Xinshun 1730

Chapter 61 Zhao Kuo VS Zhao Kuo
The call for help was delivered to his orderly.Before these "barbarians" blocked the river, Hannibal sent the messenger and several soldiers to swim across the river to deliver a message to the castle upstream.

So far, Hannibal is still full of confidence.

The barbarians outside the city will not attack the city at all.Even these barbarians didn't know to burn the surrounding rye fields.

The greatest display of his self-confidence was to grind all the rye stored in the castle into flour at the beginning of the siege without even sending out soldiers.

If there is even a little bit of attention, as a fortress engineer, the first lesson of defending the city is "The attacking side's artillery can easily hit the towering mill, so it is necessary to send enough soldiers on the first day of the siege. Grind all the grains into flour before wrecking."

Defending the city is a science.

Science always needs experimentation, but the test object of this knowledge is the life of soldiers.

Hannibal is very confident, not only because of his confidence in his knowledge, but also because his opponent is too weak.

Add the two together, double the confidence, double the ease.

However, the day after the call for help was sent, that confidence turned into panic.

Hannibal was surprised to find that the barbarians outside the city had started to move.

He thought that these barbarians would continue to attack the city wall with courage and fear of death, and become targets for the defenders to practice marksmanship.

Not so.

On the contrary, the barbarians outside the city began to dig trenches "professionally" about three or four hundred steps away from the bastion.

Through the binoculars, Hannibal could see clearly.

Seventeen wagons filled with dirt were spaced out.

In a group of four, the first person hid behind the carriage, half-knelt on the ground, and dug a hole there with a shovel.

The three people behind continued to pile up the excavated soil behind the side of the carriage, forming a parapet that could resist lead bullets and ricochets.

When the first person dug half a person deep, the four of them worked together to push the covering carriage forward.

The first person continued to dig a half-man pit, and the three behind were separated by a distance.The pit dug out by No.1 was enlarged and deepened, and the soil was piled up in front of Haogou.

Seventeen broken horse-drawn carriages and seventeen pit-digging teams formed a perfect arc around the bastion.

At this speed, a trench as the starting point for the attack will be dug in a maximum of three days.

This... shouldn't be the way a barbarian should know.

"There is also a fortress engineer on the opposite side." Hannibal came to a conclusion that he least wanted to believe.

To be able to attack a city, one must first be able to defend it.To be able to defend a city, one must first be able to attack it.

The military technology of the Khitan officer on the opposite side is not outdated, nor is it like the information he collected - Dashun completed the military reform at the level of the 80-year war 30 years ago during the war, but has maintained this level ever since. level, no progress.

This huge gap based on the previous misjudgment caused Hannibal to turn from extreme contempt at the beginning to panic.

At last he gave the first official order to defend the city, and sent the soldiers to grind all the rye into flour at once.

The artillery captain looked at the savages who were digging holes like groundhogs, and asked Hannibal for instructions.

"Brigadier general, can we attack them with artillery? Slow down their digging speed?"

Hannibal looked through the binoculars for a while, but rejected the artillery captain's suggestion.

"The artillery of the defending side will inevitably be destroyed by the attacking side. This is a matter of time. As long as the artillery is fired, the artillery position will be exposed."

"If there are enough reinforcements, the defenders' artillery should not hesitate to expose their artillery positions in advance to hinder the attacker's tunneling. Buy time for the reinforcements to arrive, and buy time for the main army to go to war."

"If there are not enough reinforcements, the limited defensive artillery that will inevitably be destroyed should be used at the most critical moment. Instead of being exposed early and being destroyed by the artillery of the attacking side."

"How to choose, this requires the commander of the fortress to have a clear judgment."

He memorized the fortress course of the French military academy, which is the experience accumulated by France, Spain, and the Netherlands for hundreds of years.

Completely correct.

Pointing to the protective slope in front of the moat, Hannibal explained to the artillery captain who didn't know much about fort defense.

"The artillery is attached to the bastion and shoots downward. As the enemy approaches, it is necessary to constantly adjust the elevation angle of the muzzle. It takes a long time to adjust the elevation angle, and the defender should try to avoid this situation."

"The protective slope in front of the trench is the best way to avoid this situation."

"The nine-degree angle extends to the protective slope in front of the trench, so that the artillery on the city does not need to adjust the elevation angle of the muzzle, and only needs a fixed angle to block the long protective slope. The height of the city wall, the angle of the protective slope, It's simple geometry that determines the optimum distance for the shelling."

"The artillery should be saved until the attacking party arrives at the protective slope and starts to attack. Try to block the protective slope and kill enough enemies before the attacking party's artillery is destroyed."

This is one of the fortress courses of the French Military Academy.

