stubborn thief

Chapter 15 Swept
Liu Chengzong waved the banner in Shanmao, and behind him, the bald little sixteen picked up the drumstick with all his strength and made a sharp tune on the waist drum.

The eldest daughter of the Bianjun family's family and the little daughter-in-law wore a floral jacket and played the small drums in a messy way. There was no tune at all.

There is also Mrs. Cao, who is standing at the end of the line with a Japanese-style waist knife and a small bow.

This is not a war drum, the sound of the drum is not for people to listen to, and no one can hear any information from the sound of the drum. It is just to scare people. First, it is to make the thieves think that they are the official army, and secondly, it is to make them think that the official army is different. The rest are encircling.

It’s hard to say whether it was the sound of the drums, or whether the bandits were preconceived and frightened when they saw the frontier army’s cloth armor. Liu Chengzong, who waved the flag, saw clearly that his brother and Cao Yao’s second team of infantrymen invaded the village for the first time. , the thief has shown a tide-like retreat.

Although many of them were brave and bloody, they were only able to stop the boiling water when they rushed up in twos and threes. Before they could touch the army, they were stabbed to death by the sword and shield hands with javelins.

When it was approaching, it was only necessary to make a knife, pick up the javelin, and the entire team continued to advance over the corpse. Only a few thirty people forced the hundreds of thieves to flee and drove them east.

The two teams of infantry were not in a hurry, the formation was always maintained by the two captains, but when approaching the earth siege, the soldiers formed three rows of long snakes in a horizontal line, with the two wings forward and the middle behind, in the shape of a small but moon. Press before.

With a bang, a cloud of gunpowder rose from the formation, and it was Cao Yaoduan's three-eyed gun that shot into the sky.

The three-eyed gun is a short-barreled fire door gun. It has three barrels about one foot long and is connected to a long wooden rod. When firing, you need to hold the gun with one hand, clamp the wooden rod with the elbow rib, and hold the match rope in the other to light the fire door. , Due to the short barrel, it is difficult to shoot accurately.

In this era, the three-eyed gun was an old weapon in terms of age. Under the influence of Qi Jiguang, the southern gunmen often used the bird gun. However, in the northern frontier army, Qi Shaobao's work in promoting the bird gun was not smooth.

The bird gun has a medicine pool. Since gunpowder is first placed in the chamber of the gun, and then the projectile is fired, the medicine pool ignited by the match rope outside the gun tube still needs to be sprinkled with the powder connected to the gunpowder. The wind is strong in the north. Risk of being blown away by the wind.

Therefore, the three-eyed guns are still installed in large numbers in the northern frontier army. The excellent frontier army horsemen can use this kind of firearm that is difficult to ignite, which is basically two types of weapons.

Bird guns can shoot far and accurately, and the three-eyed guns seek wide. For example, the defense direction is the border army in Yansui Town, Hetao Mongolia. In the face of border conflicts that usually involve hundreds or thousands of cavalry, they regard the three-eyed guns as the frontier. Make a one-time spray.

The three gun tubes were each stuffed with two or three lead pellets, and they were released nearby, smearing the face of the horse thief who lacked armor protection on the opposite side.

It is neither a bursting machine gun nor a toy that can only hear a sound, but a cheap weapon in this era that is good at dealing with unarmored enemies.

Long-range weapons still mostly use bows, while small bows that shoot long-range shots quickly and long-stubbed bows that shoot heavy arrows with great power are supplementary for melee combat.

When the Yuhebao frontier army left the fort, they handed over all the firearms, only Cao Yao kept a three-eyed gun, for nothing else, just because the luck was bad, he could use it as a horn.

The horn can transmit information, and the three-eyed gun has a short barrel and fast reloading, which is the most agile in transmitting information on the battlefield.

Liu Chengzong knew that Cao Yao's horn had two meanings.

One is that the bandit soldiers are scattered, and the cavalry can be led into conflict; the other is to tell him to kill the lame man.

The thief did not have the opportunity to observe the situation calmly. It is said that Taoists cannot stand without rigid bones. The head of the thief, Bai Yingzi, is the steel skeleton of this group of bandits. Everyone who suddenly attacked is searching for Bai Yingzi within the field of vision.

