1627 Rise of the South China Sea

Chapter 728 Hard Battle

"All gunners, get into combat positions immediately!" Bart loudly issued an order to prepare for battle, watching the Mata blue army in the distance slowly advancing southward.

The Mata blue army stopped about one mile away from the city of Batavia, 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. Only on the northern front, there are about 30 Mata blue troops in formation outside the city.As for the large and small trebuchets, there are more than [-] trebuchets that have been seen so far.

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, but will certainly maintain enough pressure in the other two directions to allow the defenders in the city to attack the city. The army cannot easily gather in one place for defense.

Then, a large number of flatbed carts began to transport the prepared stone bullets to the front line and pile them up. After Bart confirmed the size of the stone bullets used by the opponent through the telescope, his expression became even uglier.

Judging from the size, the individual weight of these stone bombs is about at least a hundred catties. If they can be thrown near the city wall with a trebuchet, their power will not be much different from that of shelling.Although the speed of the cannonball is faster, its weight is far less than that of the stone bullet, so its lethality will only be comparable.

It was not that the Mata Blue Army was not equipped with artillery. Before the war, the British sold a lot of artillery to Laden Langsan, hoping that the Mata Blue Army could break through the Dutch-occupied city of Batavia in one fell swoop.However, the Mata blue army is not proficient in the use of artillery, and they are also very aware that artillery, a weapon that consumes a lot of ammunition in wars, is expensive and inconvenient to supply, and the firing life of the artillery itself is relatively limited. Therefore, in the battle to attack Batavia, Radon Langsang did not show his hole card at the beginning, but first used the more primitive trebuchet, which was less difficult and costly to use, as a siege machine. The means of long-range firepower output for combat.

Although the firing speed of this trebuchet is slow and the accuracy is limited, no matter how primitive the method is, it cannot support the large number. If dozens of trebuchets are concentrated and project stone bullets at a few points, the power is still quite terrifying.Bart’s cousin was killed by a stone bomb that fell from the sky when the Mata blue army attacked the city in 1629. At that time, Bart was not far from him, and he witnessed his cousin from a living to a dead man in a second. Although it has been three years since the horrible scene of people turning into a pile of minced meat, it still recurs in Bart's mind from time to time.And now the scene outside the city made Bart recall the fear of being dominated by the trebuchet again.

With the sound of horns echoing on the plain outside the city, the siege of the Mata blue army finally kicked off.After all, Bart was a professional soldier. Although he still had an indelible fear in his heart, he quickly calmed down and directed the artillerymen to start loading ammunition.

While the catapults were slowly reloading, the Mata Blue infantry began to push forward.However, the advance speed at this time was much faster than before. Soldiers holding swords, guns and shields trotted all the way to Batavia City, followed by many engineers carrying ladders, planks and other tools.

Although the opponent's troops quickly came within range of the artillery, Bart was in no hurry to open fire.He knew that the commander on the opposite side was waiting for the city fire artillery to fire, so that the other party could accurately determine the location of the city fire defense point, and then use the trebuchet to conduct concentrated strikes.Bart had to bring the enemy closer, so that when a fight broke out, the artillery could at least fire two more rounds before the opponent retreated.

Bart did not give the order to open fire until Mata Blue's troops had entered a distance of 300 meters in large numbers.The artillery fire on the city wall and the small strongholds outside the city rang out one after another, and about twenty artillery pieces participated in this round of shelling.The smoke from the burning gunpowder 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 bombs thrown by the trebuchet had also flown from outside the city to several main fort positions at the head of the city.What Bart was worried about before became a reality. These tall trebuchets did have a terrifying range. Several heavy stone bullets hit the top of the city fiercely. Although they did not directly hit the defenders on the city wall, they saw A stone the size of a marching drum fell from the sky, and the terrifying feeling made everyone lower their bodies and subconsciously avoid it.

A stone bullet hit the city wall near Bart, and the rammed earth splashed covered Bart's head and face.Bart spat out the dregs in his mouth, and the blood of the Nordic people was aroused at once. He stood up and cursed fiercely, and then yelled at the artillerymen and immediately continued to reload and shoot outside the city.

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

After the Mata blue army's catapults demonstrated their power, Bart had to temporarily give up using artillery fire to attack the advancing infantry units, and instead set the target on the more threatening catapults in the distance.

The infantry of the Mata blue army seized this gap and quickly advanced beyond the moat.Among the various siege tools they carried, there was a combination of tools specially designed to break through this barrier.The panting engineers erected the long ladder in their hands on the side of the ditch, and then let it fall to the opposite bank. The length of the ladder was enough for it to form a passage on the ditch about six meters wide.

However, if it is only such a narrow and simple passage, it will obviously take a lot of time for the siege troops to pass through the trench smoothly, so this kind of ladder is built in pairs of two adjacent to each other, and then someone follows up and lays prefabricated stones on the ladder. Nice planks.There are also some engineers who jumped directly into the ditch holding wooden sticks with thick arms, trying to use the wooden sticks in their hands to prop up the bridge in the middle.The vanguard of Matalam, which attacked the city two nights ago, has measured the water depth and flow velocity in the trench to ensure the feasibility of this bridging tactic.

There are seven or eight such simple bridges being erected at the same time, and the main thing that can stop them is the firing of Dutch army muskets on the defense line.From time to time, Matalan soldiers who were shot fell into the water from the side of the ditch and the ladder bridge, becoming floating corpses.The Mata blue army also has its own counterattack methods 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 not even be comparable to matchlock guns, hundreds of thousands of sharp blades are fired at the same time, and the covering shooting effect still inevitably causes casualties to the defenders.

