A crisp roar sounded, the corridor pavilion west of Tianxin Pavilion was filled with gunsmoke, dozens of shotguns were put down in rows, and more than ten people were shot and fell to the ground when the Taiping army and the Qing army were fighting bloodily on the city wall.

There were always one or two hundred people on the city wall, but the projectiles fired by dozens of shotguns only hit more than ten people, and this hit rate was difficult to compliment, because the firearms of the Qing army at this time were mainly shotguns and guns, and the quality of the shotguns of the Qing army was relatively poor, the barrel was uneven, and the width of the chamber was different. If the chamber is wide, it will eject weakly and fly not far; If the pipe is thin, it is easy to blow up and self-injure the shooter, so the Qing soldiers are often reluctant to use it.

At that time, the Qing army was more willing to practice safe bows and arrows, and generally did not dare to operate muskets with the danger of rifled explosions, and the non-commissioned officers tried to avoid being musketeers, while the musketeers were reluctant to train with live ammunition, and the commanders rarely fired live ammunition for the sake of safety. This kind of musket not only has the danger of exploding, but also leaks gunpowder gas without exception, and sparks will splash on the hand and face, so when firing, the gunner "closes his eyes, twists his head, and shrinks his neck", and it is a miracle that such a shooting method can hit the target.

Moreover, the number of firearms equipped by the Qing army is not large, and ordinary green battalion soldiers and horses are not allowed to be equipped at all, like some military important places, border fortresses, and provincial capitals, only four to sixty percent of the soldiers and horses are equipped with firearms. Since the Taiping Army broke out in Guangxi, the Qing court strictly ordered several neighboring provinces in Guangxi to reorganize their troops, but the governors and governors of the provinces suffered from the lack of money and food available, so the sophisticated weapons and firearms could only be concentrated in the provincial capital.

"Come and kill me!" Li Yiwen rolled on the spot, dodged the projectiles flying in the sky, and roared loudly with more than ten Taiping soldiers to rush into the city tower of Tianxin Pavilion, he knew that he must kill the Qing army on the upper floor, otherwise the Qing demon would instead release arrows instead of muskets, and dozens of people under his command would definitely suffer heavy losses.

After the platoon guns were put down, they did not cause much trouble to the Taiping army, but they dealt a fatal blow to the recalcitrant Qing army on the city wall, "Poke Bazi, Lao Tzu is desperate below, which bastard puts a gun on it?" "Hurry back, even your own people will be killed!" More than 100 Qing troops at the head of the city were almost unable to resist the fierce attack of the Taiping army, and the accidental injury of the musket upstairs made the Qing army even more frightened, and they began to retreat to the east city wall.

Li Yiwen led people to kill in the attic, the Qing army upstairs was mostly equipped with firearms, bows and arrows, and it was useless after being close to the enemy, after being killed by Li Yiwen and others, dozens of Qing soldiers upstairs were killed most of them, and the rest of the people all fell to the ground and begged for mercy and surrendered.

When the banner of the Qing army was thrown down from the Tianxin Pavilion, Li Yiwen saw that on the Kuixing Tower in the distance, the banner of the Qing army also fell, it seems that Lin Qirong also succeeded, and the two of them each led a hundred people to defeat more than 200 Qing troops on the two high grounds.

The fighting power of the early Taiping army was indeed very strong, and the Qing army was often able to win more with less in hand-to-hand combat. In the early days, Hong Xiuquan and Feng Yunshan set up four large halls in Guiping Jintian, Bauhinia Mountain Huantian Village, and Pingnan Huazhou Lin Chang, in addition, there were also large halls in Guixian, Luchuan and other places. These Daguan usually taught the people martial arts, and carried out preaching and secret weapons making at night, among which the Jintian Hall was presided over by Wei Changhui, the Lin Changqiang Hall was presided over by Hu Yihuang, and the Luchuan Hall was presided over by the boxer Lai Jiu.

