Chapter 554: The Ming-Portuguese War (VIII)

The Guard Battalion, appearing for the first time outfitted in the latest equipment, instantly seized everyone's attention.

The smooth, bizarrely eye-catching steel helmet was unmistakably a Ming-dynasty version of the M35.

Considering that bulletproof requirements in this era were not high, with opponents at best firing low-kinetic-energy lead balls from matchlocks, the Ming version of the M35 was considerably thinner than the original. But this was just right — the thinner helmet reduced the soldiers' burden and was also more suitable for subtropical use. Most critically... this thing saved on material.

The steel plate for the helmet was hydro-formed, but the shape was meticulously exact — whoever dared ruin the stick-wielders' deep sentimental attachment to the M35 would be a historical sinner!

And so, wearing the scaled-down M35 steel helmet, dressed in Type 07 combat uniforms, and equipped with a full set of battlefield individual soldier gear, the regular army made its dazzling debut.

At this moment, the native Ming people who knew nothing of the inside story also formed different opinions of the fresh troops. In the eyes of the onlookers, this unit of soldiers with iron pots on their heads probably had some Dao to them? After all, iron pots weren't cheap these days either.

But in the eyes of the military officers on the city wall, this was Cao emptying his old coffers. After all, the officers more or less knew some inside details, and on top of that they all understood the trade — they knew that any force that could be pulled out in this kind of battle situation was definitely a standard garrison or household retainer squad brought in to hold the line. As for those iron pots, no one paid them any mind; they were just helmets, nothing more.

Very quickly, the soldiers of the Guard Battalion formed ranks before the Gate Barrier. As shouts of roll call and number reporting rang out one after another, in a single moment, 500 soldiers stood neatly arrayed in square formation.

For this unit that the transmigrators had built from the ground up, peacetime ideological training and other such lessons had long been thoroughly done, so at the moment of battle there was absolutely no need for any profound mobilization. After Yu Mingjie exchanged a few words with the temporary Battalion Commander Wei Yuansheng, Wei Yuan picked up the iron megaphone and issued a simple order: "All units, offense — occupy the enemy fortress ahead!"

Beneath the Gate Barrier, a deafening, uniform roar erupted: "Kill!"

At this moment, the Pioneer Army, having received its orders, had already withdrawn from the front.

Wu Sanye and his group were also among the retreating column. Having relinquished the main assault task, Wu Sanye and his core brothers had suffered no fatalities in today's fighting. There were only two wounded, and at this moment, Third Lord was moonlighting as a stretcher-bearer, carrying a brother whose leg had been grazed and broken by a cannonball to the battlefield hospital.

Unexpectedly, they ran head-on into the "regular army."

Third Lord felt a sudden jolt and handed the stretcher off to others: "You all go on, I'll stay and watch the battle."

Although their contact had been limited, Third Lord and indeed all the Pioneer Army men knew that these regular troops, despite holding official registries and wearing the skin of government soldiers, were all private soldiers built up alongside the Grand Commandant from the start — strict in discipline, ample in pay and arms, uniformly young and able, the absolute finest of the elite.

And in the few instances of contact, the old veterans of the Pioneer Army could clearly sense that these young upstarts with their noses stuck in the air rather looked down on men of the rivers and lakes like themselves.

As a motley army, they naturally had self-awareness. Seeing the central army marching toward them, Third Lord and his men silently cleared the path, their gazes complicated as they stared at the other side's retreating backs... The Pioneer Army had lost a bit of face today. Everyone both hoped these youngsters would show their prowess and take Red Hair City to bring honor to the Grand Commandant, and also harbored a little calculation, thinking the youngsters ought to suffer a bit and shed some blood first.

The Guard Battalion soldiers, long since thoroughly brainwashed by the transmigrators using future-era military education methods, had absolutely no time to pay attention to those losers by the roadside. The young men now held their heads high and chests out, steel guns gripped tightly in their hands, pride on their faces, their eyes brimming with excitement.

After crossing the buffer zone between the battlefields, very quickly, the 500 soldiers in formation spread out into a scattered skirmish line.

Once the skirmish formation was deployed, roughly three or four layers could be discerned. Between the soldiers in each layer, the distance was at least 2 meters apart. In this way, a mere 500 soldiers occupied a considerably large battlefield space, nearly enveloping the entire front face of Fort São Paulo.

"What kind of bird formation is this?"

At this moment, Wu Sanye, lingering in the middle section of the battlefield, and the military officers seated upright on the Gate Barrier voiced the same question.

The scattered skirmish line, so familiar to later generations, had utterly overturned the common knowledge of the ancients.

Whether military officers or Wu Sanye, in the years they had grown up, the concept of "form the formation, then fight" was already part of their blood.

In the warfare of the cold weapon era, only by huddling together could one survive, whether in street brawls or battlefield slaughter. The difference between the two was merely a matter of execution: a military formation could make thousands act as one, advancing and retreating together, sharing life and death; the street brothers weren't bad either — when trouble came, shoulder to shoulder they'd go, and no one could be the first to flee and expose his back to the enemy.

In short, to start a fight, first form the formation.

Yet the scene before their eyes was truly a bit "eye-stinging." This sparse, scattered scene, utterly devoid of any formation to speak of, had already exceeded the imagination of Wu Sanye and the others.

No matter what the onlookers thought, the soldiers moving in a Brownian motion pattern continued to advance with unshakable determination.