Fortunately, the city defense artillery fire has achieved results. The two trebuchets were easily torn apart by the shells bouncing off the ground, which gave the Dutch artillery more confidence.After all, the opponent's firing speed is much slower than that of the artillery, and there are no cover facilities, so if the fight continues like this, the side with the artillery will definitely have the upper hand.

A 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 firepower at the top of the city. Hundreds of muskets quickly taught them the principles of life.The firepower advantage of the design of the bastion is only beginning to be reflected at this moment. Due to the existence of the fort outside the city, there are no dead spots for shooting near the city wall, and the two lines of defense, which are high inside and low outside, naturally form a three-dimensional firepower output. , which puts the enemies trying to attack the fortress or climb the city wall into a dilemma.

Outside the north city gate of Batavia are two adjacent wedge-shaped fortresses, each with two hundred soldiers stationed, and with the fire cover at the top of the city, any attempt to directly attack the city gate will be in vain.The Mata blue army who crossed the moat left nearly [-] corpses near the fort, but they hadn't even touched the side of the city gate.

The tactic of the Mata blue army across the moat was undoubtedly very successful, but they were unable to overcome the special defense line of the bastion full of thorns.The Matalan soldiers had almost no protective measures, which resulted in a much higher casualty rate than the Dutch defenders during the battle.After losing about 300 men, the Mata Blues gave the signal to retreat, and the survivors quickly withdrew back the way they had come.

And 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 with machetes and spears. Where is the strength of playing blue people?In face-to-face combat, they can at most have two to three rounds of shooting opportunities within the range of muskets, and the opponent's strength advantage is more than two or three times, and it is enough to kill the city of Batavia with a sea of ​​​​people. All Dutch.Therefore, the combat concept implemented by the Dutch army from the very beginning was that it could not defend itself, and used strong fortifications to drag down the opponent's offensive.

Taking advantage of the cessation of the fighting, the defenders of the fortress outside the city hurried to the trench to clean up the ladder bridge built by the Matalan men.Only at this time did they realize that the Matalan people had actually driven iron hoops into the ground, and firmly fixed both ends of the ladder bridge to the shore.It was only after the iron hoop was pulled out from the ground that it was shaped like a horseshoe in its entirety. It was about a foot long and both ends were sharpened so that it could go into the ground. It was obviously a specially made utensil.This also shows that the opponent's tactics are not a temporary idea, but have made sufficient preparations and drills.

Although the timing of this war broke out very suddenly, both warring parties have made a lot of preparations for it.The Dutch strengthened the fortifications of the city, expanded the size of the garrison, and improved the management and scheduling measures in the city during wartime.The Matalan people optimized the means of siege. Whether it was a large trebuchet or the tactics of crossing the trench with the ladder bridge, they were all new things that did not appear in the last match.

Bart didn't care about rest, and ordered to immediately start counting the battle damage and consumption in this battle.The battle damage in terms of personnel was mainly concentrated in the fortress outside the city. The close-range bow and arrow and spear-throwing tactics of the horse-fighting blue army were still somewhat powerful. In addition, a few stone bullets directly smashed into the fortress, causing a total of 20 damage to the defenders. Many people were killed and more than [-] wounded who needed to retreat from the front line for recuperation.Fortunately, no defenders at the top of the city were killed in battle. Only a dozen or so people were injured by fragments of stone bombs, and none of the artillery or fort was damaged. Bart was greatly relieved.Although there are spare artillery in the city, it is time-consuming and labor-intensive to move the spare artillery to the city wall and re-install and calibrate it.

As for the consumption, it mainly focused on weapons and ammunition. During the one hour and seventeen minutes of fighting, the defenders fired a total of 140 shells, and the firing frequency was close to two rounds per minute.It is difficult to count the number of firearms fired, but there are more than 30 guns that need to be repaired due to malfunctions after the war.At present, the military workshops in Batavia are producing only two or three muskets a day.If high-intensity day-to-day combat is to be carried out, the speed of gun manufacturing may not keep up with the speed of gun consumption.

At this time, Van Diemen also came to the front line and asked Commander Bart about the situation of the battle.Bart had just said a few words before being interrupted by Van Diemen: "Lieutenant Bart, please inform me of the results of the battle. We can talk about the battle damage later."

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

Van Diemen sighed and explained: "Now the council needs to know the result immediately, Lieutenant Bart, I must let those stupid shareholder representatives know that the City Defense Army is far more reliable than they imagined! I want to obtain authority from them, In order to mobilize more resources 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 let someone count the results of the battle!"

Compared with the situation of battle damage, the killing results of this battle are really worthy of the defenders' pride.The Mata blue army suffered over a thousand casualties in this battle, and there were more than [-] corpses left near the trenches alone, and some wounded soldiers who escaped by chance may not be able to survive until their injuries are fully recovered.Due to the hot temperature, the defenders of the city cannot let these corpses rot and stink near the fortress and the city wall, because it is very likely to bring plague.Fan Dimen organized thousands of civilians to dig a large pit outside the city to bury the corpses.

The Mata blue army on the opposite side also tacitly did not launch an attack again during this time period. It was not until the battlefield was cleared in the afternoon and the peasants returned to the city that the horn sounded again in the wilderness. Davia City marches.

Bart found very depressingly from the telescope that the number of trebuchets in the opponent's array was not reduced compared to the morning, but increased by about a quarter. It can be seen that the Mata blue army has indeed carried out the siege battle. Carefully prepared.Perhaps after the tentative attack in the morning, the opponent has made some adjustments to the offensive strategy.

"These goddamn heretics!" Bart put down his binoculars and ordered angrily, "Order everyone to get into combat positions and prepare to fire!"

(End of this chapter)