The Shen Shuren set off early in the morning of April 17, rushed to Gangneung to ask for help, arrived late at night on the 19th, and returned the next day after resting for only one night. On the way back, due to physical exhaustion, it is inevitable that the horseback will be a little slower.

Fortunately, the second half of the boat was downstream, so the total time spent was still about the same, and I still rushed back to Xiaogan on the 22nd.

On the battlefield of Xiaogan, He Jin and He Yilong will certainly not wait in vain.

After their defeat in the initial battle on April 16, they desperately hurried to build weapons for the attack camp and waited for the rear army to assemble one after another.

On the 18th, the main force of the thieves on the front officially broke through 30,000, and after another two days, the total number reached 40,000.

The last 10,000 people, according to the plan, will be able to arrive in two more days, and then it will be the real 50,000 army Mount Tai to the top - don't dislike Erhe's slow march of soldiers and horses, mainly because they have to march over the Dabie Mountains, and it is much more difficult to walk through the mountains than the plains, and the rear army will also have to carry heavy equipment and grain and grass, which will be even slower.

In addition, after three days of attacking the camp weapons, the thieves have destroyed the greenery within a radius of ten miles, cut down countless large trees, and made thousands of simple thick wooden shields that can be used as shelters for the camp, allowing the soldiers to push the long-range troops that are close to the front line for the attack camp to hide behind and shoot arrows.

In addition, there are dozens of simple broken wooden walls with ramming wood, dozens of short ladders and trench bridge slabs. As long as these things can be pushed to the front, they can be directly placed on the wooden wall of the rammed earth base with a relative height of no more than one and a half zhang, forming a slope, allowing the soldiers to rush directly to it, which is much easier than climbing the city wall.

And the reason that made He Jin and He Yilong most confident was that at the night of the 19th, the artillery in their army was finally transported to the front line!

When Shen Shuren dealt with Liu Xiyao and Lin Yangcheng before, the weaker battalions in the five battalions of the left did not have artillery. But the more powerful troops among the thieves more or less have a few cannons.

The form of war at the end of the Ming Dynasty was very different from what many people made up their brains. Especially five years after Chongzhen, cannon technology has long been spread, and it is not unique to the Ming official army.

In the last few years of Chongzhen, the force with the largest number of cannons was actually the Manchu Qing Dynasty - the Manchu Qing Dynasty has always attached great importance to the wild manufacture of cannons from the time when the soldiers came to the surrender of traitors such as Kong Youde and Geng Zhongming with Hongyi cannons and cannon casting craftsmen.

By the time of Chongzhen's death, the Qing army had more than 200 cannons, the highest number in the world. Therefore, in history, Shi Kefa defended Yangzhou so easily and the city wall collapsed, and after hearing that Yangzhou was easily bombed, the defenders of Nanjing were also completely frightened, and they had no courage to defend at all.

In addition to the Manchu Qing Dynasty, the second most powerful force in the world at that time was Zheng Zhilong in Fujian, and the third was the turn of the Ming court.

Before the demise, the total number of Hongyi cannons owned by the imperial court was only more than 100.

In the last two years, the total number of artillery pieces of Li Zicheng and Zhang Xianzhong swelled to the scale of dozens of guns. Further down, there are a few to a dozen small thieves.

At this moment, He Jin and He Yilong are not too wealthy, and they have also exhausted their family resources, and they have gathered two thousand-pound Franc machines and seven or eight ordinary Franc machines in front of the Suizhou Army, but there are no Hongyi cannons.

At the end of the Ming Dynasty, the Hongyi cannon generally weighed more than 3,000 catties to 45,600 catties, corresponding to the 12-pounder naval guns and 18-pounder naval guns in the West.

The original Dutch goods, the charge can be fully loaded to reach the above pounds. The quality of the Ming Dynasty's domestic production is poor, and the gun body is still the same weight, but the ammunition should be reduced by one-quarter or even one-third, otherwise it will be as strong as the original import, and it will be easy to blow up.