At this moment, the atmosphere grew even more tense — likewise, the Portuguese on the great fort were also somewhat confused. Half a head could be seen popping up from the crenellations from time to time; probably the Portuguese were also hesitating in alarm.

Very soon, no one needed to speculate any longer. The very moment the foremost soldiers stepped onto the 100-meter line, the rear erupted once more with the deafening roar of cannons.

A dense swarm of cannonballs came hurtling through the air, passing over the friendly troops below and smashing precisely into the city wall.

Simultaneously, at the rear artillery position, the transport teams also began to move out. Several 24-pounder cannons, each pulled by a team of four sturdy horses coordinated with a large amount of manpower, were advancing toward the front at a slow pace.

The Portuguese were stunned senseless by this wave of cannonballs. "Infantry-artillery coordination" — such an advanced concept would only become widespread in later generations. In this era, the impact dispersion of smoothbore cannonballs was enormous, and no one could possibly execute this kind of tactic... except for transmigrators.

Relatively advanced industrial smelting and processing techniques, relatively precise tolerances, and even more advanced sighting and measurement technologies — these future sciences that originally could not appear in this era had created a scene both ancient and novel: infantry-artillery coordination tactics using smoothbore cannons and infantry.

The sudden several volleys of cannonballs instantly caught the Portuguese on the city wall completely off guard. The Portuguese had never anticipated that the besiegers below, already within 100 meters, would still dare to fire cannons.

And so the Portuguese paid the price. Amid the muffled thuds of cannonballs landing, bursts of miserable screams were interspersed.

The besiegers below were utterly unaffected by the cannonballs streaking overhead; the skirmish line continued to advance steadily. Before long, the sunlight reflected off the foremost steel helmets was only 50 meters from the fort.

50 meters was already within the effective killing range of a matchlock.

Yet by now, no one on the city wall was firing harassing shots or shells; the Portuguese were all busy dodging cannonballs. Just like that, the newly arrived fresh troops easily pressed close to a distance of only 30 meters from the fort.

Unexpectedly, the siege assault the Portuguese had imagined did not begin. After the troops below maneuvered into position, they halted on the spot, maintaining their original formation.

The artillery fire suppressing the city wall finally ceased at this moment.

The Portuguese lookout post at a corner of the great fort quickly reported the situation to the officers hiding below: although the besieging troops had made no other moves, the siege cannons at the rear were ceaselessly creeping forward, like the god of death about to descend.

This made the Portuguese somewhat panicked, because once the siege cannon group closed in to a certain distance, the fort's gate and walls could both be destroyed by sustained cannon fire.

"We must take the offensive!" This was now the Portuguese's only choice.

Fortunately, at this moment, the cannonballs that had been incessantly blanketing the fort had ceased firing, so the Portuguese, following prior experience, began stealthily moving firearm soldiers and gunners up, hiding behind the crenellations and making ready to fire.

Very quickly, two ready-to-fire firearms per man were prepared. The cannon crews, too, had, in such a difficult environment and at the risk of being blanketed by iron balls, hunched over and loaded several cannons.

Now everything was ready, all they needed was the east wind. As long as the matchlock soldiers could cause chaos below, the gunners could fire their deadly grapeshot.

The next moment, with the crisp report of a Portuguese officer's gunshot, the soldiers hidden behind the crenellations immediately repeated their old trick — shouting in unison, they turned and appeared behind the crenellations, swiftly braced their matchlocks, and ignited and fired.

The next moment, a row of uniform gunshots rang out.

Nearly ninety percent of the Portuguese soldiers who had exposed themselves at the crenellations, after this volley of gunfire, had their heads or upper bodies pierced by bullets. Blood splattered into the air. The already-lit matchlocks in their hands lost their aim and were flung into the air by their medically deceased owners, letting out their final roar.

The killers beneath the city wall at this moment still maintained a standard kneeling firing posture. Seeing that the targets assigned to them were dead, the marksmen expressionlessly pulled open the breech of their Type 38 rifles, took out ammunition, lowered their heads, and began reloading.

Although the transmigrators could not yet produce brass-cased bullets, resources like lead bullets and black powder could no longer stump the Industrial Party.

As the original core unit built from the ground up by the transmigrators, the soldiers of the Guard Battalion possessed the best military resources of this era. In peacetime training, soldiers could use firearms for live-fire shooting almost without restriction... even the frequent training itself was an advanced resource that armies of this era did not possess.

Therefore, at a mere 30 meters distance, in the sights of the specially selected top trainees in the first row, it was practically a hundred shots, a hundred hits. Moreover, the Portuguese had none of the self-awareness of later-era soldiers; the area of their upper bodies exposed over the crenellations was still far too much, leaving ample target area for the rifled marksmen below.

Next, with this terrifying volley, a scene that shattered the defenders' courage unfolded: no one, no person's limb, nor even part of a limb, could protrude beyond the crenellations. The moment any object defied this rule, it would instantly be blasted to pieces.

And the skirmish formation below remained coldly in a standby state. Occasionally, scattered gunshots rang out, and accompanying each gunshot was inevitably a scream from the crenellations.

Seeing the corpses piled on the city wall and the wounded rolling and howling in agony, the Portuguese officers were at their wits' end. Yet the time left for the Portuguese was already running out — the sounds of human shouts and horse neighs were gradually becoming clear. The siege cannon group had arrived.