Under the increasingly fierce artillery of the modern army, the ancient city wall has been unable to bear the heavy responsibility of the city defense system, whether it is in the Chinese army's successive attacks on the Taiping army or the Qing army, their city walls can not effectively resist the pace of the Chinese army, and even the role of the city wall is not as effective as those trenches.

And this situation in turn has also been confirmed in the Chinese army, as the city wall has been bombarded one after another, the city wall that was regarded as the main body of defense has lost its strategic role, especially as the British and French forces began to fire a large number of grenades and grenades at the head of the city, so that the soldiers in the defense of the city head suffered many casualties, and finally had to retreat from the city wall.

As the effectiveness of the city walls gradually lost its effectiveness, the fortifications that the Chinese army relied on were replaced by those inconspicuous trenches.

These trenches were dug outside the perimeter of the city walls, and there were many wooden fences, barbs and other obstacles outside the trenches, and behind the trenches were traffic trenches that zigzagged to the rear.

If you just look at these trenches, it is easy to mistake them for the Russo-Japanese War or even World War I.

But if you look closely, you will find that these trenches are actually two different things from the trenches of later generations, first of all, these trenches are generally about one and a half meters wide, and some spacious places even have a width of two meters.

The bottom is about 130 centimeters above the ground, which is the height of many modern breastworks, allowing soldiers to stand and reload and shoot while effectively covering the part below the chest.

However, if the ordinary breastoping wall encounters the enemy's solid artillery shells, the temporary breastwork on the battlefield cannot be blocked at all, and even the thick city wall cannot block the artillery bombardment. Not to mention the chest wall of this area, Lin Chengting was trying to offset the firepower of the Chinese army back then. At first, they also used low walls and the like, but it soon became clear that these low walls were too vulnerable to solid ball shelling. So it was simply a trench dug up.

At a depth of about one meter and three, if the soldier bends down, he can hide in it entirely.

Dozens or even hundreds of meters away from the trench are some obstacles such as wooden fences and even bamboo chips directly inserted into the ground, which are used to hinder and disrupt the shape of the enemy army.

Although the trench defense system has not appeared long ago on the Chinese battlefield, it has been widely used in modern warfare, especially the construction of a chest wall for defensive operations is a necessary skill that every modern army needs to master, and in some fortresses, there will also be the application of trenches.

The American Civil War in history is a very common application of trenches and breastwork, but when people describe it in film and television works or literary works, most of them like to describe head-to-head battles in the field. Therefore, when it comes to modern warfare, it is often thought of the line combat mode, that is, the line of gunners.

However, in actual combat, this kind of line duel, especially large-scale line duel, is actually very rare, the Chinese army has been an army for many years, strictly speaking, there are only two line duels, one is with Du Xing'a's training army, and the other is with Li Hongzhang's Jianghuai New Army, and these two battles are encounters in the field. It's not an offensive and defensive battle in the traditional sense.

In actual combat, in fact, the most important thing is the offensive and defensive battle faced by the Third Army now, and in the offensive and defensive battle, the two sides are not stupidly going outside the city to conduct a line duel, but using various methods to destroy the enemy or hold the city as much as possible.

Count Ergin deployed more than 100 artillery pieces for shelling. And Qu Panyun's use of trenches for defense is a typical offensive or defensive tactic of this era.

In the face of the Chinese army's abandonment of the city wall, but directly used the trench for defensive operations, Count Ergin also felt a little headache about this.

The Chinese army in front of them can only be said to be very average in terms of training or tactics. The previous day's arming was full of holes in Ergin's seriousness, but the reason why Ergin used 'very general' to evaluate. And if it is not evaluated very badly, then it already represents in the eyes of Count Ergin. Although these Chinese troops are a little worse, they are already a modern army, and they cannot be viewed with the eyes of African barbarians.

Therefore, he was very cautious in commanding the battle in the past few days, except for a small defeat in the outer city on the second day of the siege, which lost nearly 100 men, and although he also suffered sporadic casualties at other times, there were no large-scale casualties.

At this point in the battle, Count Ergin's command was already considered to be of the best level, and by artillery bombardment alone, he had killed and wounded more than 300 soldiers of the Chinese army, half of whom were artillerymen who had been fighting at the forefront of the battle. As for the auxiliary defense army and the people, there were more casualties, and the three auxiliary defense divisions together have accumulated nearly 1,000 casualties.

As for the people who had to brave the shelling of foreigners to continue to build fortifications and fill the city walls, they also suffered heavy casualties, and at least more than 3,000 people have been killed or wounded so far.

However, the total casualties of these Anglo-French troops outside the city would never exceed three hundred.

