Chapter 728 A tough battle

"All gunners, get into combat positions immediately!" Watching the Ma Da Blue Army slowly advancing southward in the distance, Bart loudly issued an order to prepare for war.

The Mata Blue Army stopped about one mile away from Batavia City and slowly pushed the huge trebuchet to the front line of the array. Bart took the time to calculate the size of the opponent's troops in the battle. It was only in the north.

On this front, there are about 10,000 Ma Da Blue troops arrayed outside the city. As for the trebuchets of various sizes, there are currently more than 30 seen.

Although there is no news from the east and west sides yet, Bart believes that the Mata Blue Army will probably not concentrate all its forces in one direction to attack the city, and will definitely maintain enough pressure in the other two directions to allow the defenders in the city to

The army cannot easily gather in one place for defense.

Then a large number of flatbed trolleys began to transport the prepared stone bullets to the front line for stacking. After Bart confirmed the size of the stone bullets used by the opponent through the telescope, his face became even more ugly.

Judging from the size, the individual weight of these stone bullets is probably at least about a hundred kilograms. If it can be thrown near the city wall with a trebuchet, its power will not be much different from that of artillery shells. Although the speed of the artillery shells is faster

It is fast, but its weight is far inferior to this stone bullet, so its lethality is only between the two.

It’s not that the Malta Blue Army was not equipped with artillery. Before the war started, the British sold a lot of artillery to Lord Langsang, hoping that the Malta Blue Army could break through the Dutch-held Batavia City in one fell swoop. However, the Malta Blue Army

The army is not proficient in the use of artillery, and they are also very aware that artillery weapons require a large amount of ammunition that is expensive and inconvenient to replenish in war. In addition, the firing life of the artillery itself is relatively limited, so when attacking Pakistan

In the battle of Davia, Laden Langsang did not show his trump card from the beginning. Instead, he first used a more primitive trebuchet, which was less difficult and costly to use, as long-range firepower in siege warfare.

means of output.

Although the launch speed of this trebuchet is slow and the accuracy is very limited, no matter how primitive the method is, it cannot support a large number. If dozens of trebuchets are concentrated to launch stone bombs at several points, the power is still quite terrifying. Bart's performance

It was in 1629 that my brother was killed by a stone bullet falling from the sky when the Ma Da Blue Army attacked the city. At that time, Bart was not far from him and witnessed his cousin transform from a living person to a human being in one second.

Although three years have passed since the process of making a pile of minced meat, that terrifying scene will still appear repeatedly in Bart's mind. And now the scene outside the city reminds Bart once again of the fear of being dominated by the trebuchet.

.

With the sound of bull horns echoing on the plain outside the city, the siege operation of the Ma Da Blue Army finally kicked off. Bart was a professional soldier after all. Although there was still an indelible fear in his heart, he quickly calmed down and

Command the artillerymen to start loading ammunition.

While the trebuchet was slowly loading, the infantry of the Ma-Da Blue Army began to continue to advance. However, the advancement speed at this time was much faster than before. The soldiers holding swords, guns and shields in their hands trotted all the way towards Baja.

In the city of Davia, there were still many engineers carrying ladders, planks and other tools.

Although the opponent's troops quickly entered the artillery range, Bart was not in a hurry to open fire. He knew that the commander on the opposite side was waiting for the city defense artillery to fire, so that the opponent could accurately determine the location of the city defense firepower point, and then use stone throwing

The aircraft carried out a concentrated attack. Bart had to place the enemy closer, so that when a fight broke out, the artillery could fire at least two more rounds before the opponent retreated.

It wasn't until a large number of the Ma Da Blue Army's troops had entered a distance of 300 meters that Bart gave the order to open fire. The artillery fire on the city wall and the small stronghold outside the city continued. About twenty artillery participated in this round of bombardment. The gunpowder burned.

The smoke behind them enveloped the city, making it difficult for Bart to see clearly the results of this round of shelling.

However, when the smoke dissipated, the stone projectiles thrown by the trebuchets had also flown from outside the city to several major fort positions at the head of the city. What Bart had worried about before became a reality. These tall trebuchets were indeed

With a terrifying range, several heavy stone bullets hit the city head hard. Although they did not directly hit the defenders on the city wall, the terrifying feeling of seeing stones the size of marching drums falling from the sky still made everyone

Everyone yelled and lowered their bodies, subconsciously trying to avoid it.

