Bringing the Railway to Daming

"Damn it! The city lord doesn't care about his life or death?!"

Zhu Yu cursed angrily, pulled the fat-headed and big-eared "Malomobahu" to the ground, and dragged him under the rattan shield.

At the same time, he heard the guard captain Gao Zehou beside him shouting, "The rear guard will cover you, and the vanguard will follow me into the city to support Captain Ma!"

In an instant, gunshots rang out at the city gate and inside the city.

Zhu Yu was protected by dozens of guards and retreated to the city wall beyond the range of arrows.

Even though arrows were raining down, he did not forget to ask the guards to drag "Malamabahu" with him. As a result, when they retreated to the place, they saw that the man was unfortunately shot in the neck by an arrow and died.

A guard said angrily: "Your Majesty, this man is probably not the city lord at all!"

Zhu Yu had been feeling something was wrong, and when he heard this he suddenly realized it. He looked up and saw that the tall and strong general on the city wall was still giving orders after seeing that the "city lord" was dead, and he also showed his head from time to time to throw javelins.

This man was obviously extremely strong, and his javelin could be thrown almost as far as an arrow.

Although the Qi vassal's guards were well-armored and had many rattan shields, which could block arrows, they could not block javelins, and almost every shot killed one of them.

Zhu Yu was furious when he saw this and asked, "Did you send a signal?"

The guard leader said, "It was sent immediately."

Just as he finished speaking, he heard deafening artillery fire coming from the direction of the port, followed by gunfire and shouts.

The two warships that were previously docked at the dock carried not only the one thousand elite guards who went ashore with him, but also five hundred guards hidden inside. After receiving the fireworks signal to start the war, they would land with the cooperation of the warships and become the vanguard of attacking the dock.

At the moment when Zhu Yu was asking questions, the sixty gunners who came with him also retreated to a distance of about a hundred steps with their tiger squat cannons, set up thirty tiger squat cannons, and fired them towards the top of the city.

These tiger squat cannons are the latest model and can fire flower shells.

After only one round of artillery shells, the Sinhalese people on the city wall were blown to pieces, howling in terror - the Tiger Crouching Cannon had small shells, so it didn't kill many people, but it injured quite a few, because the Sinhalese army had a very low armor rate (this was the case in ancient tropical countries).

The main thing is that they were all terrified.

Before this, the Sinhalese had never seen guns or even gunpowder. Influenced by religious ideas, they believed deeply in ghosts and gods.

Now that we see the Ming army holding an iron bucket and releasing thunder from a hundred steps away, how can we not be afraid?
In addition, those who were injured by the shrapnel looked very scary and screamed in pain, which made the others even more scared.

"Why would the enemy thunder?"

"The Buddha is angry!"

"Buddha, please spare my life. We know we are wrong..."

Neither Zhu Yuanzhang nor his soldiers had expected that after just one round of tiger squat cannon fire, some of the Sinhalese soldiers on the city wall would flee or kneel down to beg for mercy.

Of course, there are also people who talk about Buddha but do not believe in gods and Buddhas in their hearts, such as Maramabahu.

Although he was also frightened, his fierce temper made him recover quickly. He glanced at the tiger-crouching gunner who was loading ammunition outside, then kicked the soldier who was kneeling on the ground to apologize to the Buddha and cursed: "Idiot, those are enemy weapons, not the anger of the Buddha!"

If Buddha really had a spirit, he would have died countless times since he had done so many bad things.

It can be said that in the Buddhist country, the people who least believe in Buddhism are the powerful and influential like him.

Taking advantage of the gap when the Tiger Crouching Cannon was firing, he used his personal prestige and the assistance of several loyal subordinates to stabilize some of the soldiers and prevent them from fleeing.

As a result, the tiger squat cannon under the city sounded again at this time.

After this bombardment, although there were fewer panicked shouts from the city walls, no one dared to show their heads.

On the other side, Qianhu Gao Zehou led hundreds of guards and vanguards, as well as Ma Baihu and others, carrying dozens of wounded soldiers and more than a dozen corpses out of the city.

Afterwards, nearly a thousand guards were divided into two groups and retreated alternately. They retreated to a place three hundred steps away where the catapults from the city walls could not reach them, and then they stopped.

Gao Zehou came before Zhu Yu and sighed, "It's a pity that we have too few people and are not familiar with the layout of the city. Otherwise, we would have been able to rush in and seize the city."

Zhu Gui said, "That's fine. Let's seize the port first. Once the army lands, we can fire our powerful cannons and capture Mannar City like a piece of cake. By the way, how many casualties have we suffered?"

Gao Zehou said, "When Captain Ma and his men rushed in, they were met with a dense hail of arrows. Originally, there were few casualties, but upon seeing this, the enemy launched another round of javelins, killing several people immediately." "Luckily, we got in in time and drove back the enemies in the city with a few volleys of gunfire. Otherwise, Captain Ma and his men would have been trapped inside."

