Qin Rigang's troops are not a new army, his troops are still traditional cold weapon troops, and they rely heavily on the city walls when defending and fighting.

Now Lin Chengting withdrew the artillery team and allowed Yu Shengjun's artillery to bombard the city wall, which led to heavy casualties among the troops he deployed on the city wall.

In this way, it is strange that Qin Rigang is not mad at Lin Chengting, but in the face of Qin Rigang's accusation, Lin Chengting just didn't care, the artillery team was his, and it was not his turn to let Qin Rigang dictate how he liked to use it.

Lin Chengting's attitude made Qin Rigang angry, and finally had to remove his own troops from the city wall, so as not to suffer indifferent losses.

Outside the city, Lin Zhe, who watched the enemy troops withdraw from the city one after another, did not have a happy expression, because this was not a good thing for Yu Shengjun, and the enemy's initiative to withdraw from the city to avoid the battle meant that the enemy casualties caused by his artillery attack were much less.

At the same time, the existence of the trenches and breastworks under the walls of the enemy could not allow the infantry to take advantage of the situation and launch a direct siege!

As a last resort, he asked the artillery unit to change its strategy again, except for continuing to use some 12-pounder guns to bombard a certain section of the city wall of Changzhou with solid shells, and let all other artillery pieces be reloaded with grenades and grenades to hit the enemy in the trench outside the city wall of Changzhou.

Although the enemy has a trench to hide, but the continuous shelling will also cause the enemy to continue to suffer casualties, this casualty may be a few times or two rare, but the cumulative number is still a considerable number, and can only be beaten and cannot fight back for a long time, the morale of the enemy soldiers is very severe.

In the past few days in mid-April, Yu Shengjun set up a camp outside the city on the one hand and put on a posture of long-term siege and confrontation, and on the other hand, he also let the artillery continue to bombard, and there was no other sound in and around Changzhou except for the rumbling of artillery.

At this time, He Chun, Huang Zonghan, Zhang Guoliang and others also led nearly 30,000 Qing troops to arrive near Changzhou, but Lin Zhe did not have great expectations for them, anyway, there are many enemy soldiers gathered in Changzhou City, and it is impossible to take the 30,000 Qing troops.

After Hechun arrived in Changzhou, Lin Zhe didn't have a good impression of Hechun. But he still sat down with him to discuss Changzhou's military affairs.

Perhaps because of the lesson learned last time, this time He Chun did not talk about the fact that Yu Shengjun must be under his control and command during the talks, but instead showed a tone of discussion, saying that after the two armies were ready. A joint siege of the city, testing the reality of the Changzhou thief army.

Attack Changzhou now? Don't be kidding, the current Changzhou is an iron-clad hedgehog, and he hasn't even been able to find a place to put his mouth in a few days, and according to his own deduction and that of many generals in Yu Sheng's army. If you want to defeat the defenders in Changzhou, it is not possible to rely on the siege directly, you must lure them out and let them take the initiative to attack their own camp to prevent the attack, and follow the original Suzhou Battle to have any hope of victory.

Even so, the risk is extremely high, after all, the strength of the Yu Sheng army led by Lin Zhe is still too small, and only seven or eight thousand people have to face ten times the enemy army, and the difficulty can be imagined.

As for the nearly 30,000 Qing troops, Lin Zhe didn't take them into account at all. The combat effectiveness of these Qing troops is not even as good as that of the auxiliary defense regiment under his command, and they are considered to be in the way when they are cannon fodder.

So Lin Zhe said: It's okay to visit once, but my Yu Shengjun has few major generals, so I won't send infantry to attack the city, but Yu Shengjun will provide sufficient artillery support for the siege troops, and also provide flank cover and pressure formation.

He Chun saw that Lin Zhe refused to send troops to attack the city, although he was dissatisfied, but he also knew that this siege would have to rely heavily on Yu Shengjun, without Yu Shengjun, let alone attack the city, it is estimated that he would immediately have to lead the army to flee back to Jiangyin.

Besides, Lin Zhe promised to provide artillery support and cover behind the flanks. This is okay, after all, Yu Shengjun's artillery is the strongest he has ever seen in his life.

Like everyone else, he had long heard that Yu Sheng's weapons were sharp, but there was still no intuitive concept of what a sharp method was.

Until he saw that there was a row of them. The artillery position, which was almost impossible to see at a glance, was the first time that he had an accurate concept of Yu Shengjun's firearms.

In fact, the Qing army not only had 3,000 jin of cannons, but also 5,000 jin or even 8,000 catties, and there were a lot of 10,000 jin cannons. However, the number of these giant cannons is quite small, and most of them are deployed in the city and coastal defense batteries, and those 8,000 jin and 10,000 jin cannons are naturally impossible to pull out for field battles, even if they are 3,000 jin is very few.

However, looking at Yu Shengjun's artillery position, there were dozens of these twelve-pounder guns that resembled a 3,000-pound cannon.

In addition, there are those 24-pounder and 32-pounder mortars with stubby barrels, and the firing sound is even more terrifying!

In addition to these huge cannons on the artillery position, He Chun also saw that Yu Shengjun's infantry also had some small-caliber artillery, such as the mountain splitting guns commonly used in the Qing army and the Taiping army, but they were not like it.

These small-caliber guns were light four-pounder guns specially attached to the infantry battalion in Yu Sheng's army.

Although each of Yu Sheng's mixed regiments was assigned to an artillery battalion with two twelve-pounder guns, these guns were heavy artillery and provided long-range fire support. As for the infantry battalion, small and medium-caliber artillery is still needed to provide scattered fire support at medium and close ranges.

