The Ming army knew how to use trenches to resist the Chu army's artillery attack, and the Chu army also knew how to use trenches to resist the Ming army's artillery counterattack.

Some Ming army generals saw that their own artillery counterattacks had no effect, so they simply sent infantry to counterattack, trying to expel the Chu army's behavior of not engaging in direct combat and digging trenches secretly...

As a result, these Ming army soldiers had just left the trench, and before they even lined up, they were greeted by a large number of artillery shells...

After some Ming troops who were lucky enough to break through the Chu army's firepower to counterattack approached, they soon discovered that the Chu thieves' infantry on the opposite side had very fierce firepower.

The crackling sound of gunfire was like fried beans, and it was so dense that people suspected that the Chu troops hiding in these trenches were not thousands at all, but tens of thousands...

Naturally, they didn't know that the first batch of Chu troops to participate in the battle was the Chu army's trump card First Division, and all members of the First Division had already been equipped with flintlock muskets.

Its infantry firepower density is several times higher than before!

After several counterattacks and killing and wounding thousands of people, the Ming army on the opposite side completely gave up the idea of ​​counterattack...

If they continue to fight back like this, they will probably suffer tens of thousands of casualties before the Chu army can dig trenches in front of them. Then there will be no need to fight and they will just surrender.

Seeing that the Ming army on the opposite side stopped counterattacking, the Chu army was not idle either and continued its excavation work!

To be honest, the battle outside Tianjin was different from what General Li Chengtong expected!

As the commander of the Third Army, Li Chengtong can be said to be the first senior general in the Chu army to come into contact with and study various new tactics under flintlock guns.

He has participated in the formulation of various line tactics for the new troops that have been practiced for a long time.

This kind of line tactics, when practiced within the Chu army, can be said to be like meeting gods and killing gods, meeting Buddhas and killing Buddhas. When faced with the traditional old army, its firepower density advantage is enough to give the new army a huge tactical advantage.<

/p>

When conducting exercises between new-style troops, all the old tactics are unreliable, and only line tactics can be used. When two troops using new line tactics are fighting, it looks a bit silly to line up, and then you

Fire a round of muskets, I'll fire a round of muskets.

There is a feeling of standing and shooting each other, so some people within the Chu army, especially people from other arms such as cavalry and artillery, jokingly call this line tactic the queuing to shoot tactic...

Regardless of whether the name sounds nice or not, this line tactic is really useful when fighting in the wild.

However, a very embarrassing fact is...

In addition to exercises, Chu's new troops have never used line tactics on a large scale in actual combat...

Not to mention large-scale, it has never been used in actual combat with hundreds or thousands of people...

Why?

Therefore, since the Battle of Jiangbei began, the Ming army on the opposite side did not give the Chu army a chance to engage in field battles with large-scale infantry!

Whether it is the Battle of Yangzhou, the Battle of Huai'an, or the remaining battles in Jiangbei, they are basically all about fortification.

It cannot be said that there are no field battles, but field battles generally occur between cavalry, especially small-scale reconnaissance cavalry.

As for the infantry, the infantry of the Ming army will not come out to play field battles with your Chu army.

Therefore, the line tactics that the three divisions of the Chu Army's Third Army had practiced hard for a long time were of no use to some extent.

In fact, let alone the line tactics of the new troops, even the various field tactics of the old troops have not been used in actual combat for a long time...

Again, the Ming army did not give the Chu army a chance to engage in serious field battles, especially field battles between infantry.

Li Chengtong originally thought that this situation would change when he arrived outside Tianjin. After all, Hong Chengchou on the opposite side had hundreds of thousands of people under his command.

So many people can't just stay in Tianjin city!

They have to set up a battle in the wild and fight with themselves!

As a result... the Ming army did not stay in Tianjin City, but they built numerous fortresses and trenches around Tianjin City.

After all this going on, it turned into a tough battle.

As a result, the two main forces of the Third Army, the First Division and the Eleventh Division, could only forget about line tactics and wield shovels and hoes like the engineers.

Just like in a critical battle, trench digging begins!

The Ming army is hiding in the fortress and cannot come out of the trench. You can't just stupidly send infantry to line up and then face the artillery from the opposite side unilaterally.

Even if they fight like this, they can actually rush over in one go. After all, the rate of fire of artillery is very limited, but the Chu army is unwilling to bear such casualties.

Therefore, the Chu army adopted the method of digging trenches to advance, which was relatively time-consuming and consumed more ammunition, but resulted in fewer casualties and was more reliable.

Ever since, such a scene happened outside Tianjin!

A large number of Ming troops relied on various fortresses, trenches, and parapets to resist stubbornly, and used artillery to carry out continuous artillery counterattacks.

