Total War: I'm building up an army to rebel against the Qing Dynasty in a heavily modified vers

Chapter 91 The Qing army's artillery was even worse than lousy!

"Don't panic. Although the city gate has been breached, there is still a barbican inside and another gate. It won't be easy for those rebels to break through the city gate!"

"Just send these rebels to their deaths one by one. I want to see if they can withstand the guns and cannons from the city walls!"

Upon hearing Wanfu's words, the Eight Banners soldier supporting him nodded while subtly glancing at his crotch.

Not bad, the old man's crotch isn't wet yet, but if he's really that confident, why are his legs shaking like this?

Meanwhile, atop the city wall, dozens of Manchu soldiers, holding rather unreliable bird-shaped weapons, stared with awkward expressions at the approaching enemy army.

If they had a choice, they really wouldn't want to use a musket; they'd rather use a traditional bow and arrow!

They knew perfectly well what kind of quality this thing produced by the imperial court was. Holding this piece of junk, they were afraid that they might accidentally load too much gunpowder into it, causing the gun barrel to explode first!

Of course, that being said, if you actually let them play with bows and arrows, these Eight Banner soldiers would be even less able to do it.

Why would Wanfu bring out a batch of his most treasured firearms that had been stored away for who knows how long?

It's because these Manchu bannermen have long been so corrupt that they don't even know how to draw a bow and shoot an arrow!

Besides them, at the other end, several Manchu soldiers were pondering how to deal with the two cannons on the city wall.

Logically speaking, these two cannons shouldn't be operated by the Eight Banners soldiers. These two cannons originally belonged to the Green Standard Army, and the Green Standard Army was responsible for operating them.

Unfortunately, the Green Standard Army troops they had previously sent out were completely wiped out, and all the contestants who barely knew how to operate artillery died at the hands of Luo's army.

As a result, when the army led by Luo Ke, now renamed the Po Lu Army, attacked, they couldn't find a single player in the entire city who knew how to fire a cannon!

"—Idiot, I told you, don't rush to fire the shells! I haven't even poured the gunpowder in yet!"

"Damn it, why didn't you say so earlier? You were rambling on and on, how was I supposed to understand a single thing you were saying?"

Before the Eight Banner soldiers could even ignite the gunpowder, they stuffed the cannonballs into the breech, and even shoved the plugs into the breech twice. And that's exactly what happened.

The shell is stuck in the general's cannon, and no one knows how to get it out. The cannon is now completely useless!

Meanwhile, on the other side, several Manchu soldiers were also nervously operating the cannon and arguing about how much gunpowder to load.

None of them knew how much gunpowder they should use to properly fire the shell.

If they loaded too little, they were afraid the shells wouldn't fire; but if they loaded too much, they were afraid the cannon would explode right in front of them.

Although they had never witnessed a cannon explode, because they had never seen those two cannons fire, they had heard that if a cannon exploded, the flying fragments could instantly turn them into mush.

So after all that trouble, the Eight Banners soldiers cautiously poured in a little gunpowder. They almost fought over it, because they were afraid that if they poured in too much gunpowder, the barrel would explode.

"Fire! Bombard the Luo family army outside! Let the rebels eat their words!"

Although the Luo Family Army has now been renamed, these Eight Banner soldiers still haven't quite adapted, or perhaps they are just unwilling to call out the sharp name of the Po Lu Army.

As one of the Eight Banner soldiers cautiously lit the fuse, the others quickly retreated to both sides, each covering their ears in terror.

Judging from their appearance, you'd think they were complete novices setting off firecrackers for the first time!

boom!

With a muffled thud, the great cannon on the city wall finally fired.

Located outside the city, Rock watched his troops advance rapidly through his binoculars while looking puzzled at the cannon that suddenly fired from the city wall.

"What are these damned Tartars doing? How can they even hit them from this distance?"

Rock measured the distance; his dwarven ballistae hadn't even entered firing range yet, so how come the other side had already fired first?

Could it be that the Qing army's cannons on the city wall have a longer range than their own dwarf crossbows?

If the Qing army had used some new type of howitzer or other artillery, he might have been willing to believe that such artillery could have a longer range than the dwarf crossbow, but if it was just the old-fashioned general's cannon, then forget it.

Judging from its size, it shouldn't be a cannon like the Red-Clad Cannon. If it were just an ordinary Divine Might General Cannon, its effective range would be less than 800 meters.

Sure enough, to Rock's utter bewilderment, the shell that shot out of the cannon barrel seemed to have diarrhea, tracing a huge curve before crashing to the ground with a thud.

If you measure the distance, the shell didn't even travel 100 meters; it started falling almost as soon as it left the muzzle.

"Are you kidding me? Are these Qing soldiers here to be funny?"

Rock was speechless. He felt he had considered the extent of the Qing soldiers' incompetence as much as possible, but he only realized now just how incompetent they were.

Of course, this might also be because the Qing troops that Rock encountered were not elite troops.

