Su Yonglin once had unrealistic fantasies about the Song Army's legendary ultra-long-range destructive weapon, the Three-Bow Crossbow, also known as the legendary Eight Ox Crossbow.
However, Su Yonglin felt very depressed after the professional department of the Ministry of Industry of the Ming Dynasty had an actual understanding of the three-bow crossbows seized during the Ming-Song wars.
It is not impossible for this thing to shoot to one thousand meters or even one thousand five hundred meters. As long as you are willing to use the highest-grade raw materials, the best wood and beef tendon, and take the risk of firing it once, this expensive three-bow crossbow will be completely This range can be reached without the risk of scrapping.
It can indeed hit very far.
But the range does not mean the effective range. Otherwise, if Su Yonglin asked the general to raise the muzzle of the cannon, it would be able to shoot two or three kilometers away. The range is quite terrifying, just like what is recorded in the history books.
But what's the use of hitting the target no matter how far you hit?
It is not impossible to make this three-bow crossbow shoot a kilometer away, but the deviation from the intended shooting target is estimated to be tens of meters away, which is not the same thing at all.
The bed crossbow had no rear sight and no front sight. It was impossible for the Southern Song Dynasty court to master the mathematical model of the bed crossbow shooting data or calculate the range equation of the two-meter-long huge crossbow arrow fired by the bed crossbow.
Without the support of this mathematical data, it is difficult to say how accurate it is to roughly calibrate and then shoot a small target hundreds of meters away with the naked eye.
Throughout the ages, bows, arrows, and crossbows have been used in battles. Accuracy has never been said to be important. There are indeed sharpshooters, but there are very few. The army mainly relies on quantity to carry out coverage and strikes, and never looks at the hit rate of a single person.
Therefore, the merits of melee troops on the battlefield can be obtained on the spot, while the merits of the crossbowmen are generally obtained during daily training, and are not counted before the battle, because it is impossible to know who shot whom.
According to calculations by the Ministry of Industry of the Ming Dynasty, the maximum effective range of the three-bow bed crossbow they captured was only about 300 meters. As for the Liao army general Xiao Taolin who was killed by the Song army with a bed crossbow 400 meters away, I guess he is one of the most unlucky people in history.
He probably provoked something that he shouldn't have provoked at some inadvertent moment, which made him die in such an extremely unlucky and humiliating way.
And if the Song army is expected to use the three-bow bed crossbow on the city head to effectively shoot at the Ming army's artillery battery placed about 500 meters away from Fancheng, the difficulty is almost equivalent to using a water gun to hit a mosquito ten meters away. .
Let’s not say it’s about technology, at least it has nothing to do with technology.
Facing the effective bombardment of the Ming army's general artillery, this kind of tactical behavior was extremely close to self-humiliation.
Therefore, Zhang Yuejing and He Feihu were not worried about the impact of the Song Army's long-range strikes on the Ming Army.
And if it were a field battle, the Song Army would simply deliver food to the door. The Ming Army would be superior to the Song Army in terms of combat effectiveness, organization, and weapons. What should they worry about?
[This kind of battle with the wind is really lonely].
Occasionally, Zhang Yuejing would have this extremely Versailles thought in his mind.
However, he would not be merciful, and it was his military creed that the lion should fight the rabbit with all his strength, so he gave the order and the battle began.
The first round of firing from the general's artillery battery began in full swing.
After the earth-shaking roar, twenty-five steel cannonballs, wrapped in scorching heat, rushed towards the Fancheng wall with lightning speed.
All joking aside, the Fancheng defenders had rather complicated feelings at that time.
They felt the entire city wall shaking.
The city wall is shaking!
When the cannonball hit the city wall fiercely, it not only shattered the contact surface of the city wall to expose the inner wall, but also caused the entire city wall to vibrate.
Not to mention, there was also a cannonball that hit the tower on the city wall very accurately. Just one cannonball caused debris to scatter on the city wall and smoke filled the city wall. The majestic-looking tower was completely torn away. Half of it was in very miserable shape.
A few more cannonballs hit the city wall stacks, shattering the city wall stacks. Their momentum continued unabated and they continued to rush forward, directly smashing the defenders hiding behind the city wall stacks into a pulp.
