The first to wreak havoc on the battlefield were the rebels' red cannons and general cannons.
As the longest-range firearm of this era, the rebels knew how to use it to provide artillery support to the infantry.
When the rebels opened fire, the New Army's artillery units remained motionless, as if they existed in a different realm from the battlefield.
They even had the leisure to comment on the rebel artillery.
"Brigadier, this artillery is terrible."
Jia Yunzhi held a telescope to observe the effects of the rebel shelling and chuckled after hearing this.
"Don't even look at it. Their shells are either iron balls or stone balls. Unless they hit someone, they are a waste. How can they be compared with our explosive shells?"
"Brigadier, why don't we fire? The shooting plan has been calculated a long time ago. It is guaranteed that one round of artillery fire can kill all these antiques."
Jia Yunzhi put on a straight face and said seriously: "Don't you know how to obey orders? When it's time for you to fire, no one can make any mistakes for me."
The New Army infantrymen who withstood the shelling were not nervous at all.
A cannonball flew through the air and hit the earth wall behind the trench. Although a lot of loose soil was blown away, all the potential energy of the cannonball was completely consumed.
A solid bullet without potential energy is useless.
Some soldiers saw the cannonballs falling from the earthen wall and flicked them with the butt of their rifles. The cannonballs fell into the trench and became toys for the soldiers.
Seeing that there was no response from the New Army, the rebels' morale was greatly boosted, they advanced much faster, and finally entered the minefield.
boom……
A landmine was crushed by the shield vehicle, and the shock wave of the explosion instantly tore the people near the shield vehicle into pieces, and all the people on the vehicle and beside the vehicle were wrapped in thick smoke.
Even people within ten meters of the nearby area have turned into blood gourds and cannot be saved.
"This mine..."
Kong Youde jumped up and looked at the effect of the landmine in disbelief, his eyes widened.
Of course he was no stranger to landmines. The rebels would also use them when fighting. Before the attack, the rebels also knew that the new army would lay landmines.
The only thing I didn't expect was how powerful this mine was.
Although the Ming army's landmines could kill and injure people, their explosion range was only three or four meters, and they could never penetrate shield vehicles.
Boom...boom boom boom...
One mine after another was triggered one after another. Visible to the naked eye, many shield vehicles and soldiers were affected. There was a huge gap in the rebel array.
Fortunately, most of the people who died were civilians, and as we all know, civilians are not even cannon fodder in a war.
It was impossible for them to run away, because behind them was the rebel army. Once they dared to turn back, the rebels' butcher's knives would make it impossible for them to survive.
In desperation, the civilians continued to push the shield cart toward the mine array while wailing loudly.
After they passed through the minefield of more than 300 meters, more than half of them were dead.
But what awaited the rebels next was a barbed wire fence that they had never seen before.
Just like at Qingshui Pass, the barbed wire fence was placed thirty meters in front of the new army formation.
Why are they arranged so close?
The new army has now summed up experience.
First of all, this distance allows the new army to effectively prevent the enemy from destroying the barbed wire fence. Whether it is a musket or a grenade, it can cause lethality at this distance.
If it is further away, the enemy only needs to put up a shield. If the barbed wire is destroyed, the New Army's muskets cannot penetrate the shield, and the grenades cannot be thrown.
If artillery was used, it would probably blow up the barbed wire fence.
Therefore, the optimal distance for laying out barbed wire fences is between twenty and forty meters in front of the array.
The rebels originally didn't take the barbed wire fence seriously, but when the shield truck crashed into it and could no longer move forward, they realized they were in trouble.
The rebel general immediately ordered civilians to remove the barbed wire fence.
But the civilian husband did not have pliers or other tools in his hands, so his hands were directly stained with blood from the barbs on the barbed wire.
Some rebel soldiers used knives to chop, but apart from a crashing sound, there were not even a single knife mark on the barbed wire fence.
There were also smart people who noticed the wooden piles wrapped around the barbed wire and rushed over to pull the wooden piles out of the soil. As a result, they discovered that the wooden piles were driven very deep and it was impossible to pull them out manually.
Even if you want to cut off the wooden piles, you can't do it, because each wooden pile is as thick as a human waist. If you just rely on a sword to cut it, you can't cut it off for a month.
When the rebels were stopped by the barbed wire fence, the sharp whistle from the New Army suddenly sounded.