The Chu army carried out intensive bombardment while digging trenches and advancing continuously.

Occasionally interspersed with some Chu army assaults or Ming army counterattacks.

But this kind of assault and counterattack has nothing to do with line tactics. After all, the shells fired by a large number of artillery on both sides are flying overhead, and the distance between assault and counterattack is often within a hundred meters or even more.

distance.

In such a small space, there is no time for you to queue up slowly.

By the time you finish lining up, you'll probably have been almost killed by the opponent's artillery fire.

Therefore, the generals on both sides had a tacit understanding and directly ordered the infantry on the front line to rush forward and then initiate hand-to-hand combat.

The battle mode outside Tianjin is, to be honest, very boring. There is no massive charge involving thousands or even tens of thousands of people, nor are there hundreds of artillery pieces firing rapidly at a target.

On the contrary, battles often involve multiple or at most a dozen artillery pieces continuously bombarding a target.

Battles between infantry are often limited to hundreds of people.

The Chu army had to temporarily organize more commandos, and let the 1st Division and the 11th Division, which lacked heavy armor and cold weapons, be temporarily responsible for counterattacks.

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The assault operations were mainly undertaken by the Eighth Division and Twentieth Division of the Second Army.

It has to be said that these troops in the old style still have a relatively large advantage in this kind of critical battle, especially in assault battles with more hand-to-hand combat.

Their large numbers of heavily armored spearmen and sword and shield men are more useful in this type of combat.

——

This boring battle lasted for three days!

However, in these three days, Hong Chengchou and other senior Ming army generals lived like years!

Despite the fact that the battle was dull and sporadic, there seemed to be no grand and large-scale battle scenes.

However, the casualties were not small at all, and the various fortresses and trenches defended by the Ming army continued to fall.

After all, the hundreds of artillery pieces of the Chu army are not for viewing. Even if they are scattered across the entire battlefield, the firepower density is still very high.

Not to mention that as the communication trenches continued to advance, a large number of mortars in the Chu army were also moved forward one after another. These mortars were moved forward with the help of the communication trenches and hidden in the frontline trenches. They often hit multiple doors and then pointed at the open

A sudden bombardment was carried out on a certain section of the trench where the army was gathering.

This kind of shelling seems sporadic, and the scale is not large. There may only be a few shells landing and exploding!

However, the killing power is not small at all. Once a mortar shell hits, it will often cause casualties of at least a few to more than a dozen Ming army soldiers.

A dozen here, dozens there...

Similar situations were very common on the long front, which resulted in hundreds of Ming soldiers being killed or injured in the Chu army's front-line mortars at the end of the day.

Plus the damage caused by field artillery and heavy artillery!

The artillery units of the Chu army killed at least three to four thousand Ming troops in the first three days during the continuous bombardment.

At the same time, more than a thousand people were killed and injured in the Chu army's infantry assault.

After three days, Hong Chengchou found that he had lost more than 5,000 people under his command!

This result made Hong Chengchou feel incredible.

Obviously there wasn't much fighting. The Chu bandits on the opposite side didn't even launch a serious large-scale attack. They just relied on sporadic shelling and infantry assaults to kill 5,000 of their own people.

The current war, to be honest, has become incomprehensible to him.

General Li Chengtong and other Chu generals, no matter what Hong Chengchou and the others thought, they saw that the results of the previous three days of fighting were pretty good, so they continued to implement this tactic.

July 28, the sixth day after the Chu army launched an offensive on Tianjin City.

The temporary commando team of more than a thousand people from the Eighth Division of the Second Army of the Chu Army, plus tens of thousands of other troops from the Eighth Division, decided to forcibly assault the Ming Army's East Fort outside Tianjin and completely capture the Ming Army's defense line.

The three major strongholds.

This East Fort was one of the most important fortresses of the Ming Army in the entire Tianjin defense line, with at least fifteen long-barreled artillery deployed.

There are two to three hundred short-barreled artillery pieces in a mess, and the total force is at least tens of thousands.

This is actually a fortress built around the entire mountain.

The entire Tianjin defense line is actually Tianjin City in the middle, and then two small fortresses on the east and west, which together form a mutually supporting defense system.

Among them, the East Fort has always been the main attack site of the Chu army!

In order to conquer this east fort, the Chu army concentrated eighty mortars of various calibers and hundreds of field guns of various types.

In addition, the navy also dispatched warships to venture into the Zhigu River and directly approach to bombard the eastern fortress.

Although the navy only sent five warships into the Zhigu River, the firepower exerted was quite powerful, providing fire support of at least thirty naval guns.

Under the continuous artillery attack of the Chu army for six days, the East Fort was already beyond recognition.
Chapter completed!