NOVEL NEXT Chapter 434 British Tactics
Chapter 435 British Tactics
The next day, under the cover of a thin curtain of rain, a group of British soldiers slipped into the innermost layer of the "Pa" through a gap opened by a cannon.
The defending Mysore soldiers hurriedly fled from the tunnel, but the man who left the ignited gunpowder barrel took out a flint, but the sparks fired three times in a row were extinguished by the rain blown in by the wind.
Two British soldiers appeared at the tower entrance and raised their Brown Bess flintlocks at him.
An hour later, Marquis Wellesley looked at the seven or eight corpses soaked in the rain with a gloomy expression. He wasted a full 14 days on this crude fortress before finally conquering it. The Mysore people died less than 30 people.
He glanced at the more than 200 flintlock guns and a 4-pound cannon piled not far away. He was about to return to the tent when he suddenly stopped.
He turned to the officer in charge of sorting out the loot and asked, "Why didn't you see the enemy's gunpowder and cannonballs?"
The officer hurriedly pointed to a dozen small wooden boxes under the tree: "Over there, Lieutenant Colonel."
Wellesley came from a family of military officers. Although he was young, he already had the rank of lieutenant colonel.
He was a little surprised and said: "That's it?"
"Yes, Lieutenant Colonel. In fact, this is the first time we have captured their weapons. They used to detonate gunpowder when evacuating."
Wellesley stood in the rain and squinted his eyes. These ammunition were only enough for the soldiers defending the fort for another 10 days at most. In other words, they only prepared more than 20 days of ammunition from the beginning.
He wiped the rain off his face, looked at the narrow tower at the top of the "Pa", suddenly raised the corners of his mouth, turned to Cornwallis and said: "I think I have discovered the weakness of this thing. "
Two days later.
Forty or fifty Hyderabadi soldiers, in a very loose formation, cautiously attacked the "Pa" on the mound in front.
Soon, gunfire rang out inside the "Pa", and a Hyderabadi man lost half of his head to a lead bullet on the spot.
The others were shocked and wanted to run away subconsciously, but when they turned around, they saw hundreds of British soldiers in red uniforms pointing their guns in the distance.
Their hearts suddenly tightened, recalling the scene where dozens of people who had fled back in the morning were shot on the spot. They quickly turned around, looking for a hiding place around them, and then bravely raised their guns to fight back.
The order given to them by the British commander was to attack for an hour, and then they could retreat and replace the next group of people.
However, in less than half an hour, these dozens of people were beaten to death by Mysore soldiers.
The British officer in the distance put down his telescope and turned to look at Wellesley. Seeing the latter nodding, he immediately shouted to a small group of Maratha soldiers next to him: "It's your turn, go and capture that fort!"
Driven by the British soldiers, the Marathas moved toward the "Pa" with pale faces.
"Are you sure this is effective?" Cornwallis looked at the Indian soldiers who were shot and fell to the ground one after another, and turned sideways to Wellesley, "We seem to have gotten nothing except huge casualties."
"Just watch patiently." The latter said calmly, "If I guess correctly, this fortress can be captured before dark."
Nearly 50 Maratha soldiers were all killed quickly, and another group of British servants were forced to rush forward. They began to use the former's corpse as a cover, but they only lasted for more than 40 minutes, and then the next group …
At around 5 o'clock in the afternoon, Cornwallis looked at the corpses spread around the "Pa" and made a rough estimate. There should be more than ten groups of Indian soldiers dead there, at least 600 people.
He was about to say something more to Wellesley, but unexpectedly found that the Mysore fortress had become quiet.
"Okay, it seems that my judgment is correct." Wellesley said with a smile on his face, "Let our people come up."
"Yes, Lieutenant Colonel!"
Immediately, nearly a thousand British "lobster soldiers" surrounded the "Pa". However, they only encountered extremely sporadic counterattacks.
The British used gunpowder to blast open several layers of walls and drove the Mysore soldiers into the tunnel.
Then the retreating defenders detonated the gunpowder barrel, and more than half of the tower at the top of the "Pa" collapsed.
Cornwallis used the remaining light of the setting sun to see the British flag being planted on the fortress that had troubled him for half a year. He looked at Wellesley in shock: "You, how did you do that?" ? It only took one day to conquer this thing!"
"Ammunition storage." Marquis Wellesley pointed calmly to the tower on the top of "Pa", "The main body of this fortress is a three-layer wall, and only the middle can be used to store ammunition.
"Based on its narrow size, I estimate that after part of the space is occupied by food and fresh water, they can only store up to 300 artillery shells and more than 15,000 rounds of gunpowder, as well as the corresponding gunpowder.
"So, I let people attack continuously in batches. When the Mysore people are pressed, they will ignore their ammunition reserves. Oh, and long-term continuous shooting will also significantly reduce their hit rate.
"Eventually, they exhausted their ammunition and our soldiers rushed in. That was it."
In fact, he said a little less. That is, after killing a large number of enemies, Mysore soldiers will enter an extremely excited and bloodthirsty state, so they only know how to keep shooting and do not think about tactics at all.
Cornwallis listened to the young officer in front of him calmly describe the tactics of "using human lives to exhaust the enemy's ammunition", and couldn't help but be stunned on the spot - it turned out that the measures he had taken to reduce casualties and save the lives of soldiers had also failed. Time for the enemy to rest and deploy tactics.
In fact, continued pressure at all costs is the best tactic to deal with the Mysore people with low military literacy!
"But," he thought of another question, "Although we quickly captured the fortress, the casualties were too many..."
They killed at least 600 people in this day's attack. Based on this figure, after all the fortresses in Mangaluru are solved, the price will have to be between 20,000 and 30,000 people!
"They're just some Indian natives." Wellesley waved his hand nonchalantly, "Their population is very large, so this is nothing."
As he was speaking, he saw the commander of the Hyderabad Army walking towards him with a dark face, but he continued to say to Cornwallis with a normal expression:
"And my goal is not to capture Mangalore. Just let Tipu know that we can quickly breach his fortress."
The Hyderabad officer came to the two men and shouted in a rough voice without even saluting:
"You can't let my soldiers die like this. Nearly 400 people died today!"
Marquis Wellesley looked at him with a smile and said:
"It is a soldier's duty to die in battle. There will be many more storms like this in the future, so you have to get used to it as soon as possible."