Chapter 728 Hard Battle
"All gunners, get into combat positions immediately!" Watching the Ma Da Blue Army slowly advancing southward in the distance, Bart loudly issued a battle preparation order.
The Mata Blue Army stopped about one mile away from Batavia City and slowly pushed the huge trebuchet to the front line of the array. Bart took the time to calculate the size of the opponent's troops. On the northern front alone, there were about 10,000 horse-and-blue troops arrayed outside the city. As for trebuchets, large and small, there are more than thirty seen so far.
Although there is no news from the east and west sides yet, Bart believes that the Mata Blue Army will probably not concentrate all its forces in one direction to attack the city, and will definitely maintain enough pressure in the other two directions to allow the defenders in the city to The army cannot easily gather in one place for defense.
Then a large number of flatbed trolleys began to transport the prepared stone bullets to the front line for stacking. After Bart confirmed the size of the stone bullets used by the opponent through the telescope, his face became even more ugly.
Judging from the size, the individual weight of these stone bullets is probably at least about a hundred kilograms. If they can be thrown near the city wall with a trebuchet, their power will not be much different from that of artillery bombardment. Although the speed of the cannonball is faster, its weight is far less than that of the stone bullet, so the lethality is only between the two.
It is not that the Malta Blue Army was not equipped with artillery. Before the war, the British sold a lot of artillery to Lord Langsang, hoping that the Malta Blue Army could break through the Dutch-held Batavia city in one fell swoop. However, the Malatan Blue Army is not proficient in the use of artillery, and they also know very well that artillery weapons require a large amount of ammunition that is valuable and inconvenient to replenish in war. In addition, the firing life of the artillery itself is also relatively limited. Therefore, in the battle to attack Batavia, Laden Langsang did not show his trump card from the beginning. Instead, he first used a more primitive trebuchet, which was less difficult and costly to use, as a siege weapon. A long-range firepower output method for combat.
Although the launch speed of this trebuchet is slow and the accuracy is very limited, no matter how primitive the method is, it cannot support large numbers. If dozens of trebuchets are concentrated to project stone bombs at a few points, the power is still quite terrifying. Bart's cousin was killed by a stone bullet falling from the sky when the Blue Army attacked the city in 1629. Bart was not far from him at the time and witnessed his cousin transform from a living being to a living being in one second. Although three years have passed, the horrific scene of a person turning into a pile of minced meat still reappears in Bart's mind from time to time. And now the scene outside the city reminded Bart again of the fear of being dominated by the trebuchet.
With the sound of bull horns echoing on the plain outside the city, the siege operation of the Ma Da Blue Army finally kicked off. After all, Bart was a professional soldier. Although he still had an indelible fear in his heart, he quickly calmed down and directed the artillerymen to start loading ammunition.
While the trebuchets were slowly reloading, the infantry of the Horse and Blue Army began to advance forward. However, the advancement speed at this time was much faster than before. Soldiers holding swords, guns and shields in their hands trotted all the way to Batavia City, followed by many engineers carrying ladders, planks and other tools.
Although the opponent's troops soon came within artillery range, Bart was in no hurry to open fire. He knew that the commander on the opposite side was waiting for the city defense artillery to fire, so that the other side could accurately determine the location of the city defense firepower point, and then use trebuchets to carry out concentrated strikes. Bart must place the enemy closer so that when the fight breaks out, the artillery can fire at least two more rounds before the opponent retreats.
It wasn't until the Ma Da Blue Army troops had reached a distance of 300 meters in large numbers that Bart gave the order to open fire. The artillery fire on the city wall and the small stronghold outside the city continued. About twenty artillery pieces participated in this round of bombardment. The smoke from the burning gunpowder shrouded the city, making it difficult for Bart to see clearly the results of this round of bombardment.
However, when the smoke dissipated, the stone projectiles thrown by the trebuchets had also flown from outside the city to several major fort positions at the head of the city. What Bart had worried about before became a reality. These tall trebuchets did have a terrifying range. Several heavy stone bullets hit the city head hard. Although they did not directly hit the defenders on the city wall, they could see Stones as big as a marching drum fell from the sky. The terrifying feeling still made everyone yell and lower their bodies, subconsciously trying to avoid it.
