Qiming 1158

Chapter 1054 Under the Rewards, There Will Be Brave Men
The fierce and strong personal soldiers stunned the Song army soldiers in the city. They were led by officers who were also crying and cursing the personal soldiers, and they went up to the city tower with a funeral mood to prepare for battle.

For these Song soldiers, fighting on the tower was tantamount to suicide.

For the Ming army, firing the second round of artillery shells is not a simple matter, especially for the difficult-to-operate large general artillery.

After a shell is fired, first of all, the gunners of the artillery team need to use special tools to shout and work together, reset the artillery, and adjust the shooting angle according to the sight and front sight on the barrel.

Then they had to use a hooked brush to first hook out anything that wasn't fully burned in the barrel, then use a water-soaked brush to go into the barrel to clean and extinguish the sparks, and then a dry cloth-wrapped barrel was inserted into the barrel to wipe dry.

At this point, the gunners can fill in the gunpowder again, put in the shells, and sometimes need to plug something to fix it to increase the airtightness, and finally ignite the propellant, which in turn ignites the gunpowder in the barrel for a second shot.

In this process, with the increase of the number of shots, it is necessary to give the gun barrel some time to cool down and cool down. When the temperature of the rear gun barrel is very high, it is even necessary to pour warm water to slowly cool the gun barrel to maintain the firing state of the gun barrel. .

The longer the fighting time, the more time it is necessary to cool the gun barrel to avoid problems such as blasting the chamber and reducing the life of the gun.

Because of this limitation, the number of shells fired per day is also limited, so Su Yonglin ordered the Shenji Battalion to fire no more than [-] shells per day and each general cannon.

Therefore, when the Shenji Battalion uses the Great General Cannon to launch, it must also pay attention to the upper limit and conduct alternate launches.

In fact, the gunners don't rotate every day until they hit [-] shells. Generally, when they hit [-] or [-] shells, they will start preparing for the rotation.

Gunners also need to prepare spare tire guns during the battle, and it takes considerable time to prepare for the process from the retirement of the old guns to the launch of the new guns to prepare for firing.

This period of time is a must for the current artillery, and it is also one of the biggest weaknesses of the general artillery.

However, its power is very powerful, and it is the most powerful siege weapon in this era. Its advantages determine that the Ming army cannot abandon it, and will only continue to improve it.

For example, give it a better way to fix the gun body, eliminating the time-consuming procedure of resetting and adjusting the firing angle.

If this procedure is avoided, it can save half the time of the gun crew.

Or enhance the strength of the gun body, so that the gunners don't always worry about it blowing up, eliminating the cooling time, then it can also reduce a lot of trouble for the gun to launch.

The second round of shooting came as soon as it was said, and 25 general cannons roared again.

Amidst the earth-shattering roar, 25 iron bullets were wrapped in scorching air and smashed towards the Fancheng tower again, causing terrifying damage to the Fancheng tower again.

Before the Song Dynasty, the city towers of Xiangyang and Fancheng were all earth cities. They were built with rammed earth layer by layer, which was relatively strong and durable, but they were not covered with bricks.

In the Song Dynasty, especially in the Southern Song Dynasty, because of the important strategic positions of Xiangyang and Fancheng, the Southern Song Dynasty court spent a lot of money to coat the city walls with bricks.

The industry of burning bricks was very prosperous in the Ming Dynasty, so the Ming city walls were mostly brick-clad city walls or even pure masonry structure city walls. Before the Song Dynasty, they were mostly earth city walls. Durable.

The brick-burning business appeared in the Song Dynasty, but it has not yet flourished. The cost of brick-cladding is relatively high. Only important towns have this treatment, otherwise the court cannot afford it.

Su Yonglin vigorously developed the brick-burning industry in the Ming Dynasty, vigorously built brick-burning workshops, and then improved the city walls of some important towns with bricks.

At present, major cities such as Zhongdu City, Liaoyang City, Datong City, Chang'an City, Luoyang City, Kaifeng City, etc. have been improved. The existence of bricks has greatly enhanced the defense of these cities.

For the Southern Song Dynasty, in addition to Lin'an City, Xiangyang and Fancheng have this brick-clad treatment, and the city walls are very strong.

