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In Hangzhou City, Hangzhou General Yi Lesheng was anxiously running around the city, and the sudden attack of Taiwanese military horses was indeed enough for him to have a headache.

The Qing court set up a total of 14 garrison general positions throughout the country, and the Hangzhou general was responsible for garrisoning Hangzhou and administering Zhejiang. It is equivalent to the commander of the Zhejiang Provincial Military Region in later generations, and the real power in his hands is very large. If anyone mentions this position to Geng Jingzhong, I am afraid that he will immediately think of a celebrity who often appears in TV dramas - Nian Qianyao. However, at this time, Nian Qianyao has not yet been born, and his father and mother are only afraid that Geng Jingzhong is not yet big!

"Boom!" After a roar, a bowl-sized buckshot crossed a distance of about 600 paces and smashed on the city wall of Hangzhou City, and after smashing a cyan city brick from a local kiln mouth to pieces, it rebounded in the air for a distance of about a foot and a half and landed on the ground in the shape of a free fall, and smashed out a small dirt pit, and then could no longer move. After about ten breaths of effort, a 2,000-pound Hongyi cannon adjacent to the Taiwanese gunner, who had just fired a shell, also fired a shell. However, the gunners here seemed to be loading a little too much gunpowder when loading, so the lead bullets fired flew over the city wall and into the city, but they did not even touch the tiles on the city tower, which directly brought a lot of casualties to the people in the city.

Immediately after that, Taiwan's 10 cannons opened fire one after another, which may also be the reason for the lack of gunner training, and Taiwan's gunners were either a little too charged and fired shells straight over the city wall, or the gunpowder was less loaded. I didn't touch the edge of Hangzhou City at all. The result of this guidance is: Those that flew over may have destroyed several houses in the city, or perhaps caused some hidden casualties of the Qing army. What was not enough fell into the moat, which was not wide and deep, and stunned a few unlucky pond fish, and the two situations did not help the Taiwanese side in the slightest in their efforts to demolish the city wall.

Only three out of ten shots were hit, and the generals of the Zheng Army who commanded the artillery bombardment saw such an achievement, and their faces could be described as extremely gloomy. So he summoned the commander of the artillery, and after a merciless reprimand, Zheng Jun's shelling began to be relatively accurate. But that's just relative, seven or eight minutes later. The second round of artillery sounded, the situation was indeed better, five shells fell on the city, but most of them only hit the outer city wall, for the thick city wall of Hangzhou City, the impact is very small, unless the Taiwanese artillery is smashed down in this small area, continuous bombardment for an hour or so, almost to break the city wall!

The Taiwanese general in charge of the siege was Shi Lang, known as the "Thunderbolt of the Sea", who led 20,000 Taiwanese sailors to formally attack Zhejiang. The first step is to gallop into Hangzhou Bay, get off the ship and attack Hangzhou City directly. As long as they take the city of Hangzhou, the whole of Zhejiang will be cut off from Jiangbei, which will be of great benefit to their occupation of Zhejiang. At the same time, the Mawei Army had also sent troops and horses to attack Quzhou and Wenzhou counties. It's just that Geng Jingzhong changed his mind temporarily, and he was not ready to take these territories immediately, but wasted time with the soldiers and horses in these places. but they set up camp twenty miles outside the city, but they did not attack.

For the Mawei Army, whether these small counties are taken or not has no impact on them at all, it is better to drag the time like this first, and even if the siege is only a little pretentious, the number of troops is small and the combat strength is weak. As for whether others will think that he is not strong enough to fight, or whether he is pretending, in short, the energy of the Mawei Army is really not divided to take care of these small mountain towns.

The Taiwan side can be said to have made a large-scale dispatch this time, with a total of less than 50,000 soldiers and horses, and most of its elite troops are in the army of 20,000 people. As an advance army, these 20,000 elites were responsible for capturing Hangzhou, Huzhou, Jiaxing, Ningbo, and Shaoxing in northern Zhejiang. That is, half of Zhejiang's territory will be taken. The soldiers and horses under the command of the Hangzhou general are more than 10,000 soldiers, except for 6,000 people stationed in the Hangzhou camp, the others are distributed in various provinces, and they guard the city together with the inspection of each province. In this way, Zheng Jing was not sloppy, and asked Shi Lang to carry thirty Hongyi cannons, which are all lighter cannons, which can be used in land and naval battles, and they will be far behind the Mawei Army in this regard!

The number of artillery pieces brought ashore by Taiwan's advance army on this trip was only 30, and the 10 Hongyi cannons were quite powerful, but the rest of the Franc machine light artillery and tiger squat artillery were powerless to pose a threat to the city wall, so although the shooting accuracy of the 10 Hongyi cannons was improved for a while, the damage to the city wall by the shells did not increase significantly after half an hour passed, and Shi Lang, who had been watching the battle, was a little anxious!

