Zhutian: Starting from the Space-Time Merchant

Chapter 655 Horse Team VS Maxim

'Knock knock knock knock~'

Amidst a mixed sound resembling a muffled drumbeat and a curtain being torn apart, the quadruple 23mm rapid-fire cannon unleashed a true barrage.

The quadruple-barreled gun has an extremely high rate of fire.
The cannonballs whistled through the air and exploded, a hail of bullets flying through the galloping cavalry.

Each burst clears the surrounding area, creating a cloud of blood mist.

The continuous and intense bombardment and explosions created a terrifying metal storm in a certain area, forming a barrage barrier that isolated life.

This scene made Senggelinqin, who was watching from afar, furious.

"Let's go~"

He shouted loudly, waving his arms vigorously, "Everyone, get out of here!"

He still has vision and ability.

This terrifying scene was beyond human capability to resist; at this moment, not running away was the only correct choice.

In the chaotic battlefield, only those nearby could hear his shouts.

Fortunately, there weren't many fools; the vast majority of people wisely chose to flee on horseback.

Lin Dao was not in a hurry at all. He controlled the speed of the vehicle and followed, while the cannon was constantly pointed at the densely populated area of ​​people and horses, firing a series of bullets.

In this chase, after going around in circles, Senggelinqin was shocked to realize that he had actually run back to where he started.

If you run a short distance ahead, you'll reach the Grand Canal.

At this moment, he could not see the vast battlefield environment, nor did he know the actual situation of the imperial army.

However, if one could see that the supervisory team, personally led by the imperial envoy Sheng Bao, was constantly beheading people not far away, one would know that the situation was deteriorating rapidly.

Deserters usually appear on the side that is at a disadvantage.

He took a breath and looked back. The terrifying roar behind him had stopped at some point.

In the distance, the strange, colossal steel beast was slowly moving away.

Although I don't know why, there's no doubt that this is good news.

Senggelinqin hurriedly dispatched his personal guards to gather and regroup the cavalry.

With a cavalry force numbering in the tens of thousands, it was impossible for them all to be concentrated around him.

In reality, he only brought the cavalry deployed on the left flank, and after the initial attack, they gradually dispersed.

The various cavalry units were led by the commanders-in-chief, deputy commanders-in-chief, and even wing commanders and captains, ranging in size from several thousand to only a few hundred riders.

They were scattered across the vast battlefield, doing all sorts of things.

Some were entangled with Taiping army formations, some were trapped in barbed wire and could not extricate themselves, and some tried to launch a surprise attack on the artillery positions, but were chased around like ducks.

Most of them, however, lingered far off the edge of the battlefield, occasionally making a show of charging into battle, but in reality, they were avoiding combat.

This is quite normal, after all, this is not two hundred years ago.

Those who had the courage to appear on the battlefield were already among the best of the Manchus of that era, and could be called heroes.

We cannot expect them all to be fearless and willing to die for the Qing Dynasty.

At this moment, even those who kept their distance but didn't run away immediately were already doing justice to the stable wages that the Qing Dynasty had provided for them over the years.

Lin Dao turned the Shilka River self-propelled gun around to attack the cavalry that wanted to run away but dared not.

While we're at it, let's cool down the gun barrel.

Continuous high-speed firing will cause the barrel temperature to rise rapidly and increase wear.

Even if high-performance gun steel is used, it is impossible to fire continuously.

This isn't some feel-good story about a million soldiers crowding into a single village.

In reality, Lin Dao's actions at this time had little impact on the battlefield.

The various units of the Taiping Army are carrying out the tactical plans agreed upon during the previous military council in an orderly manner.

The core tactic is simple: artillery boom boom boom, infantry charge charge charge!
Artillery positions across the area continuously fired at their designated targets, while infantry musketeers advanced relentlessly, squeezing the enemy's living space.

As the battle situation further changed, the 130mm caliber pipes, which had not fired before, also began to spew out angry flames.

'Woo~~'

The dull, piercing sound of heavy trucks passing through the tunnel came from the sky.

The real heavy artillery shells whistled down from the sky and crashed into the Tartar army's formation.

The shells of this caliber are extremely powerful, with a kill radius that is basically measured in the size of a football field.

Perhaps the power could be partially absorbed due to the bodies of people and horses, as well as various other things, but for people of this era, it was still beyond their capabilities.

As expected, when wave after wave of heavy artillery shells fell, the Tatar infantry, who had already begun to desert, quickly fell into a state of panic and rout.

The scale of the collapse was so massive that even the supervising teams couldn't keep up with the fighting.

The rout of the infantry was fatal for the cavalry.

Without the infantry to hold them back, these cavalry units will soon lose their purpose in fighting.

With a livid face, Senggelinqin called upon all the cavalry he could contact to spur their horses forward in the direction of the cannon fire.

This terrifying heavy artillery brought devastating damage.

If we cannot destroy it, we will surely lose this battle!
"How can it be?!"

Having traveled for about twenty or thirty miles without finding any trace of the Taiping Army's heavy artillery, Senggelinqin exclaimed incredulously, "What kind of cannon is this? How can it shoot so far?!"