And the Franc machine is nearly a hundred years behind the Hongyi cannon, which is a Portuguese cannon of the 16th century.

The ordinary Franc machine weighed three or four hundred catties, and could hold one catty of gunpowder and one catty of iron bullets, which was only five times larger than the heaviest muskets such as the turtledove, and could only be regarded as between a gun and a cannon.

The thousand-pound Franc machine is the largest in the Franc machine, which can reach 1,000 catties, and the ammunition can also reach more than three catties of gunpowder and shells, which is equivalent to the 4-pound cannon of the West - so the strongest Franc machine is only one-third of the firepower of the weakest Hongyi cannon.

With some of these weapons, Erga of course must immediately launch a full-scale general attack on Zuo Zixiong's battalion!

……

So, on April 20, two days before the return of the sunken tree.

This new offensive and defensive battle broke out in the Xiaogan camp at the mouth of the Lishui and Hanshui rivers.

The thief who got the cannon felt that he could do it again, and he was so excited that he didn't want it.

Early in the morning, they feasted on the soldiers, boosted their morale, fed all the soldiers, and even gave each of them a little fish soup to drink—the fish was caught from the Han River nearby, and the harvest was not much, only a few hundred or thousands in total, and it was impossible for tens of thousands of soldiers to eat fish and meat, but only to boil hundreds of large pots of thin fish soup.

After eating the hot fish soup and rice, all the thieves felt warm, and they lined up out of the camp full of energy, walked more than ten miles, and arrived in front of the official barracks.

Thousands of large wooden shields used to construct the formation house were pushed in front, and two thousand-pound Franc machines and seven ordinary Franc machines were also pushed to a distance of one and a half to more than three hundred steps away from the positions of the officers and troops.

Then, around each Franc machine, at least three layers of wooden shield array houses were arranged to build a good defense. If Shen Shuren saw this scene, he would probably sigh with emotion:

These thieves were self-taught, and the cannons of this era generally did not have their own shields, but they actually thought of erecting large wooden shields on the left and right sides, exposing only the angle of the front of the shot, so as to protect the gunners to the greatest extent.

Of course, many gunners in the thief army, and even the officers in charge of the artillery team, felt that this was a bit redundant - the Franc machine was at least more than three hundred steps away from the enemy camp wall, and it was absolutely impossible for the bow and crossbow to threaten the target so far away, so these wooden shields probably did not have a chance to actually come in handy, at most it was to make the gunners feel more at ease, and not to be nervous when operating.

After the formation, He Jin seemed to be ready to hit the morale of the officers and soldiers, and sent out scolding fighters, preparing to open artillery and demonstrate and persuade them to surrender again, so that the officers and soldiers firmly realized that they had no chance of winning!

……

Zuo Zixiong, Zhang Mingzhen and Yang Jinjue had been cautiously holding in the camp for more than three days, and the Hongyi cannons left to them by the Shen Shuren had already been properly deployed.

The six Hongyi cannons, all of which were deployed a little later in the camp, in pursuit of concealment, higher visibility, and better angles of fire. Over the past three days, soldiers have dug up earth piles to build rammed earth batteries and piled up cannons high.

In addition, in order to better protect the artillery, and also to allow the cannon to play the tactics of switching between long-range single-headed shells and melee shotguns, in the past three days, Zuo Zixiong dug a second trench and rammed earth wall in the battalion, which was located along the front of the cannon battery.

In this way, when the cannon needs to fire shotguns, musketeers and pikemen can retreat under the cannons without worrying about being accidentally injured by the shotguns.

Originally, the Hongyi cannon did not have a gun carriage, because the guns above 12 pounder in this era were all naval guns, and there was no need to consider the movement of the guns on the Galen gunboat.

But Shen Shuren had seen a cannon retreat, and of course he wouldn't take this kind of detour, so when he got these cannons from Zheng Chenggong, he drew a sketch casually, discussed it with the carpenters, and made a gun carriage, which didn't take much effort.

