Chapter 156 Hard Village

"Boom."

After a flash of fire and a loud muffled sound.

The few unresponsive soldiers under the wooden muzzle immediately howled and fell backwards, rolling on the ground.

One of the soldiers was rolling and trembling, holding his face under the iron helmet with both hands, shouting vaguely: "Ah...my face, my eyes."

Soon, his cries became quieter and hoarse, as if he was losing his strength.

After the blood mist dissipated, his body, like the other soldiers who had been hit, was bleeding like a sieve.

A group of gray-faced men ten meters away from these soldiers all looked up in astonishment at the muzzle of the wooden cannon being retracted on the top of the village wall and were stunned, with fear written all over their faces.

At this time, several feathered arrows flew sparsely from behind them toward the wall. One of them hit the log fence with a "bang" and began to shake. Others seemed to be able to fly over the wall.

A slovenly bearded man who was looking down made a muffled cry, grabbed the arrow tail that suddenly appeared on his neck, and fell down. The other figures immediately shrank back.

Looking at the bandits who fell to the ground and were still twitching, a man who was probably an officer wearing a short iron armor finally started to yell.

"Mom, don't be a coward. Go build a ladder and go up."

While cursing, the officer vigorously kicked the butts of several soldiers around him.

When several soldiers gasped and lifted the ladder up from the pile of corpses under the wall, the officer held a shield in one hand and a knife in the other, and stood there for a moment while looking up at the earthen wall that was only a few meters high.

The muzzle of the wooden cannon has disappeared, but what else is on it?

The unknown is sometimes more frightening.

After the officer yelled a few times to cheer him up, he finally yelled: "I'll go first, you follow."

After saying that, the officer only relied on his legs and body to stick to the ladder and slowly stepped up with a delicate balance.

When the officer was already as high as a person, a soldier on the escalator below gritted his teeth and climbed up the ladder with a knife.

"Boom."

There was another dull cannon blast.

Although the smoke was not coming from the officer's head this time, and it was still a wooden cannon.

But wooden cannons are also artillery after all.

The sound of such close-range firing is still very loud and shocking, enough to eclipse all the chaos and shouting within dozens of meters.

The officer, whose head was almost as high as the village wall, was shaken to the point of being sluggish. His neck involuntarily shrank, and at the same time he subconsciously glanced in the direction of the gunfire.

Twenty meters away, a small piece of blood mist floated under the wall of the village again.

However, during this moment of distraction, several figures appeared from the wall above the officer's head, and then two very long spears quickly stretched out from the left and right sides.

One spear was blocked by the officer's tilted shield and slid aside, while the other spear successfully passed through the gap and stabbed the officer's waist.

With a "clang" sound, the spear, which was not very powerful, came into close contact with the short-shielded iron armor of the ladder-climbing officer, and then also slid to the side.

Tie Zhajia has made a great contribution, and the officer's life should be safe.

But the officer had trouble maintaining his balance while holding a shield in one hand and a knife in the other. This stab immediately caused him to shake violently and fall to one side with an "ouch" sound.

The soldier following the officer did not hold a shield.

Ben was holding the ladder and staring upwards. He happened to witness the officer being stabbed and falling. Since he could not judge whether he would be hit, he instinctively jumped to the ground on the other side, which was not too high.

But at this moment, a three-eyed gun protruded from the wall of the village.

In the continuous firelight, the officer who had just fallen to the ground instantly covered a part of his upper body and howled.

Tie Zhajia did not bring him any luck this time.

The sudden concentration of fire cannons and three-eyed cannons and the sudden sound of three cannons completely slowed down the offensive under the wall and made the brave attackers hesitate.

The feeling of being bombarded at close range by firearms, especially artillery, is quite unpleasant.

All climbing operations seemed to be interrupted.

Under the wall, some irritable and anxious curses began to erupt one after another, and the sudden and chaotic whistles made the panicked crowd at a loss what to do.

But there was a lot of applause and curses on the wall.

Then more stones mixed with bamboo arrows began to pour downward, further exacerbating the chaos under the wall.

Several large rows of musketry soldiers who were dozens of meters away from the outside of the village wall began to rush forward in a chaotic manner. They did not stop until they were more than ten meters away from the village wall, and began to form a chaotic formation.

Most of them were very confused and cowering, looking at the top and bottom of the wall, looking for their officers.

Suddenly, a musket soldier who was holding a musket and a match rope was shot in the shoulder by a bamboo arrow. The soldier who was shot immediately screamed exaggeratedly.

"Bang, bang, bang..."

Finally, as several officers waved their sabers, the first row of cannons fired in confusion.

After a puff of smoke, another row of cannon soldiers fired upwards.

