolute safety line for shelling, and the French army could still use manpower and animal power to pull 65mm army guns with small wheels, and the mobility was far better than that of the Vietnamese army and the Black Flag Army.

Looking at the French gunboats in the distance, Ma Tao is also quietly thinking about this, the position of the Black Flag Army battery is a narrow bay on the Red River, the French gunboats from the downstream must go around to get through guò, which greatly enhances the power of the battery, Ma Tao naturally knows the 150mm rapid-fire gun produced by the Mawei Artillery Bureau, at a distance of 2500m, the trajectory is very stable, and now the widest part of the river is only a little more than two kilometers, which can be said to be all under control......

Sure enough, the French gunboats collectively slowed down at a position of about three kilometers and slowly set up a position, apparently hoping to strike the batteries standing on the river bay with the shelling of four gunboats together, and taking into account the ups and downs of the boats on the river, the speed was reduced to 3 knots, and the bow of the ship slowly moved forward!

The gunboat and the turret are getting closer and closer...... Captain Corner commanded the gunboat very calmly, and the French artillerymen in the front of the gunboat easily shook the gear transmission, carefully adjusting the firing angle, and only waited for a safe firing distance to give the natives on the shore a fat meal!

There was no rangefinder on Matao's side, but at the beginning of the design of the fort, the approximate distance of the position in the river was marked on the observatory by using the distant scenery and the relative offset of the battery's observation port. When the ranks of the French gunboats slowly moved into the optimal range, a red flag was erected on the battery indicating firing!

The first round of fire from the eight 150mm rapid-fire guns facing the Red River gave the French gunboats a disadvantage, and seeing the seven or eight launches on the opposite battery neatly spraying fire, Captain Köllner realized that he might have made a big mistake, and now this distance is definitely far more than the best firing distance from the French artillery. The artillery of the Vietnamese turned out to be sharper than the M1876 of the mighty French Arsenal in Paris!

The other party immediately gave an affirmative answer, and the whistling cannonball fell around the gunboat, setting off a high splash of water, obviously the other party was not using the original solid iron ball cannonball, the final explosion of this cannonball was clearly audible, and Köllner immediately realized that he was wrong......

At this moment, he was no longer allowed to turn the bow of the ship, after all, it was difficult for the gunboats lined up to make a detour on this not wide river, and the result could be completely catastrophic, and Captain Corner immediately ordered to speed forward and engage in a head-on exchange of fire with the other side!

As soon as the order was given, the second round of artillery of the other side rushed again, which could be completely inconsistent with what he had learned, Köllner had realized the huge danger at this time, the interval between the two rounds of artillery was only 10 seconds at most, this could never be the kind of old-fashioned bronze cannon or cast iron cannon, which was obviously the rapid-fire cannon only of the French Expeditionary Force...... And the firing range is farther than the guns on the gunboat, and it is obvious that the caliber is larger than the 90mm M1876 rapid-fire gun on his side!!

In this U-line bend, the reduced speed of the ship in front of Kollna in order to increase the accuracy of the artillery became their fatal wound, and although they had just ordered to speed up, this small steamer did not accelerate and decelerate as freely as the motors of later generations, and these few minutes of acceleration time made the whole small fleet fall into a nightmare.

The rapid-fire gun is easy to aim at a long distance from a heavy gun, and in a short period of time, the displacement of the target is relatively small, and the excellent re-entry device of the 150mm gun of the Mawei Artillery Bureau makes the homing after shooting very accurate, which greatly improves the accuracy of continuous shooting.

Ma Tao had already assigned targets for 8 guns, he adopted the strategy of concentrated bombardment, and according to the provisions of the design tutorial, for the enemy troops concentrated in rows, the limited target should be the battleship in the middle of the enemy army, such an advantage is obvious, even a close miss may cause the loss of adjacent warships.

So Captain Köllner was lucky enough to escape the fate of the first target, while the small steamer "Toulon" immediately behind him fell into a nightmare.