It's just that the two-wheeled gun carriage is still relatively difficult to make now, and it is still unstable, and at the initial stage, Shen Shuren first listened to the advice of the carpenters and made it a four-wheeled one.

However, the size of the front wheels and the rear wheels are not the same, and the car plate resting the gun body also has a certain inclination angle, and with the curved surface of the soil slope on the fort, it is easy to control the pitching angle of the artillery - this design is actually a bit advanced, because the use of Hongyi cannons by the Ming gunners in this era is more than ninety percent of them are direct fire, almost no one goes to curved fire, and no one will calculate the ballistic parabola.

At this moment, Zuo Zixiong, who had been waiting for him to be hungry and thirsty, suddenly saw Erhe making a big move, and he had already used binoculars to closely monitor and detect the enemy's situation, and then called his generals to work together.

Zuo Zixiong himself didn't know much about artillery, but Zhang Mingzhen had been fighting with Haikou for many years and was used to seeing artillery in coastal areas.

"Yuzuo guerrilla, this thief should have used the Franc machine and the thousand-jin Franc machine - I have been fighting Haikou in Ning Shaowei for many years, and I am used to seeing all kinds of Franc machines, ordinary Franc machines have a range of three or four hundred steps, and a thousand-pound Franc machine can reach five or six hundred steps, that is, close to one and a half miles.

Now looking at the distance between the positions deployed by the thieves, it should be exactly these two. Why don't we let our Hongyi cannon fight back first! We can go far, and we can also deploy on the high earth platform behind the formation, we can hit the enemy and the enemy can't hit us!

If, after being beaten, the thieves have to use the Franc machine to counteract, then they will have to push forward at least two hundred steps further, and then they will be within the range of our firearms and crossbows! ”

Zuo Zixiong nodded, his heart became more and more calm, and he calmly ordered: "It's good to know that the enemy can't hit our artillery, even so, give them a little more time to deploy, and when they have more soldiers lined up and ready to charge, we will open fire again, so that they are in a dilemma!" Expose it now, don't scare away directly! ”

Zhang Mingzhen frowned: "But what if the enemy is desperate and really rushes in?" Although the Franc machine will definitely not be able to defeat the Hongyi cannon, as long as there is an opportunity to fire three or five rounds of cannons, it will be able to blast many gaps in the rammed earth and wooden fence on our outside, and then the thieves can rush directly through the gaps. ”

Zuo Zixiong smiled coldly: "Forget that our army temporarily dug a ditch and piled up a low earth wall under the fort, although it was too late to deploy a second wooden fence, this low wall and the firearms battalion were enough to shoot the thieves who rushed into the gap!"

Our non-commissioned officers have never been shelled before, and if they last for a long time, they will inevitably be demoralized, so it is better to be mentally prepared for the first fortification with a wooden wall to be broken by the enemy from the beginning! ”

When Zhang Mingzhen and the others heard that it really made sense, they didn't persuade them anymore, and they all went to implement them.

The Ming army originally saw that the thieves had artillery, and their morale was inevitably low after three days of highness, and they were afraid that the left guerrillas would make them not retreat, and if they were drawn by the cannons behind the wooden wall, they would be killed in vain.

Now, at the order of the left guerrillas, all the pikemen were to retreat to the vicinity of the second earthen wall in advance, and the firearms battalion was only crouching behind the rammed earth part of the first wall, with their bodies exposed above the height of the mound, and not standing behind the planks, leaving only two sentries in each team to stand up and look.

The soldiers suddenly regained some confidence, and their fears were driven away. Everyone knows that it is impossible for the Franc machine to directly hit a mound of dirt more than a foot on the ground and then hit someone, either sinking into it or ricocheting, so as long as you don't hide behind the stake, you are basically safe.

Soon, the thieves at the front gathered more and more, and the preparations for firing were ready, and at this time, Zuo Zixiong put down the binoculars, waved his big hand, and motioned for Zhang Mingzhen to fire.

