Gao pragmatism, who was regarded as a thorn in Zhasak Tuhan's side, was actually not particularly calm, because this battle in Sand City was also a brand new experience for him.
A new experience of being blocked in the city by others while being beaten passively.
But the strange thing is that, except for himself, he found that most of the people around him were very calm, especially Ma Gui, who was as relaxed and comfortable as if he was not in the middle of a war at all.
Gao pragmatism, who ran to the east city tower early in the morning to check on the enemy's situation, couldn't help it anymore, and said to Ma Gui, who looked calm next to him: "Xi Quan, I see that you are very confident in this battle, and you don't seem to care about it at all.
Do you take Tumen seriously?"
Ma Gui smiled and said: "Although Tumen and Xin Ai have more than 70,000 people, it is meaningless. Even if you give them another 70,000, it will be useless. They will not pose any threat to Shacheng within three months."
"Why are you so sure?" Gao pragmatically asked.
This question seemed to come as a surprise to Ma Gui. He said with a slight surprise: "I will defend him. I have a strong city to rely on and cannons to kill the enemy. His cavalry, if it comes to coming and going, is of course in
I'm above you, but I'm stuck below the city and can't make any progress. I'll have to leave sooner or later, so why should I worry?"
Gao pragmatic nodded and said: "You mean, they don't have any effective means of attacking the city. Although they are surrounding the city with great momentum, it is actually useless?"
"Of course." Ma Gui smiled and said, "Please wait and see..."
Ma Gui pointed to the Tumen and Xin'ai cavalry who were camping far away outside to surround Shacheng and said: "Although they said they were sieging the city, they chose a far away location for their camp. This shows two things: first, they are afraid of being bombarded by our army's artillery; second, they are afraid of being bombarded by our army's artillery;
Second, he is afraid that our army will suddenly attack the camp."
"Kick the camp?" Gao pragmatic asked back.
Ma Gui nodded and said: "They don't know the deployment of our army. They probably think that there are 20,000 to 30,000 cavalry in the city. If there are really 20,000 to 30,000 elite cavalry, concentrated in one gate and suddenly burst out of the camp, the chance of success is quite high.
Not low.
At that time, his 70,000 troops were scattered outside the four city gates, and each gate had less than 20,000 riders at most. If they were suddenly kicked out, there was a high chance of collapse. As for after one gate collapsed, I would be next.
It will not be a good thing for them whether our army continues to pursue and expand the victory, or our army withdraws its troops and returns to the city."
"It's a pity that there are not many cavalry in Shacheng." Gao Pingshi finally relaxed and said with a smile: "It seems that Tumen Khan was disappointed."
Ma Gui laughed and said: "Let him be frightened. Let's defend the city as usual and prevent the cavalry from showing up from beginning to end... Oh, we can still let them see something occasionally to prevent them from having any other ideas.
.”
Gao pragmatic nodded and said: "Xi Quan, your words reminded me that yes, we still need to make sure that there is a main force of cavalry in Shacheng."
As he spoke, he turned to Cao Gan and said: "Go find two people. One should look like Dacheng Taiji, and the other should look like Ali Ge. Then prepare Dacheng Taiji's ceremonial guard, especially the flag. Once you have them together,
Let them go to the tower to patrol the city occasionally, not too often, just once a day, and it does not need to be long, just one stick of incense is enough."
Cao Gan responded with a smile, and then asked: "Would you like to find another substitute for Chaterji? Although it is a bit difficult to impersonate him, the people in Tumen are far away and can't see clearly."
Gao Pragmatic had just considered finding an actor to replace Chatterjee, but Chatterjee's behavior, especially his eyes, was difficult to imitate - he was a special shooter, his eyes were sharp, like an eagle's, which was unusual.
When someone pretends to be him, a look in his face can make a difference.
However, Cao Gan was right to remind him that although Qataiji's eyes are not easy to fake, the pictures are far away. They are not the most talented people in the world. They can still clearly see "Qataiji" from such a distance.
Eyes?
So Gao Pragmatic thought for a moment and agreed, so Cao Gan went down to prepare and start looking for people.
Ma Guize said: "Your Majesty, you don't have to worry. Our Ming army is the main force in Shacheng now. Our army is good at guarding it. Now the city is equipped with artillery and there is a lot of food. As long as Tumen can't produce artillery, he can't even think about it."
Break into the city."
Gao pragmatic nodded, but sighed slightly in his heart.
It seems that the Ming army used cannons as city defense weapons. It cannot be said to be Yuan Chonghuan's unique invention, but there are already signs and even traditions. However, Yuan Chonghuan's understanding of the use of weapons was a bit biased, so he went the wrong way.
During the period from the late Ming Dynasty to the end of the Ming Dynasty, should artillery be used to defend the city? Gao Pragmatic believed that it was possible, but this yes should refer to small and medium-sized cannons that can shoot down, or even long-range muskets, and it was definitely not Yuan Chonghuan's
Defend the city with Hongyi cannon.
Take Ningyuan City in the late Ming Dynasty as an example. The city is 12 meters high (already converted). It takes 1.41 seconds for the artillery shell to lower to the enemy's height of 2.2 meters. Even if the Hongyi cannon fires at 0 angle and the muzzle velocity is 360 meters/second, it will land after 1.51 seconds.
If the front speed is reduced to 220 meters/second, a blind spot of at least 406 meters will be formed under the city.
So if we calculate based on the record of the small shooting angle of one minute (7.5 degrees) commonly used by cannons in the Ming Dynasty and the range of three miles, the blind spot is at least 1500 meters. Can it still be accurate if it is 1500 meters away? The result is naturally that it is not accurate if it is far away, but it is not accurate if it is close.