After the first round of firing, the "Toulon" also picked up its speed, hoping to get as close as possible to the opponent's battery and use the advantage of its rapid-fire guns to suppress the opponent's firepower, but the second round of eight shells flew in, ending its dream.

The first 150mm flowering shell hit the bow gun emplacement, this gunboat uses the rear open gun emplacement, but considering the actual combat effectiveness of the gunboat, the gun position gun profile armor is only 15mm forged steel plate, this thickness of the iron plate is enough to withstand the Vietnamese gun bullets, obviously, this 15mm ordinary iron plate is naturally not enough to withstand the bombardment of the best range of 150mm shells!

After the shell penetrated the gun frame, it stuck directly on the 15mm iron plate and then exploded, tearing a large hole of 30 cm x 40 cm in the gun hole, tearing the iron plate fragments and the fragments of the shell immediately overturned seven or eight black French Algerian soldiers around the gun frame.

The three French gunners in the gun cage were even more miserable, the shrapnel directly cut off the head of a French artilleryman, and the other French soldier was blasted out of a large hole in the chest by the fragments, and fell to the ground without saying a word, and the last French artilleryman was cut by an unknown number of fragments in the body with countless bullet holes, and the whole body was bubbling with blood......

Although this shell killed many soldiers at the bow, it was not fatal, but the second shell did not hit the superstructure of the gunboat, the shell tore through the wooden hull from the bow and burst into the bilge, blowing up the transmission of the bow rudder, which was considered a complete loss of direction for the ship, and caused a small fire at the bottom of the "Toulon".

Just as the "Toulon" was in full swing for repairs, the battery that was firing with all its might did not hesitate at all, and 12 seconds later, the third round of shells roared, and this time the hit rate of the guns was even more amazing, and two shells actually hit the bow of the ship directly almost in the same position.

Two shells pierced the middle compartment of the ship, and then exploded on both sides of the ship's bottom plate, and the violent explosion completely destroyed the ship's bilge double plank, forming a huge hole with a maximum diameter of two meters and a minimum of one meter! The river poured into the cabin at once! And even more fortunately, another shell, which was clearly unaimed, flew directly over the "Toulon",

The speed of the water intake was so rapid that when the fourth round of artillery hit, the Toulon was already tilted so badly that all the shells of the fourth round flew into the river unexpectedly!

Amid the exclamations of the soldiers, Captain Corner also saw the destruction of the "Toulon", and the surviving black servant soldiers on board jumped into the river, but this section of the river was so deep and rough that some of the soldiers who were not good at the water quickly sank to the bottom, while others desperately slid to the gunboats on both sides!

At this time, the battery had already entered the range of the French gunboats, although it was not the best firing distance, the gunboats could not wait to start a counterattack, after all, this can give the opponent a certain amount of pressure, and giving the opponent pressure will undoubtedly reduce some of their own crises!

Boom...... The rapid-fire cannon let out a low roar, and the French were still on target, and all three shells hit the huge battery standing on the opposite bank of the river, but the result was not as they imagined to break through the wall, or open a large hole! After the 90mm flowering shells were stacked on the outer dark gray wall, there was a violent explosion, but only a small piece of graystone-like thing collapsed, and the battery was completely nothing!

At this time, the fifth round of rapid fire on the battery was fired again, since the French had already begun to counterattack, and after the sinking of the "Toulon", the positions of the three gunboats had been opened, so this time the target of Matao chose the first enemy ship "Marku", Bi Jin, the enemy who was most likely to break through the artillery defenses!

The cannon roared again......

After losing the "Toulon", Körner's gunboat squad finally picked up the speed, and the small steamer was spitting smoke and trying to rush downstream! The acceleration and dislocation of the opposing fleet also caused a rapid decline in the accuracy and speed of the battery's firing, and the two sides sprayed shells back and forth.

In the next 60 seconds, the two sides exchanged only two rounds of shells, and the French did nothing except blow a few craters outside the battery, and now they could figure out that it seemed that only a direct hit of the long gun muzzle opened by the opponent on the outer wall of the battery could hope to kill the enemy artillery that was firing...... It's just that on a bumpy ship, it's too difficult to complete such a task!

