Outside Yangzhou City, Luo Zhixue's imperial headquarters was set up on a low hill outside the city. It was actually more than two thousand meters away from Yangzhou City. The excessive distance still had a certain impact on Luo Zhixue's observation and command. However, for safety reasons, Luo Zhixue's imperial headquarters cannot be set up too close.
After all, strictly speaking, a distance of about two kilometers is not an insurmountable distance for field artillery of more than nine pounds. The maximum range of the nine-jin field artillery in the Chu army can reach more than three thousand meters, but the hit rate will be lower. It's just very touching.
In actual combat, they will never fire at the maximum range. Let alone the maximum range of more than 3,000 meters. Even if it is more than 1,000 meters, the artillery of the Chu army will not fire easily... For contemporary artillery, In terms of hit accuracy, even if the bombardment is only about a thousand meters, it can only be a covering bombardment, and the lethality is not very good.
In actual combat, the best range of the Jiujin field gun is within 800 meters, especially between 500 meters and 800 meters, which can give a good balance of lethality and hit rate.
It is true that at a distance of more than a thousand meters, the popular rate of contemporary field artillery, including the old Hongyi artillery in the Ming army, is negligible, but you still have to be careful, so the Chu army commanded the imperial troops outside Yangzhou City. The headquarters was set up directly on a low mountain more than 2,000 meters away.
A solid anti-artillery system was also built to prevent the Ming artillery troops on the opposite side from jumping over the wall and shelling directly from more than two thousand meters away. It was also necessary to prevent the artillery troops on the opposite side from being unlucky and hitting the headquarters directly with artillery shells. Come.
Therefore, when Luo Zhixue now observes the battle in this headquarters, he always observes with a telescope behind the anti-gun bunker.
Fortunately, the monocular telescope in his hand uses crystal lenses carefully polished by senior eyeglass craftsmen. Therefore, even though he is more than two thousand meters away, Luo Zhixue can still see the opposite side better. The situation in Yangzhou City.
At this time, the city of Yangzhou in Luo Zhixue's sight was no longer as prosperous as it had been in the past. The large buildings and residences outside the city were either bombarded and turned into ruins, or were simply demolished by force by the Ming army themselves, leaving hundreds of people outside the city walls. Miri is in ruins.
Except for a few large cities such as Jinling City and Youzhou City, most other cities, even many provincial cities, cannot make the city area too large due to construction costs and defensive performance.
But as time goes by, the effective area within the city cannot satisfy the increasingly crowded population, so a large number of residential or commercial buildings will be built outside the city walls, so you can see many cities. Outside the city wall, there are still large areas of residential buildings...
As some cities develop over time, more and more buildings are built outside the city. In order to protect these places, the government often adds a city wall on the outside to form an outer city, while some simply build a new city to form a juxtaposition of the old and new cities. pattern.
Yangzhou City has a juxtaposition of old and new cities. The old city built in the late Yuan Dynasty is generally used as the residence of the government and the residence of the gentry. The new city is a commercial center where many salt merchants live.
However, even after the new city was established, as time passed, there were still a large number of ordinary residences, shops and other buildings outside the city walls.
These civilian buildings outside the city walls are often greatly damaged in wars.
Neither the attacker nor the defender has a favorable impression of these buildings.
For the attacker, these buildings outside the city will affect their own attack. This place is occupied by a large number of messy buildings, and the attacker cannot deploy its troops...
For the defender, these buildings will also affect the firing range of one's own artillery and muskets, and are more likely to be exploited by the attacker.
Therefore, many times the defenders will temporarily demolish all the buildings outside the city...
Unfortunately, the attacking side often also violently demolishes.
During the previous Battle of Jinling, due to the fighting between the Chu Army and the Ming Army defenders, a large area of buildings along the Qinhuai River was directly smashed to pieces. Even the many painted boats on the Qinhuai River had to flee the Qinhuai River in embarrassment with many young ladies. …
So much so that for a long time after the war, the once bustling Qinhuai River was in a state of depression...
The city of Yangzhou is no exception. Since Song Zushun led his troops to retreat to Yangzhou last year, he has begun to build Yangzhou's city defenses.
Many of the obstructive buildings outside the city were demolished by the Ming army defenders themselves...
Then dig trenches, build civil fortresses, and arrange various firepower points.
When the Chu army started bombarding Yangzhou City half a month ago, the fierce artillery smashed the remaining buildings outside the city to pieces...
So much so that the area outside Yangzhou City now looks like ruins.
But anyone with a little military knowledge will realize the danger when they see this ruins.
If the Chu army acted like a traditional cold-weapon army and foolishly let the infantry line up and attack the city wall directly, a large area would fall in minutes.