Of the six Hongyi cannons, four of the 12-pounder guns were aimed at the positions of the two jack Franc machines of the thieves, and two were aimed at the flag array of the thieves in the distance.

There was a dense loud bang, and six 12-pound solid iron balls flew out under the pressure of gunpowder explosion gas of the same weight, and a terrible sonic boom screamed through it.

"Boom! Kacha! "Six or seven hundred paces away, sawdust was flying, and the thick wooden shield that Erga deployed to protect the cannon was self-defeating.

The shells of this era were all solid shells, which relied on direct hits or bounces to kill people, and it was impossible to hit accurately after more than a mile, so they could only be randomly blinded to places with dense crowds.

The four guns that shot at the position of the thousand jin franc machine, none of the shots directly hit the thousand jin franc machine, but two of them hit the wooden shield, and the sawdust flew for a while, forming countless shrapnel, but it killed and injured many gunners, and some unlucky ordinary thief infantry in the back row, which was covered by the rebounding ricochet, and directly became a meat paste, and the death was quite terrifying.

And the cannonballs that flew towards the flag array of the rogue generals were undoubtedly impossible for the generals to be blinded, one shot directly hit the high and flew far away in vain, and the other shot hit the crowd of He Jin's personal guards and cavalry, killed one person and one horse, and then rebounded, crushing a bloody road.

"Sigh law-" He Jin's war horses were all shaken and neighed by this loud noise, and the horses of ordinary officers with poor quality next to him even stood up and threw off the people on their backs.

He Jin was stunned for a long time, and he didn't react for a long time, and when the officers and soldiers were about to fire the second round of artillery, he shouted hoarsely: "Hurry up and open the cannon!" Fight back! Hit the back of the official barracks! Knock out their Franc machine too! ”

In the second round, both sides opened fire almost simultaneously, and the thieves' shells flew out for only three to five seconds, and the shells of the officers and soldiers arrived again. It was also at this moment that He Jin and He Yilong realized that the equipment of the official army may not be a Franc machine, but the legendary Hongyi cannon - because it feels a little different when you listen to the momentum.

However, they were not convinced, after all, the sound of the artillery of the officers and soldiers was heard from nearly two miles away, and it was already very slight, and no one knew how loud the sound near the cannon was, and there was no way to compare.

The thieves' temporary change of target, from bombarding the wall to artillery countermeasures, was obviously self-defeating. If they want to hit the barracks and defenses of the official army, they can still hit quickly.

I just want to hit the Hongyi cannon so far away, with the hit rate of the Franc machine, Mongolia may not be able to hit dozens of rounds, and the officers and soldiers have not placed a defensive shield next to it, so it is impossible to break the protective facilities and kill the gunner with wood chips.

The officers and soldiers also built high forts very viciously, which led to the projectiles aiming at the forts, if they deviated left and right, they flew directly into the sky, and there was no chance that the ricocheting bullets would bounce and kill a few people.

The two sides fired wildly, and the soldiers on both sides also experienced a struggle in their hearts as if they had been hammered. Both sides were trying hard not to retreat and flee under the sound of artillery.

After five or six rounds, Zuo Zixiong's artillery results became more and more successful, and the thieves' wooden artillery shield positions were blown to pieces, and dozens of gunners were killed, and one thousand-pound franc machine and two small franc machines were injured.

Only then did He Jin react from the initial misresponse, and urgently calculated with He Yilong, and re-ordered:

"The artillery team doesn't care about the Hongyi artillery of the official army, and continues to blast open the camp wall and camp gate as originally planned! Get ready! As long as you see the enemy camp being blasted open two or three times, you can prepare to charge! ”

By this time, Erga had already figured it out: there were more than 40,000 people here, and in the case of the fortifications being blown up and rushing into the ground, no matter how many cannons the enemy had, they would be captured! It's just more people dying!

Know how to endure casualties! I can't bear the child and can't catch the wolf!