As the saying goes, feng shui takes turns, a few days ago it was the Taiping army that attacked Huzhou City defended by Yu Shengjun, but in a few days, the roles of the two sides were reversed, and it became Guangde City defended by Yu Shengjun attacking the Taiping army.

After Lin Zhe led the army to Huzhou in a hurry, he did not stay in Huzhou for long, but after resting in Huzhou for a day, the next day he led the main force of Yu Sheng's army to pursue north, but he also went to Changxing before attacking Guangde.

The strategic position of Changxing is still relatively important, and this small county town can be regarded as a triangle with Huzhou's capital city and Guangde.

The strategic position of the city is not light, and it leads to the Taiping army going south or the Yu Sheng army going north, they have successively sent troops to attack the city, and they have been traumatized by two consecutive wars in a short period of time, which is undoubtedly a disaster for the people of the city and nearby areas.

After the Taiping army took Changxing, they first killed the gentry, officials, and landlords in the city, and then plundered the whole city and arrested the strong men.

After Yu Shengjun recovered Changxing, Yu Shengjun, as before, robbed the Taiping Army's military funds and confiscated the wealth of the wealthy families who defected to the Taiping Army as war trophies.

However, Yu Shengjun is thousands of miles away, but he has no interest in engaging in large-scale massacres.

However, Qu Shengchao went north to fight with Yu Shengjun, but this was not the case, after taking Changxing, Qu Shengchao did not have the slightest softness, and without Yu Shengjun's hands, Qu Shengchao took more than 1,000 people to strengthen the gentry and people who searched and shopped 'thieves'.

was killed by the Taiping Army first, and then killed by Qu Shengchao, although Changxing, the former land of fish and rice in the south of the Yangtze River and the people living and working in peace and contentment, is still a little far away from the ten rooms and nine emptiness, but there are still ten rooms and five emptiness.

After Qu Shengchao led more than 1,000 people to leave Changxing to chase Yu Shengjun to Huzhou, Changxing was full of white flags!

Qu Shengchao's purge in Changxing, Lin Zhe is not easy to say, because this is not an accidental and independent action, but a universal thing, regardless of whether it is the Taiping army or the Qing army after conquering the city defended by the other party, there is a situation of large-scale slaughter.

The Taiping army killed people who were unwilling to lean on the Taiping army, and the Qing army killed the Taiping soldiers, and the people did not have a third choice, so they were either killed by the Taiping army or killed by the Qing army, which was also the most direct reason for the population reduction of tens of millions during the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom period.

By the time Qu Shengchao took Minzhuang to catch up with the pace of Yu Shengjun's brigade, Guangde City was already close at hand!

"These thieves are well guarded, and they have made a lot of preparations to see how they look!" Shi Qingxuan, who was standing beside Lin Zhe, said while looking at Guangde City in the distance.

And Hunter William, who was also wearing the uniform of Yu Shengjun, also put down his binoculars, turned his head to Lin Zhe and said: "General, have you seen it, the enemy seems to have dug a chest wall outside the city!" ”

Lin Zhe also frowned, chest wall? It wasn't a breastwork, it was a trench.

Just looking through the telescope, I could only see a long trench behind the small moat outside the city, and the earth from digging the trench was piled up with a breastwork about half a meter high.

Could it be said that there are also people in this Taiping army, otherwise how could they dig trenches? This was completely unexpected.

He didn't know that Lin Chengting's digging of the trench was completely forced by Yu Shengjun's powerful firepower.

Although Guangde had city walls, Lin Chengting did not think that these low, thin city walls could withstand the artillery bombardment of Yu Shengjun's army, and even if they were protected by city walls, it would be difficult to avoid a large number of casualties among soldiers.

So effectively resisting the powerful firepower of Yu Sheng's army in defensive operations? This has always been a question that Lin Chengting has been thinking about.

If you want to defeat Yu Shengjun, it is not possible to compete with them head-on with firepower and even strength, and the only way is to offset Yu Shengjun's firepower advantage.

As long as the combat distance between the two sides can be shortened to within 100 meters, then the musketeers under his command can exert an effective range, and even within a distance of 100 meters, a large number of hand-to-hand soldiers with cold weapons under his command have the opportunity to quickly approach Yu Shengjun, so as to defeat Yu Shengjun with hand-to-hand combat.

Around these factors, Lin Chengting came up with the method of digging a trench.

According to his assumption, when Yu Sheng's army attacked the city, it would definitely be a volley of artillery and muskets, even if the city wall could not be turned into a bunker, but was the biggest target, the soldiers on the city would suffer heavy casualties.

However, if the soldiers hide in the trench beforehand, they can easily dodge the artillery of the Yu Shengjun, and those solid ball shells can destroy the city wall, but they will never hurt the own soldiers in the trench. Yu Shengjun's musketeers can shoot their own soldiers at the head of the city from a distance, but they can never hurt the soldiers hiding in the trenches.

And once Yu Sheng's army continues to advance, he must cross this trench, and then his soldiers will have the opportunity to engage in hand-to-hand combat with the enemy.

Although he didn't know if he could win hand-to-hand combat, it was already his only chance to defeat Yu Shengjun.

So he did not hesitate to spend a lot of effort to dig a trench under the city, and his practice unknowingly made the trench appear on the Chinese battlefield decades earlier.

Looking at the trenches under Guangde City, Lin Zhe frowned, are these Taiping soldiers also smart, and they can dig trenches.

