The Ghanaians living on the Gold Coast, unlike other Black African regions, have moved away from simple clan and tribal civilizations and have entered the feudal social system with one foot. Why is it just one foot? Because the princely state of Ghana at this time was a mixture of mixed tribal politics. In other words, these princely states are just relatively large tribal alliances, and at most their internal organizational systems are more refined.

The Mossi people in this semi-feudal civilization naturally did not produce high-level buildings or fully functional towns. The city of Moxie in front of Wickham is obviously built using the plate construction method, and the wall of the mixed civil and engineering walls is about three meters. In this way, the city wall defense cold weapon army is difficult, let alone the European army that has entered the age of firearms.

Wickham didn't know whether to be happy or worried. Glad that such a rudimentary city wall was conducive to the offensive operations of the British army. The worry is, what good things can be hidden in such a Moxi Wangcheng, which is more like a bandit cottage in Xiangxi? Wickham is now beginning to wonder if King Moxie is hiding nearly 100,000 pounds of wealth in it, as Captain Stanley said.

The royal city of Moxi is not so much a city as it is the castle of a medieval lord of Europe. It is surrounded by a number of haphazard grass-roofed adobe houses, the core of which is the palace of King Mositu, surrounded by an earthen wall a little more than three meters high, with some rough arrow towers and watchtowers. Of course, the gates of the royal city of Moxi are far from those of the iron-clad hardwood gates of the Middle Ages. Because of the low level of construction of the Moses, the crooked gate was reinforced with some thick wooden planks and some pig iron bars.

After spotting the British army outside the city, the Mossi natives who lived on the outskirts of the royal city fled to take refuge inside the city walls. The rudimentary gate creaked and closed with the combined efforts of several Moxi soldiers. The Moxi archers on the arrow tower drew their bone arrows and put them on their bows, ready to fight back at the European colonists who dared to attack the city. The British soldiers could even see a figure swaying on the low city wall, it should be the Moxi warriors preparing for defense on the city wall, but the number was not very large, it seems that Captain Stanley's estimate of the Moxes is no longer combative.

Captain Stanley rode up to Wickham and said, "Lieutenant Wickham, the defenses of the Moxies are a joke to our valiant army!" Just push two guns a hundred meters from the city gate and bombard them with solid shells. No more than three salvos and my artillery will be able to blast that joke door open! ”

The reason why the British colonizers have not opened up this area as a colony until now is not because the Ghanaians have strong combat effectiveness, but because the current British military presence in Ghana can only be on the coastline, and the far inland areas are beyond the reach of the whip. Wickham, who is well versed in European colonial history, knew that it was not until around 1880 that the whole of Ghana became a colony under the direct jurisdiction of the British Empire.

However, this time it was different, Wickham was just thinking of grabbing a handful and leaving, and did not need to maintain a long-term military presence in the region. Moreover, the strength advantage of the Moses had been broken, and the defense of the royal city was very weak, so it was a good time for the independent company of the marines to take advantage of the weakness.

Wickham lined up the Marines and Hessian mercenaries in two thin columns, advanced directly to a distance of fifty yards from the city walls, and suppressed the Moxi defenders at the head of the city with shotgun fire to cover the artillery firing at close range. When the Moxi archers saw that the enemy had attacked the city, they poked their heads out from behind the wooden battlements and quickly shot a rain of arrows.

Because the British were too close and on the inferior side, after the Moses fired two waves of arrows, the dense infantry line suddenly fell by more than two dozen men. The soldiers who were wounded by arrows were quickly dragged down by the reserves behind them and handed over to Modi, the military doctor, for treatment, so as not to affect the morale of the wounded soldiers.

Although the British suffered more than two dozen casualties so quickly, Moxie's archers also paid a heavy price. All the Moxie archers who dared to show their upper bodies and fight back were basically beaten by the hot lead bullets fired from the British army's smoothbore guns, and their flesh was blurred and wailed.

Taking advantage of the fact that the defenders of Moxi at the head of the city were suppressed by British fire, Wickham hurriedly ordered the artillery group to advance two three-pounder infantry guns to a distance of sixty yards from the city gate and began to load solid ammunition. The Moxi soldiers on the watchtower, after seeing the British pushing the artillery up, immediately shouted anxiously to warn the defenders on the city wall.