After all, these were just Qing troops from outside the Great Wall. To put it bluntly, the Qing court itself was afraid that the clans and fellow villagers outside the Great Wall would become too powerful, so they would try to restrict the area outside the Great Wall as much as possible and had no intention of building their own place of origin.

Many times, the Manchus and Eight Banner soldiers stationed outside the Great Wall wished they could simply rebel against the court, since the court's attitude towards them was so terrible that they would think they had been exiled!

Under these circumstances, it was clearly impossible to expect these Eight Banner soldiers from outside the Great Wall to be particularly brave. Even if they did have that kind of courage, they would not put it into serving the court.

"Reporting to the commander, the ballistae are now in place!"

"Reporting to the commander, the enemy has entered the firing range of the Imperial Guards!"

The two unexpected pieces of good news finally brought Rock back to his senses. He waved his hand and said with great enthusiasm, "Give them a good beating! Bombard those Tartar soldiers on the city walls!"

As the saying goes, "Open fire, blast their mother!"

Although Rock didn't have cannons on his side, only heavy crossbows brought by the dwarves, he still felt that the vulgar line of poetry was quite fitting.

During the previous experiments, Rock had consulted with the dwarven craftsmen and made some additional modifications to the bolts of this heavy crossbow.

When firing, Rock and his men strapped an extra ring of explosives around the heavy crossbow bolts, as if they were a bunch of extra-large firecrackers.

The fuses of these explosives were twisted together by the dwarves into a rope and attached to the back of the ballista. They only needed to calculate the burning speed of the fuse in advance, and when they fired this thing, it would explode on the spot when it landed in the enemy ranks.

For dwarves, calculating lead time for leads is second nature.

Perhaps some dwarves don't know how to fire a cannon, since not all dwarves are artillerymen, but it's impossible for any dwarf not to know how to mine, because mining is the foundation of a dwarf's livelihood.

Dwarves who don't know how to mine are discriminated against in dwarven society. It's like being a eunuch who can't have sex; no dwarf can respect someone who doesn't know how to mine.

During the mining process, these dwarves definitely need to use explosives, so they have developed an extremely precise ability to control the fuse, ensuring that the error is reduced to within half a second.

With two crisp bowstring sounds, two giant crossbow bolts, each over two meters long and resembling long spears, were fired from the ballista and flew towards the Qing army's cannons on the distant city wall.

Earlier, the Qing army had noticed the crossbows carried by the enemy troops below the city, and they also noticed the short men who were responsible for operating the crossbows.

However, they didn't take the ballista seriously at first. After all, the ballista was an outdated weapon, and it was also very troublesome to operate. It was not something that ordinary bandits and powerful people could handle well.

It wasn't until the two crossbow bolts struck with pinpoint accuracy and pierced the bodies of two Eight Banner artillerymen that the remaining Eight Banner soldiers realized the situation was dire.

Before they could dodge, the explosives attached to the two crossbow bolts exploded with a bang.

The explosives not only shattered the bodies of the Eight Banner soldiers impaled on the crossbow bolts, but also caused damage to the surrounding Eight Banner soldiers, rupturing their eardrums and causing blood to flow from their ears.

That's not all; the huge fireball produced by the gunpowder explosion also ignited the gunpowder piled up next to it!

These Qing artillerymen had no idea what safe operation meant. They didn't even know how to properly place cannonballs and gunpowder, so they never considered what the consequences would be of leaving gunpowder barrels wide open next to the cannons.

When the huge explosion rang out, Rock was startled. He looked at the dwarven crossbowmen not far from him with a puzzled expression and couldn't help but ask, "What's going on? Did you put some strange formula in the explosives? How can this thing explode so powerfully?"

The dwarven crossbowman shook his head, equally puzzled, and said, "No, Commander, we're using the regular gunpowder you collected. I think it's possible that our gunpowder ignited the gunpowder used by the enemy artillery?"

While speculating, the dwarven crossbowman couldn't help but look down on the opposing artillery, thinking that these guys' professionalism was practically that of dogs.

Good heavens, forget about the Empire or anything, the artillery of these Qing soldiers is probably on par with the Norse barbarians! Even the Greenskins' artillery is better than them!

The cannon, along with the surrounding artillery, was completely destroyed by the gunpowder explosion. As for the other cannon next to it, the Eight Banners artillerymen there still haven't been able to get the shell stuck in the breech!

Judging from their posture, this cannon might be ruined!

The other Eight Banners musketeers trembled in fear. They had no idea what had happened. All they knew was that there had been a huge explosion nearby. When they turned around, they found that the artillerymen there seemed to have all died.

Holding their muskets, their faces were full of confusion, because they simply couldn't figure out how they could stop the ferocious musketeers outside.

But they didn't need to think about it anymore, because the Po Lu Army soldiers had already opened fire.

The first soldiers to open fire were naturally the 200 newly trained guards under Roc's command. These 200 soldiers, armed with Chasebo rifles, knelt on the ground, took a quick look, and then began firing at the Qing troops in the distance.

This rifle has an extremely long range, maintaining a flat trajectory even at 800 meters, and its accuracy is quite impressive. Moreover, because it is a breech-loading rifle, soldiers can also lie prone and fire while holding this weapon.

