Outlaws of the Marsh

Chapter 126 Offense and Defense ([-])

...

After paying the price of dozens of human lives, the siege team of the government army finally broke through the third and last fire wall.

Under Hu Yanzhuo's instructions, the rear battalion of the Chenzhou infantry replaced the Chenzhou front battalion, which had nearly half of the casualties.

At the same time, under the command of Guanghui, a battalion of soldiers and civilians began to throw rolling logs and stones down the pass!

Below the first pass is a very steep slope.

As soon as the rolling wood and stone fell on the slope, the rolling speed was greatly increased by the slope, and then it went straight to the siege troops, and its power was no less than that of the boulder thrown by the catapult.

What's even more frightening is that rolling logs and stones can destroy siege equipment such as siege carts, ladder carts, and wooden curtain carts. People who are hit by them are even more dead than alive. Sometimes a rolling log may kill [-] people. !

In addition, the stopped rolling logs and rocks also became roadblocks, which greatly hindered the speed of the siege team!

Faced with this situation, even if Han Xin is reborn, he can only try to break through to the pass as soon as possible, and then launch a general attack!

In the end, the Chenzhou Infantry Rear Battalion paid the price of more than 100 casualties, four wooden mantle carts, one ladder cart, and three 轒辒 carts, and finally advanced to the bottom of the Li Pass, and then the Chenzhou Infantry Left Battalion pushed up again Several wooden curtain carts, ladder carts, and rolling carts were replaced, and the rear battalion of the Chenzhou infantry was replaced.

The siege battle has officially begun!
……

In the reeds.

The three heroes of the Ruan family, Zhang Shun, Li Jun, Tong Wei, Tong Meng and the leaders of the navy gathered in one episode.

Looking at the ships around them, iron leaves and arrows were nailed in rows on the bows to hurt them. The cabins were filled with reeds and dry firewood, and the firewood was filled with sulphur, flame and nitrate.

Ruan Xiaoer said: "Gongsun Daoist concluded that tonight is the east wind, so we can do it anytime, but I want to wait until the middle of the night before doing it, what do you think?"

Zhang Shundao: "The second half of the night is the best, when they are on the ground, they will definitely fall asleep, we can catch them by surprise."

Ruan Xiaoer said: "I think so too, but please be careful, Hu Yanqing should be someone who understands water warfare. On this road, he would rather detour than drill into the reeds, presumably to prevent us Set fire to the reeds."

Li Jundao: "Besides, he only connects three or five boats together, and the distance between the front and rear is huge. Even if we learn from Zhuge Liang and Zhou Yu and set fire to the boats, it won't help. This is not an easy opponent."

In fact, Li Jun, Tong Wei, and Tong Meng were not involved in this battle. Li Yan's order to the three of them was to fully develop the Chengkou Salt Farm and not to participate in this battle.

But Li Jun soon wrote a personal letter to Li Yan, which roughly meant: He represented Tong Wei, Tong Meng, and Ma Lin to fight, and the four were willing to be small soldiers, and they wanted to live and die with Shuibo Liangshan.

Feeling Li Jun's sincerity, Li Yan asked Li Jun to lead Tong Wei and Tong Meng back to join the battle, leaving only Ma Lin and his Nadu infantry to guard the Chengkou Salt Field.

After Li Jun, Tong Wei, and Tong Meng came back, Li Yan sent the three of them together with Ruan Xiaoqi to the navy to strengthen the navy.

Ruan Xiaoqi said disdainfully: "So what if he prevents us from burning the reeds? He can also guard against our Liang Shanshui Army's Wooden Crow and Underwater Dragon King Cannon?"

Wooden crow.

A water warfare killer developed by Liu Huiniang.

Of course, the idea was provided by Li Yan to Liu Huiniang.

Its principle is actually very simple, to put it bluntly, it is an underwater explosive package, as long as its waterproof and ignition problems are solved.

After these two problems are solved, the diving master can hang it on the bottom of the ship and detonate it, and the enemy ship can be sunk.

In addition to Mu Laoya, Liang Shanshui Army also has a big killer in the water-the underwater Dragon King Cannon.

The structure of the underwater Dragon King Cannon is to use cow urine foam as a thunder shell to keep water tight, and the inside is filled with black powder, and incense is used as a fuze. For ventilation, the board goes up and down with the waves, and water cannot be poured in to ensure that the incense can burn normally, and stones fall under the cow urine bubble, so that it has a downward force.To maintain stability while drifting.

The fuze of the underwater dragon king gun determines the burning time of the incense according to the distance to the enemy ship and the speed of the water flow. It uses the water flow as the driving force. Bombard enemy ships from underwater by surprise.