Therefore, the soldiers of the early Taiping army are all perennial martial arts, plus there are few mountains and highlands in Guangxi, life is difficult, the folk customs are very fierce, worship God and religion are many Hakka people in Guangxi, often bullied by the natives, and the two sides fight all the year round, so the Taiping army is used to fighting peasant men, compared to the perennial smoking, gambling, negligent training of the green battalion soldiers are naturally too powerful, it is Lin and Li who can quickly defeat the Qing army and capture Tianxin Pavilion and Kuixing Tower. …,

Just as the soldiers of the Taiping Army were cheering on the Tianxin Pavilion, Li Yiwen raised his eyes and looked into Changsha City, only to see that on the street to the south gate, the dense Qing army was rushing to this side, and the Qing army also poured out on the streets and alleys, not to mention two or three thousand people, but the Qing army was very slow, Li Yiwen even saw the Qing army generals beating the soldiers fiercely, and under the persecution of the Shangguan, these driven soldiers moved forward slowly.

Look outside the city again, the cavalry of Xiao Chaogui, the king of the west, has already stepped across the Jinji Bridge, and the six hundred cavalry will quickly enter the city, Li Yiwen is a little worried, after the cavalry enters the city, the streets in the city are narrow, and it is not conducive to the cavalry charging and galloping, and the number of Qing troops is large, and the cavalry will become a live target for spears and bows and arrows if they are blocked on the road.

Li Yiwen wiped the blood stains on his face, pulled a Taiping army over and shouted loudly: "You hurry up to the south gate to intercept His Royal Highness the King of the West, and tell His Highness that the Qing Demon Brigade is attacking the South Gate, and the horse team will not be able to play on the street, so let the King of the West suspend the assault, and wait for us to set up a cannon to coax him a few cannons, and after defeating the Qing Demon, the King of the West can lead the horse team to gallop!" ”

After the Taiping army received the order, Li Yiwen looked at the cannon muzzles on the wall of Tianxin Pavilion facing more than ten cannons of all kinds outside the city, and roared sharply: "Dismantle the cannon, the Qing demon has been killed, let's set up the cannon to bombard the damn!" ”

There are more than ten cannons of all kinds on a small Tianxin Pavilion, in fact, the Qing army's artillery casting jishu is not backward, a year after the Opium War began, the wave of cannon casting was set off in all parts of the Heavenly Empire, and the scene was like the great steel smelting in later generations. Ding Gongchen, a native of Quanzhou, Fujian, referred to the structure of Western cannons and cast a high-performance haode iron cannon in Guangzhou. In 1841, he compiled the "Illustrated Illustration of the Performing Artillery", and in 1842, the "Illustrated Illustrated Illustration of the Performing Artillery" was valued by the Governor of Liangguang and the general Yishan. In the same year, the Qing court ordered the popularization of the methods described in the Illustrated Illustration of the Performing Artillery.

However, the "Illustration of the Artillery Performance" still promotes the traditional clay mold casting cannon method, and the cannons often have honeycomb-shaped holes, which are easy to explode when fired; Very low efficacy; The bore cannot be processed in depth, resulting in the ballistic disorder after the shell is ejected.

At this time, another cattle man appeared, Zhejiang Jiaxing County Cheng Gong Zhenlin felt that the Chinese clay mold overall casting method is not practical and cumbersome, and determined to reform. In 1841, he invented the iron mold casting cannon method more than 30 years earlier than Europe, and the iron mold can be used many times without cleaning the gun chamber, eliminating the multi-honeycomb easy to explode the mud mold cannon with honeycomb

shortened the casting cycle, reduced the cost of casting cannons, and wrote the "Casting Cannon Iron Mold Diagram", which was printed and distributed to the coastal provinces in 1842.

