With the order given, a large number of French troops began to build improvised fortifications on the left side of the roadbed in battalion units, and the leveled road was clearly the best artillery position, 68mm field guns and 100mm

Heavy artillery was also unloaded from the carts, and a thousand-strong force of three French and three Algerian battalions formed a line of defense in front of the artillery positions.

As the main force of the attack, 2 French battalions, 1 Algerian black battalion, 1 Vietnamese servant battalion, and 1 yellow flag battalion were ordered to open the first trench 200 meters forward, waiting for the end of the shelling, and then they could launch an attack on the Qing army, when the French cautiously advanced on the way, they were shot from 500 meters away, and more than 20 were knocked down on the spot, and the lieutenant colonel in charge of the command had not yet come back to his senses, the banging gunfire rang out again, and nearly 20 people were knocked to the ground on the spot, and what was even worse was that More than half of those who were knocked down were officers, and although they were not killed by guns, this had caused heavy psychological pressure on the soldiers.

This made Lieutenant Colonel Roger immediately understand the situation, the other side actually had a good to perverted top marksman, who could shoot rifles at a distance of more than 500 meters, this situation made him feel difficult to deal with for a while, this was a problem that he had never encountered, he could not afford such continuous casualties, and immediately the first line of defense was pushed back 100 meters.

During the interval between the artillery positions in Guba, he did not forget to communicate with the 4th Brigade and Fengyi Brigade in front, but the frontal communication had been blocked by this Qing army, so after sending a small detachment to the flank, he ordered him to bypass the opponent's position, make sure to get in touch with Major General Bō and Sailer in front, and after defeating the frontal enemy, flank this blocking force.

It took until 9 o'clock in the morning, 75 field guns to complete the arrangement of 50 guns, and when the artillery officer ran to report, Guba was already impatient to wait, and immediately ordered to launch an artillery bombardment of the enemy's main position and the auxiliary position on the right flank, but the artillery officer cowered and reported again, and the shells of the 68mm field gun were only half a base reserve, which made Guba depressed again for a while.

However, there is already a lot of ammunition for half a base, and the French artillery company in this era stipulates that a base ammunition is 200 68mm shells, which is the configuration of 5 guns, and now Guba is holding a whole artillery company in his hand, and there are more than 1500 ammunition for half a base, and the ammunition for 6 100mm heavy guns is even more lacking, a total of only seventy or eighty.

Gu Ba pondered for a moment, since there is a Qing army here, this means that there is a possibility of a larger Qing ** team ahead, so this half of the base number of shells should also be used well!

The combat effectiveness of this army, he had seen in Luerzhuang, the other party used strong fortifications to cause a lot of trouble to his attacking troops.

However, although the other side occupied a small hill in the wilderness, this small mound with a height of only twenty or thirty meters, he did not pay attention to it, and cooperated with the army of the artillery unit to deal with an enemy with only shallow trenches...... There is absolutely certainty that the enemy will be defeated.

With a wave of his hand, he gave the order to bombard, since he wanted to defeat the enemy, he naturally wanted to stab the dagger in the throat of the opponent, so the primary target was determined to be Baiqi Ridge, of which the target position of two artillery companies was the position of the second battalion on the right flank, and the other eight artillery companies were mainly attacking Baiqi Ridge.

With a few school projectiles flying up a hundred feet of ridge, the shelling by the French finally began...... Gu Ba's artillery order was 40 68mm guns to carry out four rounds of shelling, and he, who had studied artillery, had already estimated the area on the top of this 100-foot ridge, and fired 160 shells in a salvo, which was enough to cover the area of less than three acres of land on the top of this loess mountain.

Gu Ba didn't have time to explore this small hundred-foot ridge before the bombardment, but it was also a little difficult to explore, this wasteland was just such a commanding height, but if he had seen the trenches on this small hill that were formed into a field grid, and the thick walls of the trenches made of high earth walls, he would definitely reconsider planning his own artillery tactics.

At the beginning of the shelling, except for a small number of soldiers left at a few observation points where the earth had been piled up, the defenders of the three brigades on the hill had moved to the support trenches behind them through the guò trench passage, and the rear was dug in the trenches on the north side of the mountain, showing a curvilinear distribution, and even if the shells were abundant, the huā shells could only cause very limited damage.