It is precisely because of the two big killers, Mu Laoya and Underwater Dragon King Pao, as well as diving masters such as Zhang Shun and the Ruan brothers, that Li Yan, Liu Huiniang, Wen Huanzhang and others decided to send the officers and troops to Liangshan and then take advantage of Liangshan's terrain and The general strategic policy of the officers and soldiers to defend the city is because only in this way, the official ships will be stationary, and then maximize the destructive power of the two big killers, the Mulaoya and the underwater Dragon King Cannon, as well as the diving power of Zhang Shun and the Ruan brothers. The advantage of masters is the only way to wipe out the official army in the end.

In fact, there is another very important reason why Li Yan and others set this general policy - to seize the ship.

Since Li Yan built the saltworks in Chengkou and opened up the rear area of ​​Jeju Island, there was a serious shortage of boats in Shuibo Liangshan, especially large boats.

Although Meng Kang and Ye Chun were able to build them, after such a long time, they only built four more large ships with a load of [-] shi, which was far from enough for the fleet moored in Liangshan.

This time Hu Yanzhuo brought ten large ships with a load of [-] shi and two hundred ships with a load of [-] shi. If they can be captured, even if only half of them are captured, they will be enough to moor Liangshan in a short time. The strength of the army will also more than double.

The bombing ships are the main ones. After the war, as long as those sunk ships are towed to the shipyard in Shuibo Liangshan for simple repairs, those ships can serve Shuibo Liangshan.

It can be said that Li Yan and others racked their brains in order to make Shuibo Liangshan grow stronger.

Of course, what should be burned still has to be burned.

Whether it is Mu Laoya or Underwater Dragon King Pao, they are not yet fully mature, so it is inevitable that there will be fish that slip through the net.

At this time, you can't feel sorry for those fish that slipped through the net. They must be burned. After all, no matter how important the boat is, it is not as important as victory.

This is why Li Yan and others arranged hundreds of fire boats.

Now everything is ready, even the east wind, there is only a suitable time...

……

……

PS:

After reading the comments, some people questioned Big Bird why he didn't set fire to the boats, but instead engaged in city defense battles. Here I will explain a few words to you.

First of all, if the official army does not have a navy, Liangshan will naturally have an advantage in fighting with it. After all, Liangshan has diving masters such as Zhang Shun and the Ruan brothers.

But this time the official army brought [-] sailors, the regular navy, and the Liang Shanshui army really have an advantage?Even if there is, head-to-head, I am afraid that it will hurt the enemy one thousand and self-damage eight hundred, which is very fatal in the initial stage.

Someone proposed to set fire to the reed marshes, which is actually a good idea, and I thought so too.

But after thinking about it, I didn't write it like that.

The reason is that I don't want to write about the general as an idiot, who doesn't even know how to hide in the reeds without being burned by the enemy, and I want Hu Yanqing, let alone make him an idiot.

As for fighting a defensive war with the government and the army, I dare not agree with this point.

Although there are many leaders in Shuibo Liangshan at present, their overall strength is still very weak. It can be said that they have no strengths.

The Liangshan army had to go through a cruel battle before they could slowly transform into a regular army, otherwise they would only be a group of bandits, and the safest cruel battle should be the battle of defending the city. Other battles should not be as easy to fight as defending the city, especially It is in the case of the natural danger of Liangshan.

So, after comprehensive consideration, I designed this battle.

In addition, let me explain that this idea is not all mine. I wrote this paragraph with reference to the passage in "Water Margin" that defeated Gao Qi three times.

In "Water Margin", because Gao Yu brought Liu Menglong, Niu Bangxi and other healthy sailors, Song Jiang and others did not dare to fight with them, so they first put the army on Liangshan to fight, and then forcibly lowered the army With his strength, he forcibly used spells to set fire to the official ship.

I don't have spells here, I can only cheat a little bit in technology.

It's not actually cheating.

The wooden old crow was invented by the pirates of Dongting Lake in the Southern Song Dynasty a few years later.

The underwater dragon king cannon was invented in the Yuan Dynasty.

Hmm... In fact, this chapter was not originally written in this way, but after seeing many readers' comments, I thought about it and rewrote everything I wrote originally, in order not to cause misunderstandings.

Um...to be honest, I went to see my girl’s performance today on June [-]st, and took her to play with her all afternoon. I wrote it in advance, but I saw that many people questioned my thinking, and had to overthrow and rewrite those two chapters. It was almost eight o'clock (at night) when I came back, and there was only enough time to write this chapter.

Feel sorry!

(End of this chapter)