They had already considered the fact that the Ming army would use trebuchets to attack the city, so they upgraded the defense of the city wall and wrapped the city wall with high-quality blue bricks. Ordinary trebuchet attacks could not damage the wall.

However, the artillery of the Ming army is a direct bombardment, which is completely different from the projectile of the catapult. The kinetic energy of the gunpowder explosion is far more than the mechanical kinetic energy of the catapult. It can be said that it is a pit, a pit.

All the shells that hit the wall basically shattered the brick-clad part, and after a few more times, the earthen wall behind the brick-clad was directly exposed.

After the brick-clad part was knocked out, the inner rammed-earth city wall actually had a considerable defensive power, and the city wall was quite thick. The thickness of the rammed-earth city wall often exceeded its height, making it difficult to destroy.

However, as long as it is bombarded by artillery beyond a certain limit, it cannot be said that this thick rammed earth city wall will not collapse.

Even if it is the Great Summer Dragon Sparrow City that is as strong as Helian Bobo, what can it be?
The heavy blow of the artillery shells caused huge damage to the Fancheng City Tower. The Fancheng City Tower continued to vibrate, and the defenders on the city wall were devastated by the shells, and were completely unable to fight back for a while.

Zhou Benyuan left the tower under the protection of his subordinates, hid in a safe place, and it took a while to recover.

After recovering, Zhou Benyuan felt that he couldn't go on like this.

To fight back, you must fight back, you can't sit back and watch the Ming army bombard them with new firearms and they don't fight back.

He noticed that after each bombardment by the Ming army, there would be a long period of time, and this period of time was an opportunity for him to counterattack.

He took advantage of the gap to climb up the city wall to watch the Ming army's formation, and found that the Ming army did not come to attack the city during the gap between the shelling, and there was no sign of approaching.

Do you want to destroy the city walls with new firearms?
Zhou Benyuan didn't know, but it was necessary to fight back.

His subordinates told him that it was very difficult to fight back, because the Ming army was too far away, nearly [-] paces away from the city wall, and their trebuchets and crossbows might not be able to get the Ming army.

"Whether it is enough is one thing, but not fighting back is another. Passive beatings will greatly destroy the morale of the army. We must fight back! We must inspire the morale of the army!"

Zhou Benyuan quickly asked the bed crossbow crew that could still fire to fire the bed crossbow, use the bed crossbow to counter the Ming army, and reward the bed crossbow crew with [-] pennies for one shot.

Then he asked the trebuchet crews on the tower and in the city to send boulders to counterattack, and each member of the catapult crew was given five hundred pennies for each boulder fired.

At the same time, he also knew that this kind of empty talk could not stimulate the soldiers enough, so he promised someone to count, and he would wait beside the crew with a truckload of copper coins, pay the money after the call, pay on the spot, and never delay!

The so-called heavy reward must have a brave man. The ordinary soldiers of the Song Army originally joined the army to fight for money. When they heard that they had money, they would not delay in paying on the spot. Many people immediately became excited.

There is also the possibility of being hacked by the senior officers, and even more exploited in layers. If you can get [-] to [-]% of them in your hands, even the officers love them like sons. The majority of officers and soldiers are deeply depressed by this.

But this time, it's on-the-spot payment, no delay!

They are not afraid of the terrorist threat of artillery.

Death threats on the city walls are also debatable.

Although the calf was still a little soft, when they saw the whole box of Huang Chengcheng's copper coins, the calf of the soldiers of the Song Army was not so soft, and their hands became stronger.

They were obsessed with [five hundred pennies, five hundred pennies], as if they could immediately extract the power from their hearts, and this power was enough to support them to withstand the fear of the Ming army's firearms and go to the city to fight back.

As long as one shot is fired, it is the income of Lin'an people for five days, and six shots are the income of Lin'an City people with the highest living standard and highest salary in the entire Song Dynasty. Basically, it is also a month's expenses for a family.

For the big-headed soldiers, the temptation is hard to resist.

So much money, how long did it take to pay for soldiers?

Such a good opportunity, should we let it go?
Hit it!Why not fight?
So the Song army in the city began to fight back.

(End of this chapter)