The room goes through the late Ming Dynasty, and the back door leads to North America at the beginni

Thousands of border troops from the Shaanxi Jinglu Camp stayed in the trenches on the eastern front line.

As the enemy troops approached the trenches amid artillery bombardment, a general was giving repeated instructions to his soldiers.

"Remember, when the bandits are within 200 steps, use the tiger crouching cannon to attack them first; when they are within 60 or 70 steps, use the muskets to attack them."

"If the tiger squat cannon and muskets can't stop the bandits, when they are within thirty steps, don't hide in the trenches, rush up and fight them hand to hand."

"You have to know that if you hide in the trenches at that time, you will only be defeated by their small army of enemies, and you will definitely die!"

In order to deal with the Hui army, the Chu army's wise men exhausted their brains and came up with this set of tactics. Of course, this was also based on the fact that they had fought with the Hui army many times and had a better understanding of the Hui army's tactics.

As for how to deal with the artillery and shrapnel of the Hui army, it was not mentioned above, and the Chu army soldiers could only rely on trenches.

The trenches could only reduce the chances of the Chu army being hit or injured by shrapnel, but they could not completely prevent it. If anyone was injured or killed by shrapnel, they could only blame themselves for their bad luck.

However, with the trenches in place, the Chu army was no longer as passive as before when facing the artillery fire of the Hui army.

This is also because the Chu army's trench tactics were invented not long ago and still have many shortcomings. For example, there are no bullet shelters in the trenches, and there are no traffic roads between the trenches, so they can only rely on the military camps.

If there were transportation roads, the Chu army would be more flexible in advancing, retreating, gathering and dispersing between trenches and military camps, the gap in weapons and equipment and the quality of soldiers would be further narrowed, and the battle would be easier to fight.

Under round after round of artillery bombardment, the vanguard of the Kuomintang army soon arrived at a position more than 200 steps in front of the first trench.

At this time, the enemy troops stopped and set up mortars.

However, the Xunfeng Guards of the Hui army had already learned about the trench tactics of the Chu army, and naturally prepared countermeasures.

In fact, the Hui army has had the advantage of firearms for so many years, and the General Staff had already studied the corresponding tactics to deal with anti-artillery tactics according to Liu Sheng's instructions.

The mortar is a weapon used to counter the first generation of trench tactics.

The support of the Lai Army's mortar can be adjusted. When the elevation angle is raised to a certain level, small shrapnel shells can be fired into the trench.

At this time, the vanguard of the Hui army did just that.

The captain of the Chu army in the Jinglu camp originally wanted to wait for the Hui army to get within 200 steps and then use the tiger squat cannon to give them a severe blow, but he never expected that he was hit by a round of artillery shells from the Hui army first.

The shrapnel fired by the mortar is small and has little power, but there are many of them!

The vanguard of the Hui army this time had thousands of people, carrying more than 800 mortars!

In addition, mortar shells were more likely to fall into trenches than field artillery shells.

At this time, seven or eight hundred small explosive shells fell. Even if only half of them fell into the trench, they would blow the Chu army inside into pieces, leaving them burnt on the outside and tender on the inside.

The captain of the Jinglu Camp was lucky enough to survive. After he came to his senses, he asked in shock and anger: "What happened? How could the enemy's tiger squat cannon hit the trench? How did they do it?"

It was no wonder that the captain was shocked and angry. It was because the tiger squat cannon and the mortar were too similar. Even after many battles before, the Chu army had not been able to find the difference between the two.

At this time, under the attack of the Hui army's mortars, the Chu army could not withstand it at all.

Many of the surviving border soldiers climbed out of the trenches and ran to the back.

In this way, the first trench of the Chu army collapsed directly under the attack of the Hui army.

If the first trench was like this, the other trenches would naturally not be able to be defended.

Even if a small number of Chu soldiers stubbornly stayed in the trenches and waited for the Hai army to get closer, then shot at them with muskets, or even rushed into the crowd to engage in hand-to-hand combat, it would only be a waste of their lives.

In fact, the fact that the Hui army was able to break the trench tactics so easily was not entirely due to the mortars. Another important reason was that the Hui army had high morale, while the Chu army, on the contrary, had low morale and unstable military spirit. Naturally, they collapsed at the first touch when faced with a declining situation...

On the east gate tower of Ruyang.

Chen Wan was expecting his trenches and military camp defense system to deal a heavy blow to the bandits in this battle. Unexpectedly, not long after the battle started, the soldiers in the trenches on the front line retreated wave after wave.

Because it was too far away, he could only see the Chu army retreating, but he had no idea how the battle was fought in detail.

So he hurriedly ordered the soldiers of the Dubiao Camp, "Quickly send someone to the front to ask why they are retreating one after another!"

"Yes!"

Just as the troops of Du Biaoying were leaving the city, several trenches on the front line were lost again, and it seemed that the Hui army was about to advance to within four miles of the east wall of Ruyang City.

By then, the Hui army could push the field artillery over and directly bombard the Ruyang city wall.

In this way, the trench and military camp defense system built by Chen Wan lost most of its effectiveness.

So Chen Wan was extremely worried.

After a long time, the people from the Du Biao camp came back.

"Reporting to the commander, the generals on the front line all said that the tiger crouching cannon can be fired directly into the trench, and it is a shrapnel shell!"

"What?!" Chen Wan was also shocked and even unwilling to believe it. "How is this possible?"

In his opinion, no matter if the cannons of the Hui army were running or occasionally hitting the trenches, they were definitely a minority and would not cause the front-line troops to flee.

Therefore, at the moment, he Ning Yuan believed that it was just a lie made up by the front-line generals to shirk responsibility, and it was not the real thing.

In just a short while, the vanguard of the Hui army had already advanced to within three miles of the city wall.

The artillery on the top of Ruyang City immediately opened fire.

However, the accuracy of the Chu army's artillery was already very poor, and they used iron bullets. In the land covered with trenches, the damage they could cause to the Hui army was quite limited, and they could not even slow down the Hui army's attack speed.

Moreover, the field artillery of the Wei army quickly advanced to within three or four miles of the city wall.

At the commander's command, more than two hundred field guns roared together, and the sky full of artillery fire immediately suppressed the Chu army's cannons on the east wall of Ruyang.

Even the artillery batteries in the military camps outside the city were destroyed by the artillery of the Lai army, or were so badly hit that they could not raise their heads and could hardly fight back.

Afterwards, with the advantage of artillery fire, the Hui army began to break through the trenches one by one and take down the Chu army camps one by one as before.

At noon, the Hui army rested in an orderly manner for an hour.

By the afternoon, the Hui army quickly reached the city wall and began the real siege.

The Hui army had many artillery pieces and explosive packs made of yellow dynamite, so at this point in the battle, the outcome was no longer in doubt.

boom!
With a loud bang, a section of the east wall of Ruyang City collapsed directly due to the explosion of the explosive pack!
The Chu army on both sides of the collapsed area were horrified. When they came to their senses, they immediately fled in panic.

Some people even shouted as they ran: "The city has been breached! Escape!"

When Chen Wan saw this on the east gate tower, he knew that it was impossible to defend Ruyang City.

Perhaps if he retreated into the city, he could rely on the Du Biao Battalion to engage in street fighting and drag it out for a day or two.

But that was meaningless, and Ruyang would eventually fall into the hands of the Hui army.

He couldn't just surrender to the enemy.

He then came to the third floor of the city gate tower, bowed towards the south, and cried out sadly: "Your Majesty! I am incompetent and cannot defend Ruyang. I can only die to apologize!"

After saying that, he jumped down from the city gate tower... (End of this chapter)