However, Köllner still thought of one point, the other party's gun emplacements in the front were so fierce, but the biggest weakness of the battery was that the firing angle was relatively small, and the cannon was not easy to move, once the enemy ran out of view, it would lose the way to continue the attack! A very bold plan immediately came to his mind!

"Quickly rush over and land on the shoals behind, the Vietnamese batteries will definitely not be able to attack the targets behind!" Köllner gave the order loudly.

Ma Tao was also very angry at this time, these artillerymen have experience in live ammunition shooting in training on weekdays, but today except for the second and third rounds, which were successful in hitting the stupid and almost fixed target on the opposite side, the next three rounds of shooting were all only harmful to the fish and shrimp in the river, which made me very depressed!

There are only more than 500 shells stored in the battery, and in just a few minutes, a tenth of the stock has been destroyed, and the French outside still want to rush through the blockade of their artillery, how can this be!! If the first exchange of fire allowed the French to break through the defensive line, the second battalion where they were located would have lost face......

At this time, at the No. 1 gun position, the French gunboat was almost out of the firing angle of the 150mm rapid-fire gun on his gun position, and several artillerymen immediately called for seven or eight Black Flag soldiers, and together they pushed the rapid-fire guns together with the base to the gun ......window on the other side.

In the next two rounds of firing, the French finally ushered in the first effective shooting, a shell fired by the gunboat "Marku" impartially concentrated the firing port of the No. 6 gun position, but because the cannon window made of cement and rock with a thickness of more than 40mm was extremely strong, the 90mm French artillery shell did not produce a greater explosion effect, but the shrapnel flying out horizontally poured into the battery, and the famous artilleryman on the No. 6 gun position was overturned to the ground, and the two Black Flag soldiers who were carrying the shells to the No. 6 gun position also suffered an unwarranted disaster. Heroic sacrifice.

Seeing that the artillery under his command fell, Ma Tao rushed over, only to see that both artillerymen were shot in the chest, which was the wounded of several Yan zhòng, and he also understood that at the current level of medical technology in Mawei, this is almost equivalent to death! These are all artillerymen brought out by themselves, and they are all young people with lively minds and culture, but they didn't expect to fall in front of them in the first battle!

But at this moment, this is not the time to mourn for his comrades, he waved his hand and shouted loudly, "The brother in position six has died, who will load me with shells!" ”

A soldier of the Black Flag Army with a spear in his hand had long been lying on the shooting hole, so he jumped up, and the soldier who died from behind the gun emplacement, picked up a shell weighing more than 30 kilograms and rushed over, "Instructor Ma, I'm coming!" ”

Ma Tao laughed and pulled the bolt, "Big Luo, good job!" Look at your strength, you can help me reload a few times! ”

The big man was familiar with the gunners' action of filling the barrel with shells, but he was a little rusty when he did it himself, and with Ma Tao on his side, he immediately mastered the essentials and completed the loading immediately!

The long barrel quickly adjusted a few times again, and in the distance was the gunboat led by the French fleet that was speeding wildly! Ma Tao froze, took a few seconds of careful aim, and pulled down the launcher violently! The 150mm rapid-fire cannon made a loud bang, and a puff of smoke shot out!

Ma Tao didn't mean to stop at all, he pulled the bolt suddenly, and the yellow and clear bullet shell fell to the ground from the barrel of the cannon, making a crisp sound, and his loud voice roared, "Big man, load!" ”

"Come on!" ……

After three rounds of continuous firing, when the No. 1 rapid-fire gun had just been transferred to its position, the artilleryman's diligent and frantic shooting finally achieved results, and a cannonball fired by Ma Tao himself whistled through the middle wooden hull of the "Maku" wooden-hulled gunboat, and after easily tearing the block of the three layers of wooden planks, it directly hit the steam pipe between the opponent's boiler and steam......