1627 Rise of the South China Sea

Chapter 3240
At dusk, the rumble of artillery echoed on the Linhai plain, and the battle outside Shanhaiguan continued.

All the artillerymen on the position were blackened by the gunpowder smoke, but they were still full of energy.After holding back for three years without fighting, this time I can finally make a good use of it.

In this kind of tough battle, the cavalry is responsible for guarding the periphery and blocking reinforcements, and the infantry is responsible for cleaning the battlefield and eliminating remnants of the enemy. It is the artillery that really plays the leading role on the battlefield.First let the artillery tear open the opponent's line of defense, destroy the solid fortifications, and clean up the threatening main firepower points before it is the turn of other arms to take action.

In one day, the artillerymen of the [-]th Army Division had already fired nearly a thousand artillery pieces, breaking down a dozen or so fortresses, and advancing the battle line by more than ten miles.From the current position of the Haihan army, the towers of Shanhaiguan can already be seen in the distance.

But Sun Zhen didn't see any joy on his face. Although the current progress was not bad, and the number of casualties in his troops was extremely low, he had to bear the huge consumption of ammunition for this.

The number of artillery shells fired in just one day has already exceeded the amount of live ammunition training conducted by the Artillery Battalion in the past three years of truce, and this has also far exceeded Sun Zhen's expectations before the start of the war.The amount of money required to purchase these ammunition is even more unimaginable for ordinary people.

Continuing to fight at this level, I am afraid that the ammunition prepared by the Sixth Lu Division before is only enough to capture Shanhaiguan, and may not be able to smoothly push Yongping Mansion behind Shanhaiguan.

But Sun Zhen's original plan was to at least push the battle line past Yongping Mansion and advance to Shuntian Mansion where the capital of Ming Dynasty is located, so as to form an effective response to the main attack direction.

Sun Zhen looked at the battle map in front of him again. Between the current battle line and Shanhaiguan, there were about four or five fortresses.Moreover, the closer to Shanhaiguan, the denser the fortress group, and the previous offensive method may need to be adjusted.

Of course, artillery is not the only offensive method available to Sun Zhen. He relies on artillery because it is the simplest and most effective way.

At the beginning, the Qing army retreated in front of Shanhaiguan. First, they were afraid of casualties and did not want to fight the Ming army in this place. Second, they lacked sea transportation capabilities and could not use the nearby Bohai Sea to bypass this critical pass. Therefore, they chose Bypassing the Yanshan Mountains from the north, they took a big circle to attack Shuntian Mansion.

But the conditions of the Haihan Army are different. The Bohai Sea is almost completely controlled by Haihan now, and there are two armed fleets sailing in the Bohai Bay at this time. In one more day, the armed fleet will be able to rush to the vicinity of Shanhaiguan to help in the battle.

It's just that the mighty Sixth Division, if they want to ask the navy for help in a low voice, it would be a bit embarrassing.Moreover, before the war, Sun Zhen boasted to Chen Yixin that going to Haikou would definitely break Shanhaiguan Pass and open the northern gate of Ming Dynasty.

As night fell, the Haihan army retreated with gold, and Sun Zhen had no plans to organize a night battle.This was the first day of the battle, and the follow-up combat missions were not easy, Sun Zhen didn't want to drain the energy of his troops so quickly.

Before dinner, Sun Zhen personally inspected the deployment of the temporary camp.

Although these fortresses built by Daming painstakingly have been breached by Haihan, they still have certain defensive capabilities as temporary camps to station troops.

However, in order to prevent the Ming army from taking risks, many secret sentries were deployed around the camp.Barbed wire fences and other barricades were temporarily placed on the main roads to prevent enemy cavalry from rushing in at night.

After returning to the tent and having a simple dinner, Sun Zhen summoned his combat staff to listen to the report on today's combat situation.

A staff officer reported: "At present, according to the count of corpses in various fortresses, the number of Ming soldiers killed in battle is about 100, and more than [-] people have been captured alive. Among them, more than [-] officers at various levels have been handed over to the military. Bureau interrogation."

It sounds like the result is good, but Sun Zhen knows that this number is probably less than one-tenth of the troops deployed in Shanhaiguan, and the real tough battle is yet to come.

The staff officer continued: "In the various fortresses that have been breached, many standard muskets have been found, and their structure has changed from the bird guns used by the Ming army before."

Then someone presented the spoils of war, and Sun Zhen took it, and saw that the bolt mechanism of the flintlock had the shadow of Haihan's old style flintlock.

Sun Zhen has been in the army for many years and has used all kinds of new and old weapons. It is obvious at a glance that such changes can effectively improve the firing rate of ammunition.

Sun Zhen looked at the barrel of the gun again, and found that it was not a smoothbore gun, but a rifled gun with processed rifling.

It seems that the Military Weapons Bureau of the Ministry of Industry of the Ming Dynasty has not been idle all these years, copying all the details that can be imitated.

Judging from the details of the gun body, Daming is still far from Haihan's level of military industry, and it is still unable to realize industrialized manufacturing. The output and quality of this standard weapon that is purely handcrafted must be limited.

However, judging from the quantity seized, Daming has achieved mass production of rifled rifles to a certain extent, which is a red flag.

However, considering the elite level of the frontier army, Sun Zhen was convinced that this was a weapon specially provided to the frontier army by the Ming court, and the local troops might not be able to receive such treatment.

But in time, if all the resources that Ming currently possesses are invested in the military, it might not be possible to equip an army with all firearms by rubbing hands, and its strength is likely to be almost the same as that of the Haihan Army when Sun Zhengang joined the army 20 years ago. .

From this point of view, Sun Zhen felt that the timing of the war chosen by the executive committee was excellent. If it was a year or two later, the Ming army he had to face might not be so easy to deal with. It was imitated.

There was nothing to say that night, and both sides obviously wanted to save their energy for the battle after dawn.

Sun Zhen got up early in the morning, the sky outside the tent was twilight, and cooking teams had already set up stoves in various places in the camp to prepare breakfast.

Sun Zhen strolled to the top of the fort wall, raised his head and looked into the distance.

This is the west side of the fortress, which was less affected by the shelling of the Haihan Army yesterday, and the fortress wall has basically maintained its original shape.

Sun Zhen stretched out his hand, and the guard immediately handed over the binoculars.He raised his binoculars and looked into the distance. The rising sun shone on the city wall of Shanhaiguan, like a silver dragon crawling on the horizon.

From the foot of Yanshan Mountain in the north to the coast of the Bohai Sea in the south, this coastal channel, which is only more than ten miles wide, is cut off by the Shanhaiguan Great Wall.And conquering this critical point is one of the main goals of the Sixth Lu Division's mission.

(End of this chapter)