Completely correct.

Sin9 degree, 0.15, the bastion is three meters high, the longest distance of this protection slope is simply divided, it is about 20 meters.

The protective slope can prevent the artillery on the bastion from adjusting the elevation angle. The shells will bounce and roll when hitting the slope, and the killing range can be increased to 40 meters.

Behind the protective slope is the moat of the bastion.

At the end of the protective slope, there is a parapet.

Soldiers on the defensive side can stand at the parapet and shoot towards the slope, and cooperate with the artillery on the bastion and the musketeers on the height of the bastion to form a three-dimensional crossfire of the upper, middle and lower layers.

Under the premise that the defensive artillery will inevitably be destroyed, the distance of about 40 meters on the protective slope will be the place with the highest defensive killing efficiency.

After the attacking side's artillery is exposed at the bastion, it will take at least one to two days to counter and destroy it.

And during this day to two days, the attacker will continue to launch attacks.Because it is necessary to use the body of the infantry to test out the artillery configuration of the defender and indicate the attack target for the artillery.

Used properly, it can cause the attacker to shed a lot of blood.

However, if the protective slope is attacked, the fall of the bastion will only happen sooner or later.

As long as you reach the protective slope, or use heavy artillery to counter the defensive artillery and blast the city wall, or dig a tunnel to bury gunpowder, you can attack the bastion after brutal hand-to-hand combat.

But now, his strength is not enough.Hannibal understood that the bastion might not last as long as he imagined.

Once these groundhogs dug in front of the protective slope, they could only send limited troops to fight repeatedly with the opponent.Give up the protective slopes and trenches, and the fall of the bastion is just a matter of time.

If you don't give up, it will also drain your blood. After all, you only have more than 100 soldiers in your hands, which is seriously insufficient.

Hopefully, reinforcements can arrive before these people attack the protective slope.

Three days later, a trench three to 400 meters in front of the bastion was formed, and the continuous joining of the carriage cover team and the soldiers who were constantly familiar with the digging technology made the excavation speed increase visible to the naked eye every day.

After the first trench was formed, Hannibal found that the people had split into two.

Some people continued to push the carriage for cover, and dug a bigger hole near the first trench.

The accumulated soil slowly formed a small soil bag.

Someone filled the soil with woven baskets and built a wall in the place of the small soil bag, reserving a cannon emplacement that was obviously prepared for the cannon.

The whole body of the person cannot be seen through the binoculars, but in the deep trench, people are constantly rushing forward, just like groundhogs on the prairie advancing in the tunnel.

Someone carried the wood and threw it into the "cannon position", and someone inside could be seen laying wood on the ground.

Hannibal frowned, and counted the number of gun positions, about thirty.

In other words, the attacking side has at least thirty heavy artillery pieces.

The reason why it is determined to be heavy artillery is also the curriculum of the military academy:

Siege heavy artillery requires laying wood, planks or logs under the gun positions to prevent the heavy artillery from sinking into the soil, resulting in the inability to control the elevation angle of the muzzle.The wood spread out like a floor can reduce the pressure of the heavy artillery on the soil. The pressure is divided by the area to get the pressure.Of course it's not the same thing as the wheels pressing on the floor and the wheels pressing on the dirt.

That's still true.

Although there is no sign of the heavy artillery yet, Hannibal used his years of experience in the military academy to deduce that the heavy artillery from the siege side would arrive soon based on those artillery positions.

Except for those digging the heavy artillery emplacements, the rest started the classic Z-trench extension.

Lesson [-] of French Military Academy Fortress Engineering: The best choice for the siege side to approach the bastion is to start from the first trench and dig a Z-shaped trench, approaching in a zigzag manner.

Dig a vertical line directly, and the artillery of the defenders can shoot directly.If a shell falls into a ditch, it will pierce the candied haws.It would be better to hit the ground directly without cover.

For the turning angle of the Z-shaped trench, the shape of the bastion and the distribution of star angles should be considered to calculate the optimal angle, and within an adjustable range, choose the angle that saves the most effort.

The people who dug the Z-shaped trench were similar to those who dug the first trench before.

It is also a group of four. The first person digs himself deep in the front and then moves forward, and the people behind follow up to expand the trench.

But for a few days, the periphery of the bastion was like a spider web.

Numerous trenches extend inward from the first trench, winding and twisting.The defenders couldn't see any exposed people, only the dirt that kept flying out.

The terrifying silence on the battlefield increased the pressure on the defenders in the city.Someone couldn't help but shot into the trench, but it didn't do anything.

The artillery captain also gave up the idea of ​​testing shelling. Shelling has no effect on the Z trench unless someone invents an explosive shell and fires it with a mortar with a huge curve.