A stone bullet hit the city wall near Bart, and the splashed rammed earth covered Bart's head and face. Bart spat out the dirt in his mouth, and the Nordic blood was immediately aroused. He stood up and cursed fiercely.

He swore foul language, then yelled at the artillerymen and immediately continued loading and shooting outside the city.

"Aim at those damn trebuchets and blow them up!" Bart ordered loudly.

After the Mata Blue Army's trebuchets showed their power, Bart had to temporarily give up using artillery fire to attack the advancing infantry units, and instead targeted the trebuchets that were more threatening in the distance.

The infantry of the Ma Da Blue Army seized this gap and quickly advanced outside the defensive trench. Among the various siege equipment they carried, there was a combination of tools specially used to break through this obstacle. Panting

The engineers erected the long ladder in their hands at the edge of the trench, and then let it fall to the other side. The ladder was long enough to form a passage in the trench, which was about six meters wide.

However, if it is just such a narrow and crude passage, it will obviously take a lot of time for the siege troops to pass through the trench smoothly, so these ladders are usually built in two pairs next to each other, and then someone follows up and lays prefabricated ladders on the ladder.

Good wooden boards. There are also some engineers who jumped directly into the trench with wooden sticks as thick as their arms, trying to use the wooden sticks in their hands to prop up the bridge in the middle. The leading troops of Matalan who attacked the city at night two days ago have already measured it.

The water depth and flow velocity in the trench are required to ensure the feasibility of this bridge-building tactic.

There were seven or eight such simple bridges being erected at the same time, and the only way to stop them was the shooting of Dutch muskets on the defensive line. From time to time, shot-in-arms soldiers would fall into the water from the edge of the ditch and the ladder bridge.

Become floating corpses one after another. The Ma Da Blue Army also has its own means of counterattack at this distance. In addition to a small number of matchlock guns, they also have bows and arrows and throwing short spears. Although the accuracy of these cold weapons may be worse than even matchlock guns.

No, but hundreds of sharp blades were shot out at the same time, and the covering shooting effect still inevitably caused casualties to the defenders.

Fortunately, the city defense artillery fire has achieved results. The two trebuchets were easily torn apart by the shells that bounced off the ground. This gave the Dutch artillery more confidence. After all, the opponent's firing speed is much slower than the artillery.

Since there are no cover facilities, if the battle continues like this, the side with the artillery will definitely have the upper hand.

The small number of Matalan soldiers who had crossed the ditch from the ladder bridge began to attack several small forts outside the city, but they probably forgot that these forts were all within the coverage of the city's firepower.

Hundreds of muskets quickly taught them the principles of life. The firepower advantage of the bastion's design began to be reflected at this moment. Due to the existence of the fortress outside the city, there were no shooting dead spots near the city wall, and the inside was high and the outside was low.

The two lines of defense inside and outside naturally formed a three-dimensional firepower output, which put enemies who tried to attack the fortress or climb the city wall into a dilemma.

Outside the north gate of Batavia are two adjacent wedge-shaped fortresses, each stationed with two hundred soldiers. Coupled with the fire cover from the city head, any attempt to directly attack the city gate will be in vain. Cross

The horse-drawn blue troops who crossed the moat dropped nearly two hundred corpses near the fortress, but they had not even touched the edge of the city gate.

The Mater Blue Army's tactic of crossing the moat was undoubtedly very successful, but they were unable to overcome the special defense line of the bastion, which was covered in thorns. The Mater Blue soldiers had almost no protective measures, which led to their inability to fight during the battle.

The casualty rate was much higher than that of the Dutch defenders. After losing about 1,200 to 300 people, the Malta Blue Army gave a signal to retreat, and the survivors quickly retreated back the way they came.

The Dutch defenders did not attack rashly. After all, almost their only combat advantage lies in the strong fortress. Without this environment, even if they can use muskets to fight, they may not be as good as horses fighting with scimitars and spears.

How strong are the blue men? In a face-to-face battle, they can only have two to three rounds of shooting opportunities within the range of the musket. The opponent's troop advantage is more than two or three times, and a direct confrontation with the human sea tactic is enough.

All the Dutch in Batavia were killed. Therefore, the combat concept implemented by the Dutch army from the beginning was to hold on and use solid city defenses to wear down the opponent's offensive.

