I am the prince of the Ming Dynasty, I don't give up

Chapter 550 Train Cannon

When the people in the city saw this scene below the city, they all gasped. Everyone understood Zhu Houxun's intention of building a railway.

In fact, this was also a helpless move by Zhu Houchun. Attacking a strong city like the capital would be difficult even if Zhu Houchun had more than 200,000 light infantry. Even if he succeeded, there would be heavy casualties. This was not what Zhu Houchun wanted to see.

Therefore, they had to rely on artillery. Ordinary field artillery was not enough. They had to rely on heavy artillery. Zhu Houxun had no shortage of heavy artillery, because the naval warships were equipped with the largest muzzle-loading smoothbore cannon that the Royal Group could produce at that time. This type of cannon was named red cannon by Zhu Houxun with a bad taste. Some of the red cannons equipped by the navy were even larger than those on the walls of the capital.

The Royal Group has already dismantled thousands of red-coated cannons of all sizes from the navy warships. Such heavy cannons can only be transported by rail. If they are transported by road, it will take at least a month to reach the capital, and by then the flowers will be cold.
Moreover, these cannons did not have gun carriages, and it was quite troublesome to build such a large number of them.

After Zhu Houxuan learned about this, he waved his hand and said: There is no need to build any new artillery carriages. Trains are the best artillery carriages and the best launching platforms. Moreover, their mobility is much higher than that of ordinary artillery carriages.
Zhu Houxuan's words awakened everyone, and they quickly modified dozens of trains, so the railway cannon as a weapon appeared on the historical stage ahead of time.

In order to allow these railway guns to enter the battlefield smoothly and maneuver on the battlefield, Zhu Houxuan asked the civilians to build a ring railway around the capital.

This ring railway is between 4,000 and 4,500 meters away from the city wall of Beijing. Because the city defense artillery of Beijing has little accuracy against targets at this distance, they can only rely on guessing.

If you have no idea about this ring railway, you can think of it as the Third Ring Road of the capital city in later generations, because the average distance between the Second Ring Road and the Third Ring Road of the capital city in later generations is about four kilometers.

Of course, a railway built in such a hurry will have quality problems and its service life will be greatly reduced, but this is also a disposable railway and what needs to be solved is whether there are any problems.

Zhu Houxuan also ordered the railway workers to build many branch lines on the basis of the ring railway. These branch lines were closer to the city walls. Each branch line was a position for a train gun, which could more conveniently attack the city walls.
(The red line in the picture is a schematic diagram of a section of the main line and branch line of the Weicheng Railway)
When Zhu Houxuan had repaired all of this, he was already invincible. The railway artillery that could be quickly maneuvered through the Beijing railway network was extremely terrifying. In this era, no army could survive collapse under the firepower coverage of so many railway artillery.

After the first train gun appeared, train guns appeared one after another in the sight of the defenders of the capital.
The area under the city wall suddenly became extremely busy, shrouded in black coal smoke and white neatly. In a flash, the number of artillery gathered under the city far exceeded the number of artillery on the city wall of the capital.
The railway guns followed the command and entered the branch lines one by one. Each branch line was roughly a trapezoid and could accommodate three railway guns. The section parallel to the city wall could accommodate one train, connecting to the ring railway, and the railway diagonally opposite the city wall could accommodate two trains.
Each train has ten carriages, each of which is equipped with a red cannon, enough shells and propellant, and a whole gun crew. This red cannon weighing several thousand pounds cannot be manned by five or six people like the Portuguese field guns. A gun crew must have more than 20 people to make the cannon operate quickly.
As soon as the train gun stopped, a group of guards jumped down from it and nailed several long steel wedges into each wheel of the train, nailing the wheels in place. This was to prevent the huge recoil force from causing the train to derail instantly when the gun was fired.
Then a gun battle suddenly broke out.
The artillery on the train had already been loaded, and after preparations were made, it immediately launched an artillery attack on the walls of the capital.
The setting sun was like blood, dyeing the sky red, and also reflected on the ancient city walls of the capital, covering them with a layer of tragic battle robe.
Hundreds of red cannons gathered under Anding Gate, and more than 500 cannons gathered on the northern wall of the capital, firing one after another at the city wall (you can't use salvos, because the recoil of salvos can overturn an entire train). To the defenders on the city, hundreds of white flowers bloomed one after another under the city, and each white flower represented a cannonball containing violent power being fired.
A shell tore through the air like thunder, cutting through the sky with destructive force, breaking through the afterglow of the setting sun, and heading straight for the city wall.

Above the city wall, black smoke and dust intertwined into a chaos. Every impact was accompanied by flying bricks and stones. The city wall seemed to be shaking. Most of the city walls of the capital were built during the Hongwu and Yongle periods. Each brick and stone had a history of hundreds of years and carried the weight of history, but they also seemed shaky under this fierce attack.

In fact, when the railway guns entered the battle position, the artillery on the city wall had already started to move and began to fight back against the railway guns below the city. The two sides fought back and forth at the beginning, but soon the artillery on the city was completely suppressed by the artillery below the city.
There was no other way. There were too many artillery pieces under the city. While surrounding the other three sides without attacking, more than 500 cannons were gathered on the north side to bombard the city walls. This was simply too insane.

There were only 72 red cannons on the northern wall of the capital, which was no match for them.
In fact, there is no technological gap between the artillery of both sides. The maximum range is 5 kilometers, and the effective range is meters. The effective range is the range within which accuracy can be achieved.

The artillery fire below the city was stuck at a distance of 3,000 to 4,000 meters, so both sides could only rely on luck.
But the target of the artillery below the city is the city wall of Beijing, which is more than ten meters high. In particular, the Anding Gate Tower is more than thirty meters high. Such a large target can have a good hit rate even outside the effective range.

The artillery on the city wall was aimed at a train that was about three meters high and three meters wide, so the accuracy was relatively low.
However, many railway guns were still hit. However, many railway guns were equipped with gun shields, which are actually thick steel plates, each of which weighs more than one ton. These were recently cast by the Tangshan Iron and Steel Plant. Anyway, they are transported on the railway, so the weight is not a big deal. Of course, not all the extra railway guns were equipped with this kind of gun shield, but only the railway guns closest to the city wall were equipped with it.
(End of this chapter)