The garrison general of the city of Moxie was not a dirt bun who had never seen the market, and he had a painful lesson about this terrible weapon of the white man. He hurriedly asked the Merxi archers to give priority to attacking the British artillery, in the hope of delaying the British artillery to open fire. However, in his panic, the Mossi guard forgot that the Mossi people's shoddy bows and arrows could not pose a threat to the Hessian artillery eighty yards away.

Many of the Moxi archers, after receiving orders from their leaders, could only stand up straight and return fire on the British artillery. But most of the Moxie archers, before they could shoot arrows, were beaten into blood gourds by the British infantry under the city walls. The only lucky ones who shot arrows only fell softly on the bodies of a few Hessian artillerymen, and it was not enough to tickle them. Seeing this, the Hessian mercenaries laughed loudly in German, and a few of them even took off their pants in public, laughing and spilling "mocking urine" in the direction of the Moxies.

Captain Stanley blushed, and the discipline of his mercenaries was very loose, and sometimes even vulgar. It used to be forgotten, but now in front of the British Marines, he suddenly felt a sense of shame and disgrace to a foreign country. However, Wickham didn't show anything, and after a few Hessian mercenaries, the tension on the battlefield did dissipate a lot.

A short time later, the artillerymen informed Wickham through the order flag that the gun had been loaded. Wickham let the signal soldiers around him raise the command flag to represent the opening of the cannon. After receiving the order, the two three-pounder infantry guns, which had long been ready to fire, soon let out the roar of the "king of war".

The scorching cannonball, with the sound of breaking through the air, hit the wooden gate of the city of Moxie very hard. It's just that the gates of the city of Moxie squeaked and shook a few times, but they didn't fall down with a bang. Wickham shook his head when he saw this, although these three-pounder infantry guns moved and deployed faster, their power was much worse than that of six-pounder guns and twelve-pounder infantry guns. Seeing that the city gate was still unharmed, the defenders of Moxi let out a cry of excitement, and the originally anxious mood calmed down a little.

Listening to the shouts coming from the city wall, a sneer hung on the corner of Wickham's mouth, these barbarians were happy too early! The three-pounder infantry cannon was originally only a small artillery used to hit the opposing infantry, and siege was not something such a small cannon was good at. But this combat experience is only valid in Europe, and the less reliable gates of the Moses may be able to withstand a salvo of three-pounder guns, but two, three?

The Hessian artillerymen didn't care about the immovable city gate, but silently cleaned the chambers and loaded the ammunition, and everything seemed to be in order. In the space of five minutes, the two guns fired another volley, and the two solid projectiles, without exception, all bombarded the city gates. By the time the fourth salvo was over, the battered wooden gate could not withstand such a close fire, and collapsed amid the desperate screams of the Moxies!

Contrary to the mournful expressions of the Moxies, the British soldiers erupted into a burst of cheers, because Wickham had already announced before the siege that the loot would be distributed proportionally after entering the city!

Ruhl's platoon was the first to rush through the gates, which had lost their defensive barriers. All the soldiers were holding back their strength to find the palace where King Mossi was located, and the floor tiles there were said to be paved with gold. Seeing that the British army had entered the inner city, the Moxi defenders, whose morale was not high, dispersed in a hurry. The bold ones even quietly opened the door of the royal treasury, ready to fish in troubled waters. In less than twenty minutes, the city of King Moxi was in chaos, and there was a sky-high fire everywhere.

The royal guards loyal to King Mossitu did not disperse in a hurry, but lined up at the entrance of the palace with a musket in hand, ready to stop the invading British army. Although the royal guard was small in number, all the weapons were purchased from the Netherlands and trained by Dutch instructors, making it a quasi-modern army.

He just wanted to hurry into the second row of the royal city robbery, and he crashed into the defense line built by the Moxi royal guard. The royal guards of Moxi, who had been waiting for a long time, quickly fired a volley of fire according to the infantry tactics of Europe!