Bai Yingzi could not be found, and the thieves fighting each other were scattered. When Bai Yingzi was found, he was leading several management teams to flee east with seven or eight grain carts. none.

When the flag was brought down, Liu Chengzong turned around and ran down the mountain at a brisk pace. Twelve frontier soldiers were stationed beside the red flag on the official road.

Everything had been arranged before the war, and they would, as agreed, under the leadership of Liu Chengzong, intercept and route the fleeing thieves from the east.

Everything about this familiar road is like a carnival belonging to the abandoned soldiers of the frontier army. The soldiers put on the saddles that have just been adjusted, and even the war horses twisted awkwardly because they had not been saddled or carried people for a long time.

In the eyes of the riders, it was as if the war horse was also excited.

They rode their horses quietly, their shoes on the yellow earth, and there was a deep, firm clang.

In order to ensure that the frontier horse soldiers could complete the interception mission, Liu Chengzong issued several orders to the team with a high bow. go.

The thieves in the village have used all the means at their disposal. Some people try to block them, but they are knocked over by the frontier army with their spears.

Those who were willing to resist were killed in pieces in an instant, and the rest of the manpower did not know how to deal with it.

Seeing that the official army was advancing step by step and could not catch up with them, Bai Yingzi, who had escaped from the village entrance to the east, also noticed that something was wrong, stopped following the fleeing subordinates, got on the carriage at Panliang Station, and looked westward.

"It seems that the official army has no reinforcements. There are only more than 30 people, and the banner has not yet been raised."

The frontier troops in the Ming Dynasty suffered a decline in combat effectiveness due to the corruption of the imperial court and the poor financial situation, but they were still strong in terms of morale, training, and discipline. Troops that had been underpaid for three years could still follow the emperor's edict to go out to fight. A manifestation of discipline.

Institutionalized troops don't say big troops go into battle. Even if a small flag officer leads troops to carry the work for the landlord, there will be helmets and flags. This seems to be common sense to Bai Yingzi, who has been fighting with the official army for many years.

But at this time, the officers and soldiers only saw the bare helmets and guns on their heads, and the red flag that waved on the hill at the beginning was gone. Looking back, that flag was nothing like a military flag, neither four-colored flying tiger nor five-sided The Divine Banner doesn't even have 28 constellations.

After experiencing the initial panic, Bai Yingzi woke up, patted his head and scolded fiercely: "I fell into this group of shady suspects, they are a group of deserters, they have to starve to death without food, gather people to follow them - forget it, pull Raise a team to protect the grain cart!"

Sober, sober, Bai Yingzi has not yet had blood on his head.

It wasn't that he didn't want to fight, it was just that the thieves and soldiers were scared out of their minds, he ordered a counterattack, and no one went to kill him.

After a moment of hesitation, the sound of hooves exploded in the south, and a frontier cavalry approached them.

The horse team first came out alone, and then the twelve cavalry lined up in three teams. Everyone held the reins in their left hand and the knife in the right, with the back of the knife resting on their right shoulder, galloping like a thunderbolt with an indomitable momentum.

Before they approached, the bandit soldiers gathered beside the grain cart had already rushed to both sides like waves. When Liu Chengzong approached five or six paces, there were only three or four people on the left and right of the grain cart, who were as frightened as wooden chickens. No matter how Shangbai Yingzi called, he couldn't call back his subordinates.

Bai Yingzi had just lifted the bow from the bow bag at his waist, and before he could squeeze the arrow, Liu Chengzong had turned his horse's head and galloped to one side, turned back and pulled the bow full of strength and released a fast arrow.

In an instant, Liu Chengzong heard a high-pitched arrow from behind him, and his ears were filled with the screams of the cavalry rushing into the crowd and slashing and slashing.

Note: Actions such as cavalry formation, saber leaning on the shoulder, etc. refer to the "Pingfan Victory Map" depicting the border army in Guyuan town performing military tasks during the Wanli period of the Ming Dynasty

(End of this chapter)