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Chapter 1197: Galloping Horses 2
“Boom boom boom…boom boom boom…”

Unfortunately, reality severely disappointed them. They had only charged a few dozen meters when the second wave of shelling came. The shells seemed to have eyes, and most of them fell into the ranks and exploded violently.

The smoke was black in color, obviously different from the black powder used by Europe and the Ottomans. The lethality was even more prominent. Even though the cast iron bullet could not produce too many fragments, it contained hundreds of soybean-sized steel particles.

Within a few meters, these little things fly faster than bullets, have higher armor-piercing ability, and are much harder, and can easily penetrate any armor of this era, including the front of the European half-body armor that is 8 mm thick.

"Let's give credit to the captain who commanded the artillery first!" After watching the second round of shelling, Hong Tao reluctantly put down the telescope and climbed down from the roof of the car. While preparing his rifle, he instructed Wang Chengen to record the military merit.

The artillery commander poured most of the shells at the Lancers to the west. He probably didn't know the name and origin of the Lancers, but he was able to make a quick judgment based on the information conveyed by the lookouts and prioritize attacking the most threatening targets. He was very smart.

"Bang..." Before Wang Chengen finished writing, Hong Tao aimed at the cavalry team about 400 meters away and fired the first shot.

He used a Type 24 needle-barreled breech-loading rifle with an effective range of over 500 meters. Even if he couldn't see the target clearly and couldn't aim accurately, there were many targets. As long as he controlled the up and down angles and didn't let the bullet fly away, his hit rate was still quite high.

"Congratulations, Your Majesty, we hit one!" As soon as the shot was fired, a member of the Cuju team immediately took over the fired rifle and handed over a loaded rifle. There were also people holding telescopes to observe and report the count.

"I told you to run fast!" The first hit gave Hong Tao a huge boost and increased his confidence. He found a clearer target for the second shot.

"……" But there was no pleasant report after the gunshots, and the target didn't seem to be hit, and was still driving the camels to run at high speed.

"Hey, I have a bad temper, come again!" The slap on the face was so loud that it echoed. Even though Hong Tao was thick-skinned enough, the eunuchs did not dare to laugh at him. They were still too embarrassed to look back, so they took the rifle with their hands behind their backs and aimed before firing again.

"He's fallen, he's fallen, congratulations to the emperor!" After three consecutive shots, the rider was still intact, but his luck finally ran out and he still couldn't escape from the gates of hell.

"If you dare to lie about military intelligence again, I will send you to the front line! Don't just sit there, fight together and count the kills. Whoever kills the most enemies gets to choose the spoils first."

Unfortunately, this shot was not fired by Hong Tao. At this time, the vanguard of the cavalry had rushed to a distance of about 100 meters from the trench. A cloud of white smoke rose from the ground and the army opened fire.

The foxholes were not connected in a chain. There were hundreds of them dug, more than ten meters apart, and evenly distributed about a hundred meters in front of the second trench.

The soldiers in the pit did not need to block the enemy's advance. They only needed to shoot as many moving targets as possible to reduce the enemy's impact force for the last line of defense and shoot the riders who fell off their horses.

The order that Hong Tao gave to Yang Zhiyi was not to take any prisoners and to kill as many as possible. He must use this battle to establish his authority and let the Ottomans, Arabs, and Europeans know what will happen if they anger the Ming Empire.

For these religious people, small favors are useless, and it is difficult to bind them with economic benefits in a short period of time. The only deterrent effect is killing. They will attach themselves to whoever is more vicious. As for whether they will hate or not, that is inevitable. The problem is that they will hate even if they are not killed. They hate all pagans. This thing cannot convince them, so let's kill them. Kill one less, one less.

The scene of nearly 10,000 cavalry charging together must have been particularly grand, like the surging waves of the Cape of Good Hope, one layer pushing another, with no end in sight, and the power is endless, making people feel powerless just by looking at it.

On the other hand, the positions of the Ming army were plain and even a little ugly, just like the reefs on the shore. No matter how big the waves were, they would hit the wall here. As long as the time was not too long, the reefs would always stand firm, while the fierce waves would crush them one by one.

When the volleys in the trenches sounded, the Ottoman cavalry were like waves hitting reefs, part of them shattered, and part of them rolled back, trying to leave this land guarded by demons.

But it was too late. The nearly 100-meter-deep foxhole area was like a swamp, constantly swallowing up the number of cavalrymen, and few people could retreat smoothly.

Most of the cavalry fell on the dry land. Their blood dyed the gravel red and was quickly covered by dust. Not many traces were left except the wailing of people and camels.

Only a small number of cavalrymen at the back, who had not yet had time to approach the Ming army camp, found that their companions in front of them had fallen to the ground one after another, so they quickly turned around and evacuated.

But before running out of rifle range, you will still be chased by at least hundreds of bullets. Even if you finally dodge, there will be shells falling from the sky.

It doesn't have to be very accurate, just explode a few meters away, and there is a high probability that one of the people and the camel will be injured. Moreover, the range of the shells is longer, and they can still chase and explode from a kilometer away, without any mercy or martial ethics.

How long would it take for 2500 infantry to defeat tens of thousands of cavalry? Hong Tao remembered that outside the abandoned small city outside the Great Wall north of Datong, it took several thousand land forces several days to defeat the Mongolian cavalry, killing nearly enemies. Later, at Tashan in Jinzhou, they blocked the Jurchen army for a whole day, but only killed more than enemies.

In the blink of an eye, more than 40 years have passed. Today, two thousand army infantrymen, five hundred warrior battalions, dozens of guards and a hundred engineers wiped out most of the more than cavalry in just over minutes, and less than % of them escaped back to the swamp to the west.

It may sound a bit exaggerated, but if you do the math, it's not uncommon. Leaving aside the 500-plus artillery pieces, the 2000-plus muskets only need to fire four times on average to do the job.

If the hit rate is set at 50%, each soldier only needs to fire 8 bullets. If the hit rate is reduced to 25%, only 16 bullets are needed. With the firing rate of the Type 24 rifle, it only takes more than two minutes.

In fact, the actual exchange of fire lasted even shorter, perhaps only about 10 minutes. Isn't that terrifying? In just minutes, nearly well-trained elite cavalrymen, the pride of all nations, were turned into cold corpses.

As the victor, this is a victory of science and technology. When the rate of fire, range and accuracy of the musket are greatly improved, the efficiency of killing also increases in direct proportion.

If the lives of our own soldiers are also taken into account, the copper shell bullets, which are more than ten times more expensive than paper shell bullets, do not seem to be a waste. Moreover, as long as the battle is successful, most of the copper shells can be recycled and reloaded, and are not disposable.

(End of this chapter)