Chapter 801: Beachhead Landing

Latest URL: "Prepare for a fight to the death!"

At Niu Tou Tan, Luse's eyes were bloodshot as he drew the sword at his waist and held it high.

At this moment, he was in a sorry state; his clothes were tattered, and the hair on his left side had been scorched.

Yesterday, they had been bombarded for an entire day.

During the final round of shelling in the evening, a Cannonball exploded less than twenty meters away from him.

If his guards hadn't protected him, he would already be dead.

At the same time, he also felt the humiliation of being toyed with.

It wasn't until last night that he suddenly realized the attacks he had repelled four times were merely feints.

Their ultimate goal was to destroy all of their Forts.

However, he also knew clearly that even if he had known it was a feint at the time, he would have been helpless to stop it.

Except for the first feint, the number of troops in the subsequent attempts had grown larger and larger.

If they didn't stop them, the feints would become real attacks.

And this was precisely the tricky part of the Yan King Army.

Besides shame and annoyance, a rising hatred burned in his heart.

His guards were dead, and after taking stock, of the more than twenty thousand Mercenaries, only over fifteen thousand remained; more than four thousand had died in yesterday's bombardment.

And that was just the Mercenaries; the casualties of the Shizu Army were even more severe.

Of course, he would not feel any heartache for the deaths of the Da Song soldiers.

He only felt heartache for his own people.

Many of these were veterans who had followed him in battle for over a decade.

They hadn't died on the sweltering islands of the south, yet they had died in Da Song.

"Fight to the death!"

"Fight to the death!"

"..."

As his voice fell,

the Mercenaries in the Trenches raised the Smoothbore Guns in their hands and shouted in agreement.

Luse looked toward the ships in the river while encouraging the soldiers along the Trench.

Encountering a British soldier, he grabbed the man's shoulder and shook it, "For glory!"

"For glory!" the British soldier shouted loudly.

Encountering a Tianzhu native soldier, he said the same, "For glory!"

The Tianzhu soldier was even more excited than the British soldier; he straightened his body and shouted, "For Britain."

In the years that Britain had ruled Tianzhu, the British had become the most noble people in Tianzhu.

Once, their Tianzhu caste system was divided into four ranks: Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya, and Shudra.

Nowadays, Britain was effectively above the Brahmin.

And he belonged to the Shudra, known as the untouchables.

Now, Luse had actually touched him, which naturally made him excited.

"Colonel, we will definitely be able to defeat the enemy," the Tianzhu soldier added.

Luse smiled and walked toward the next Yajia native soldier.

He liked the eternal confidence of the Tianzhu people, and he also liked this war, just as the Tianzhu soldier had said.

"Boom, boom, boom..."

While Luse was encouraging the soldiers, the thirty-two remaining Forts launched a bombardment into the river.

But such sparse shelling could no longer block the charge of a thousand sails and ten thousand boats.

The Large Troop Transports arrived at the shore, and since they could not dock against the bank, the soldiers immediately climbed down from rope ladders and waded through knee-deep water to the shore.

The small boats were very free; the soldiers swung directly to the shore and climbed onto the riverbank.

In an instant, the ships formed a line along the long Niu Tou Tan.

The soldiers climbed off the ships one after another and attacked forward.

Viewed from high above, it was just like countless dark green leaves moving across the yellow mudflats.

"Bang, bang, bang..."

Once ashore, the soldiers immediately found their respective Flag Leaders.

In the Prince's Personal Army, three men was the smallest combat unit.

But this was when serving as skirmishers to harass the enemy's formation.

When attacking a Trench, it was not just a skirmisher formation, but a combination of multiple formations.

Most of them used the flag as the unit.

Each flag had thirty men; when attacking, the target was not too large, and when facing many enemies, they could concentrate their firepower to kill the opponent.

As the soldiers were landing, three Hot Air Balloons slowly rose into the sky on the opposite side of Jiujiang.

A rope was tied under these three Hot Air Balloons, and the rope was tied to a wooden stake below to ensure the balloons would not be blown away by the wind.

