"Wei Laowu, take your men to attack the city. I'll mark your first achievement by storming the city wall." A black-bearded man spoke.
"General, don't worry, Lao Wu will definitely capture this little city of Jinzhou. Just watch from behind!" The man named Wei Lao Wu said in high spirits.
These Han generals all defected to the slaves and traitors from the Ming army. Now they have nearly 20,000 troops besieging a small Jinzhou city. There are only a few thousand defenders in the city. Even though the soldiers and horses of the Tiger Flag are more powerful than the Ming army, they are all human beings, and they are still Han people. They have one head and two arms. There is no big difference, no one is much better than the other.
Wei Laowu appeared outside Jinzhou City with his own army of thousands of households. He rode a horse himself, pointed the whip in his hand at Jinzhou City in front of him, and said loudly: "Listen to me, as long as we attack the wall of Jinzhou City, you will have three buckets of rice per person, and everyone will follow me." Rush." Without Shanxi merchants transporting a large amount of grain and iron for the slave thieves, Liaodong did not experience the invasion of Guandong in later generations and the large-scale development of Liaodong. At this time, Liaodong's land was limited and the weather was not good, so the output was even less.
Food has always been a scarce resource. Using food to boost morale is far more effective than giving money directly.
kill! Wei Laowu took the lead and led five to six hundred Han soldiers towards the gate of Jinzhou City. Mang Gurtai and Jier Harang stood on horseback under the banner, watching Wei Laowu's troops, waiting to see the reaction in Jinzhou City.
On the walls of Jinzhou City, cannons were ready. Next to each cannon was a gun crew, ranging from two to four members. Without receiving orders, these people looked outside the city with stern expressions, and no one took the initiative to fire.
"Captain Chen, it's almost done!" Wang Ju, the captain of the thousand-man team next to him, said to Captain Chen of the artillery team next to him.
Captain Chen held a monocular in his hand and was watching the situation outside the city through the telescope.
Just listen to him say: "Don't be anxious, move closer and then attack. They are all infantry. If you move in and attack, they will not be able to escape even if they want to."
"Have you figured it out and are going to use all the cannons in the city?" Wang Ju looked at Captain Chen in surprise.
Captain Chen took away the monocular telescope in front of him and said: "On your city wall alone, there are eighteen cannons. What if we fire them together and scare away the slave thieves in the distance? We have agreed Come on, take your time, let’s hook up with the slave thieves and add fuel to it little by little.”
"Come on, I won't argue with you. You are good at playing with cannons, but you have to keep some for me. Don't kill them all, and give my people some practice," Wang Ju said.
It can be seen from the expressions of the two people that they are very relaxed and do not take the invading army of slaves and thieves too seriously at all.
While the two people were talking, Wei Laowu led his soldiers and horses closer to Jinzhou City.
"Blow the whistle!" Captain Chen of the artillery team shouted. The person next to him picked up the copper whistle tied around his neck and blew it hard.
The sharp and piercing sound of the copper whistle could be heard for miles through the air, and the gunners guarding the city wall heard it all.
As soon as the whistle blew, one of the gunners raised his torch and lit the cotton rope on the cannon. boom!
A four-pound cannon on the city wall was fired, followed by several more cannons. Cannonballs flew out of the muzzle, jumped off the city wall, and fell towards the cannon approaching Jinzhou City. In the ranks of Han soldiers.
The advantage of Tiger Flag's cannon is that it is of good quality, powerful and has a long range. The gunner can not only operate the cannon skillfully, but also has high level of accuracy and accuracy.
Whether it is the artillerymen of the Ming army or the slave thieves, they are far from comparable to the artillerymen of the Tiger Flag. In the first round of artillery fire on the city, only one of the cannons missed a little, and all the other artillery pieces accurately fell into the ranks of Han soldiers like Wei Laowu.
The cannons were like plows plowing the ground, plowing out bloody furrows and holes in the crowd.
The round of shelling just now took away the lives of at least dozens of Han soldiers. If the possibility of artillery on the city had not been anticipated during the attack, the team would have spread out and moved forward, otherwise there would have been more casualties.
The Han soldiers who joined the slave and traitor side had to say that they were less afraid of death than when they were in the Ming army. The casualties of dozens of people did not waver Wei Laowu's team of Han soldiers. Instead, they charged forward even more fiercely, and they would not give up until they reached their goal.
Every time a cannon is fired, it has to clean the barrel, cool it down, and then replace it with new powder and iron bullets, which is much slower than changing bullets for a blunderbuss.
However, after the gunners became proficient and practiced for a long time, the gunner members of each gun team had different divisions of labor. Together, they greatly shortened the firing interval between the two guns.
Before Wei Laowu and the Han soldiers could reach the cannon's blind spot, the cannon on the city wall fired again. It was the same cannons that had been fired before, but this time it was the second time.
This time, none of the cannons fired from the city wall hit the target.
The casualties of Han soldiers outside the city increased again, and the Han general Wei Laowu who led the army was lucky enough to escape two rounds of bombardment.
"Let another team go up." The black-bearded man on the slave bandit side saw that there were many casualties in Wei Laowu's team. He did not want Wei Laowu's team to bear the pressure of siege alone, so he sent another Qianhu to attack the city. .
Another team of five to six hundred Han soldiers rushed towards Jinzhou City. When the team was halfway through, Wei Laowu's team was already less than a hundred steps away from the nearest wall of Jinzhou City.
At this time, Wei Laowu's Han army no longer had to worry about being bombarded by the city's artillery, because the target of the artillery in Jinzhou City had been replaced by the Han army behind.
The sound of cannons kept ringing on the city wall.
"Work harder, we're going to be close to the city wall soon." Wei Laowu shouted as loudly as he could, regardless of whether the surrounding subordinates could hear him.
In fact, without his need to say anything, the Han soldiers who had already rushed to the city wall were already shouting with high morale.
A ladder was carried over and Han soldiers began to approach. Everyone wants to be the first to climb to the top of Jinzhou City via a ladder and win the first prize.
And just after they got closer to the city wall for more than 20 steps, the green bricks on the city wall suddenly fell from the city wall, and black holes of the muskets protruded from it.
boom! boom! boom! There was light from the muzzles of these black holes, and lead bullets sprayed out from them.
The Han soldiers closest to the city wall were hit by these sudden fire cannons before they could react, and fell to the ground one after another.
Wei Laowu was lucky. The horse was hit and he fell to the ground. However, his leg was pinned down by the fallen horse and he couldn't get away for a while.
But his life was saved.