Ruhl had a rifle in his hand, but he had in mind the sparkling gold, and when he had snatched enough of the booty, he returned to Hampshire, bought a small estate, and became a respectable squire. Before Ruhl could think about what his future wife would look like, he suddenly felt a warm liquid splash on his face. Ruhl reached out and touched his face, only to realize that the warm liquid turned out to be scarlet blood! The companion next to him had been shot in the chest at some point, and he didn't even let out a scream, so he fell to the ground softly. Startled by the sudden turn of events, Ruhl looked up to find a Moxie army lined up forty yards ahead with a smoothbore gun in hand.

Seven or eight soldiers were lost in just a face, and Bert's heart hurt to death, these damn black eggs were everywhere, but the soldiers of the Marine Corps were one less if they died, and there was no place to replenish them. Regardless of the casualties, Bert was confident that he would be able to defeat the Moxiese muskets with just two rounds of fire, but such a battle loss ratio was really unacceptable to the British troops who were fighting far from home. In order to avoid further casualties, Bert made the decision to disperse the soldiers of the second platoon to both sides of the street, so as not to become a live target for the Moxie Gun Team.

Wickham saw that the offensive in front of him was blocked, and his eyelids couldn't stop beating wildly, thinking that there must be something unexpected in front of him. Sure enough, a soldier with blood on his arm came to Wickham and said, "Report to Lieutenant Wickham, Ensign Bert met the muskets of the Moxies at the gate of the palace, and the casualties were too great to advance for a while. ”

When did Big Brother Africa become so smart that he knew how to train the Muskets? Wickham was stunned, he didn't expect the other party to step into the age of firearms! What Wickham didn't know was that after the outbreak of the Great Revolution in France, the French navy, which was loyal to the royal family, cut off the source of military spending, and naturally focused its attention on the large number of ordnance materials piled up in the military port of Brittany.

Tens of thousands of these rifles were sold to European countries during this period. The muskets in the hands of the Moses were one of the French exorcist rifles. However, it was not the French navy that sold guns to the Mossi, but the Dutch, who competed with the British merchants here! The Dutch commercial power in Ghana had long since been weakened by British encroachment, and in order to create problems for the British, who were expanding into the interior of Ghana, the Dutch spared no effort to strengthen the local indigenous power. The Fire Guards of the Moxies were one of the pawns of the Dutch against the British.

Wickham's heart tightened, if the chain fell at a critical moment, wouldn't the previous efforts be in vain? Thinking of this, Wickham nervously asked the soldier, "How many people are in the musket team of the Moxies?" The soldier didn't dare to hide it, and hurriedly told everything he saw: "Lieutenant Wickham, the number of Moxi's fire and spear team in front is not large, only about a hundred people, it seems that it should be the guard of King Moxitu." ”

When Wickham heard this, he was completely relieved, this fire and spear guard of more than 100 people was still too small in number to be afraid. However, how to eliminate the Moxie Guns on the opposite side made it difficult for Wickham. Do you want the British army to follow the tactics of platoon shooting and killing in this era, and play with the Moxies face to face? If Wickham dared to do this, then the Marine Independent Company would be crippled after this battle.

Captain Stanley next to him seemed to understand what Lin Zihan was worried about, so he spoke: "Lieutenant Wickham, or will we push the artillery up?" The range of the scattered shells of the artillery is generally hundreds of meters, and at such a distance, the muskets of the Moses cannot pose a threat to our artillery, but our artillery can attack the opposing side. "The Europeans of this era have no experience in using artillery in street fighting, and Captain Stanley's suggestion is definitely an epoch-making proposal.

Wickham's eyes lit up, this tactic was not Napoleon's battle to make a name for himself in suppressing the royal party in Paris. At that time, Napoleon was entrusted by the Directory to lead hundreds of troops to defend the seat of the National Assembly. In the face of the absolute superiority of the opponent's forces, Napoleon creatively dragged the artillery into the streets of Paris, and waited for the rushing royal army with grapeshot shells, and nearly 6,000 royal party members were immediately killed in a river of blood.

The current British army can completely imitate this tactic, add "bayonets" to the cannons, and bombard the Moxi Fire and Gun Team in front of the Moxie Palace at close range! At this time, Wickham's gaze at Captain Stanley also became admirable, this guy can get along with such a way, it is definitely not easy.