Chapter 137: “Breaking” The City

Ambrosius was riding on a donkey with a telescope, looking at the chaos inside and outside the White Horse City, which looked a bit funny.

Ambrosius wanted to find a horse, but due to the many mountains and climate problems in this area, the locals preferred donkeys to horses.

Donkeys have better endurance and are easier to feed, but as mounts, they are a bit lacking.

The battle situation in front of him was very chaotic. After all, Ambrosius graduated from a military academy, and he hoped to fight a more "regular" war.

However, the current situation was beyond his control.

"Artillery ready!" Ambrosius shouted.

The ten cannons of the Crusaders at this time were all moved from armed merchant ships, and even the gun carriages were temporarily built.

Although a little crude, it was still many times more advanced than the Vietnamese artillery.

Fan Zhu also discovered this strange army outside the city, but when he saw the leader of the other side sitting on a donkey, he couldn't help but laugh contemptuously.

"Knife and card players, get ready, give them a head start."

At this time, nearly 10,000 Vietnamese troops gathered at the South Gate. In Fan Zhu's mind, these 10,000 soldiers were all blood-thirsty and combat-ready soldiers, and they were definitely not comparable to the cannon fodder at the North Gate.

Two thousand elite troops entering the city could completely take down the entire Baima City. The newly appeared enemy troops were about 2,000-3,000, and it should be more than enough to keep 8,000 people.

Here, in order to prevent these temporary combat forces from collapsing suddenly, Ambrosius tried to let them march in dense formations as much as possible.

In fact, the mainstream of this period was already skirmish line + queue, but Ambrosius only let the Austrian soldiers in his hands form a shallow skirmish line, and the rest were several large infantry squares.

Ambrosius did not have many professional artillerymen, and the long-barreled heavy artillery he used was removed from armed merchant ships, so it was very slow to deploy.

The swift and decisive reaction of the other side also surprised Ambrosius. If the other side had a cavalry team, he would have suffered heavy losses now.

Because Ambrosius had been in contact with the generals of Zhenla for many years, he found that they knew little about the role of artillery and were slow to act in battle. After an order was issued, it might take several days for the army to execute it, so Ambrosius dared to prepare artillery in front of the enemy.

But the Vietnamese seemed to send bare-chested swordsmen with iron knives and wooden signs?

"Are they here to die? It looks like there are only two thousand people at most, but we have 4,500 people." Ambrosius couldn't help but sigh.

"Maybe they are here to die." Captain Bilafeng pointed to the Vietnamese army at the gate of the city. They seemed to be cleaning something and trying to close the gate.

"Their city can withstand the artillery fire? What's the point of closing it or not?"

The power of artillery during this period has long exceeded the range that traditional city walls can withstand, which is why bastions are the mainstream of European fortresses.

Even the walls of Constantinople cannot withstand the fire of modern artillery, let alone the simple walls of Baima City, which are made of mud, trees and stones.

Fan Zhu really let these cannon fodder die. He wanted to see the opponent's firepower and buy time to close the city gate. After all, sieges have always been more beneficial to the defending party since ancient times.

And this Baima City is a representative of high walls and deep moats. If it weren't for the fact that the Zhenla people defending the city were really hard to pull away, and he had a lot of clever tricks, I really don't know how long it would take

However, while Fan Zhu was still lamenting that his use of troops was unpredictable, the Crusaders opened fire, and the shells were not fired at the swordsmen in front, but at the walls of Baima City.

The solid shell fired by the 16-pound cannon hit the city wall directly, and the huge impact force directly opened a big hole in the three-meter-high and one-meter-thick city wall.

This is not because the Austrians' artillery is advanced, but more because the construction structure of the city wall of Baima City itself is unreasonable, and after a hundred years of wind and sun, it has become a high-risk building.

At this time, the city wall of Baima City was bombarded by heavy artillery, and just one round was like a candle in the wind.

"How is it possible?" Fan Zhu murmured in his mouth, and his men also felt it was incredible, but instinctively wanted to persuade Fan Zhu to escape.

At the same time, the swordsmen on the front line also engaged in the battle.

To be honest, for this kind of cold weapon troops with dense charging, skirmishers are obviously not as useful as line infantry. After two rounds of shooting, the Austrian skirmishers simply joined the queue directly.

At first, the sporadic shooting of the skirmishers could be tolerated by the swordsmen, but their morale was broken in the first round of fighting with the line infantry.

Due to the quality of the soldiers, even the pediatric tactic of three-stage attack can only be done by the main force of the Guardian Army. For those new recruits who were temporarily recruited, Ambrosius required that only the first row was responsible for shooting, and the following rows were responsible for loading and passing guns.

Even so, after a round of shooting, the swordsmen of the Yue army collapsed and fled madly. Some ran to Baima City, and some fled to the mountains and forests.

If Ambrosius had a cavalry under his command, he would definitely order a pursuit, but he did not. With the impact of the donkey, he could only make the other party laugh to death.

Those remnants who fled into Baima City are not terrible. What is terrible is those who fled into the mountains and forests. They will be unstable factors in this land in the future.

Fan Zhu ordered the army to defend the South Gate, and he led a large army to kill the North Gate.

Although the city wall had collapsed in many places, the tall buildings still gave the Vietnamese army a little psychological comfort.

However, the Austrian artillery soon started firing again. Although Ambrosius had seen that the enemy's army was in a state of collapse, he did not want to sacrifice any of his soldiers and decided to continue bombarding and force the enemy to fight with him out of the city.

Another point is that the Crusaders have a range advantage at this time, and once they enter the city for street fighting, the Crusaders' advantage will be greatly weakened, and they may even become the passive party in street fighting due to the problem of the guns themselves.

The heavy artillery bombarded round by round, and the Crusaders' ranks were constantly approaching the city wall, but the Vietnamese did not dare to fight back. First of all, they had no artillery, and secondly, whether it was bows and arrows or matchlock guns, they could not compare with the rifles in the hands of the Crusaders in terms of power and accuracy.

What's more, there were more than a hundred scattered soldiers on the Crusaders' side, and the rifles in their hands were not vegetarian.

The battle line at the South Gate was still advancing in an orderly manner, while the North Gate was already in a mess. At first, the Vietnamese who suddenly came from behind Guan Jinpan and others made them fall into despair.

However, the following situation puzzled Guan Jinpan and the soldiers guarding Baima City. After the large group of Vietnamese troops coming from the south opened the city gate, they did not join forces with the Vietnamese troops at the gate to clear out the defenders in the city. Instead, they fought with the Vietnamese troops outside the city. The scene was very tragic.

In the end, the Vietnamese troops in the city broke through the defense of the Vietnamese troops outside the city and rushed towards the mountains and forests.

Just as Guan Jinpan and others reorganized the defense, another Vietnamese army rushed towards the North Gate. They seemed to be avoiding some terrible beasts. In this way, Baima City was killed by two Vietnamese.

But those Vietnamese soldiers seemed to have no intention of capturing the city at all. They all fled to the mountains and forests in the north, which made the Zhenla defenders who were already kneeling on the ground and ready to surrender feel very embarrassed.

I'm considering writing about Europe tomorrow, but there are still some things to write about Africa, such as the "Battle of Blood River" and Garibaldi in South America. If you want to read it, leave a message. If you don't want to read it, leave a message too. I'll see which side has more, and then decide.

This is an extra update, please give me some votes or something.