Besides the Hot Air Balloon Troop, Qin Shan, Guan Tong, and Lv Chang stood on these three Hot Air Balloons respectively, and each was equipped with a flag signaler.

The colors of the flag signalers' flags were also different: red, yellow, and blue.

High up in the sky at over fifty meters, the three could see the battlefield opposite clearly.

In this way, they could coordinate the soldiers based on battlefield intelligence.

Before the soldiers landed, they had all memorized the colors of their respective flags; whose soldiers they were, they would follow that person's orders.

"Transmit my command: have the Artillerymen establish an artillery position on the left side of the mudflat at the direction of 8:30 AM." He observed the battlefield while holding a telescope.

Lv Chang disregarded his trembling legs and issued the order.

Before boarding the Hot Air Balloon, he had been excited.

But after the Hot Air Balloon ascended, it nearly cost him his life.

Looking down from above, he felt nothing but lightheadedness.

But as it was currently wartime, he gritted his teeth and overcame his fear.

Upon discovering a location suitable for the Artillerymen, he immediately issued the order.

At the same time, Qin Shan and Guan Tong were also continuously issuing commands.

Among the soldiers on the mudflat, there were people specifically responsible for using Telescopes to observe the Flag Language signalers on the opposite bank and relaying orders.

Upon receiving the orders, they continuously sent people to pass the commands down level by level.

After landing, the originally chaotic soldiers gradually became orderly.

Different Captain Army units were responsible for different areas, launching attacks toward the mudflat.

"Bang, bang, bang..."

"Boom, boom, boom..."

After the Infantry and Artillerymen found their positions, they immediately launched an attack across the long mudflat.

At every point on the mudflat, Wangfu Army soldiers were pushing forward.

The Howitzers fired Lime Bombs into the Trenches, and the soldiers responsible for throwing Hand Grenades took advantage of the clouds of smoke created by the Lime Bombs that obscured the enemy's vision and prevented them from opening their eyes, quickly running forward to toss the Hand Grenades into the Trenches.

Within the white lime mist, clusters of Flame ignited.

"Brothers, it is time to fight for our lives. Do you want your family's fields to be seized by Yan Wang? Do you want the wealth you have accumulated to vanish into smoke? Today, no one is allowed to retreat; kill them all." In the Trench, Wang Xie roared continuously at the generals of the Powerful Clans and Rich Clans.

Those who had retreated from Jiangbei to Jiangnan and continued to follow them were all Rich Clans loyal to the death, as well as the sons and younger brothers of their families.

This time, the troop expansion also mostly recruited private soldiers of the Rich Clans.

They knew clearly that the common people's will to resist Yan Wang was far less resolute than that of the Rich Clan private soldiers.

If they were ordered to guard Niu Tou Tan, the loss would come even faster.

And this was also the advice Luse gave them: troops should be elite, not numerous.

Therefore, they temporarily let the common people be responsible for digging Trenches, transporting grain and fodder, or acting as miscellaneous soldiers.

When an emergency arose, they would then press-gang the able-bodied into the army.

After all, this war could not afford any mistakes; they had to concentrate all their strength.

But what he did not know was that Luse harbored a vicious scheme.

Ordering the elite of the Powerful Clans to resist Yan Wang first was naturally to kill and injure as many of Yan Wang's soldiers as possible, deplete Yan Wang's strength, and stall Yan Wang's southward advance.

If the Powerful Clans could not hold them back, they would certainly become hysterical by then.

At that time, they would surely disregard the lives of the common people entirely, accepting any means to force the common people onto the battlefield.

Thus, even if Yan Wang captured Jiangnan in the future, it would be a fragmented and broken Jiangnan.

Not only would he be unable to gain any benefits, but it would also become a burden.

But for Wang Xie, they could not perceive the viciousness within it.

Because this indeed aligned with the interests of their Powerful Clans.

"Kill! Kill! Kill!"

Amidst Wang Xie's roars, the Powerful Clan generals shouted with reddened eyes.

They hated Yan Wang; it was Yan Wang who made them lose their fields and wealth in Jiangbei, and now they were living under someone else's roof.

They wanted to make Yan Wang pay a bloody price.