The disgraced official I took care of was actually Zhu Houcong's childhood friend.

Chapter 244

As the saying goes, when a cannon goes off, there is a thousand taels of gold.

War is always very expensive, but Zhou Chu was not worried. The gentry of Jiangnan had already paid for it, and Zhou Chu knew very well that he could not fight these rabble for long.

The reason for fighting this battle is to use it to deter the wealthy gentry and merchants in Jiangnan and make them behave themselves in Jiangnan.

The gentry class cannot be completely eliminated; it can only be weakened and deterred.

The more the court hardened its stance, the more lenient they became; the more lenient the court became, the more lenient they became.

Soon, the Zhang brothers led an army of over 100,000 to the gates of Suzhou. Zhou Chu stood on the city wall and looked out over the vast expanse of people below.

For Zhou Chu, the denser the enemy's forces, the better, as this would maximize the effectiveness of the artillery.

The reason for fighting this battle is to completely annihilate these hundreds of thousands of troops. These people are the slaves and private soldiers of the gentry, and if they are not eliminated, they will become unstable factors in the future.

Chu Liu hid at the rear of the army formation, surrounded by more than a hundred Tiger Warriors, with the Zhang brothers on the chariot next to him.

The reason was that these two were really bad at riding horses and didn't dare to ride on the battlefield. So, on the sixth day, someone made a large chariot for them. This made Zhang Heling value Chu Liu even more and feel that he, as the commander-in-chief of the three armies, was really thinking of him in every way.

Chu Liu knew very well that those at the front would be met with artillery fire. He was there to infiltrate, not to die, so he simply stayed at the rear of the battle line and used flag signals to direct the main force to charge.

These simple flag signals were taught to him by the Tiger Legion.

"Brothers, kill! Take Suzhou! You'll all live the high life!"

Zhang Heling drew his sword and shouted.

As soon as Zhang Heling gave the order, the attack horn sounded immediately, and Chu Liu waved the battle flag in his hand, directing the army to charge.

To be honest, given the level of skill of someone like Chu Liu, it's already quite an achievement to be able to command hundreds of thousands of troops to complete a charge without them trampling each other, let alone to mention any formations or orderly military formations.

The army of over 100,000 men had no formation whatsoever and charged straight towards Suzhou.

"fire."

Zhou Chu waved his battle flag and gave the order to fire.

Upon receiving the order, the gunners lit the fuses one after another. A few seconds later, more than a hundred mother-and-child cannons, along with the red-coated cannons that were already in the military camp, fired a single salvo, and the area outside Suzhou was covered in blood. Thousands of rebel soldiers were killed.

The first volley is often the most effective because the rebels are in their most densely packed and undefended state.

This volley of fire halted the rebel army's advance. These men had never fought a battle before, and they were all thinking that they could storm into Suzhou and rob whoever they wanted, and live a life of luxury.

But when they actually saw their own men being bombarded and killed by cannons, with blood splattering everywhere and corpses all over the ground, they were so scared that their legs trembled. How could they dare to continue charging?

Everyone knows the saying "the nail that sticks out gets hammered down," meaning those who charge ahead are the first to be shot down.

Even the Zhang brothers, who were hiding at the very back, were pale with fright. Only then did they realize that the real battlefield was completely different from what they had imagined. Facing the dark cannon muzzles of Suzhou City, Zhang Heling really couldn't figure out how to break through the city.

On the sixth day, however, he ignored all of this and continued to wave the battle flag, signaling the army to charge. At the same time, he ordered the supervising team to keep a close watch on these people and to kill anyone who tried to desert.

To prevent these people from collapsing too quickly, the supervisory team alone numbered 10,000 to 20,000 people on the sixth day of the Lunar New Year.

After a salvo, the cannon barrels of the red-coated cannons need a certain amount of time to cool down, but the mother-and-child cannons are different. After switching to the child cannons, the second salvo can begin very quickly.

In addition, the rebels' cowardice slowed their advance, which meant that the mortars could fire more frequently.