"Pass the order, let the artillery fire first, and see the effect!" In the face of these fortifications built by the Taiping army, Lin Zhe did not invest a large number of troops to attack at the first time, but used artillery to carry out exploratory shelling.

After his order was issued, Yu Shengjun's twelve-pounder guns, six-pounder guns, and thirty-two-pounder mortars stepped forward one after another to build artillery positions.

At this time, the 3,000-jin giant cannon of the Taiping Army at the head of the city also began to shell the artillery positions of the Yu Sheng Army outside the city by virtue of the advantage in range.

However, their artillery skills are not complimentary, the artillery skills of the artillery units under Lin Chengting are not good, plus a large number of well-trained artillery soldiers were killed and wounded under Huzhou City, which is supplemented by ordinary infantry, it is good to be able to fire shells, as for the accuracy, there is no need to count on it.

Therefore, the artillery of the Taiping army opened fire one after another, but the artillery of Yu Shengjun still arranged the artillery position by themselves, and the Taiping army on the opposite side fired for a full two quarters of an hour, and only one shell fell into the artillery position of Yu Shengjun, causing two casualties.

"Hmph, now it's our turn!" Seeing that his artillery had just been arranged, Fu Linyang, the company commander of the Second Artillery Company, ordered the artillerymen to open fire.

Fu Linyang, as the oldest artillery commander in Yu Sheng's army, and the second artillery company under his command were also the most elite artillery units in Yu Sheng's army.

Just in the first round of proofreading and shooting, their shells hit the Huzhou city wall of more than 1,000 meters, and the twelve-pound solid ball cannonballs smashed on the city wall, which could even make the Taiping soldiers on the city head feel a shock.

As the Second Artillery Company took the lead in firing, the artillery of the other three artillery companies of Yu Shengjun's army also completed preparations one after another, and then opened fire one after another.

This time Yu Shengjun went to Guangde, and Lin Zhe basically brought all the troops that could be brought, bringing five infantry battalions, four artillery companies, two baggage battalions, and two cavalry companies.

Although Lin Zhe attached great importance to rifles, he attached more importance to artillery, especially preferring to use twelve-pounder field guns, and this time he brought eighteen twelve-pounder field guns, six six-pounder field guns, and two thirty-two-pounder mortars.

On the other side of the Taiping Army, there are only a few 3,000-pound cannon cannons that can be compared with the 12-pounder field artillery, and the other mountain-splitting cannons below 1,000 catties cannot be compared with the artillery of Yu Shengjun.

Looking at the many Yu Shengjun heavy artillery outside the city firing, Lin Chengting's face on the head of the city was black, where did this Lin Zhe get so many heavy artillery.

He really couldn't understand that he had worked hard to get more than forty artillery pieces in the past year, but there were only a few three-thousand-pound cannons, and the others were small-caliber mountain splitting cannons, but this Lin Zhe pulled out eighteen huge cannons in one go.

The artillery forces of both sides are completely incomparable, but the war is never fair.

The first artillery battle between the two sides was to attack the enemy's artillery position, and compared with the artillery skills of the Taiping Army Taishui, although the artillery skills of the Yu Shengjun artillery were also high and low, some old gunners were still very accurate, especially the artillery of the Second Artillery Company not only maintained a fairly fast rate of fire, but also fought accurately and ruthlessly

It was only half an hour later, Lin Chengting was looking at the messy artillery positions of the 3,000-pound giant guns and wanted to cry without tears!

In the face of the bombardment of Yu Shengjun's eighteen twelve-pounder guns and six six-pounder guns, not only did the artillery suffer heavy casualties on the gun positions of these 3,000-pound guns, but also the artillery mounts on the guns were destroyed, and now they have completely extinguished!

After killing these 3,000-pound cannons, Yu Shengjun's shells began to fly towards other Taiping army artillery positions on the city's head, and the artillery of the Taiping army continued to be killed and wounded, and the artillery was destroyed.

Although Lin Chengting knew that his artillery could not defeat Yu Shengjun's artillery, he was also very angry when he really saw that the artillery team he had worked so hard to pull up turned into nothingness.

Lin Zhe naturally didn't care what Lin Chengting's mood was, at this time he and other senior generals of Yu Shengjun were still admiring the results of the artillery bombardment, while carefully inspecting the city fortifications in Guangde.

By the middle of the afternoon, the artillery unit of Yu Shengjun, which had been on and off for several hours, finally stopped the large-scale shelling, and after fighting for so long, the body consumption of the artillery was a little large, and they also had to rest and rest, in addition, Yu Shengjun's artillery shells were not unlimited, and they could not continue to fight.

At this time, Fu Linyang walked to Lin Zhe's side: "Commander, Fang Cai's artillery has successfully suppressed their artillery, and it has also killed and injured many of them, but we have also found that our solid shells have a very small killing effect on the trenches under their city!" ”

Lin Zhe didn't care, but said, "What about the grenade, what is the effect?" ”

Fu Linyang replied: "It is difficult for us to accurately hit their trenches, and if we can hit accurately, their effects will be some, but overall the effect is still limited!" ”

Lin Zhe's face sank when he heard this, if the solid ball and the grenade have no good effect, then this battle will not be good!

But Fu Linyang changed his mind and continued: "However, we found that the effect of our grenade bomb is okay, although there is still the problem of insufficient accuracy, but as long as it can explode in mid-air of the thief army, it is enough to kill and injure a large number of thieves in the trench!" ”

"Grenade bombs, I remember we just equipped, how many are there?"