Ergin used a large number of artillery to gain the advantage, forcing the Third Army to suffer heavy casualties, but also had to completely abandon the outer city, and finally even the inner city walls were abandoned, so he chose to use the trench directly to meet the battle.

Looking at the already tattered city wall of Guangzhou, Count Ergin gave an order with a smile on his face: "Let the young men start, and strive to enter the city for dinner!" ”

On the city wall, Qu Panyun watched as the foreign soldiers who had stayed outside the city and had not moved stepped forward one by one with rifles, and then lined up a neat phalanx as they approached.

He frowned: "It's finally coming!" ”

"Order the 30th Regiment to make all preparations, and immediately reinforce the battlefield as soon as the situation changes!" Qu Panyun saw that the British and French troops on the opposite side finally dispatched a large number of infantry to step forward, and immediately gave the corresponding order.

"Let the musket regiments of the 27th and 33rd Auxiliary Defense Divisions immediately enter the battlefield, reinforce the 28th and 29th regiments respectively, and strengthen the firepower!"

"The hand-to-hand combat troops immediately enter the predetermined position!"

As Qu Panyun's orders were issued, tens of thousands of people of the Third Army moved quickly, perhaps this is not right, it should be said that the two infantry regiments of the Tenth Infantry Division and the two musket regiments of the Auxiliary Defense Army moved.

For example, the 10th Infantry Division, which was the main force, deployed two infantry regiments and most of the artillery fire in the trench of the eastern wall of the inner city, and also had an infantry regiment and a small amount of artillery in the southern part of the inner city, that is, in the direction of the outer city wall.

Of the divisions, the 8th Division was on the southern wall, while the 27th and 33rd divisions were on the eastern wall.

Now that the foreigners are launching a large-scale attack from the east, Qu Panyun naturally wants to prepare the 30th Infantry Regiment in the south, in case the east gate cannot be defended, the 30th Infantry Regiment will have to be reinforced in time.

The troops of the Third Army at the East City Gate moved quickly, but the foreign soldiers outside also gradually accelerated, and this Ergin was probably to reduce the casualties of the troops within a range of about a thousand meters, so they did not use the mode of horizontal formation into the battlefield commonly used by the British army, but used a column to advance.

As more than 3,000 soldiers of the British and French forces attacked, the artillery of the Chinese army in the city also changed the previous strategy of occasionally firing a cannon at intervals of more than ten minutes or even an hour, and began to shell rapidly, and the rate of fire directly increased by about three points per minute.

And for the column ranks of the Anglo-French forces, in addition to continuing to use grenades and grenade shotguns, the artillery of the Chinese army also frequently used solid shells.

Although it is said that the column entering the battlefield can effectively reduce the probability of being hit, there are advantages and disadvantages, that is, once it is hit by a solid ball shell, the casualties caused are not a few people, but dozens or hundreds.

In the era of line lines, a solid-ball shell fired from a twelve-pounder gun could easily penetrate an entire column of an infantry company at a distance of 600 meters to 1,000 meters.

This is talking about a column, not a horizontal formation, that is, once it hits, this solid ball shell may hit the infantry company from the beginning to the end, and the entire infantry company will be completely abolished after one shot.

Of course, this is the most ideal situation, although everyone knows that once the column is hit by a solid shell, it will suffer heavy casualties, but the reason why many generals in this era still like to use columns to enter the battlefield is because the artillery hit rate in this year is not good, if you are unlucky enough to only be less than two meters of the double column is hit by someone with a shot, from death to the end, it will not be a battle, just drink water and choke yourself to death.

Although the artillery of the current Chinese army has started combat rapid fire, and the artillery has begun to fire frequently, the hit rate is relatively limited, many grenades fall in the open space and explode, and some solid bullets even fall in the open space and jump, but some grenade scattered bombs explode in the sky above the enemy's phalanx, and then achieve good killing results.

However, when the artillery of the Chinese army desperately opened fire, trying to block the approach of the infantry of the British and French forces, the artillery of the British and French forces was not idle, and they also carried out intensive combat rate of fire, on the one hand, they tried to suppress the Chinese artillery positions on the head of the city, and on the other hand, they also carried out fierce artillery bombardment of the Chinese army trenches outside the city.

In particular, the large-caliber 32-pounder and even 64-pounder mortars that were brought down from the battleship fired grenades at the trenches.

However, if the Chinese army had relied on a simple breastwork, it would have suffered heavy casualties in the face of such heavy enemy shelling, but now it is relying on trenches.

But can the trenches alone withstand the shelling of more than 100 guns by the British and French forces? (To be continued......)