"All the reports are in force, the enemy has launched a large-scale move!"

Zhao Laoyao was closing his eyes to rest, and then he heard his subordinates report the latest developments of the Wu Yue Navy.

"Hehe, they are all insignificant boats!" Zhao Laoyao climbed up the mast, held up a monocular telescope, and took all the movements and stills of the enemy in his eyes.

After observing for a while, Zhao Laoyao immediately climbed down the mast and ordered loudly: "Order all ships to turn around and retreat outside Hangzhou Bay."

Although there are many large ships of the Li Family Navy, each ship is equipped with at least five monocular telescopes. In other words, the observation sentry on each ship and the captain who commands the battle are equipped with monocular telescopes.

In this way, the navy of the Li family army could detect the enemy's movements in advance to make timely avoidance.

To put it bluntly, what the navy's big ships fear most is not that the enemy's large ships are many, but that the enemy uses the narrow terrain and adopts the strategy of fire attack.

Since the brothers of the infantry army had already landed, Zhao Laoyao naturally could not fight against Wu Yue's navy and retreated to the open area, which was inevitable.

Not to mention that Zhao Laoyao commanded the navy to fight the enemy, Li Zhongyi led 40,000 troops and landed on the right bank of Hangzhou Bay. The first enemy army he faced was Zhenhaidu, Wuyue Kingdom, which was stationed in Xiuzhou.

Xiuzhou, which is the majority of Jiaxing City today, and part of Songjiang Prefecture.

Fan Zhi once commented on Xiuzhou: Xiuzhou rarely learns military affairs, and is very concerned about Wenru, and does not worry about cold and hungry, and does a lot of farming. It is between the two major prefectures of Suzhou and Hangzhou, and is adjacent to Sanjiang. It is good at the benefits of fish and salt in the lake, sea, and is called the hometown of rice in Zeguo. It has a simple and beautiful custom. The prosperity of literary and wise figures is facing each other.

To put it bluntly, Xiuzhou is a typical land of fish and rice. There are many wealthy families in the city, which is one of the treasure houses that Li Zhongyi wants to swallow in one bite.

After landing near Xiuzhou, Li Zhongyi ordered Li Yong to lead the brothers of the cavalry to surround Xiuzhou.

Li Zhongyi gave Li Yong, that is, Po Chaoyong's order, only one: no rich family in the city is allowed to be let go!

Li Yong naturally did not dare to neglect Li Zhongyi's strict orders. He immediately discussed with the army to govern Qian Shude. The two of them led a cavalry and advanced together, blocking the four gates of Xiuzhou respectively.

Although Qian Shude, the cavalry policing envoy, was a general in the policing system, but because he had been in charge of the cavalry for many years, he was very familiar with the combat characteristics of the cavalry.

Therefore, Qian Shude took over half of the cavalry without any ambiguity and led his soldiers to block the north and west gates of Xiuzhou tightly, and not even a mosquito was let go.

When Li Zhongyi arrived at the city of Xiuzhou, Li Yongtang's artillery army had already set up all the cannons and was waiting for Li Zhongyi to order a general attack.

The sunset was a little dazzling, but it did not affect Li Zhongyi's good mood at all. He smiled and said to Li Yongtang: "Your kid's hands and feet are quite tidy. You have already pulled the rack and ready to start the bombing?"

Li Yongtang smiled and said, "This is all God's arrangement. I don't want you to endure hardships outside the city."

Li Zhongyi laughed and said that Li Yongtang, who was originally not good at speaking, also learned the skill of being slick.

In Li Zhongyi's monocular telescope, the Wu Yue soldiers and generals on the city all showed fear. One of the generals in the lead pointed at the formation artillery and turned their heads and didn't know what to say?

Li Zhongyi knew very well that the Wu Yue people in Xiuzhou should be guessing what the cannon is, right?

In the north of the Strong Han Empire, the Khitans and the Fu family army suffered a lot from artillery.

Earlier, the imperial army led by Han Tong collapsed instantly under the bombardment of artillery.

Since Li Zhongyi tried out the artillery, the so-called famous generals defending the city of the same era were destined to become defeated generals in the troubled city.

The same land of the Thirteen Prefectures, the populations of the Northern Han Kingdom and the Wu Yue Kingdom are completely incomparable.

So far, the thirteen states in the Northern Han Kingdom have a population of less than one million.

However, Xiuzhou of Wuyue alone has a population of 200,000. As for the capital of Wuyue, Hangzhou, the Xifu Prefecture, has an astonishing population of 390,000.

Objectively speaking, the total population of Hangzhou is only a little inferior to that of Jinling, the capital of the Southern Tang Dynasty.

The so-called northerners are good at bows and horses, while southerners are good at boats and boats. The characteristics derived from this are actually that southerners are more good at doing business than northerners, while northerners are better at armed struggles.

Facing Xiuzhou, where the city is high and the valley is deep, Li Zhongyi ordered lightly: "Look for some soldiers with loud voices and ask them to tell the city's guards that it is still time to open the city and surrender. Otherwise, the powerful troops of the Supreme Kingdom of the Heavenly Kingdom will not be able to protect their wealth and safety."

Zhang Sanzheng, who had been standing behind Li Zhongyi, couldn't help but curl his lips and secretly felt funny.