A cannonball landed on the tower and bounced off, then went straight over the tower and crashed into the city, killing a dozen unsuspecting Song soldiers in the city and injuring or burning twenty or thirty others.
A cannonball smashed into the city wall and then flew up directly, hitting the remaining half of the tower, breaking two pillars, and tearing the remaining half of the tower into pieces. A large amount of debris fell to the ground and splashed. Many Song soldiers Hence the injury.
There was also an unlucky guy who was hit in the neck by debris, bleeding profusely, fell to the ground, twitching, and died slowly.
A three-bow bed crossbow firing group is located at a higher position on the city wall. A newly built bed crossbow tower is designed to fire farther and be more lethal. However, this bed crossbow tower was hit by a cannonball. hit.
The building was shattered, the bed crossbow was destroyed, and none of the seven soldiers in the launch team survived. They all died in extremely miserable conditions, with no bones left.
The situation was so tragic that the surrounding Song soldiers who witnessed all this and were lucky enough to survive were so frightened that they ran away with their heads in their hands and urinated. They no longer dared to muster the courage to approach the front line and turned around and ran away crazily.
Another three shot directly over the city wall and rushed into the city, landing in the city, causing huge damage to the buildings in the city and the Song soldiers around the buildings, causing the Song army in the city to fall into a huge panic.
They shouted, they cried, they turned around and ran away. Many of the originally organized troops went into turmoil after being so stimulated. Many soldiers ran away to the south of the city involuntarily, and the officers could not stop them at all.
Some officers even took the lead in escaping, so that the soldiers under his command lost discipline and ran for their lives, feeling like they were acting in a life-and-death show.
The soldiers on the city tower ran frantically toward the city, and the soldiers below the city ran frantically toward the inner city, all trying to stay away from the city wall and the terrifying [Ming Army Magical Artifact].
Before the Ming army approached the city wall to launch a real attack, the morale of the defenders in the city collapsed for the first time. Fortunately, the Ming army did not launch an ant attack on the city at this moment, otherwise Fancheng would have been defeated by the Ming army on the first day of the battle. Fight to the city wall.
For all this, Fancheng guard Zhou Benyuan lacked psychological preparation.
At that time, Wang Yan had already moved to Xiangyang City, and Zhou Benyuan was supervising the battle on the North City Tower.
He looked at the Ming army's position from a distance and still couldn't see clearly the artillery. But when the clouds of white mist suddenly rose, he felt something was wrong.
Sure enough, the vibration caused by the cannonball hitting the tower, the feeling that the entire tower was hit by an iron fist and then shook, was like someone hitting his heart with a fist.
The shells did not hurt him, but the ferocious bombardment of the shells caused huge physical and psychological blows to the city walls and towers and the Song army.
What's even more terrible is that the city wall stacks, whose defenses were relatively weak compared to the walls, were destroyed by Ming army artillery shells. Many of the city wall stacks were shattered, which greatly reduced the city wall's ability to protect Song soldiers.
It is conceivable that once the second round of shooting arrives, the Song Army's defense on the city wall will be more difficult and the casualties will be even more severe.
However, the problem facing Zhou Benyuan was that the soldiers of the Song Army had already fled. After receiving the report, he had to summon up his strength and order his personal guards to dispatch, kill the fleeing officers and soldiers, and restore order to the defenders as soon as possible. , Arrange troops to defend the city.
When encountering fear, they can only create greater fear and let the Song troops in the city know that they may die if they go up to the tower to fight, and they will definitely die if they escape down the tower. In this way, they will make the right choice.
This is the experience of veteran Zhou Benyuan.
When they were dealing with the Jin Army, they did the same thing when they encountered timid soldiers. They would not do ideological work to you in a soft voice. They would only use knives and blood to show you the consequences of not going to the battlefield. Then I ask you - do you want to go?
Do you dare not to go?
Before the Ming army launched the second round of artillery bombardment, Zhou Benyuan's order was passed to the soldiers. As the arm of the commander-in-chief, the soldiers resolutely carried out the mission of the commander-in-chief, dispatched on a large scale to hunt down deserters and fleeing officers, carrying their The head goes to the front line to threaten cowardly soldiers and officers.
If you don't go up to the tower and fight to the death, this is the fate. Unless ordered, you are not allowed to go down to the tower privately. Otherwise, whoever comes down will be killed!