Because these seemingly ruined places outside Yangzhou City are actually covered with trenches, parapets, fortresses, and firepower points dug by Song Zushun's troops.
I can’t say it’s airtight, but it’s definitely not easy to get through.
At this time, Xu Zhixian was standing next to Luo Zhixue, introducing the situation on the opposite side to Luo Zhixue: "After more than half a month of fire testing, we can basically confirm that the defensive tactics adopted by the defenders outside Yangzhou City are different from those used before. Like the state, with the city wall as the commanding height, the fortress outside the city, and the trench as support, long-barreled artillery was deployed at the high point, while in the numerous trench fortresses outside the city, a large number of short-barreled artillery was deployed to form a complex crossfire. "
As Xu Zhixian spoke, he pointed to a ruins on the east side and said: "Your Majesty, please look, that is their main position, and that slightly raised hill is where their fortress is. They surround this hill and A complex system of trenches and parapets was built on some of the ruins of the outer buildings, and relatively secret firepower points were also set up.”
"In a previous exploratory attack, we found that the opponent had at least six long-barreled artillery and more than 20 short-barreled artillery firing!"
"But the solid shells fired by our field artillery have basically no effect on their fortifications. As for the mortar artillery, because of its poor accuracy and short range, it cannot fire at too long a distance."
"Because the terrain within a few hundred meters is open and the field of vision is good, if our mortar artillery troops try to get closer, they will be attacked by the enemy's long-barreled artillery. Therefore, the last trial attack did not achieve good results!"
"The artillery and engineers have discussed and formulated a new combat plan. They are preparing to use part of the recovery terrain to build an artillery communication trench so that the mortar troops can smoothly reach within 300 meters and fire at the nearest location, using large-caliber mortar shells. Pry open this turtle shell!”
Luo Zhixue looked in the direction indicated by Xu Zhixian, and sure enough there was a slightly raised hillside on the east side. It was too mountainous to say that it was only twenty or thirty meters high at most.
But just such a small hill of 20 to 30 meters high has now become the focus of contention between the two sides in the Battle of Yangzhou.
The Ming army deployed heavy troops here, and there were communication trenches connecting the city, which made it easy to obtain supplies of soldiers and ammunition.
At the same time, the terrain here is open and the field of vision is good. If artillery is deployed here, it will be enough to cover a large area around it.
If the Chu army wants to further threaten Yangzhou City, it must first capture this place, otherwise it will be very uncomfortable if it is attacked from both sides.
Luo Zhixue only took one glance and knew that this thing was an evolved version of the outside-city fortress in the Battle of Jiujiang.
When Shi Kefa deployed in the direction of Jiujiang, he referred to experiences such as the Wuchang Battle and came up with this defense system from the fortress outside the city.
The core idea is to build fortress protrusions outside the city wall, connect them to the city wall with trenches or trestles, and deploy artillery and infantry in these forts outside the city. Multiple protruding fortresses can form a certain crossfire of firepower, which in turn will cause damage to the siege troops. A huge threat.
In essence, it is somewhat similar to the European bastion defense system, but it is more radical than the bastion defense system and focuses on the anti-grenade function.
Our colleagues in Europe are not as perverted as the Chu army. They directly pull hundreds of mortars, risking their own explosions and killing many artillery soldiers in every battle, and spend a lot of ammunition to attack a city...
Therefore, European colleagues basically do not need to think too much about the threat from grenades.
But the Ming army was different... In addition to being threatened by a large number of solid artillery from the Chu army, they were also threatened by a large number of mortar artillery from the Chu army.
This means that the fort must also have a roof... The trench must be deep and narrow, not too wide. Even the sandbags on the gun emplacement cannot be piled up just in front, but must be in front, back, left and right.
Because the grenade lands behind your butt and explodes, there will also be shrapnel flying towards your butt...
At the same time, this kind of protruding fortress outside the city often has thick anti-gunnery civil engineering works, as well as trenches, parapets, etc., which can effectively resist the bombardment of small and medium-caliber solid artillery shells... and can also resist the bombardment of mortars to a certain extent. .
During the Battle of Jiujiang, this fortress defense system outside the city did bring a lot of trouble to the Chu army.
But the Chu army quickly came up with a solution: Use siege cannons weighing more than nine kilograms or even fourteen kilograms to suppress the enemy's artillery firepower, and then get a lot of large-caliber mortars to go up and bombard them indiscriminately. After the shelling, This kind of fierce bombardment is actually not to kill or injure many enemy troops, but to suppress the enemy infantry and create favorable conditions for the infantry to attack.
After the bombardment, the Chu army would directly send out commandos to fight and forcibly capture this kind of fortress outside the city.