Of course, because this French rifle had a caliber of 11 mm, its recoil was also incredibly strong. It was quite difficult for ordinary soldiers to handle, and their shoulders would get very tired.

Two hundred soldiers fired wildly from a distance of 500 meters.

Although these new guardsmen were not very familiar with their rifles, their accuracy was not as good as Rock had imagined, at least not as good as they had shown at the firing range.

Even so, a large number of the Eight Banners soldiers on the city wall fell down on the spot, and the remaining Eight Banners soldiers lay prostrate on the ground, none of them daring to raise their heads.

"Sorcery! This is sorcery! The Luo family army must have used sorcery!"

"That's right. Judging from their Western clothes, they must have used some Western tricks. They've learned the witchcraft of those red-haired devils!"

The few Eight Banner soldiers who survived were trembling with fear, all believing that Luo Ke's soldiers must have used sorcery.

Otherwise, how could those guys have such accurate muskets, capable of hitting them from such a distance?

Under normal circumstances, the effective range of the bird-shaped rifles in the hands of Qing soldiers would not exceed 80 meters, which is only one-tenth of the effective range of the Chassepot rifle. Moreover, the accuracy of the firearms in their hands was already very poor, and they basically relied entirely on probability to hit the target when firing.

Compared to the other team's equipment, they felt that it wasn't a matter of good or bad equipment anymore, but rather that the other team's equipment was so fantastical that it was unscientific!

It felt like two soldiers were slashing at each other with swords, and then the other suddenly pulled out a flying sword, which instantly stunned all the Qing soldiers!

After only one round of fighting, the Eight Banners soldiers on the city wall had already disappeared, which made the remaining Imperial Guards quite unhappy.

They rarely had the chance to play around with their new weapons in actual combat, but they never expected that the enemy would be so vulnerable!

Damn it! They only fired one round of shots, and those Eight Banner soldiers either died or ran off to play dead. Isn't that disrespectful to them?

Frustrated, the new army seemed to be locked in a stalemate with these Eight Banner soldiers, all lying there with their eyes wide open, waiting for the Eight Banner soldiers to show themselves so they could fire a few more shots.

Rock was speechless at the way these guys behaved.

However, apart from the soldiers who were still in place preparing to suppress the enemy, Luo Ping had already led the greatsword warriors to the city gate in the distance!

Compared to their normal state, all the greatsword warriors now had a cloth covering their faces, completely obscuring half of their faces, just like bandits.

Because they knew that Rock had gone to the city gate first, obtained a bloated zombie, and breached the gate, they were all afraid of encountering a terrible biological attack.

As expected, no one dared to approach the city gate in the distance. Even though the Qing soldiers hiding in the city had seen a large group of giant swordsmen rushing towards them, they still did not have the idea of ​​coming to block the gate.

Wanfu looked at the giant swordsman who was about to rush into the city gate in the distance, his face full of despair.

He didn't have time to think about why the Luo family army was still using outdated heavy infantry; he only had one thought in his mind:

Run! Run now!

It's too late to run now. If he doesn't run, and falls into the hands of these rebels, who knows how much more suffering he'll endure!

If he hadn't seen the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom in the south, he might still have held onto hope for his status as a member of the imperial family, believing that even if he fell into the hands of rebels, they would most likely not dare to touch him.

But when he recalled the scenes of bloodshed during the Taiping Rebellion, Wanfu trembled with fear.

If he were caught by these people, it would be quick and painless for them to chop him up with a knife. The real fear is that before they kill him, they will torture him severely, or even put him on a wooden donkey and parade him through the streets!

The thought of his unfortunate colleagues in the south being forced onto wooden donkeys by the Taiping Army and paraded through the streets filled him with dread.

If he were to suffer such punishment, putting aside the physical pain, he felt that he would have no face to live on in terms of spirit!

"Quickly, escort me out of the city! The back gate hasn't been sealed off by the Luo family army yet; let's slip away through the back!"

In fact, Luo Ke did not deliberately use any tactic of surrounding three sides and leaving one side open. The reason why the back gate of Kaiyuan City had not been sealed off by Luo's army was simply because Luo Ke's army had just arrived here when he issued an order to launch a forced attack.

That is why Wanfu still has a chance to escape through the back door.

"My lord, you mustn't! If we escape, how will we explain ourselves to the imperial court?"

"Yes, sir, besides, how can we possibly escape the pursuit of the rebel cavalry in this freezing weather?"

When they saw Wanfu trying to escape, the Eight Banners soldiers beside him quickly stopped him, fearing that their superior would run away and leave them to take the blame.

But Wanfu, who was already terrified, didn't care about any of that. In his opinion, as long as the green hills remain, there will always be firewood to burn!

At worst, I can find a way to pull some strings and get the Emperor to forgive me!

He was, after all, a member of the imperial family and related to the emperor. He figured the newly enthroned emperor and the regent empress dowager wouldn't be so heartless.

Just as he was thinking this, two strangely dressed lamas suddenly stopped him.

>