You can't hit him! Who he can kill depends entirely on his appearance.
What's more terrible is that after doing this, the incident angle of the solid bullet when it hits the ground is absolutely increased, making it difficult to form a ricochet. It is expected that Yuan Chonghuan's red cannon will form a ricochet to kill the wild boar skin at a maximum range angle of more than 30 degrees.
, which is even more unreasonable. Because the shooting steel plate of later high-speed steel bullets must have an angle of more than 70 degrees from the normal line (less than 20 degrees horizontally) to form a ricochet.
How could Yuan Chonghuan's shooting angle of more than 30 degrees (even greater when landing) form a ricochet? Could it be that Yuan's cannonballs are faster than modern cannons, Yuan's lead bullets are harder than steel bullets, or the place where the boar skin is standing is a super steel plate floor
?
Because of these shortcomings of artillery in this era, Engels's book "Artillery" set the ideal shooting angle of artillery as five degrees - "shooting downward or upward on a slope above 5 degrees, or shooting from the top of a hill."
Shooting on another hill is a very unfavorable shooting condition."
The two key points mentioned in Mr. En's book to greatly reduce the power of cannons are that the angle of incidence cannot be large and the gun position cannot be high. Yuan Chonghuan actually took care of both.
The defensive artillery that can really go up to the city are small and medium-sized artillery. As for the artillery going up the city and related division of labor, the Ming Dynasty's "Fire Attack Zhi Yao" actually has a record: "If the enemy is stationed in camp and peeks from a distance, he must use long battles and muskets to attack him from a distance.
Camp, so that they do not dare to stand still for a long time." And what really kills the enemy is the Tuo Pao (wide-mouthed cannon): "If ants swarm and approach the city, they will use big Tuo blunderbuss as a plan to kill them wide."
Just say that some people in China do not believe it, and continue to refer to the works of Mr. Engels. He also said it very clearly in "The Bastion": "They are built very high, and the artillery can shoot beyond the breastworks of the bastion from here. Because of this
The artillery with the longest range is usually placed in the commanding position of the fortification in order to harass the enemy with artillery fire from a longer distance."
Look, in an era that has surpassed the technological level of the late Ming Dynasty, on the bastions that have surpassed the city defenses of the late Ming Dynasty, in the fortresses that have surpassed the late Ming Dynasty fortresses, cannons that have surpassed the level of the late Ming Dynasty have also been used.
It's just harassing the enemy with artillery fire!
At that time, Engels was still in the bastion era, which gave Yuan Chonghuan some respect for his "cannons for strong cities". In the city wall era, the book of T. N. Dupuy, a leading military scholar, discussed the use of cannons in cities.
The evaluation is more straightforward:
"As has been noted, this is partly because castles and walled cities cannot mount the large cannons needed to deal with enemy bombardment. The light cannon on the walls cannot hit the enemy's longer-range siege guns, which are slightly heavier.
Although the cannon can be dragged to the city wall with a lot of effort, it can only have the opposite effect. Because the recoil of the cannon will cause huge vibrations at the base of the wall, seriously affecting the solidity of the city wall, it will make it more difficult.
Easily breached." ("The Evolution of Weapons and Warfare")
Look, "it is easier to be breached". This is really even the last fig leaf, which has been removed by "the cannon of a strong city"!
In addition, Gao Pragmatic has always felt that Yuan Chonghuan exaggerated the power of the Hongyi Cannon to the point of exaggeration. At this time, the Hongyi Cannon not only had a faster rate of fire at the beginning, but also suffered from the cooling of the barrel during continuous firing.
, the rate of fire is only about eight rounds per hour (this is assuming there is no malfunction). This rate of fire obviously cannot form enough firepower in the face of swarming enemies.
From Gao Pragmatic's point of view, the use of artillery in the solid artillery era was, first, to siege cities, using large siege cannons, such as the No. 1 cannon and No. 2 cannon under the Jinghua imitation system; the second was to break infantry mass formations, using infantry anti-personnel cannons.
For example, the No. 3 cannon and the No. 4 cannon, the ones with a slightly lower technical level were the Tiger Crouching Cannon that Qi Jiguang loved most in field battles.
As for defending the city, giant cannons like the No. 1 Cannon and the No. 2 Cannon ("giant" in this era) are nothing but harassment, and cannot reach the height of "defending the city with cannons".
The "big cannon" in Ma Gui's mouth is not actually a real reference. What he means is simply that it can hit the opponent's artillery - big cannon is just a habit.
As a typical firearms party, Gao Pangshi had to prepare cannons since he adopted the center-flowering tactic of "suicide". In fact, he prepared quite a lot of cannons - a total of seventy-six No. 3 cannons and one No. 4 cannon.
One hundred and thirty-seven, a total of two, two hundred and thirteen cannons.
However, he did not have an accurate judgment on which city gate Tumen would attack mainly, so the two hundred or so cannons were currently evenly distributed on the four city towers in the southeast, northwest and northwest.
Of course, each city gate was assigned more than fifty No. 3 and No. 4 guns, which was already an exaggeration in this era.
What's more, he doesn't only have cannons - he also has a large number of Longqing Type 2 muskets and a small amount of Wanli Type 1 muskets. These muskets produced by Jinghua, due to their reliable quality, can be fully charged, and their range is obviously beyond ordinary in this era.
With a bow and arrow within range, it is not a problem to attack the Mongolian soldiers attacking the city from a high position.
The only question is whether Tumen will choose to attack by force.
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