Chapter 39 It Is Difficult to Fill the River

The next day, Liu Liangzuo's troops began to siege the city.

"General, let's go to the tower. The enemy has a lot of cannons."

Wang Dafu suggested.

Under the city, the Qing army has launched ten cannons, which are truly mighty from a distance.

"Bring over our guns too."

Wu Changqing did not go to hide. Artillery in this era basically still fires solid bullets. The cannonball is a big iron ball and will not explode. Unless it is directly hit, there is no danger.

The Qing army only had ten cannons, and the chances of being hit on the thousand-meter-long city wall were very small.

Only when the explosive grenade appears, the shell can kill the enemy in a large area. When the current artillery is attacking the city, the main function is to blow down the city wall and attack the morale of the enemy, not to kill or injure the enemy.

As the cannons of the Qing army sounded, the Qing army also began to act, and the first step was naturally to fill the moat.

If they don't fill in the moat that is several meters wide, they will not be able to attack the city.

More than 3,000 soldiers rushed to the city wall with sacks, and the scene was quite spectacular.

"shooting."

When the soldiers rushed to about 150 meters away from the city wall, the rebels on the city wall began to shoot.

With the sound of gunfire, many Qing troops fell on the road.

Although this distance is still a bit far, but because the Qing army stations are relatively dense, many people are hit.

The Qing army actually knew that if they wanted to reduce losses, they had to keep distance, but they couldn't do it.

The moat that is several meters wide is not so easy to fill. They need to throw the sacks in a small section, and it is impossible to fill the entire river. It takes too long and is extremely difficult.

If it weren't for the difficulty of filling the moat, Liu Liangzuo could attack from all sides of Suzhou at the same time to disperse the defense forces of the Ming army.

Because of the moat, Liu Liangzuo could only concentrate on one place.

"The range of this new fire gun is really far, so order the archers to step forward to suppress it."

Before Liu Liangzuo came, he had read many battle reports about Wu Changqing, and knew that Wu Changqing had a group of new-style fire guns, which had a very long range and great power.

Following his order, more than two thousand archers stepped forward.

"Shoot the archers first."

Wu Changqing ordered that the number of 2,000 archers was quite a lot, and shooting those arrows in one salvo was like overwhelming the sky, and it could cause a covering blow with a good lethality.

In fact, this is similar to the current fire gun, and it all depends on coverage.

As for the so-called sharpshooter, that kind of person is one in ten thousand, and there is no one who can be a soldier.

Basically, archers don't have a good head at a distance of 100 meters. They just rely on their arm strength, and then they will salvo with others to form a rain of arrows.

Following Wu Changqing's order, the fire gun soldiers aimed their guns at the archers one after another. As for those who fill the moat, they can't take care of it, and this is also impossible.

The rain of arrows hit the barrage, and screams were heard from above and below the city.

Relatively speaking, the archers under the city are much worse, they are completely exposed to the muzzle, and the formation is dense. After one round, seventy or eighty people fell down.

And because the soldiers on the city wall are protected by the city wall, most of their bodies are behind the city wall, and the attack surface is much smaller.

However, after being washed by the rain of arrows, more than 20 Ming troops were shot on the city wall.

In the first round of confrontation, the Qing army suffered more losses, but they could also accept it, because they had more troops, with 40,000 troops, five times that of the Ming army.

Moreover, after they suffered this loss, the moat was also filled up a lot, and the goal was achieved.

However, as the shooting continued, Liu Liangzuo discovered a problem, that is, using archers to shoot with fire guns is too damn disadvantageous.

A qualified archer who shoots ten arrows in a battle will continue to fight because of soreness.

As for the fire gun soldiers, not to mention ten shots, even one hundred shots would not be too tiring.

More importantly, it takes at least one or two years to train a qualified archer. And training a qualified fire gun soldier, ten days is enough.

This also refers to the fire gun soldiers who can carry out field battles. If they are just fire gun soldiers standing on the city wall and firing guns, they can be trained in two days.

The value of an archer is at least several times that of a gunner.

In this way, let alone a two-to-one casualty rate, even if it was one-to-one, it would be a loss to the grandmother's house.

After several rounds of shooting, the Qing army's archers had lost more than 300 people, and Liu Liangzuo hurriedly ordered them to retreat.

If three hundred ordinary soldiers died, he would be indifferent. But three hundred archers died, so he would feel distressed.

Among his 40,000 army, there are only 3,000 archers in total, which is an uncompromising noble arm.

Liu Liangzuo preferred that the soldiers responsible for filling the river be shot to death, but he did not want to kill the archers anymore.

"Change the fire gun and go forward to suppress the shot."

Liu Liangzuo ordered.

There are also fire gunners in his army, but there are not many, only 2,000 people. Moreover, all the old-fashioned firearms were used, and it took two or three minutes to fire a shot.

And be very careful, one inadvertently can easily order the gunpowder bag of a comrade-in-arms.

And this kind of gun is also very easy to blow up, and there is no accurate head.

In short, this gun has many disadvantages.

fire

The gunmen stepped forward to shoot, which was even more miserable than the archers.

Archers can also kill a large number of Ming troops by projecting, but fire cannons have no projectile function and can only shoot directly.

Two thousand guns were fired, and they basically hit the city wall. The momentum was quite frightening, but the damage caused was only single digits.

"Shooting our firearms, they are courting death."

Liu Hansan laughed.

The fire guns of the Qing army came up quickly and retreated quickly. They were not opponents of the Ming army at all.

Both the archers and the gunmen lost, and the soldiers who filled the river lost their protection completely, and the Ming army on the city wall could shoot and kill arbitrarily.

This kind of situation where they could only be beaten made many soldiers responsible for filling the river stagnant and did not want to go any further.

"Continue to kill me, and the former will kill without mercy."

A hundred households and a few supervisor teams shouted angrily, so frightened that the soldiers responsible for filling the river could only grit their teeth and continue to work. Ordinary soldiers, the fate is so sad.

"General, this is not the way to go."

Cheng Tianbao was very distressed when he saw that hundreds of soldiers who filled the river had died.

Even before they officially attacked the city, they lost nearly 1,000 people. This loss is too great, even more than the loss in Jiangyin City in three days.

"Anyway, we have to attack today."

Liu Liangzuo said that two-thirds of this has been filled, and it is impossible to give up halfway, otherwise morale will plummet.

Although the loss was huge, he could only hold on through gritted teeth.