The soldiers in the first row of trenches stood up in unison, their guns sticking out of the trench and aiming at the clearly visible enemy.
Bang bang bang bang bang...
Countless gunshots combined together were like continuous thunder, and a large number of the rebel soldiers who were concentrating on dealing with the barbed wire fell instantly.
Before they could react, after the second whistle, the second row of soldiers in the trench appeared, and there was another volley of gunfire.
In just two rounds, more than 400 rebels were killed.
The gunman on the shield car quickly wanted to fight back, but when he raised his gun, the New Army soldiers had already retreated into the trench to change their ammunition.
Then, after a strange and extremely fast tearing of the air, a bullet hole appeared in the center of the gunman's eyebrow, and he fell down from the car on the spot.
When the civilians pushing the cart saw that the gunman was dead, they finally couldn't hold on anymore and ran away one after another.
The gunmen in the other cars didn't understand what was happening, but the gunshots rang out occasionally, knocking them out of the car one by one.
They had thick shields in front of them, leaving only a small hole about a foot square for shooting.
Originally, such a shield car could keep the gunmen safe, but for some unknown reason, on today's battlefield, they were killed one after another.
When more than a dozen of the musketeers were dead, the rest finally reacted and crouched behind their shields, never daring to show their heads again.
On the high slope behind the New Army position, a few hundred meters away, there were many people covered in weeds, who were snipers of the special forces.
Their mission is to deal with the gunmen of the shield car.
The small hole in the shield makes it impossible for ordinary soldiers to do anything, but in the sniper's scope, this is the best bullseye.
Not even the gunmen on the shield car could survive, and the exposed soldiers were the practice targets of the new army.
The accuracy and rate of fire of the percussion cap gun were completely beyond the understanding of the rebels.
Within twenty seconds, the New Army's three rows of trenches fired five rounds of volleys, resulting in over a thousand rebel casualties.
At this time, not only the civilians, but also the generals couldn't bear it, so they all ran back.
In the first wave of rebel attacks, the new army did not use artillery. They only relied on barbed wire, muskets, trenches and snipers to achieve a 100% victory.
Under the banner of the rebel commander, Li Jiucheng, Kong Youde and others looked at each other in confusion.
"Who can tell me what that is?"
No one could answer Li Jiucheng's question because it was their first time seeing a barbed wire fence.
Chen Yongfu, who led the attack, came back looking quite embarrassed.
"Commander, you are all handsome. That ghost thing is quite weird. It can't be torn apart, it can't be broken, it can't be knocked open, and all our people are stuck there."
No need for him to say it, everyone saw it with their eyes.
Kong Youde stared in the direction of the new army and murmured to himself.
"What kind of army is this?"
Still no one can answer.
In short, after the first wave of confrontation, what the new army showed was completely beyond the knowledge of the rebels.
They didn't understand the fast, urgent and accurate firecrackers, the weird blocking fortifications, and the violently explosive mines.
Out of caution, the rebels did not launch another attack throughout the afternoon.
In the evening, Chen sometimes came back.
"The cavalry under Zuo Menggeng's command are like dog-skin plaster. Wherever I go, they follow me and can't find any space to cross the river."
The intention of outflanking also failed, and for a while the rebels were in trouble.
"Do you have any clever ideas?"
Li Jiucheng looked sad and asked all the generals.
But all the generals were silent, and no one could provide him with any good strategies.
People are always instinctively afraid when faced with things beyond their cognition.
However, there was something that gave the rebels no way to retreat.
That is Dengzhou.
The rebels who cannot recapture Dengzhou will have no choice but to die.
When the mutiny was launched in Wuqiao, why did Kong Youde, Li Jiucheng and others have to fight all the way back to Dengzhou instead of going directly north to join the Hou Jin Dynasty?
Because they passed by land and the Ming Dynasty's army gathered together, they only had a dead end.
Only by capturing Dengzhou and using the ships of the Dengzhou Navy could they have a way out.
Later, successive defeats of the official army made Li Jiucheng and others' ambitions expand. They were no longer satisfied with defecting to Hou Jin, but wanted to divide the territory and claim the kingship on their own.
But no matter what, Dengzhou must be held in hand.
Now that the new army is standing in front of them and showing great strength, how can the rebels break the situation?