Chapter 878 Advance Tactics

The salty and wet taste of the sea was blown by the east wind.

Yao Hongtao stared at the royal soldiers who were slowly coming. Unlike their nervousness, these soldiers seemed to be winning.

From a distance they even heard loud singing, which was so impassioned and uplifting to hear.

"Get the artillery ready."

Yao Hongtao put down the monocular in his hand. These things were purchased by the Merchant Council from Western merchants, and almost every general now has one.

"Yes, General." After receiving the order, the lieutenant immediately put all the artillery in place, loaded the shells and waited.

At the same time, soldiers with flintlocks were running up and down the city walls, each finding his place to shoot.

When everything was ready, the lieutenant frowned and said, "General, there seem to be not many soldiers in the Great Yu Kingdom. There are only about 20,000 soldiers. Maybe we can defeat them head-on."

Yao Hongtao glanced at the lieutenant, and he said lightly, "Do you think the northern royal army is Li Chuyuan's stragglers? You didn't know where these soldiers were when they used flintlock spears to defeat the barbarians in Jizhou!"

The lieutenant's face was blushing. After successfully defeating several sieges, he was very confident in the current firearms army. In his opinion, defeating Li Chuyuan was only a matter of time.

Because of this, they didn't care about the army in front of them. He said: "The general seems to be a little too ambitious to destroy his prestige. Now it turns out that the loyalty of the soldiers loyal to the king is far less than the loyalty of the soldiers loyal to the merchant council. The same is true. , I believe that the people must also be dissatisfied with the decaying dynasty in the north, and their soldiers will not work for them."

"Really? Have you been to the north? Have you known Qingzhou?" Yao Hongtao was a little dissatisfied. This deputy general was not his, but the one assigned by the Merchant Council.

He knew very well that the Merchant Council was not very at ease with him, but he chose to betray the King of Chu, and now there is only one way to follow the Merchant Council, not to mention Cao Kun promised to give him a seat as a councillor.

The lieutenant was speechless again, and he argued: "General, it seems that you don't have enough faith in the Merchant Council. Now the Merchant Council, at the suggestion of the Qinglong King, has decided to use the method he did in Jizhou to win people's hearts, just wait and see. Well, soon the people of Jiangnan will gather around the Merchant Council just like they were in Jizhou."

"Blue Dragon King." Yao Hongtao frowned. He had seen this Blue Dragon King before. He was a very cold scholar, and the most terrifying thing was that this Blue Dragon King was very good at bewitching people.

Back then, the King of Chu reused him, and he successfully provoked turmoil in Jizhou, but he was refrigerated after he returned to the State of Chu after his failure, because the King of Chu was also worried that the King of Qinglong would bring cholera to the State of Chu.

Now that the Blue Dragon King has defected to the Merchant Council, he can already imagine what will happen when these two freaks combine.

When the lieutenant saw this, he immediately laughed, and he said, "This Qinglong King still has a way to win over the people. Now, many people have turned their fields to the Merchant Council in order not to pay grain."

Yao Hongtao suddenly sneered when he heard the words. He suddenly felt sad for the people, because he knew very well that this slogan would eventually become a dead letter.

There has never been a dynasty that did not pay grain, and now the merchant council is just drawing a pie for the people to die for them.

"Sad, sigh." Yao Hongtao didn't know whether he was talking about the lieutenant or himself. He stopped talking, but stared at the royal soldiers who were getting closer and closer.

Outside the city, Lu Fei was observing the situation in Songjiang City.

Different from the past, the current Tiger Ben army is not arranged in a dense formation as before, but a skirmish line is distributed outside the east wall of Songjiang City.

"This city wall has 20 artillery pieces, and the city wall is full of soldiers with flintlock guns. If a frontal attack is carried out, there will be a lot of casualties. We only have 20,000 people. We need to use the advantages of breech rifles." Lu Fei said sternly. , even with artillery, siege warfare is still a headache.

In particular, the soldiers in the city also use firearms. They can rely on the city wall to use firearms to kill and injure the soldiers attacking the city, which is not cost-effective.

So, he continued: "Guo Ming, you immediately lead the soldiers to dig trenches and dig them all the way to within 50 meters of the city wall."

"Yes, General."

Guo Ming responded. Now the shovel has basically become the standard configuration of the army. The purpose is to dig trenches. After receiving the order, thousands of soldiers were put into it.

So Yao Hongtao was surprised to see the royal army stopped at a distance of 300 meters and started digging.

"General, what are they doing?" The lieutenant was surprised, they had never encountered such a situation.

Yao Hongtao shook his head. He was also at a loss now, but he understood that this was definitely not a good sign. He shouted at the artillery; "Fire!"

With his order, the artillery on the city wall suddenly roared, and the solid bullets went towards the royal army like lightning.

But when the gunfire sounded, the opposing royal army immediately scattered to find the uneven terrain as a barrier to lie down. At the same time, he saw the royal soldiers lying on the ground starting to shoot.

"Bang bang bang..."

A burst of fire erupted, bullets flew around the city wall, some soldiers could not dodge in time to be hit, and fell down with a scream, and the city wall suddenly fell into chaos.

Yao Hongtao even had a cold sweat on his back. When did the royal muskets shoot 300 meters?

When he was mad, Lu Fei kept urging the soldiers to dig trenches. In fact, there were not many shooting guidelines at all. After all, the accuracy of 300-meter target shooting was not high.

He has gained experience in daily training. In fact, as the distance increases, the shooting accuracy of soldiers continues to decline. Even if the range and accuracy of breech rifles have been greatly improved, human vision and operation are also limited. .

It is very difficult to accurately hit a person within 500 meters, and the best shooting distance is within 200 meters.

So this shot is just to suppress the opponent's artillery, not to kill the enemy.

After some fire cover, the soldiers dug trenches faster, and none of the soldiers wanted to be smashed by the artillery on the city wall.

Three hours later, a winding trench extended under Songjiang City, and other soldiers entered the trench and continued to expand the trench project.

After the initial shelling, the parliamentary army quickly gave up shooting, as the Royal soldiers who had taken refuge in the trenches could not be wounded by solid bullets.

At this time, Lu Fei ordered all the soldiers to enter the trench to surround Songjiang City, and at the same time, two mortars carried by two people also entered the trench.

They advanced to a distance of fifty meters from the city wall.

After receiving Lu Fei's order, he immediately threw explosive and lime bullets on the city wall of Songjiang City, and the soldiers with falcon rifles also shot at the city wall through the edge of the trench.

The Battle of Songjiang City officially started.