As the melee combat begins, the casualties of the fire rifle soldiers can also begin to increase.
The rebel spearmen also came up. The five-meter-high city wall was not enough to completely cover the firecrackers who lowered their firecrackers. There were shield soldiers in front of the rebels, and many spearmen came behind.
With a standard spear of four and a half meters, coupled with a human's arms and height, it is completely possible to assassinate the defenders on the city wall. For a while, the two sides fought fiercely from a height of five meters. The rebel swordsmen took the opportunity to climb the wall.
At the shooting port on the lower level, priority was given to targeting the spearmen and shooting them by name. The rebel shield bearers boldly rushed forward and blocked the shooting port with their shields. Soldiers from both sides roared, cursed, and fought hard.
More ladders started to be put up on the top of the city from a farther distance. Because the city wall was not high enough and the ladders were too high, they had to be lowered from a distance.
Chain armor has limited defense, mainly because it is light and has unlimited movement. However, both the loss of defense and the effect of spears are very poor, and it can only defend against knife cuts.
Soldiers from both sides slashed at each other, and even fell off the city wall while holding them in their arms. The rebels who fell into the city were quickly shot to death by the regimental trainer with muskets.
On the lower level of the steel plate city wall, the Xinghe regiment was constantly firing. They used handguns and carbines. Without their fierce fire below, the upper level of the city wall would not have been able to defend.
In a short period of time, intensive musket fire caused heavy casualties to the enemy.
There is a shooting range under the city wall, which is not as safe as under the ordinary masonry city wall.
It can be said that there is no safe place around the car camp. For ordinary masonry walls, just be careful about your head. However, the bottom floor of the car camp is a shooting position. The regiment practices shooting here.
Although the rebels tried their best to dodge the shooting holes and ran back and forth quickly to prevent being targeted, several people were knocked down with each burst of gunfire.
The lead bullets practiced by Xinghe Tuan are particularly powerful. These soft lead bullets are wrapped with steel balls.
Because the specific gravity of the two different materials is different, these steel-core bullets will immediately lose stability and roll when entering the human body. Once they are hit, they will cause huge tear-like wounds and huge cavities.
Steel core bullets can easily penetrate armor and break bones. Heavy armored infantrymen have no resistance even in front of handguns and will be shot through directly.
The border troops sometimes put on a layer of cotton armor, a layer of chain armor, and a layer of cloth armor on the bodies of those who dare to charge. Jiannu's cloth armor was originally learned from the Ming Dynasty. Such a configuration,
It can even withstand matchlock guns at close range.
Jiannu used this kind of triple-armored heavy infantry to withstand the fire of muskets, rushed up, moved away the obstacles such as horseback and gunfire, and then launched the cavalry to attack the musketeers. After breaking up the queue, the whole army covered them up and killed them.
With such a configuration of armor and stomach, apart from being too heavy to allow even a not particularly strong soldier to run in it, it had no problem at all against the three-eyed blunderbuss that was the most commonly equipped weapon in the Ming Dynasty.
However, even though the rebels sent a large number of heavily armored warriors up, their heavy armor was of no use against the flintlocks and double-barreled handguns.
The combination of steel-core bullets and maroon gunpowder propellant easily penetrated their armor stomachs.
Zhou Yuji looked at the sinking sun and unknowingly realized that today's battle had continued into the afternoon.
To the east of the carriage camp, a dozen heavy siege vehicles were pushed up. They were moving forward slowly and were already less than fifty meters away from the city wall.
The attack failed for a long time, and the casualties continued to rise. Countless corpses had fallen under the city wall. Many hundreds of households were crippled within ten minutes after they went up. They had to withdraw and other hundreds of households went up.
The rebels are now on the verge of getting down. If they hadn't used the silver they looted from Zhangjiawan to reward them heavily, as long as they were willing to go up, they would have given each person ten taels of silver and killed an enemy and rewarded them with another ten taels of silver. I'm afraid they would have been defeated by now.
The shield carts were pushed up again. This was the last batch of shield carts they made in the past three days.
Now, the gun window at the rear of the sidecar has been closed, and the artillery has stopped being used. The threat of the shield car is gone, and they have pushed the shield car up again to cover more than a dozen siege vehicles.
These siege vehicles are made of one-meter-thick whole logs cut horizontally as wheels. Each siege vehicle has five wheels on the left and right. On the floor of the vehicle, the sides are composed of more than a dozen wooden pillars with a mortise and tenon structure.
The ladder-shaped bracket contains more than a dozen triangular stable wooden support structures.
Two thick beams with ropes hanging on them. A half-meter-thick log with a temporary ram made by a captured blacksmith on the head. Used as a battering ram.
If not for the lack of time, they would probably have to install a roof and walls on this kind of rush vehicle to defend against muskets and bows and arrows, and to protect the people pushing inside.
Seeing the siege vehicle approaching, the Rumi gunmen on the city wall suddenly panicked.
After all, the outer steel plate of this two-layered city wall built with scaffolding is only three millimeters thick. This thickness is mainly based on the fact that an ax cannot be opened. However, in the face of such a behemoth siege vehicle, it can be said that the effect is limited.
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Zhou Yuji immediately became nervous. He turned to Huang Hao and said, "Why don't you open the gun window and use artillery to deal with them."
Huang Hao pondered for a moment and said: "The fighting is too intensive now, and we don't have enough troops, unlike the last time we were on the grassland. If we open the gun window rashly, I'm afraid the enemy will take the opportunity to sneak in in large numbers. And there are densely packed enemies ahead.
The shield car blocks the view, and the artillery cannot aim. They have already rushed to the city."
Zhou Yuji said anxiously: "What should we do? These logs are huge and equipped with cast iron rams. Our city wall may not be able to stop them and they will be knocked open a few times."
He pondered for a moment and said: "Fortunately, I have built several walls with sandbags in the past three days in the city. If that doesn't work, I'll just fight in the streets."
Zhou Yuji has a good habit of being careful about the Wannian ship. He always prepares for the worst.
In the past three days, while the rebels were attacking Zhangjiawan, he dug trenches inside the car camp and used straw bags to fill up the sand and soil to form a fortification. There were still several small sandbag walls inside. Even if the enemy rushed in, they could rely on it.
These walls continue to fight.
Huang Hao said: "It doesn't have to be like this, the situation is not that urgent yet."
Huang Hao turned around and shouted: "Carry the grenade up the city wall. Let the gunpowder boost the grenade launcher and go up to the arrow tower. Kill those rams for me."
After hearing the order, the regiment trainer below quickly ran to the baggage truck and opened the caravan's quilt, revealing densely packed wooden boxes. These grass-green boxes were filled with grenades.
There were also dozens of long, grass-green wooden boxes that were also moved down by the regiment training soldiers. It was unknown what was inside. These wooden boxes were one foot square and about one and a half meters long.
Zhou Yuji said in surprise: "Madam asked you to bring the grenade battalion."