Taking advantage of the lull in the fighting, the defenders of the fortress outside the city hurried to the trench to clean up the ladder bridge built by the Matalan people. Only then did they discover that the Matalan people had driven iron hoops into the ground and smashed the ladder bridge.

Both ends of the ladder bridge were firmly fixed on the shore. After it was pulled out of the ground, it was revealed that the iron hoop was in the shape of a horseshoe, about one foot long, with both ends sharpened to facilitate penetration into the ground. It was obviously specially made.

Equipment. This also shows that the opponent's tactics are not improvised, but have been fully prepared and practiced.

Although the war broke out suddenly, both warring parties made a lot of preparations for the war. The Dutch strengthened the city's defenses, expanded the size of the garrison, and improved the city's management and dispatching measures during wartime.

The horses and blue men have optimized the means of siege. Whether it is the large trebuchet or the tactic of ladder bridge crossing the trench, they are all new things that did not appear in the last battle.

Bart ignored the need to rest and ordered an immediate inventory of the battle losses and consumption in this battle. The personnel losses were mainly concentrated in the fortress outside the city. The close-range bows, arrows and spear-throwing tactics of the horse-defeating blue army were indeed quite powerful.

Including several stone bullets that directly hit the fortress, a total of more than 20 casualties were caused to the defenders and more than 30 wounded who needed to retreat from the front line to recuperate. Fortunately, the defenders at the top of the city did not

There were casualties, and only a dozen people were injured by fragments of stone bullets. None of the artillery and forts were damaged, which made Bart breath a sigh of relief. Although there were spare artillery in the city, the spare artillery had to be moved up the city wall.

, and re-installing and calibrating it is also a time-consuming and labor-intensive matter.

As for the consumption, it was mainly concentrated on weapons and ammunition. During the one hour and seventeen minutes of fighting, the defenders fired a total of 140 rounds of artillery shells, with a firing frequency of nearly two rounds per minute. It is difficult to count the number of rounds fired for muskets.

But after the war alone, more than 30 guns needed to be repaired due to malfunctions. The current rate of making muskets in the military workshop in Batavia is only two or three a day. If high-intensity continuous work is to be carried out,

In battle, the speed of making guns may not keep up with the speed of gun wear.

Van Diemen also came to the front line at this time and asked Commander Bart about the battle situation. Bart had just started to say a few words when he was interrupted by Van Diemen: "Lieutenant Bart, please tell me the results of the battle and the battle damage."

We can talk about it later."

Bart was a little confused about what he meant and was stunned and did not respond to Van Diemen immediately.

Van Diemen sighed and explained: "Now the council needs to know the results of the battle immediately, Lieutenant Bart, I must let those stupid shareholder agents know that the city defense army is far more reliable than they think! I want to obtain authority from them,

So that more resources can be mobilized from the city to resist the invaders outside the city!"

Only then did Bart come back to his senses: "General, please give me some time. I'll have someone count the results of the battle right now!"

Compared with the damage caused by the battle, the killing results of this battle are really worthy of making the defenders proud. The Mata Blue Army suffered more than a thousand casualties in this battle. There were more than 600 corpses dumped near the trench alone, and

Some wounded soldiers who were lucky enough to escape may not be able to survive until their injuries recover. Due to the hot temperature, the city defenders cannot let these corpses rot and stink near the fortress and city walls, because it is very likely to bring plague. Fan

Dimen organized thousands of people to dig large pits for corpses outside the city and bury them.

The Ma Da Blue Army on the opposite side also had a tacit understanding not to launch another attack during this period. It was not until the battlefield was cleared in the afternoon and the civilians returned to the city that the horns of horns sounded again in the wilderness. The Ma Da Blue Army came out of camp and lined up towards Ba.

March to the city of Davia.

Bart was very depressed to find from the telescope that the number of trebuchets in the opponent's array was not less than that in the morning, but actually increased by about a quarter. It could be seen that the Ma Da Blue Army was indeed planning this siege.

Careful preparation. Perhaps after the tentative attack in the morning, the opponent has made some adjustments to the offensive strategy.

"These damn infidels!" Bart put down his telescope and ordered angrily: "Order everyone to get into combat positions and prepare to fire!"
Chapter completed!