In the past, Yu Shengjun used the captured 300 catties or 500 catties of mountain splitting guns as battalion guns, but found that the caliber was different, not to mention, and the quality was mostly uneven, so later the Ordnance Bureau simply gritted its teeth and let the captured artillery return to the Linde Machinery Factory, and used the obtained copper to build a unified standard of light four-pounder artillery.

In fact, it is not only these three or five hundred pounds of mountain splitting guns that have been returned, the Ordnance Bureau has planned to return all the captured bronze old guns, and then use these copper materials to make Yu Shengjun's unified artillery.

These light four-pounder guns were organized into artillery companies on weekdays and managed and trained by each artillery battalion, and during the battle, they were assigned to each infantry battalion, and each infantry battalion was assigned to a platoon, which had two guns under its jurisdiction.

In order to reduce the weight to obtain the mobility that can keep up with the infantry phalanx, the barrel of the gun is relatively short, and the gun carriage is also designed to reduce weight, so the power of the guide machine has come up, but the range is more tragic, the effective range of firing solid projectiles is only 500 meters, and the effective range of firing scattered projectiles is 400 meters.

From this range, it can be seen that this is a portable infantry gun specially designed to provide fire support to infantry at medium and close range!

If you count these four-pounder infantry guns. In fact, the entire Yusheng Army has been equipped with more than 100 artillery pieces of various calibers.

This kind of firepower completely destroyed the Taiping army and the Qing army.

Seeing so many pieces of Yu Shengjun's artillery for the first time, He Chun really understood how Lin Zhe's domineering confidence came from.

If he had such a powerful army under his command, he and Chun would have to their tails to the sky!

The two sides discussed a tentative siege after noon the next day, and then agreed that they would camp separately. Yu Shengjun camped outside the east gate, and the Qing army camped in the northeast corner of Changzhou, which could not only correspond to Yu Shengjun's remote call, but also block the Taiping army in Changzhou from the north gate to attack flank.

Lin Zhe took the initiative to propose this separate station, and he didn't want the defense deployment in his camp to be disrupted by these Qing troops. At that time, if the Taiping army takes the initiative to attack the city, these Qing troops will not only help, but it is estimated that they will cause big trouble and chaos to themselves.

It's a ticking time bomb to put in your own camp!

Faced with Lin Zhe's mention of yì like this, and his expression of fear of being implicated, Hechun was unhappy again, but he was unhappy, and he and Chun were not willing to stay with Lin Zhe.

There was nothing to say all night, and the next day Lin Zhe saw that the Qing army camp not far away was busy, not only in the camp. He also sent a large number of people to cut down trees nearby, knowing in their hearts that they were building some siege equipment or something.

However, what made Lin Zhe find it interesting was that the Qing army also sent a large number of cavalry units to cover the soldiers of the Green Battalion who were cutting down trees.

"It's a pity, those are good horses!" Wang Luyun stood beside Lin Zhe, looking at the thousands of cavalry of the Qing army in the distance, and the war horses under his crotch all glowed green.

"We have been scraping together for the past two years, and we have only gathered thousands of cavalry, but such a group of remnants of the defeated army also have nearly 3,000 good war horses, what a waste!"

Yu Shengjun's lack of war horses is not a matter of a day or two, two years ago Lin Zhe sent people to the north to try to buy war horses in large quantities, but now during the war, although there are many good horses on the Mongolian steppe in the north. But the Qing court requisitioned more, and it couldn't buy much at all.

In the past two years, more than 1,000 horses have been purchased and transported, and most of them are ordinary horses with a shoulder height of no more than 1.3 meters. Can only be used as a service horse.

At present, the number of mules and horses in Yu Sheng's army is not small, and it can even be called very large, with nearly 5,000 mules and horses of various types, which is quite high for the mule and horse army, but the number of high-class horses is not much.

Because it was not only the cavalry that used horses in Yu Sheng's army, but the artillery units that used the most horses. A twelve-pound artillery company needs 150 horses, and Yu Shengjun's so many artillery units need more than 2,000 horses, and the baggage troops are also big users, requiring nearly 1,000 mules and horses, and these horses are relatively ordinary service horses, and the cavalry cannot use them.

As for the cavalry horses, there were less than 1,500 horses in total, and hundreds of them were divided into good horses as officers' mounts, so that even if the cavalry units could obtain the priority supply of high-quality war horses, they could only establish four cavalry companies directly under the cavalry regiment and five cavalry platoons under the jurisdiction of each mixed regiment, and the total number of cavalry was only a little more than 1,000.

Under such circumstances, it is not surprising that Wang Luyun, the commander of the cavalry regiment, saw that the Qing army had so many cavalry.

"Tut, big handsome, look, the rows in front of you are all excellent and high-grade war horses, and the shoulder height is estimated to be more than one meter three or five!"

When listening to Wang Luyun next to him, Lin Zhe also had a thought, this Qing army's family background is much richer than he imagined, these more than 3,000 good war horses may be more than 100,000 taels of silver if calculated in silver alone, but in the Jiangnan region where there are frequent wars, the value of these war horses is far from being measurable by hundreds of thousands of taels of silver.

If you can get a batch of war horses from them, the cavalry unit that has not been able to expand itself will be able to take advantage of the situation.

It's just that it's very difficult to get horses from them!

Since Lin Zhe became famous for his dominance two years ago, the Jiangnan camp and the Jiangbei camp were very unkind to him, and he tried to ask them for horses with cash many times but was refused, and now if he goes directly to him, it is estimated that there is no hope.

After thinking for a while, Lin Zhe decided to take a roundabout route, and immediately made an appointment with Huang Zonghan to talk about buying war horses.

Huang Zonghan was embarrassed after hearing this, but when he thought that Lin Zhe thought there was no play, he said: "Although this matter is difficult, it is not that there is no hope at all!" (To be continued.) )