In order to fill up the moat, the siege team would often send out offensive and defensive chariots to carry soldiers, and the soldiers would hide in the chariots and throw sandbags into the moat to fill the moat.
It would certainly be more convenient if there was no water in the moat, but a large sinkhole of this size would require a huge amount of sandbags to be filled, and it would not be completed overnight.
Especially the siege party will never turn a blind eye.
Therefore, you can also let the vanguard troops cross the river and start attacking the city first to attract the defenders' firepower, distract the defenders' attention, and help the rear river filling troops complete the river filling work as soon as possible.
Right now, this is the Jin Army's combat strategy.
Although there is no current, the ditch still exists. If you can't jump or fly, you still have to use the usual method of crossing the moat to attack.
The army approached the moat and pushed six trench bridge vehicles forward to build a crossing channel to provide a road for the soldiers to cross the river.
A large number of churro vehicles were dispatched to approach the moat, using the protection of the churro vehicle's roof cover to cover the soldiers in the vehicles. The soldiers began to throw heavy sandbags into the moat ditch, hoping to fill it as soon as possible.
At this time, the crossbowmen at the head of the Liberation Army also began to take action.
The dense rain of arrows crashed down with the big arrows fired by the bedzinu and the stones fired by the trebuchet, working together to hit the Jin army head-on.
Many exposed Jin soldiers died tragically from arrows. Their bodies would not be recovered. It would be best to fall directly. Those who did not fall would be pushed into the ditch by those behind to fill the pits.
The Jin army was not defenseless. In addition to setting up wooden curtains for defense, they would also send a large number of crossbowmen to shoot arrows at the top of the city for fire suppression.
In this case, the crossbowmen of the Liberation Army had a great advantage due to their favorable location. They would also put up wooden curtains as a defense to protect the crossbowmen from harm as much as possible, and then release arrows.
The two sides exchanged fire, and the losses of the Jin Army obviously exceeded the losses of the Liberation Army, but their numbers were far greater than that of the Liberation Army, so they could still endure the rain of arrows.
The Liberation Army simultaneously used bed crossbows and trebuchets to launch large arrows and stone bullets to attack the siege equipment that covered the infantry filling the river trenches.
However, these siege equipment are well-made and of high quality, and they have quite heavy defense facilities. It is difficult to destroy stones and large arrows, let alone ordinary arrows.
Under the protection of these siege equipment, the Jin Army soldiers quickly executed the general's orders, and a large number of sandbags were thrown into the moat ditch.
Although the moat of Hejian City is very wide and deep, it cannot be filled with such huge manpower and material resources from the Jin Army.
There are many people and many sandbags. If this continues, the moat will not be able to carry such a large number of sandbags. It will not take long for the moat to be filled in and lose its role in protecting the city.
Therefore, the defending troops will never watch helplessly without any reaction.
In addition to the stones thrown by the trebuchets and the large arrows fired by the bed crossbow, Jiang Liangping decided to use firearms for such a sharp siege operation by the Jin army.
Fire attack is a very ancient way of siege, and it is also an ancient way of defending the city. The siege equipment is basically made of wood and cannot be smashed, but it will be gone once it is set on fire.
Therefore, huge siege equipment is often equipped with a considerable degree of fire protection facilities, including but not limited to coating the surface of the siege equipment with mud so that the flames cannot achieve the burning effect.
Firearms these days mainly use combustion rather than explosion as a means of attack. All defensive weapons are also defensive modifications of burning firearms.
However, the newly equipped firearms of the Liberation Army that Jiang Liangping decided to use did not use combustion as the main attack method.
In this battle, Su Yonglin used all the firearms reserves he had painstakingly collected and produced.
The manufacture and storage of gunpowder is not an easy task, and the cost of manufacturing and collecting usable fire salt is quite high. Su Yonglin's toilet commando team visited almost all the toilets they could find.
Despite this, it was difficult to increase gunpowder production.
According to previous estimates, all the firearms made from gunpowder that Su Yonglin had accumulated over the past year would be used up in this war.
He gave one-fifth of all firearms and gunpowder reserves to Hejian City, the other one-fifth to Zhending City, kept one-fifth for himself, and the remaining two-fifths were divided equally among other cities. .
