Chongzhen Emperor Zhu Youzhen agreed with Ningwu Hou Zhou Yuji's opinion.

Now the Qing army's biggest reliance is his hundreds of red-coated cannons.

The red-coated cannon has a long range and strong destructive power, although it is difficult to transport and inconvenient to operate, it is naturally not hindered by the Qing army's iron cavalry escort.

And now, once all the hundreds of red-clothed cannons of Duoduo are in place, the shells fired by the hundreds of red-clothed cannons will be enough to destroy the city wall of Yangzhou City.

At that time, no matter how good the guards were, it would be difficult to resist the huge destructive power formed by the Qing army's nearly 100,000 iron cavalry charging in one direction.

In other words, once the Qing army breaks through the city, Yangzhou will gain and lose if it is not lost.

In the original history, the Qing army also relied on artillery to open Yangzhou City.

Now, Zhu Youzhen naturally didn't want the Qing army to continue to stage such a battle, so he nodded and looked at Zhou Yuji:

"Aiqing's meaning is that the hundreds of red-clothed cannons of the Qing army must be destroyed first, but this red-clothed cannon of the Qing army is not only guarded by many Manchurian iron cavalry guards of the Chinese army, but also very cumbersome and not easy to destroy."

Zhu Youzhen raised his doubts, he naturally knew the importance of destroying the Qing army's red-coated artillery, but he also knew that it was more difficult than defeating the Qing army's cavalry.

"Your Majesty, although the red-coated cannon is difficult to destroy, but the person who operates the red-coated cannon is not difficult to destroy, Weichen has been fighting at the border for many years, and knows that although the red-coated cannon and other giant cannons are powerful, they need skilled gunners to accurately make the red-coated cannons bombard the city wall, if we can kill these Han gunners who defected to the Qing army, even if the Qing army has red-coated cannons, it is difficult to destroy my Yangzhou City in a while."

As soon as Zhou Yuji said this, Liu Fangliang also took over and said: "If you want to kill all the gunners of the Qing army, you can't do it without cavalry, the cavalry can go back and forth very quickly, you can go deep behind the enemy of the Qing army and kill the gunners of the Qing army in a moment, or you can withdraw immediately." ”

"However, the artillery of the Qing army has Manchurian iron cavalry, and the cavalry of our guards can break through and successfully attack the artillery of the Qing army?" He Xin also asked.

"In this way, the cavalry can only attack the Qing army iron cavalry with infantry, and the cavalry will take the opportunity to sneak attack the Qing army artillery, and tomorrow at dawn, Duoduo will inevitably order the Qing army artillery to bombard the city, and then the outer city will be broken only afraid that it will be difficult to avoid, and then the Qing army iron cavalry will advance quickly, so field artillery and part of the infantry battalion will be needed to stop the Qing army's iron cavalry offensive, and at the same time, the heavy artillery will also bombard the enemy to assist the Guards cavalry to sneak attack the Qing artillery!"

As soon as Zhu Youzhen said this, Zhou Yuji arched his hand and said: "As Your Majesty said, tomorrow the Qing army will definitely be eager to attack the city, and our guards are eager to break its red-coated cannons, just to see who has the more fierce offensive and who will take the opponent's key point first!" ”

Zhu Youzhen glanced at Liu Fangliang and He Xin, and both of them said they had no objection.

Zhu Youzhen decisively ordered that in addition to the infantry battalion of the First Corps of the Second Army of the Guards Army assisting the field artillery battalion to hold the gate of Yangzhou City, Zhou Yuji led all the infantry outside the city to prepare for an attack on the Qing army's nearly 100,000 iron cavalry; Liu Fangliang led 30,000 iron cavalry to launch a sneak attack on the Qing artillery.

He Xin commanded the remaining troops to hold the capital city of Yangzhou.

……

As expected by Zhu Youzhen and others.

Early the next morning.

