Chapter 751: Quickly Protect This King
By now, the shield carts had pushed within fifty meters.
Powerful archers among the rebel forces had already begun unleashing volleys of arrows toward the city walls. Yet, shooting uphill drastically limited their effectiveness; the arrows largely struck the ramparts, failing to clear the defenses.
A stray arrow might occasionally clear the battlements, but these posed no significant threat. The Prince of Fu’s personal guards, while lacking in fighting prowess, were splendidly armored, proving surprisingly useful. Standing sentinel on the wall, they became living bulwarks, and the weak arrows that struck them barely registered as a tickle.
However, even these innocuous arrows terrified the Prince of Fu’s personal guards, draining the color from their faces as they trembled visibly on the ramparts.
Zhu Changxun, the Prince of Fu, was a quivering mass of fear.
If the rebel forces breached the city walls, anyone else could flee, but not Zhu Changxun. The furthest he was permitted to go was Ying'en Temple just outside the city gates. Any escape beyond that distance demanded a personal imperial edict.
Li Daoxuan watched Zhu Changxun’s pathetic display and couldn't help but shake his head in disappointment. He truly had no desire to save such an utterly useless man. But then he looked beyond the prince, and saw that the citizens of Luoyang were also trembling...
The local militia, organized by Fan Shangzheng, huddled behind the crenellated battlements, clutching large stones and kettles of boiling water, trembling with fear.
They were afraid too!
Li Daoxuan commanded, "Grenades!"
"Grenades!" a captain within the ranks echoed loudly.
The firearms troops, who had held their fire until now, drew out their small black spheres, lit the fuses, and hurled them.
Gao Family Village had once maintained a specialized Armored Grenadier Battalion, led by Gao Chuwu and Zheng Daniu. However, with the successful development of the Chassepot Rifle, the grenadiers' effective range became a disadvantage, and they were no longer formed into dedicated battalions.
Gao Family Village had instead equipped almost every soldier with hand grenades, and the former members of the Armored Grenadier Battalion were all issued the new Chassepot rifles.
And so...
As the command "Grenades!" rang out, hundreds of militia soldiers, confident in their throwing arm, were the first to act, hurling their hand grenades towards the rebel forces' shield cart formation.
The hand grenades traced beautiful arcs, soaring over the thick shield carts and descending into the rebel ranks beyond.
Zhu Changxun: "What are they doing? Throwing rocks?"
No sooner had he finished speaking than "Boom! Boom! Boom!" explosions rocked the air.
Billows of smoke rose as hundreds of hand grenades detonated in unison.
Zhu Changxun: "Ahhh, what was that explosion? Quickly, protect your king!"
His guards peered over the battlements and exclaimed joyfully, "Your Highness, the rebels have been utterly devastated by the explosions."
Zhu Changxun mustered his courage, bravely poked his head out, and only then saw that the succession of thunderous blasts had come from the small black spheres hurled by Bai Yuan’s men. After clearing the shield carts, they had detonated amidst the rebel soldiers massed behind them.
The rebel soldiers screamed in agony, their suffering utterly indescribable.
Through the gaps between the shield carts, swathes of rebel soldiers could be seen falling to the ground. The rebel soldiers pushing the carts collapsed as well, and all forward movement of the shield carts ceased.
With the shield carts halted, the rebel advance immediately faltered.
Zhu Changxun gasped, "Wow! What kind of devastating tactic was that?"
Guard: "Those small black spheres must have been gunpowder wrapped together."
Zhu Changxun: "Goodness, so gunpowder can be used in such a way?"
Just then, the rebel forces outside the city, enraged, intensified their assault. Their supreme commander, Meng Hu, pounded his war drum and bellowed, "Confound it, it's barely a few dozen yards now! Abandon the shield carts! Charge, you bastards, charge forward! Kill the Prince of Fu, Zhu... Zhu who?"
Du Hu: "Brother, it's Zhu Changxun."
Meng Hu: "Yes, yes, yes! Kill Zhu Changxun, and all his riches are ours!"
As soon as he issued this order, the hardened rebels in the front ranks hesitated, unwilling to charge.
The previous round of hand grenades had shattered their morale. The sight of their comrades' mangled bodies, torn apart by the explosions, instilled a desperate urge to retreat in many of the rebels.
Meng Hu's command reached the front lines, but not a single rebel stirred.
But then, Meng Hu’s reserves surged forward!
The rebels' numerical advantage came into play as a fresh wave of fighters surged from the rear.
They shoved the shield carts aside, discarding them. Raising their shields high, they launched a second, desperate charge. Still others seized handcarts, relentlessly hauling earth and stones towards the moat.
If just a few hundred cartloads of earth and stones could be dumped into the moat at a single spot, a path could be filled in mere moments.
Behind the handcarts, another large contingent of rebels appeared, shouldering wooden planks.
If the earth and stones failed to sufficiently fill the moat, they intended to lay planks across.
This set of tactics had served them well in previous sieges against cities like Zezhou, Liaozhou, and Huaiqing Prefecture, achieving considerable success.
But...
It was all for naught!
With the shield carts discarded, the firearms troops could now unleash their full firepower.
"Crack! Crack! Crack! Crack!"
A torrent of gunfire erupted...
The rebels’ raised shields proved utterly useless; most were mere wooden planks, utterly incapable of stopping bullets fired from breech-loading rifles.
The shields were effortlessly perforated, felling rebel after rebel to the ground.
The desperate rebels pushing handcarts, their heads ducked behind the carts, hunched low as they frantically dashed forward. But once they drew close enough to the city wall, the defenders looking down from above had a clear view of their exposed backs.
"Crack!"
A single shot, perfectly aimed at the center of a rebel's back, sent him tumbling to the ground with a sickening thud, his handcart spilling beside him.
As ferociously as the rebels had charged, so utterly pathetic were they in their fall.
The most terrifying thing was that these rifles did not fall silent after a single volley; they kept firing, and firing, as if reloading required no time whatsoever.
Zhu Changxun watched, wide-eyed and stunned. Only now did he finally understand why the Xiaolangdi water bandits, who had plagued the region for over a millennium without consequence, had been so effortlessly annihilated by Bai Yuan.
So, Bai Yuan's firearms troops were *this* formidable!
With this relentless onslaught, the rebels’ morale outside the city finally shattered.
The rebels in the front ranks stubbornly refused to charge again, nor did those in the rear dare to push forward. Then, the taut cord of their resolve abruptly snapped, and all the rebels let out a chaotic yell and broke ranks, fleeing backward.
However fiercely Meng Hu beat his drum, they refused to take another step forward.
The rebel forces retreated...
Meng Hu glanced at the towering Luoyang City before him, knowing the city was impregnable to him. Well, he had only come to test its defenses, so if he couldn't take it, so be it; he wasn't so stubborn as to batter his head against a stone wall. He called out to his younger brother, Du Hu, gathered the defeated army, and quickly retreated to rendezvous with Chuang Wang and Chuang Jiang's forces, to continue their advance towards Huguang.
"The rebel forces are retreating!"
"The rebel forces are in full flight!"
A resounding cheer erupted throughout Luoyang City.
Glancing left and right, he confirmed the immediate danger had passed, then let out a booming laugh. "Insignificant wretches, so utterly out of your depth, daring to assault Luoyang? Hahaha! With this king personally here, how could you petty criminals possibly breach these walls? Hahaha!"
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