They galloped on for another ten miles or so before finally spotting those terrifying cannons with long barrels, pointing diagonally upwards. "Bearing 1720~"

"Range 4750~"

"~~~"

"Get ready, let go!"

‘Boom~’

Amazing flames and smoke erupted from the cannon muzzle, and a shell enveloped in red light whistled out of the barrel and flew toward the bank of the Grand Canal.

There were more than twenty such giant cannons scattered across the battlefield, covering an area of ​​about one mile.

Each burst of fire from the cannon signifies the opening of the gates of the underworld.

Holding a single-lens telescope, Senggelinqin suppressed his fear of this terrifying cannon.

He shouted loudly and rode back and forth on his horse to encourage all the horse teams that had followed him there.

After fully mobilizing their morale, several thousand cavalrymen, shouting and riding their exhausted warhorses, charged toward the artillery positions.

It wasn't that they didn't want to give their warhorses time to rest, but rather that the infantry formation was clearly on the verge of collapse, and time was of the essence, so they couldn't afford to delay.

Moreover, this place is far from the battlefield.

They took a detour, which, if you calculate the straight-line distance, is about twenty miles.

There weren't many Taiping soldiers nearby, probably only a few hundred.

Senggelinqin believed that as long as his cavalry could charge in, they would surely be able to kill all the bandits.

Then, they encountered a barbed wire fence on the outside.

Long barbed wire fences were laid in a circular pattern around the artillery positions, with several layers in total.

Having already witnessed the power of this thing, Senggelinqin already had a plan in mind.

He encouraged the cavalry to charge forward, using the flesh and blood of men and horses to carve out a bloody path through the barbed wire.

These cavalry units were the last warriors of the Tartars.

Some people actually gritted their teeth, spurred their horses, and charged into the barbed wire fence, breaking through its barrier in this bloody and gruesome manner.

The passage of flesh and blood was difficult to traverse, forcing people to ride their horses with extreme caution. Many even dismounted and trampled over the still struggling and screaming people and horses as they surged toward the giant cannons that were firing incessantly.

Layers upon layers of barbed wire, a dense and crowded mass of people.

If an Englishman who had fought on the Somme were to travel back in time and witness this scene, he would immediately understand what was about to happen.

Sure enough, when the first cavalry of Tartars broke through the swaying barbed wire and charged toward the cannon with their weapons, the muffled sound of machine guns rang out.

Lin Dao had indeed not assigned too many guards to these giant cannons.

That's because there are dozens of Maxim guns at the artillery position!
Although Maxim is an ancient relic in the modern world, in this time and space, he is the key to the underworld.

Numerous Maxim machine guns opened fire simultaneously, sending dozens of long whips of flame sweeping into the dense crowd from multiple directions.

As a result, in the words of the Taiping soldiers who operated the Maxim guns, it was...
'Killing until I feel nauseous and want to vomit!'

Thousands of cavalry surged in, only to be felled like wheat under the brutal crossfire.

Senggelinqin, brandishing his imperial sword and shouting to boost morale, was swept away by a volley of bullets.

There are no slow-motion shots like in movies and TV dramas, and even fewer scenes like those in movies and TV dramas where characters withstand heavy machine gun fire and still manage to jump around or give their last words.

He collapsed on the spot, his body battered and broken, without uttering a single word.

The power of a heavy machine gun is just that great. It is greatly weakened in movies and TV shows, which simply reduce the heavy machine gun to a Type 38 rifle that can pierce two holes with one shot.

In fact, the cavalry had already collapsed before Senggelinqin was overthrown.

Forty years later, a fifty-man English squad used four Maxim guns to repel five thousand Zulus and kill more than three thousand of them.

At this moment, the cavalry was facing dozens of Maxim heavy machine guns, manufactured with modern technology and using modern bullets!
In less than fifteen minutes, most of the cavalrymen had fallen.

Besides those who died in battle and those who were wounded and fell to the ground, there were also intelligent people.

They chose to lie on the ground to avoid the hail of bullets.

As for those who weren't so clever, they huffed and puffed, exposing their backs to the muzzle of the gun, and were chased and shot for three miles.

This doesn't mean they couldn't hit anything from three miles away; it just means the archers changed their shooting methods.

Raise the muzzle at a certain angle and fire the bullet at an angle; this is the overshoot shooting method.

The hail of bullets falling obliquely from the sky, many of them entering through the shoulders of the fleeing cavalry and exiting between their legs.

A flat, unobstructed environment is ideal for this type of attack.

Of the cavalry that ultimately managed to escape the range of the arrows, less than one in a hundred survived!

Senggelinqin and his cavalry fought desperately to relieve the pressure on the infantry formation.

In reality, when they launched their assault on the artillery positions, the Tartar infantry formation had already completely collapsed.

They were unable to continue under the bombardment of numerous artillery pieces and the relentless fire of hordes of musketeers.

It's a miracle that the Tartar soldiers, who lacked faith and hadn't even received enough silver, had managed to hold out this long.

When the collapse broke out, the supervisory team was powerless to stop it.

What's truly stopping them~
It's the Grand Canal!

(End of this chapter)