Hejian City and Zhending City are of great significance. They are the core cities that the Jin Army will definitely capture. It is natural for them to be equipped with top-notch defense tools.
When the stones and giant arrows could not further block the siege of the Jin army, he would take out firearms for further attacks.
With an order, the soldiers loaded rockets on the crossbows and fireballs on the trebuchets.
The effectiveness of rockets was used when the Liberation Army Navy attacked the Jin Army Navy, and achieved good results, causing great shock and damage to the Jin Army.
The explosive performance of the gunpowder after adjusting the raw material ratio and granulating it was much stronger than the powdery and paste black gunpowder that Su Yonglin first obtained from the Jin Army, and they were not even the same thing in terms of usage effects.
Su Yonglin asked the gunpowder craftsman to increase the nitrate content in the gunpowder formula to 70% when making gunpowder. He also used urine to granulate the gunpowder. Afterwards, he conducted explosion tests and found that gunpowder with an increased nitrate content exploded more powerfully.
After the granulation process, the gunpowder burns more fully, double buffs are superimposed, the power becomes greater, and the sound is louder. The fireball suddenly does not look like a traditional firearm for the purpose of burning, but has the smell of a powerful bomb. .
In order to increase the power, the craftsmen added some gravel and iron scraps left over from making weapons, which can increase the lethality of the firearm.
After the successful test of the rocket used in the bedzi crossbow, the fireball used in the trebuchet was also put into experiment.
The spherical firearm was nothing new, but Su Yonglin made it larger, filled it with more gunpowder, and exploded with more power.
And because the accuracy of the trebuchet is really not very good, sometimes the target of the attack can be thousands of miles away from the intended target. The lack of projection means is also a very important limiting factor in the use of firearms.
So when the craftsmen were experimenting with trebuchets to throw fireballs, Su Yonglin asked them to make a wooden base for the fireballs.
This wooden bottom bracket fits the shape of the fireball, and the whole thing is tied together with straps to form a whole. This makes it safer to transport and has a good effect when used.
The fireball of this device is heavy on one side and light on the other. When thrown out, it can have an effect similar to the self-stabilizing structure of a badminton. It will not change direction and fly to some strange place. It will generally go forward, towards the enemy.
Early artillery without rifling had low accuracy. Smart craftsmen used this method to increase the accuracy of the artillery, so that solid bullets could hit the target reliably and hard.
This was one of the few pieces of early firearms knowledge that Su Yonglin knew, and it came in handy.
After several tests, it was proved that this device was effective, the accuracy was much better than the random flying before, and the landing point was more controllable, so all the fireballs produced next were in this state.
Rockets, fireballs, and flying guns, these are the three firearms with certain safety guarantees approved by Su Yonglin for trial use by the army. They are also the three firearms that can be mass-produced by the Liberation Army. Apart from these, there are currently no other firearms available for use.
There are indeed many types of firearms these days, but with so many types, their practicality is very poor.
Either the operation is too cumbersome and difficult to use in battle, or the safety is too poor and the damage to one's own people is greater than the damage to the enemy, or the sheer cost is too high and cannot be used.
It is not easy to make a firearm that is affordable and relatively simple to operate.
However, once it is integrated, it will be a new weapon that the Jin Army cannot possess and cannot counterattack. The deterrent effect on the Jin Army should be relatively large, especially the granulation of gunpowder. If no expert told Wan Yanliang this, Wan Yanliang Can you think of how to deal with it?
Technical barriers.
Jiang Liangping has seen the use of these firearms and is very optimistic about the effectiveness of these firearms. Although the dangers still exist, the dangers are ranked lower than their power.
It was useless before because the Jin army did not enter the attack range in large numbers.
Now that the Jin Army has entered the attack range in large numbers, and even some siege equipment has entered the attack range, it is time to use firearms to open their eyes, and to see seriously whether these firearms are very effective on the real battlefield. Good results.
If the effect is met, it can be installed in larger quantities to the army and used as strategic weapons in the future.
The battlefield is often a testing ground for new weapons, and it is also the birthplace of inspiration for new weapons.