Duoduo, the prince of Manchu Yu, did not delay for a moment, and immediately ordered hundreds of Qing army red-clothed cannons to bombard Yangzhou City.

In an instant.

Yangzhou City was covered by countless black iron bullets, and the city wall outside Yangzhou City was suddenly bricks flying mud, and the solid city wall collapsed in many places.

Some of the defenders of the outer city were smashed into meatloaf by themselves, and some fell from the walls and smashed to pieces.

In addition, the artillery shells of the Qing army accidentally fell into the city, smashing countless houses, and even the sound of wailing could be heard.

There began to be some riots in the entire Yangzhou city, but fortunately, at this time, Ma Shiying and Li Banghua had already taken countermeasures to appease the people's hearts in time.

However, some gentry came to the city gate to strongly demand that Kaecheng surrender, saying that they would rather surrender Kaecheng than sit back and watch the Qing army destroy the people of Yangzhou.

Some people even began to persuade Zhu Youzhen to put down his resistance.

Zhu Youzhen didn't expect that the battle had just begun, and before the winner was decided, many Yangzhou officials and gentry were already frightened by the sound of cannons.

Zhu Youzhen was not polite, and directly ordered that those who want to join the enemy at this time will be killed!

For a time, the city of Yangzhou was also cut off by countless cowardly heads, so that the order in Yangzhou city was kept in a stable state.

Moreover, Zhu Youzhen's order to suppress the bullet was to directly kill the head, regardless of the severity of his crime.

However, because of this, the city of Yangzhou has also quieted down, and there are no pedestrians on the entire street, but there are more and more officers and soldiers patrolling.

Outside the city, the main force of the Guards, accustomed to the sound of artillery, was much calmer than the officials and civilians inside the city.

At this time, Zhou Yuji had gathered 30 infantry battalions, totaling more than 180,000 people, to form 30 phalanxes and slaughtered nearly 100,000 Qing troops on the opposite side.

Among the 180,000 people, except for Zhou Yuji and the commanders of the battalions on horseback, the rest of the infantry officers and soldiers of the Guards Army were armed with steel guns and bayonets in front, neatly walking towards the Qing army's iron cavalry in front of them, and kept shouting: "Kill!" Kill! Kill! ”

The formation formed by the 180,000 infantry in the fierce pride is not inferior to the 100,000 iron cavalry.

Of course, if we look closely, we can see that although the infantry of the various battalions of the Guards advanced in a battalion as a unit, they formed a defensive attack formation against the cavalry, from a few men in a squad to six or seven men in a battalion.

The combination of spears, shields, and flintlock pistols made the infantry of the Guards not lose the slightest position even if they took the initiative to come towards the Qing army's iron cavalry at this moment.

Duoduo saw that the red-clothed cannon on his side had blasted open the outer city of Yangzhou, so he immediately ordered the red-clothed cannon to move forward and bombard the inner city.

At the same time, after leaving 5,000 Manchurian iron cavalry to guard the artillery, he personally led 90,000 iron cavalry towards Yangzhou City and killed the 180,000 guards infantry in front of him.

90,000 iron cavalry and 180,000 infantry began to close the distance outside Yangzhou.

The Guards infantry immediately under the order of Zhou Yuji, the first column of ten battalions of the Guards infantry began to disperse rapidly, forming a long defensive line in small formations, and immediately began to shoot with guns.

At this time, it was still two hundred paces away, but the flintlock pistol was already lethal, and only a small number of Qing iron cavalry had the arm strength to draw a bow and shoot the enemy from two hundred paces away.

Although there is no range accuracy at this distance, the firepower network of 60,000 people is enough to reduce the impact of accuracy on infantry shooting.

At first, some Qing army iron cavalry and war horses fell, and even flew directly due to inertia, but there were also guards infantry who accidentally fell to the ground with arrows.

In the middle of the two hundred paces, countless corpses or wounded of the Qing army were wailing, and among the various battalions of the Guards, there were also wounded Guards crawling on the ground in great pain.

(End of chapter)