Moreover, the high mounds of earth in the support trenches, the field artillery shells that came directly from the front, it was almost impossible to fall into the support trenches, and Ma Desheng, who was fully prepared to support the trenches, hid in the bunker behind the hill, wondering how fierce the French would be, and the overwhelming shells of the other side flew over. ,

After the first two rounds of firing at the top of the hill, the first round of artillery shelling on the hill hit the front position on the hill with a high accuracy of 7 percent, but as a direct-fire field artillery, it was really a little incapable of dealing with the trenches dug in the high ground.

At least more than half of the shells directly hit the thick mound of earth piled up in the loess, kicking up a cloud of dust, which looked spectacular from a distance, and the number of shells that hit the front position was quite a lot, but the shells fired directly from the bottom up, the arc of the curve was too small, and most of them did not hit the trench at all, and exploded directly on the top of the mountain.

In the face of the trenches, the power of the field artillery of direct fire is actually very limited, and when choosing the target, he also made a mistake, he was too eager to break through the enemy in one fell swoop, and also overestimated the power of the French artillery.

However, for the field artillery firing from the back, to hit the narrow trench on the high ground, the difficulty is not ordinarily high, the probability is not ordinarily low, so a round of more than 30 shells salvo, the scene is spectacular, after the shelling French soldiers are all out of the howl, such a majestic shelling, the enemy seems to soon collapse......

However, in fact, of the more than 30 shells in the first round, only one of them was lucky enough to smash into the trench and slightly injured a soldier at the observation position! If you know this result, you will probably have the consciousness of vomiting blood!

After an interval of more than a minute, the second round of shelling by the French began again, and the high ground was a mess again, and the huā shells kicked up a large cloud of floating dust, which shrouded the hundred-foot ridge! Compared with the spectacular scene on the hill, the shelling scene of the shallow positions arranged on the right flank was much weaker, and 10 field guns covered the defensive positions formed by multiple trenches of the second battalion.

In the face of the completely superior artillery fire of the French, the countertactics of the Qi side were almost almost impossible to passively beat, but they were old oilmen who had been fighting wits and courage with the French in Luerzhuang for more than a month, and they were not afraid of the bombardment of the French 100mm heavy artillery, let alone the 68mm small field artillery.

Qi Fang and they have long figured out the power of the Frenchman's small field artillery, if this thing explodes next to it, the power is indeed not small, and the shrapnel shot by the jī can shoot a distance of 10 meters...... However, this thing is a big cannon battle, and everything that hits it will explode! This meant that "the shell penetration of the 68mm field gun was very limited.

When they were in Lunizhuang, they built a large number of covered bunkers on the position, "a few logs pounced on large leaves, and then covered with thick floating soil, once the French had itchy hands to open fire, the soldiers on the front line would hide under these bunkers, leaving the soldiers to observe something" This simple mud roof can easily cope with the fire of field artillery in most cases.

Zhang Kui, who was in the rear left flank position, was also nervously observing the artillery bombardment on the front position at the moment, this sniper battle was a key part of the entire battle plan, although he had full confidence in the combat effectiveness of the associations besieging the French Fourth and Eleventh Brigades, and more importantly, there was a rapid artillery attack by the artillery regiment, but he did not despise the defensive ability of the French ** team in his thinking.

The more familiar with the weapon system, the understanding of defensive warfare is also more thorough, just with the firepower of the 80-type submachine gun and the AK02 rifle to break through the position from the front, this difficulty is also very high, the only way is to suppress the frontal fire with a more powerful weapon system with range, and then launch an impact at close range.

When he was thinking about it, the officer next to him had already reminded Zhang Kui, "My lord, the French will not fight if they shoot the front artillery?!" ”

This made Zhang Kui also a big surprise: "In the defense of Luerzhuang, he paid great attention to collecting information about the French artillery battle, and the positional battle of Luerzhuang, due to the existence of the half-solidified dark fort, made the French artillery have to act with the attacking troops, and the French artillery was crazy during the shelling."

It really made the guard ** crazy, and every time he shelled, he desperately opened the ground as if he didn't need money......,...