A stone bullet hit the city wall near Bart, and the splash of rammed earth covered Bart's head and face. Bart spat out the dirt in his mouth, and the Nordic's blood was suddenly aroused. He stood up and swore harshly, and then shouted at the artillerymen to continue loading and shooting outside the city.
"Aim at those damn trebuchets and blast them!" Bart ordered loudly.
After the Mata Blue Army's trebuchets showed their power, Bart had to temporarily give up using artillery fire to attack the advancing infantry units, and instead targeted the trebuchets that were more threatening in the distance.
The infantry of the Ma Da Blue Army seized this gap and quickly advanced outside the defensive trench. Among the various siege equipment they carried, there was a combination of tools specifically designed to break through this obstacle. The panting engineers erected the long ladder in their hands at the edge of the trench, and then let it fall to the other side. The length of the ladder was enough to form a passage in the trench, which was about six meters wide.
However, if it is just such a narrow and crude passage, it will obviously take a lot of time for the siege troops to pass through the trench smoothly, so this kind of ladders are usually built in two pairs next to each other, and then someone follows up and lays prefabricated ladders on the ladders. Good boards. Some engineers grabbed arm-thick wooden sticks and jumped directly into the trench, trying to use the wooden sticks in their hands to prop up the bridge in the middle. The leading troops of Matalan, which attacked the city at night two days ago, had measured the water depth and flow rate in the trench to ensure the feasibility of this bridge-building tactic.
Seven or eight such simple bridges were being erected at the same time, and the main thing that could stop them was the Dutch gunfire on the defense line. From time to time, Matalan soldiers who had been shot fell into the water from the edge of the ditch and the ladder bridge, becoming floating corpses. The Ma Da Blue Army also had its own means of counterattack at this distance. In addition to a small number of matchlock guns, they also had bows and arrows and throwing short spears. Although the accuracy of these cold weapons may not be comparable to that of matchlock guns, hundreds of sharp blades were fired at the same time, and the covering shooting effect still inevitably caused casualties to the defenders.
Fortunately, the city defense artillery fire had achieved results. The two trebuchets were easily torn apart by the shells that bounced off the ground, which gave the Dutch artillery more confidence. After all, the opponent's firing speed is much slower than that of artillery, and there is no cover facility. If this fight continues, the side with artillery will definitely have the upper hand. The small number of Matalan soldiers who had crossed the trench from the ladder bridge began to attack several small forts outside the city, but they probably forgot that these forts were all within the coverage of the city's firepower. Hundreds of muskets quickly taught them the principles of life. The firepower advantage of the bastion's design is only beginning to be reflected at this moment. Due to the existence of the fortress outside the city, there are no blind spots for shooting near the city wall, and the two internal and external defense lines, which are high on the inside and low on the outside, naturally form a three-dimensional firepower output. , which puts enemies who try to attack the fortress or climb the city wall into a dilemma.
Outside the north gate of Batavia are two adjacent wedge-shaped fortresses, each stationed with two hundred soldiers. Coupled with the fire cover from the city head, any attempt to directly attack the city gate will be in vain. The Ma Da Blue Army who crossed the moat dropped nearly two hundred corpses near the fort, but they had not even touched the edge of the city gate.
The tactics used by the horse-defying blue army to cross the moat were undoubtedly very successful, but they were unable to overcome the special defense line of the bastion, which was full of thorns. The Materan soldiers had almost no protective measures, which resulted in their casualty rate being much higher than that of the Dutch defenders during the battle. After losing about 1,2300 people, the Ma Da Blue Army gave a signal to retreat, and the survivors quickly retreated back to the way they came.
The Dutch defenders did not attack rashly. After all, almost their only combat advantage lies in the strong fortress. Without this environment, even if they can use muskets to fight, they may not be as good as horses fighting with scimitars and spears. How strong is the Blue Man? In face-to-face combat, they can only have two to three rounds of shooting opportunities within the range of the musket, and the opponent's troop advantage is more than two or three times. A head-on confrontation with the human sea tactic is enough to kill the city of Batavia. All Dutch. Therefore, the combat concept implemented by the Dutch army from the beginning was to hold on and use solid city defenses to wear down the opponent's offensive.
