New Shun 1730

The letter for help was given to his messenger. While these "barbarians" had not yet blocked the river, Hannibal asked the messenger and several soldiers to swim across the river to deliver the letter to the castle upstream.

So far, Hannibal was still full of confidence.

The barbarians outside the city would not attack the city at all. Even these barbarians did not know to burn the surrounding rye fields.

The greatest manifestation of his confidence was that he did not even send out soldiers, and ground all the rye stored in the castle into flour at the beginning of the siege.

If there is even a little bit of attention, as a fortress engineer, the first lesson of defending the city is "the attacking party's artillery fire can easily hit the towering mill, so it is necessary to send enough soldiers on the first day of the siege to grind all the grain into flour before the mill is destroyed by artillery fire."

Defending the city is a science.

Science always requires experiments, but the test subjects of this science are the lives of soldiers.

Hannibal is very confident, both out of confidence in his own knowledge and because his opponent is too weak.

Adding the two together, double the confidence, double the ease.

However, the day after sending the letter for help, this confidence turned into a panic.

Hannibal was surprised to find that the barbarians outside the city began to move.

He thought that these barbarians would rely on courage and fearlessness of death to continuously attack the city walls and become targets for the soldiers defending the city to practice their marksmanship.

But it was not the case.

On the contrary, the barbarians outside the city were very "professional" and began to dig trenches about three or four hundred steps away from the bastion.

Through the telescope, Hannibal saw it clearly.

Seventeen carriages filled with soil were arranged at intervals.

In a group of four, the first person hid behind the carriage, half-knelt on the ground, and dug a pit with a shovel.

The three people behind kept piling the excavated soil on the side and back of the carriage, forming a breast wall that could withstand lead bullets and ricochets.

When the first person dug half a person deep, the four people worked together to push the carriage that was used for cover forward.

The first person continued to dig a half-man pit, and the three people behind him separated. Expand and deepen the pit dug by the first person, and pile the soil in front of the moat.

Seventeen broken carriages for cover and seventeen teams digging pits formed a perfect arc around the bastion.

At this speed, a trench as the starting point for the attack will be dug in three days at most.

This... should not be the means that barbarians should know.

"There is also a fortress engineer on the opposite side." Hannibal came to a conclusion that he least wanted to believe.

To be able to attack a city, you must first be able to defend a city. To be able to defend a city, you must first be able to attack a city.

The military science and technology of the Khitan officer on the opposite side was not outdated, nor was it like the information he collected-Dashun completed the military transformation of the level of the Thirty Years War during the war period eighty years ago, but has maintained this level since then without any progress.

This huge gap caused by previous misjudgments made Hannibal go from extreme contempt at the beginning to panic and anxiety.

He finally issued the first official order to defend the city, asking the soldiers to grind all the rye into flour immediately.

The captain of the artillery looked at the barbarians who were digging holes like groundhogs and asked Hannibal for instructions.

"Brigadier General, can we use artillery to attack them? Slow down their digging speed?"

Hannibal looked through the telescope for a while and rejected the captain of the artillery's suggestion.

"The artillery of the defenders will inevitably be destroyed by the attackers. It is a matter of time. As long as the artillery is fired, the artillery position will be exposed."

"If there are enough reinforcements. The artillery of the defenders should not hesitate to expose the artillery position in advance to hinder the digging of the attackers. Buy time for the arrival of reinforcements and buy time for the main army to fight."

"If there are not enough reinforcements. The limited defensive artillery that will inevitably be destroyed should be used at the most critical moment. Instead of being exposed early and being destroyed by the attackers' artillery."

"How to choose requires the commander of the fortress to have a clear judgment."

He recited the fortress course of the French Military Academy, which was the experience accumulated by France, Spain and the Netherlands after hundreds of years of fighting.

Absolutely correct.

Pointing to the protective slope in front of the moat, Hannibal explained to the artillery captain who didn't know much about fortress defense.

"The artillery is attached to the bastion and shoots downward. As the enemy approaches, the elevation angle of the muzzle needs to be adjusted continuously. It takes a long time to adjust the elevation angle once, and the defender should try to avoid this situation."

"The protective slope in front of the trench is the best way to avoid this situation."

"The nine-degree angle extending to the protective slope in front of the trench allows the artillery on the city to block the long protective slope without adjusting the muzzle elevation angle. The height of the city wall and the angle of the protective slope determine the best distance for artillery fire. This is simple geometry."

"The artillery should be kept until the attacker reaches the protective slope and starts to attack. Strive to block the protective slope and kill enough enemies before the attacker's artillery destroys it."