Could it be that the French have turned xìngzi...... This is very strange! After the fierce volley of the French was over, two artillery groups were replaced to provide artillery support for the attacking troops, and the artillery continued to rush to the hill, and the French ground attack officially began!

The battalion-based French jumped out of cover and left the 3rd Brigade alone to take the main force of the attack at Luerzhuang, and the losses were not small, but tactically speaking, they made great progress, and a battalion of black Algerians and 3 companies of Vietnamese natives launched an attack from the ground positions held by the front and right flanks. ,

In front, a French battalion, an Algerian black battalion and 4 servant corps companies launched an attack on the hill, and the French, under Qin Kai's repeated education, no longer blindly trusted the primitive platoon tactics and queue attacks, but presented a straggler queue to move forward.

However, at this moment, it is not the field artillery that is not ineffective to cause the greatest trouble to protect the **, but the Haqikes machine gun position erected behind the attacking troops, as one of the wonders of the French industry, the Haqikes Arms Company in the 80s of the 19th century can be described as a standout, especially in the 2-pounder guns and 3-pounder rapid-fire guns.

The 37mm and 47mm five-barreled machine guns with a range of 2000m have an amazing speed of 30 to 40 rounds per minute, and the pound and crab shells fired are even more lethal for the superficial positions in the front, however, as an air-cooled machine gun, this thing also has a lot of limitations, with a rate of fire of 30 to 40 rounds per minute, which causes the barrel to quickly become hot, so the continuous firing ability is far inferior to the water-cooled Maxim machine gun used to protect **.

However, in the face of the Protector Erxie, which had no heavy weapons at all, the French's Habekais machine guns were greatly powerful, pressing the positions of the right flank Qi to death, and the counterattacks of several AK02 rifles would be subject to fierce cannon and cannon fire, and the casualties of the second battalion were not small for a while.

Seeing the fierceness of the opponent's machine artillery, the Qi side immediately adjusted its tactics, and the commandos equipped with 80 style submachine guns were arranged in the second-line trenches, and the first-line trenches were guarded by AK02 soldiers, putting the French closer and then fighting.

Cheng Gang and Shi Bingyi are a pair of difficult brothers, last time when they were playing Ryukyu, they were also on the front line of the sniper position, this time the two of them took on this heavy responsibility again, both of them are now promoted to captains, at this moment the cat is also depressed in the trenches, there is no pain of heavy firepower, it is really uncomfortable.

At this time, it is impossible to raise their heads at all, the soldiers are constantly changing positions, and then raising their heads and firing a shot to immediately change places, so that the frontal firepower built is obviously not enough to stop the enemy in front, through the observation position, the French army attacking their position at this moment has at least 2 battalions of nearly 1,000 people.

Fighting with the French in Luerzhuang for more than a month, for these French can be said to know the root of the combat power, Luerzhuang at that time had his own Makqin machine gun and mortar squad, the French lù head, to the ghost crying wolf howling car back, that Ha Qi Kaisi machine gun is not the opponent of the mortar at all, that is, the opponent's field artillery and mortar against each other, that is also a beaten can not be repaid, after all, mortars can be fired from the trench......

Cheng Gang walked around the trench with his waist on his back, taking care of them one by one all the way, "50 meters, if you start fighting again within 50 meters, their machine guns will not be able to provide fire support!" ”

After a lap, Shi Bing has already arranged it, and if you can't fight from a distance, then fight in close combat,

They really don't believe it, at close range, there is a sharper storage zài than the firepower net of the protection **?

The two confident guys crouched down and observed the enemy troops in front of them.

The French were very fast in the attack, and the speed of the advance was also very fast, under the cover of the machine guns of Habeces, although many corpses were dropped along the way, but the distance of more than 600 meters in the front was completed in a skirmish formation in just 10 minutes, and in the front row was a group of Vietnamese servants, shrunken and led by a French sergeant Jamie.

There were nearly 1,000 French troops involved in the attack, and the black pressure stragglers, divided into three echelons 100 meters apart, brandished the Shashpu-style rifles that had been loaded with bayonets in their hands, and while rushing forward, they blindly shot at the Qing army positions in front, and the bullets hit the soil without any doubt, and the gunshots of counterattacks came from time to time in the trenches on the opposite side, which made many soldiers fall quietly in the wilderness in the advance