"Release!"
Bang! Bang! Bang!
On the morning of the third day, the quiet north bank of the Red River was woken up by the Ming army's cannon fire.
This time, the Zheng Army was on guard. The soldiers were basically sleeping behind the wooden fence that was built last night, so the casualties to the army were not high. However, it was full marks for humiliation.
"This Li Dao! Won't he run out of stone bullets?" Zheng Gang, who was woken up by the sound of the cannons, cursed angrily again.
This was the 18th century, and each stone bullet would take four to five days to polish. The Ming army had fired more than 50,000 stone bullets yesterday, which was more than the Zheng family's production in more than a year.
If it wasn't for the fact that the caliber of the stone bullets was wrong, Zheng Gang would have gotten people to collect the stone bullets and use them to attack the Ming army!
However, after being beaten for two days, if they were beaten again, the morale of his soldiers would fall to the point of collapse.
Morale was extremely important in a battlefield with cold weapons.
For soldiers with high morale, they might lose more than 30% of their troops in battle, but for soldiers with low morale, they might surrender without losing a single soldier.
Now, the commander of the Ming army was attacking the morale of his army!
Thinking of this, Zheng Gang could not help but say,"Send my orders, pull our cannons out of the east gate and attack the Ming army camp with all our might!”
"Understood!" The general at the door raised his voice. It was obvious that he had endured the Ming army for a long time.
For the Ming army, who had long understood Zheng Jun's flag language, when Zheng Jun waved the flag, Li Dao knew that Zheng Jun wanted to fight back, so he immediately ordered,"
"Pass down my order. The Tiger Cannons at the south gate are to retreat. Also, do not wave any flags. Inform the entire army, except for the guards at the south gate, to retreat from the north gate. They must retreat within half an hour.”
"Yes, sir!" Hearing Li Dao's words, the eight Ming guards, except for one guard at the south gate, left the camp in an orderly manner. After retreating three miles, Li Dao ordered the whole army to rest and sent the scouts from the Brocade Guard to investigate the enemy.
As the Ming army's flag was not waved, and the Ming army's tent had its back to the Zheng army, the Zheng army bombarded the Ming army camp for 25 minutes before the commander, Zheng Gang, realized that something was wrong and immediately ordered his men to stop the bombardment!
The cannons of the Jiaozhi army were all Hongyi cannons. The prototype was a long barrel and spindle-shaped cannon invented by the West in the late 16th century.
This kind of cannon was introduced to the Central Plains in the late Ming Dynasty, but it was soon copied by the craftsmen of the Ministry of Works in the capital. All the cannons of similar design were collectively called the Red Barbarian Cannon or the Red Cannon by the Central Plains.
The design of the Hongyi Cannon had many advantages compared to the cannons of the Ming Dynasty. The cannon barrel was long, the wall was thick, and the caliber was large. The overall shape of the cannon gradually thickened from the muzzle to the end of the cannon, which was in line with the principle of the chamber pressure decreasing from high to low when gunpowder burned.
There were cylindrical ears on both sides of the center of gravity of the cannon body. The cannon could adjust the firing angle with this as the axis, and the range could be changed according to the amount of gunpowder. It was equipped with a crosshair and a camera to calculate the trajectory according to the parabola. The accuracy was very high.
Most of the Hongyi cannons were about three meters long, with a caliber of 110- 130mm and a weight of more than one ton.
The copper-iron composite Hongyi cannon, which was copied and improved from the Ming Dynasty, was called " one of the best cannons in the world in the 17th century " in the book " The Age of Gunpowder " written by Tonio Andrade, an East Asian historian of Portuguese descent.
There was a very strange phenomenon in East Asia. As long as one thing became popular in the Central Plains, other neighboring countries would follow suit and buy it.
However, the cannons of the Ming Dynasty were all bought back and copied better before being used by themselves. Kingdoms like Jiaozhi only bought them but did not make them.
The cannons of the Zheng Army were all Red Cloak Cannons, but the entire army only had about 130 cannons.
These cannons fired for 25 minutes and used up 30% of the Zheng army's gunpowder and stone bullets, but they did not make a sound from the Ming army. Zheng Gang naturally had to investigate carefully.
However, just as they stopped firing, the Ming soldiers at the south gate, who had been waiting for a long time, came out of the cave.
The cave that they were hiding in was the " bomb shelter " that Zhu Bomu had told Li Dao about. A one-meter-thick mound and a foot-thick wooden board were enough to withstand the impact of the shells of this era.
After all, the distance between the two armies wasn't far. After the artillery shells hit here, they could only penetrate the city gate at most, but not this fake bomb shelter.
The Ming army's Crouching Tiger Cannons attacked the Zheng army from two miles out of the camp. This was the only way they could hit the Zheng army. The Zheng army did not dare to chase after them because the Ming army still had their iron cavalry that had not moved.
The Zheng army's cannons did not dare to move forward. Once they moved forward, they would be attacked by the Ming army's cavalry. Zheng Gang did not dare to take this risk, so he stopped firing. After seeing that there were indeed Ming soldiers in the Ming army camp, he did not dare to push his cannons forward and could only let his cannons continue attacking.
Little did they know that the Ming army only left 5,600 people in the Shelter, and the rest had already retreated. Zheng Gang was fighting a lonely battle.
"Hehe, although the Ming soldiers are strong, our cannons are still better.”
Zheng Gang, who didn't know the truth, praised his own cannon and then left the marshal's platform with a clear conscience. He ordered his men to continue firing and at the same time, ordered the people of Rising Dragon Mansion to speed up the production of gunpowder and stone bullets.
"He also wants to let the Ming army have a taste of being bombarded by cannons ~"
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