Li Zhongyi knew that the garrison in Xiuzhou would never surrender without fighting, but he sent people to shout and persuade him to surrender in public. This was obviously a blatant digging hole!

Among the Li family army, there have been long rumors that there are many poor men in Jinyang, many beauties in Southern Tang, and many silver and money in Wu and Yue.

After hearing that they were going south to attack Wu Yue and Southern Tang, the soldiers of the imperial guards all rushed to sign up for the war, for fear of being left to defend the city in Kaifeng.

In fact, not only the soldiers wanted to follow the army to join the army, but even Zhang Sanzheng wanted to go into battle and kill more enemies and grab more money.

According to the rules of the Li family army going to war, although all seizures must be handed over to the public first, when rewarding merits afterwards, the greater the merits, the more dividends you get.

Zhang Sanzheng had been by Li Zhongyi's side, so he naturally lost the great opportunity to charge and kill the enemy and make achievements. He really sighed.

The garrison of Xiuzhou was Wang Xingkao, the governor of Zhenhai, and he was also the commander of Zhenhai.

Due to the different military system, the Li family army had only more than a hundred people, but when placed in the Wuyue Kingdom, it was similar to the army's organization.

There were 15,000 defenders in Xiuzhou. However, due to nearly a hundred years of peaceful life, the generals of Wu and Yue were seriously disconnected from the actual war.

To put it bluntly, it means that the peace time has been too long, which has led to Wang Xingkao losing the ability to go out to fight in addition to defending the city.

When the content of the Li family army's shouting was introduced into Wang Xing's ear, he couldn't help but sneer: "I want to win without fighting, have Li Zhe really woken up?"

"Come and find a few loud voices to the thieves in the north and tell them that most of my Wu Yue Kingdom are heroes, and they are definitely not cowards who are afraid of life and death, and surrender without fighting." Wang Xingkao clearly felt a huge fear in his heart. Because Qian treated him well, he could only pretend to be calm and fight back.

"I, Wuyue, serve as a minister in the Han Dynasty, why did I raise troops to attack? It's unreasonable!"

Wang Xingkao only listed the scope of the shouting, and did not specify the specific content of the shouting. As a result, the person who called out actually began to lose his sore text.

After hearing Wang Xingkao's voice clearly, Li Zhongyi couldn't help but smile: "As a soldier, he respects literature and suppresses martial arts to such a state, how can he be undefeated?"

"Yes, the emperor, the military minister should be on the battlefield and fight for the enemy bravely. Where can we talk about so much knowledge?" Seeing that Li Zhongyi was in a good mood, Zhang Sanzheng made fun of him.

Li Zhongyi smiled and ordered: "Appoint Li Yongtang to collapse the city gate of Xiuzhou within one hour."

After so many battles, the enemy's city gates were bombarded with artillery, and no matter how slow it was, it never lasted for more than an hour.

To put it bluntly, the bombardment time left by Li Zhongyi for Li Yongtang is extremely abundant.

"Listen to my command, calibrate the shelling, and open fire!" Li Yongtang calmly issued the order to calibrate the shelling.

In the Li family artillery army, according to the requirements of the artillery code, a cannon will be fired tentatively before the artillery is shot, so as to further calibrate the amount, angle, wind direction and direction of the artillery.

"Boom..." After the 12-pound cannon was ready, it immediately let out a terrifying roar.

"Bang..." The first shell did not hit the city gate, but hit the wall hard.

Wang Xingkao felt a violent shaking under his feet. He subconsciously held the trunk of the arrow with both hands, and with the help of his own teeth, he barely stood firm.

However, the ordinary officers and soldiers near Wang Xingkao were not as lucky as him. Everyone was shocked and shaking and fell on the ground one after another.

"The elevation angle is reduced by three degrees, and the cannon body is increased by five degrees..."

Li Yongtang, who was under the city, put down the monocular lens in his hand and issued a series of instructions.

After all the twenty 12-pound cannons in the entire group of artillery were adjusted to their positions, Li Yongtang ordered without hesitation, "Fire the cannon!"

"boom……"

"boom……"

"boom……"

The sound of cannons rang one after another. As the cannons lowered their elevation angle, the target pointed directly at the city gate. As a result, Wang Xingkao and his officers and soldiers in the city were like uncles dancing in the square dance, accompanied by the rumbling cannons, shaking left and right.

In the monocular lens, Li Zhongyi saw it clearly. More than 20 12-pound cannons were fired in an orderly manner using three-stage strikes.

In the first wave of shells, no shell hit the city gate hole. However, the Xiuzhou City Wall, which originally looked extremely strong, had a blue brick outside the rammed earth, a large pit on the left and a large concave on the right. Not to mention how ugly it was!

"Well, the correct head of the smoothbore cannon is still much weaker after all!" Li Zhongyi handed the monocular lens to Zhang Sanzheng and shook his head with great regret.

"Your Majesty, the smoothbore cannon is not accurate, so what cannon is accurate?" Zhang Sanzheng heard Li Zhongyi's regret, so he took advantage of the excitement and asked a question as if he was curious about the baby.

Li Zhongyi smiled and said, "When you create the rifled cannon, you will know what is a real cannon?"

This southern expedition was mainly a boat ride, so Li Zhongyi brought the 12-pound cannon as much as possible.
Chapter completed!