Zhu Yu had no intention of caring for his soldiers, but when he thought about how more than a dozen of his 3,000 elite guards had died and dozens injured in this battle, he felt very distressed and said bitterly, "Today I will avenge this!"

Afterwards, Zhu Gui asked Captain Gao to lead the vanguard battalion to keep watch here, while he led the remaining several hundred people back to help capture the dock.

In fact, his help was not needed at all - perhaps Moromobahu was too confident, thinking that as long as he could trick Zhu Gui into the city, he would be able to capture him, so he only left more than a thousand servants at the dock.

The Sinhalese servants were equivalent to auxiliary troops and had low combat effectiveness.

Moromobahu's idea was that if these servants guarded the four military forts in the port, they could use the catapults on the forts and cooperate with the more than a thousand warships in the port (most of which were very small). Even if they could not defeat the Ming army warships in the harbor, they could still hold it.

As a result, when the Shenwei cannons on the Ming army warships were fired, the four military forts became decorations.

When the thousands of warships saw the Ming army warships firing cannons, most of them were scared and fled. A small number of them bravely rushed forward, but just when they approached within two hundred steps, they were bombarded by the tiger squat cannons, and suffered heavy casualties.

In addition, the Tibetan soldiers left by Zhu Gui on the two warships boarded the dock as quickly as possible. When Zhu Gui led his troops back to the dock, the dock had already been occupied by the Ming army.

Seeing that the situation was not good, the remaining Sinhalese warships in the harbor fled in other directions.

After all, the Qi clan only had five warships, and the remaining hundreds of sea ships were carrying immigrants and supplies. Although they were also loaded with cannons and had combatants on board, the ships were not fast.

Considering that he was not familiar with the hydrology, the naval commander Lou Yuanjing did not send out ships to pursue the fleeing Sinhalese boats.

After seizing the dock, the remaining guards and garrison troops of the Qi clan landed at their fastest speed. Except for leaving a thousand people to cooperate with a thousand navy to guard the dock, the remaining several thousand troops were taken to the city of Mannar by Zhu Gui.

At this time, the city gate had been closed. Moromoba suddenly saw that the army brought by Zhu Yu was only about six or seven thousand people. He felt relieved and then asked someone on the top of the city to translate his message.

"Prince Qi, our king will lead a large army to support us tomorrow. If you know what's good for you, take your fleet and leave now!"

When Zhu Yu heard this, he laughed out loud and called ten loud-mouthed soldiers to convey his words.

"Let your king come! I am waiting for him!"

Zhu Gui was telling the truth - if the King of Sinhalese really led his troops to support him, he could be here and use the cooperation of naval guns to defeat or even annihilate the elite army of the Sinhalese Kingdom.

In this way, we might be able to easily capture the Sinhalese royal city and other cities later.

However, Mahārāma Bāhu thought that Zhu Yu did not believe him or was unaware of the power of the Sinhalese Kingdom.

He then had the translator shout, "Prince Qi, we Sinhalese have an army of 200,000 men and 8,000 warships. If you don't retreat now, it will be too late!"

Zhu Yu was a man of bad temper and stubbornness. He stopped shouting when he heard the words. He stood up and pointed at the top of the city wall and shouted, "Translator, please don't make any more mistakes! I am the King of Qi of the Ming Dynasty, not some prince of Qi!"

"Even if your King of Sinhalese came, he would still be half a level lower than me. How dare you, a mere city lord, plot to murder me? Prepare to die!"

After saying this, Zhu Yu was too lazy to listen to what Mara Mobahu said and ordered an attack on the city.

Suddenly, the naval guns in the port and the twenty Shenwei cannons pushed ashore fired together, with hundreds of shells in just one round!

At this moment, even Maramopa, who was proud of his bravery and ability to fight a lion, was frightened.

When he came to his senses, he saw that the city wall had collapsed in many places due to artillery shells, and his soldiers were either dead or fled. He sat down as if he had lost his soul.

"How do they have such powerful weapons? It's over, it's all over now. Even Buddha can't save me..."

Under the city.

Seeing that there was no one on the city wall, Zhu Yu did not rush to send people to climb the city. Instead, he ordered the artillerymen to use two Shenwei cannons to fire iron bullets to blow down the city gate, and then sent troops into the city...
March 27, the 23rd year of Hongwu.

The Qifan fleet passed through the port of Mannar in Sinhalese to replenish supplies.

The city lord, Moromoba, coveted the warships of the Qi vassal state. He first surrounded them with more than a thousand ships, and then held a Hongmen Banquet under the pretext of apology to lure the King of Qi, Zhu Gui, to land in the city, intending to capture him as a hostage.

When they entered the city, the ambush was discovered by the guards of King Qi and a fierce battle broke out.

Afterwards, Qi Fan first seized the dock, then attacked the city with dozens of Shenwei cannons, finally breaking it. (End of this chapter)