On the eighth day of the siege, the Z-shaped trench had extended to less than 200 meters in front of the bastion.

As Hannibal expected, when the Z-shaped trench was excavated to 200 meters from the bastion and about 110 meters from the protective slope, the excavation stopped.

Instead, turn sideways and start digging a second trench parallel to the bastion.

Hannibal knew that this trench would be wider and deeper than the first.This will serve as a rallying point for the final attack.

Another lesson in fortress engineering from the French Military Technical Institute: When the attacker is digging a second trench, it is the best time to go out of the city and counterattack.

If possible, the garrison commander should send elite grenadiers.When digging is slack in the evening, attack the second trench and fill it up.

Otherwise, once the second trench is dug and the attacker has a staging area and a forward position, the defensive counterattack will be killed by the attacker's musket.

That's still true.

But Hannibal couldn't use it.

Those damn Cossacks had all been buried outside the city before.

He has no extra troops in his hands, and the simple defense is already stretched, let alone going out of the city to fight back.

Through the binoculars, Hannibal saw that outside the first ditch in the distance, many people were cutting branches in the woods.

These branches are constantly being carried forward through the trench. Obviously, this is the preparation of the attacking party to fill the moat.

Once the attack began, the death squads would throw the branches and timber into the moat, filling the trench and breaking down the last outer line of defense of the bastion.

At the second trench, the groundhogs continued to build new emplacements.

Once the attack starts, the long-range heavy artillery will suppress the artillery of the defending side - if the artillery of the defending side counterattacks, the camera counterattacks and destroys; if there is no counterattack, the light artillery and mortars will take the opportunity to enter the artillery position at the second trench middle.

Bombard the protective slope at close range, forming irregular ricochet, killing and injuring the defending soldiers hiding behind the trench.

Once the deployment is completed, it is time for the general attack.

This is also the content of the military school curriculum.

Originally, according to the military school curriculum, by this time, the commander of the fortress had already dug a tunnel extending outward in the bastion.

Hang a bell on the tunnel, and use the ringing direction of the bell to judge the location where the attacker may dig the tunnel to bury the explosives.The fortress commander should dispatch elite infantry, dig tunnels, and throw grenades to fight back.

But this time, for the first time, Hannibal did not follow the curriculum of the military academy.

Because of the densely packed artillery emplacements being built outside, he was very sober. The attacking party didn't need to dig tunnels, as long as they bombarded with heavy artillery was enough.

Hannibal stared worriedly into the distance. Outside the first ditch, some people were maintaining a road leading to the forest in the distance.

Obviously, this road is prepared for the attacking side's heavy artillery.

Winter is still far away, and the attackers have plenty of time.It can be seen that they are not in a hurry, but are waiting for the heavy artillery to arrive.

The frontline is still hopelessly quiet, with only scenes of flying shovels and flying dirt.

There are no people, no guns, no cannons, but these flying mud are more terrifying than guns.

If it were someone else, they might have smiled and disapproved; but as a fortress engineer, Hannibal, these scenes are like the knights of the apocalypse who descended before the final judgment.

No. 15 days into the siege, the second trench has basically taken shape.The newly built emplacement is still empty, but the reserved firing holes are very clear, which is the first fort where Hannibal is located.

That is the support point of the entire defense system. Obviously, there is a detailed fortress deployment plan on the opposite side, and the key point of this inferior bastion can be easily judged.

Hannibal fell into deep despair.

The current situation is very clear. The war with Russia is not as simple as I imagined.The tribe will not have heavy artillery, let alone understand this effective siege technique.

What's even more frightening is that there was a big problem with the previous intelligence.

At least in terms of offensive and defensive fortresses, the Khitans in the south are not at the level of the 30 Years War.

A few days ago, he thought he was trying to copy the myth of the Portuguese in Cochin.

But now it seems that this may be his first and last actual battle as a fortress engineer.

Hannibal was ready to say his last prayers, knowing that it was only a matter of time before the bastion fell.

The only thing I can do is to use the remaining artillery in my hand to bleed the attacker on the protective slope.Use the most tragic battle for protective slope parapets and moats to delay at least 20 days.

When the reinforcements from upstream arrive, they can hold on for longer, but the fortress will be breached no later than the first snow falls.

Just as he fell into endless despair, some soldiers in the city shouted excitedly pointing at the lower reaches of the Heilongjiang River, just like the desperate Israelites in the story who saw Moses parting the Red Sea.

"Saint Andrew's Cross!"

"Saint Andrew's Cross!"

"Saint Andrew's Cross!"

"O Holy Mother of Mercy!"

"Navy! Navy! It's our navy!"

(End of this chapter)