This is one of the fortress courses at the French Military Academy.

Absolutely correct.

Sin9 degrees, 0.15, the bastion is three meters high, and the longest distance of this section of the protective slope is simply divided by about 20 meters.

The protective slope allows the artillery on the bastion to not need to adjust the elevation angle. The shells will bounce and roll when hitting the slope, and the killing range can be increased to 40 meters.

Behind the protective slope is the moat of the bastion.

At the end of the protective slope, there is a breastwork.

The soldiers of the defending side can stand on the breast wall and shoot at the slope, and cooperate with the artillery on the bastion and the musketeers on the high ground of the bastion to form a three-dimensional cross firepower of the upper, middle and lower layers.

Under the premise that the artillery of the defending side will inevitably be destroyed, this section of the protective slope with a distance of about 40 meters will be the place with the highest defensive killing efficiency.

After the artillery position of the bastion is exposed, it will take at least one to two days for the attacking side's artillery to counter and destroy it.

During this one to two days, the attackers will continue to launch attacks. Because it is necessary to use the flesh of the infantry to test the artillery configuration of the defending side and indicate the attack target for the artillery.

If used properly, it can make the attackers bleed a lot.

However, if the protective slope is attacked, the fall of the bastion is only a matter of time.

As long as they reach the protective slope, or use heavy artillery to counter the defending artillery and then blast open the city wall, or dig tunnels to bury gunpowder, they can enter the bastion after a brutal melee.

But now, his troops are not sufficient. Hannibal understood that this bastion might not last as long as he imagined.

Once these marmots dug in front of the protective slope, he could only send limited troops to fight with the other side repeatedly. Abandoning the protective slope and trenches, the fall of the bastion was just a matter of time.

If he didn't give up, it would also drain his blood. After all, he only had more than a hundred soldiers and was seriously short of manpower.

Hopefully, reinforcements can arrive before these people attack the protective slope.

Three days later, a trench three or four hundred meters in front of the bastion had been formed. The continuous addition of carriage cover teams and soldiers who were constantly familiar with digging techniques made the excavation speed increase visibly every day.

After the first trench was formed, Hannibal found that these people were divided into two parts.

One part of the people continued to push the carriage for cover, and dug a larger pit near the first trench.

The accumulated soil slowly formed a small mound.

Someone filled a woven basket with soil and built a wall at the location of the small mound, leaving a gun position that was obviously prepared for a cannon.

You can't see the whole body of a person in the telescope, you can only see that in the deep trench, people are constantly rushing forward, like a groundhog on the prairie moving forward in a tunnel.

Someone carried wood and threw it into the "gun position", and you can see someone inside spreading wood on the ground.

Hannibal frowned and counted the number of gun positions, about thirty.

In other words, the attackers had at least thirty heavy guns.

The reason why it was determined to be a heavy gun was also a course in the military academy:

For siege heavy guns, wood, planks or logs need to be laid under the gun position to prevent the heavy gun from sinking into the soil, resulting in the muzzle elevation angle being unable to be controlled. The wood spread out like a floor can reduce the pressure of the heavy gun on the soil. The pressure is divided by the area. Of course, it is different to press on the wheels and the soil and the wheels press on the spliced ​​floor.

This is still correct.

Although the shadow of heavy artillery is not yet visible, Hannibal, with his many years of experience in the military academy, still infers that the heavy artillery of the besiegers will arrive soon based on those artillery positions.

Except for those who dug the heavy artillery positions, the rest began to extend the classic Z-shaped trench.

Lesson 3 of Fortress Engineering at the French Military Academy: The best choice for the besiegers to approach the bastion is to start from the first trench, dig a Z-shaped trench, and approach in a zigzag manner.

Dig a vertical line directly, and the artillery defending the city can aim and shoot directly. If a shell falls into the trench, it will penetrate the candied haws. It is better to attack directly on the ground without any cover.

The turning angle of the Z-shaped trench should take into account the shape of the bastion and the distribution of the star angles, calculate the best angle, and choose the most labor-saving angle within an adjustable range.

The people digging the Z-shaped trench are similar to those who dug the first trench before.

There are also four people in a group. The first one digs a person deep in front and moves forward, and the people behind follow up to expand the trench.

In just a few days, the periphery of the bastion is like a spider web.

Countless trenches extended inward from the first trench, winding and twisting. The defenders could not see any exposed people, only the flying dirt.

The terrifying silence on the battlefield doubled the pressure on the defenders in the city. Some people couldn't help but shoot at the trenches, but it didn't work.

The captain of the artillery also gave up the idea of ​​trying to bombard the Z trench. Bombardment had no effect on the Z trench unless someone invented an explosive shell and fired it with a mortar with a very large curve.