Taking advantage of the lull in the fighting, the defenders of the fortress outside the city rushed to the trench to clean up the ladder bridge built by the Matalan people. Only then did they discover that the Matalan people had driven iron hoops into the ground and firmly fixed both ends of the ladder bridge to the shore. After the iron hoop was pulled out of the ground, it was revealed that it was in the shape of a horseshoe, about a foot long, with both ends sharpened to facilitate penetration into the ground. It was obviously a specially crafted instrument. This also shows that the opponent's tactics are not improvised, but have been fully prepared and rehearsed.
Although the time when this war broke out was sudden, both warring parties had made a lot of preparations for it. The Dutch strengthened the city's fortifications, expanded the size of the garrison, and improved the city's management and dispatch measures during wartime. The Ma Dalan Men have optimized the means of siege. Whether it is the large trebuchet or the tactic of ladder bridge crossing the trench, they are all new things that did not appear in the last battle.
Bart ignored the need to rest and ordered an immediate inventory of the damage and consumption in this battle. The casualties in terms of personnel were mainly concentrated in the fortress outside the city. The close-range bow and arrow and spear-throwing tactics of the horse-defeating blue army were indeed quite powerful. In addition, several stone bullets directly hit the fortress, causing a total of two casualties to the defenders. More than ten people were killed and more than thirty wounded who needed to withdraw from the front line to recuperate. Fortunately, none of the defenders at the top of the city were killed. Only a dozen people were injured by fragments of stone bullets. None of the artillery and forts were damaged, which made Bart heave a sigh of relief. Although there are still spare artillery in the city, it is also a time-consuming and labor-intensive task to move the spare artillery onto the city wall and re-erect and calibrate it.
As for consumption, it was mainly concentrated on weapons and ammunition. During the one hour and seventeen minutes of fighting, the defenders fired a total of 140 rounds of artillery shells, with a firing frequency of nearly two rounds per minute. It is difficult to count the number of shots fired for muskets, but more than 30 guns needed repairs due to malfunctions after the war alone. The current rate at which the military workshops in Batavia are manufacturing muskets is only two or three a day. If high-intensity continuous fighting is to be carried out, the speed of gun production may not keep up with the speed of gun wear.
Van Diemen also came to the front line at this time and asked Commander Bart about the battle situation. Bart had just started to say a few words when he was interrupted by Van Diemen: "Lieutenant Bart, please tell me the results of the battle. We can talk about the battle damage later."
Bart was a little confused and was stunned and did not respond to Van Diemen immediately.
Van Diemen sighed and explained: "Now the council needs to know the results of the battle immediately, Lieutenant Bart, I must let those stupid shareholder agents know that the city defense army is far more reliable than they think! I want to obtain authority from them, So that more resources can be mobilized from the city to resist the invaders outside the city! ”
Only then did Bart come back to his senses: "General, please give me some time. I'll have someone count the results of the battle right now!"
Compared with the damage caused by the battle, the killing results of this battle are really worthy of making the defenders proud. The Ma Da Blue Army suffered over a thousand casualties in this battle. There were more than 600 corpses dumped near the trench alone. Some of the wounded soldiers who were lucky enough to escape may not be able to survive until their injuries recover. Due to the hot weather, the defenders could not let these corpses rot and stink near the fortress and city walls, because that would most likely bring plague. Van Diemen organized thousands of people to dig large pits for corpses outside the city and bury them.
The Ma Da Blue Army on the opposite side also had a tacit understanding not to launch another attack at this time. It was not until the battlefield was cleared in the afternoon and the civilians returned to the city that the horns of horns sounded again in the wilderness. The Ma Da Blue Army came out of camp and lined up towards Ba. March on the city of Davia.
Bart was very depressed to find from the telescope that the number of trebuchets in the opponent's array was not less than that in the morning, but actually increased by about a quarter. It could be seen that the Ma Da Blue Army was indeed carrying out this siege. Prepare with care. Perhaps after the tentative attack in the morning, the opponent has made some adjustments to the offensive strategy.
"These damn infidels!" Bart put down his telescope and ordered angrily: "Order everyone to get into combat positions and prepare to fire!"
(End of chapter)