On this Tianxin Pavilion, there are two three-thousand-pound red-haired general cannons cast by the iron mold casting cannon method, four thousand-pound cannons, and twelve other small cannons of hundreds of catties. Li Yiwen and the others, who hurried downstairs, didn't notice that there was actually a 5,000-pound cannon in Tianxin Pavilion, which was said to have been handed down at the end of the Ming Dynasty, because no one dared to use it for a long time, and it was covered with red cloth and lay quietly in the building.

After getting off the Tianxin attic, the Taiping army swarmed to the two 3,000-pound red-haired general cannons, Li Yiwen hurriedly shouted: "The giant cannon is bulky, the gun carriage is urgent and difficult to move, the Qing demon is congested in the streets, just take hundreds of catties of small cannons to bombard!" ”

Only then did everyone turn their heads to get the small cannons, and at that moment a team of seven or eight people carried six small cannons to the city wall on the side of the city, and there were many miners of the Guixi silver mine in the Taiping army, all of whom were familiar with red medicine, and there were also gunners who were trained later, and they immediately set up small cannons at the head of the city and fired at the Qing army brigade that was rushing to the streets of the city.

A burst of artillery fire came from Tianxin Pavilion, and iron sand and small stone bullets caused great casualties in the dense Qing army array. Because the caliber of the small cannon was small, the Taiping army fired mostly scattered bullets composed of iron sand and small stone bullets. In artillery battles, it is still this kind of scattered bullet that kills people the most, sometimes the iron sand and stones are used up, and the Taiping army even uses copper coins as ammunition, and the effect is the same. …,

A large area of iron sand is overwhelming, if you happen to be within the coverage area, it is quite a tragic thing, iron sand will cause countless small wounds on your face and body, even if you are lucky enough to be rescued, the iron sand can not be taken out completely, they will accompany you for a lifetime, and you will become a pockmark.

After two rounds of artillery fire, the Qing army suddenly became in chaos, and the morale that had accumulated a little in the leather whip and invective quickly disappeared, and in the face of fierce artillery fire and terrible scattered bullets, the Qing soldiers chose the latter between their meager salaries and their own lives, turned around and fled, and scattered the Qing army behind them.

Xiao Yungui, who slowly drove into the city, breathed a long sigh of relief, when he heard that Li Yiwen and Lin Qirong had occupied Tianxin Pavilion and Kuixing Tower, he was secretly glad that he had finally escaped the curse of history, and the cannonballs falling on Tianxin Pavilion would never send Xiao Chaogui, the king of the West, back to heaven.

Changsha, the provincial capital of Hunan is already within easy reach, and the combination of Xiao Yungui and Xiao Chaogui has accomplished a feat, rushing thousands of miles to attack a provincial city, and achieving such a brilliant victory in the case of inferior troops, all he has to do now is to wipe out the remaining remnants of the Qing army.

Xiao Yungui slowly pulled out his big knife, pointed at the Qing army who was running for their lives on the opposite street, and said loudly: "Brothers, rush over and completely exterminate the Qing demon, this city is our heavenly kingdom, do it, kill it!" ”

Lin Fengxiang and Li Kaifang roared loudly, and each led 300 cavalry to chase the Qing army along the street. Xiao Yungui didn't say to rush with me this time, he cunningly chose to stay at the gate of the city, although Tianxin Pavilion has been taken, but he still doesn't dare to charge in the face of artillery fire, if any cannon is not careful, he blew himself up, it is not worth it, he is sure that the body of Xiao Chaogui, the king of the West, must be more attractive to the cannonball than others, so he chose to stay in place and "command calmly".

After Lin Fengxiang and Li Kaifang led the horse team to rush up, Xiao Yungui ordered He Bin and Zhou Zhaoyao, who were guarding the city gate, to bring a hundred people to the city wall to reinforce Li Yiwen and Lin Qirong.

After half a pillar of incense, Zeng Shuiyuan, Ji Wenyuan, and Zhu Xineng led a large group of infantry to arrive, and Xiao Yungui immediately ordered the three generals to divide their troops to capture the west gate and east gate of Changsha City, and began to sweep and sweep the remnants of the Qing army in the city.