It finally became quiet above the village wall.

But the people above the wall probably weren't killed so easily. They were more likely to lay down temporarily. Anyway, the people under the wall probably wouldn't be able to climb up at this time.

Bird guns are smoothbore guns, and the lead bullets do not rotate, so the shooting is completely rough. In other words, most bullets do not go in a straight line, but in irregular oblique curves. The spread of impact points will only make you wonder.

arrive.

This is also the reason why the tactic of queuing to kill appeared in Europe.

Regarding the hit rate of muskets, the Prussian army once conducted an experiment on muskets from Prussia and France.

For a target that is 10 feet wide and 6 feet high (3.05×1.83m), the Prussian Army's Model 1782 musket fires 100 rounds and can hit 60 rounds at a distance of 100 steps (76 meters); 40 rounds at 200 steps; 300 rounds.

There were only 25 rounds per shot. And the results of the French 1777 smoothbore gun were not much better.

You know, this is still an ideal experimental state.

Taking into account the impact of battlefield environment, such as smoke, fear, noise and other factors on the hearts of soldiers, the hit rate on the real battlefield is much lower than this ideal test.

When the muskets were rifled and the technology became fully mature, and when bullets could be pointed and hit wherever they went, the queuing-to-shooting tactic finally slowly came to an end.

As for the bird musket, it is definitely technically inferior to the Prussian Army's Model 1782 smoothbore gun.

This is also the reason why the defenders on the wall were not so worried about the rows of bird shooters that always gathered on the far side of the wall.

As long as these bird gunners do not get too close, and do not enter the shooting range of three-eyed muskets and bamboo arrows that are much closer than theirs, they don't have to worry about being suddenly struck by long-distance concentrated fire by the bird gunners.

As for the arrival of the cannon soldiers, it is not a big problem.

Since there was no wind today, the smoke produced by the cannon soldiers' firing could not dissipate for half a day. This meant that after the cannon soldiers fired a shot, they could no longer aim accurately and could only shoot at a general area.

In this way, the defenders cannot stand and defend the city, and the attackers cannot dare to attack.

In the end, the small battlefield turned into a fireworks display for the cannon soldiers.

Taking advantage of this moment, some soldiers gathered under the wall of the village covered their ears with various objects while dragging out the corpses and wounded of their companions lying on the ground.

But some people refused to do this. They tried hard to hear the voice from the rear through the sound of frying beans. They seemed to want to wait for some order.

They are hesitating.

At this time, Li Ping was about 200 meters behind them, looking at the chaos under the wall with a livid face.

This small wall made of earth, stone and huge trees seemed to be an insurmountable barrier for them.

Two attacks resulted in more than 100 casualties. They didn't even climb up the wall, and the enemy had just brought out the cannon.

The bandits still have some strength left, but they can hardly stand it anymore.

This is a disaster.

This bandit's den does not occupy a large area, but its geographical location is excellent.

In the Ming Dynasty, there were a large number of large lakes around the junction of Jingzhou, Jingmen and Qianjiang. One of them, Chang Lake, was the largest and most famous.

Its northern waters go deep into the hills, with winding lake shores and numerous lake branches, and are connected to many small lakes and sub-lakes.

Of course, most of these lakes have disappeared today, and even the long lakes that still exist have shrunk severely.

The Ming Dynasty poet Yuan Zhongdao's poem "The Ling Valley has changed for thousands of years, the plains of Sichuan are indivisible, the Long Lake has hundreds of miles of water, and in the middle there is the tomb of the King of Chu..." summarizes the size and characteristics of Long Lake at that time.

The bandit's den that Li Ping was attacking was hidden in a lake in a corner of the long lake, and was built very cunningly on a high ground concave in the lake.

A section of the village wall that is three to four hundred meters long and five to six meters high effectively separates the village from the outside world.

But such an ingenious geographical feature did not arouse much vigilance among Li Ping's troops who were suffering from consecutive victories.

The troops, who had shown pride from top to bottom, were still making preparations based on past experience. They even felt that gathering the whole army together to reflect on the situation saved a lot of trouble.

In particular, there is only a not-so-wide waterway connecting this not-so-small sub-lake to the entire Chang Lake. The way for the bandits to escape by boat can easily be blocked, making it even more convenient for them to annihilate them.

Besides, it's not a fortress in a steep valley, but how strong can a bandit fortress in a plain and water town be, and it's just a wall?

Unfortunately, they were discovered as they approached here last night, but they knew nothing about it.

And their enemies also chose to remain silent.

Fo Xiao, when the first wave of troops who rushed to the wall set up ladders and prepared to climb up the quiet and scary wall, the sudden blast of gongs and drums almost scared the attackers out of their wits.
To be continued...