On the eighth day of the siege, the Z trench had extended to less than 200 meters in front of the bastion.

As Hannibal expected, the Z trench stopped digging forward when it was 200 meters away from the bastion and about 110 meters away from the protective slope.

Instead, it turned horizontally and began to dig a second trench parallel to the bastion.

Hannibal knew that this trench would be wider and deeper than the first one. This would serve as the assembly point for the final attack.

Another lesson from the French Military Technical Academy on fortress engineering: When the attackers are digging the second trench, it is the best time to go out of the city to counterattack.

If possible, the commander of the fortress should send elite grenadiers. When the digging is slack in the evening, attack the second trench and fill it up.

Otherwise, once the second trench is dug, the attackers have a gathering place and a forward position, and the defenders will be killed by the attackers' muskets when they counterattack.

This is still correct.

But Hannibal couldn't use it.

Those damn Cossacks had all been buried outside the city before.

He had no extra troops, and simple defense was already stretched to the limit, let alone going out of the city to counterattack.

Through the telescope, Hannibal found that outside the first trench in the distance, many people were cutting branches in the woods.

These branches were constantly transported forward through the trench. Obviously, this was the attackers preparing to fill the moat.

Once the attack began, the death squad would throw these branches and wood into the moat, fill the moat, and disintegrate the last outer line of defense of the bastion.

At the second trench, the marmots continued to build new gun positions.

Once the attack began, the long-range heavy artillery would suppress the artillery of the defenders-if the defenders counterattacked, the camera would counterattack and destroy; if not, the light artillery and mortar would take the opportunity to enter the gun position at the second trench.

Close-range bombardment of the protective slope formed irregular ricochets, killing the defending soldiers hiding behind the trench.

Once the deployment was completed, it was time for the general attack.

This was also the content of the military academy course.

Originally, according to the military academy curriculum, by this time, the commander of the fortress had already dug a tunnel extending outward from the bastion.

Hang a bell on the tunnel, and judge the location of the tunnel where the attacker may dig explosives by the direction of the bell ringing. The commander of the fortress should send elite infantry to dig the tunnel and throw grenades to fight back.

But this time, Hannibal did not follow the military academy curriculum for the first time.

Because the densely packed artillery positions being built outside made him very sober. The attackers did not need to dig tunnels, just bombarding with heavy artillery was enough.

Hannibal looked at the distance with worry. Outside the first trench, some people were maintaining a road leading to the forest in the distance.

Obviously, this road was prepared for the attacker's heavy artillery.

Winter is still a long way off, and the attackers have plenty of time. It can be seen that they are not in a hurry, but waiting for the heavy artillery to arrive.

The front line is still desperately quiet, with only shovels flying and mud flying.

There were no people, no guns, no cannons, but the flying dirt was more terrifying than guns and cannons.

If it were someone else, they might have laughed and said nothing; but as a fortress engineer, these scenes were like the knights of the apocalypse before the Last Judgment for Hannibal.

On the fifteenth day of the siege, the second trench had basically taken shape. The newly built gun positions were still empty, but the reserved firing holes pointed very clearly to the first fort where Hannibal was.

That was the support point of the entire defense system. Obviously, the other side had a detailed fortress deployment map, which could easily determine the key points of this inferior bastion.

Hannibal fell into deep despair.

The current situation was very clear. The war with Russia was not as simple as he had imagined. The tribe would not have heavy artillery, let alone this effective siege technique.

What was even more terrifying was that there was a big problem with the previous intelligence.

At least in terms of fortress attack and defense, the Khitans in the south were not at the level of the Thirty Years' War.

A few days ago, he thought he was going to replicate the Portuguese myth in Cochin.

But now it seems that this may be his first and last actual combat as a fortress engineer.

Hannibal was ready to pray for the last time. He knew that it was only a matter of time before the bastion fell.

The only thing he could do was to use the remaining artillery in his hand to bleed the attackers at the protective slope. Use the most tragic battle for the protective slope breast wall and the moat to delay for at least twenty days.

When the reinforcements from upstream arrive, they can hold out longer, but the fortress will be breached no later than before the first snow falls.

Just when he was in endless despair, soldiers in the city excitedly pointed at the lower reaches of the Heilongjiang River and shouted, just like the desperate Israelites in the story, seeing Moses part the Red Sea.

"St. Andrew's Cross Flag!"

"St. Andrew's Cross Flag!"

"St. Andrew's Cross Flag!"

"Merciful Virgin Mary!"

"Navy! Navy! It's our navy!"