At the head of Hangzhou City, Hangzhou General Yi Lesheng was facing his own artillery team leader and asked, "How is it, can you get it?" ”

The leader of the artillery team who was braving the Zheng army's artillery fire probe was his Yilesheng clothed servant, named Qu Houqi, a native of Jinzhou, whose ancestors were taken captive by the Manchus to Liaodong, and he has always regarded himself as a Manchurian, and he is now a general of the Hangzhou garrison. At present, the green battalions in all provinces are divided into towns as the highest strategic units and battalions as the most basic units, but they are distinguished by standards. Each army is generally divided into four types of pacesetters: supervising the standard, raising the standard, raising the standard, and the town standard, in addition to a military standard, which is the green battalion under the direct command of the general of the garrison Eight Banners. Obviously, Qu Houqi belongs to the military standard.

"Back to the general, it's no problem!" The Qing army also had a lot of defensive artillery in Hangzhou, especially after hearing that Fujian had taken Guangdong at a very fast speed with its sharp artillery, Ilsheng asked the Qing court for some artillery. The Qing court's cannon casting technology is not bad, although the red-coated cannons have been cast in recent years, but there are still some stocks. Hangzhou is also an extremely important place, so it allocated 10 Ilsheng red-coated cannons, 15 imitation Franco, and 20 other light miscellaneous cannons, all of which were placed at the heads of several large cities to defend the city. In fact, Ilsheng was mainly to guard against Geng Jingzhong's attack, but he didn't expect Geng Jingzhong's Mawei Army to come, but Taiwan's Zheng Jing came thousands of miles away!

As the provincial capital of Zhejiang Province, Hangzhou City is of course more important than other places, so Hangzhou City also has the largest number of artillery, accounting for half of the total. Among them, there were ten miscellaneous cannons, five six-pounder furlong machines, three eight-pounder furlong machines, and five red-coated cannons. The miscellaneous cannons are basically light guns, and their effective range is only less than 100 paces, which is about the same as the range of bows and arrows. The Furlong machine is much stronger, and the effective range can reach 300 steps. The most powerful is of course the red-coat cannon, with an effective range of more than 700 steps.

Now Zheng Jun's army is located six hundred steps outside the city, and the red-coated cannons are in a separate formation, so they can naturally effectively hit the Zheng army's artillery positions under the city, but among the remaining artillery teams, its effective range is at least three hundred steps, even if the height of the city wall can provide a bonus to the range, it is difficult to pose a fatal threat to the ten Hongyi cannons owned by Zheng Jun.

"Then what are you waiting for, although Lao Tzu's cannon is a little less than him, it is enough to force him back!" Hangzhou General Yi Lesheng was overjoyed when he heard this, and the feeling of being beaten was really unpleasant, and now it was finally his turn to vent his evil anger.

"Load and fire!" In that case, what else to say, Ilsheng immediately ordered the cannon to be fired. The Hongyi cannon on the head of the ten castles first loaded the ammunition on the inside of the city wall, and then the gunners pushed the gun wheels together to send them to the battlements of the city wall, and then after a short quick aiming, the shooters inserted the red-hot iron drill into the gun door!

"Tom-tom-tom-tom-tom!"

Five cannon shots rang out in a row, and five round buckshot bullets flew out of the barrel and flew towards Zheng Jun's phalanx. The Qing army's hit rate was not very good, only two were very close to the artillery camp position, but none of them landed on the position of the Zheng army's artillery camp, but three of the five shells fell into the infantry army formation on the side, causing at least fifty casualties.

There are still such powerful red-coated cannons hidden in the city, which Zheng Jun did not expect, and they have not gone ashore to attack the city before, but there are very few cannons, and there are no red-coated cannons except for other places in Nanjing. The Qing army's sudden artillery counterattack really made the Zheng army waver. Looking at the very close impact point, the general of the Zheng army's artillery team instructed Shi Lang to move the gun position back immediately. As a result, Zheng Jun's bombardment of the Hangzhou city wall was naturally interrupted. But more importantly, after retreating more than 50 steps and reconstructing the firing position, the Zheng artillery team had to add more gunpowder to the artillery in order to compensate for the increase in firing range, so that the danger of exploding the chamber was greatly increased.

"Bastard! The Tartars actually have cannons too! Seeing that the artillery team was forced back by the wolf, Shi Lang's face suddenly became gloomy. As an extremely good naval commander, of course he knew the great role of artillery, but the guns on their warships could not reach the city of Hangzhou, and if it weren't for the guns on the battleships, it was really difficult to get them down, so he really wanted to carry a few cannons down.

"In that case, let's order to go to the camp first!" At this time, it is also necessary to start the storm, as the first city they have chosen, if they cannot take it, it will be a great blow to their morale.

A quarter of an hour later, the siege team composed of two battalions of 6,000 Taiwanese soldiers was reorganized, and the cloud echelon with ladders and planks and the advance team with swords, shields and spears drank a bowl of send-off wine, and with a command, they rushed out with a fierce look. (To be continued......)