stubborn thief

Chapter 338 Bitter Water
Solid iron bullets roared over the battlefield, shocking the soldiers who hadn't experienced war for many years. People ran on the river beach dragging their soaked cotton trousers, but involuntarily slowed down when they were [-] paces away from the enemy's line.

The seven-pound shells whizzed by, rolled and smashed into the phalanx, scaring dozens of soldiers in half of the phalanx to run away almost in a blink of an eye.

The Northwest has been at peace for a long time, and the latest war has been close to ten years. Even the selected leading soldiers, most of them are just recruits with stronger bodies and more skilled skills. They also have little experience in facing artillery shells.

The cannonball hit Li Huaao more than ten steps in front of the formation. Fortunately, the cultivated land was plowed in autumn, and the cannonball got stuck in the soil and did not bounce back. He had to stop and swallow slowly.

He was stunned for a moment before he came back to his senses. Looking around, the three front formations were frightened by the artillery and were on the verge of collapse, and they could no longer advance in parallel.

But no one backed down, because the military law of the soldiers on this point was very simple: take a step back and chop your hands after the battle.

Li Huaao raised his brows and held the Li flag spear in his palm. Standing at the front of the line, he raised his head and shouted: "My family and life depend on this battle, and Dong Li's disciples will follow me!"

The imperial court can lose this battle, and the Marshal's Mansion can also lose, but they, the side chieftains, cannot lose.

Since they chose to fight, either Patriarch Li Tianyu died on the battlefield, or he helped the court win the battle, otherwise they would definitely die.

The strenuous soldiers of the Li family also inspired other soldiers. The fear of the family law was stronger than the howling shells.

On the contrary, the soldiers of the Ye family who led the first attack did not have the pressure to die and survive. Under the shock of the bombardment on the two wings, no one was injured, but they were frightened and stopped several times.

They did not retreat, but when others entered, they did not enter, so they fell to the end.

In the blink of an eye, approaching [-] steps, the phalanx with sharp knives was still advancing steadily, but at the end of each phalanx, six soldiers pushed the extermination artillery cart to the right side of the phalanx, advancing parallel to the team.

Liu Chengzong held a binoculars to see at a glance, 24 infantry and small square formations, 24 extermination artillery vehicles, carrying a total of 72 small light cannons.

Originally there were six Hundred Tigers rushing together and some swarming bees, but now the westerly wind was blowing, and the soldiers left their rockets on the opposite bank when they crossed the river.

It's powerful and smart.

They moved the Mielu artillery vehicle to the right side of the army formation, that is, to the north, because Liu Chengzong's heavy artillery team was in the south, and the local soldiers wanted to use the army formation formed by gathering flesh and blood as a cover for the artillery vehicle.

Liu Chengzong frowned slightly, asking for benevolence.

At this moment, a Mongolian soldier with a command flag behind his back galloped to the foot of the earth mountain, shouting something, and the guards who were proficient in Mongolian language reported loudly at the foot of the earth mountain: "Marshal, thanks to the two tigers in the fishing camp, please fight and seize the cannon! "

Liu Shizixin said, grab a fart cannon, that cannon is called Mielu Cannon, and you are the one who will kill it, and you even get on the pole, do you think it is a professional match?
He said unhappily: "Please don't fight, don't move! Tell him to defend against horsemen, if the enemy's formation is not broken, you are not allowed to attack; if the enemy's formation is defeated, you are not allowed to chase across the river."

Turning his head, the twelve cannons in the heavy artillery position not far away had been loaded, but Huang Shengxiao was not nervous. Liu Chengzong even looked through the binoculars and saw Huang Xiao picking out his ears while sending someone to wave a command on the front of the horizontal formation with his right arm raised. flag.

On the contrary, the soldiers on the right wing were gearing up for each other. When Liu Chengzong saw their appearance, he knew that Huang Shengxiao was going to break the formation.

The most powerful firearms unit under Liu Chengzong's command was assembled on the right wing, where there were thousands of heavy artillery, [-] inverted gun chariots converted from Mongolian Lele vehicles, and [-] heavy gunners who were good at charging.

Although Xie Erhu was also on the right wing, he was not included in the elite troops. At this time, his main task was to disperse the troops at the foot of the mountain and help the common people gnaw the weeds in the ground with war horses.

Basang exhaled heavily, staring straight at not far away, the enemy was getting closer and closer, which made him hold his breath involuntarily until he couldn't hold it anymore.

He was waiting for the Han infantry in front of the formation to shoot, but he didn't hear the gunshot for a long time. He could only see the enemy getting closer, so that he could even see the strange little car with three iron tubes not far away.

The two armies approached a hundred paces, and Basang couldn't wait any longer. He had never played with artillery, but he had seen it many times, and he knew the threat of these things to the infantry phalanx when they fired at close range.

So he ordered the archers in front of the formation to throw a rain of arrows on the formation, and ordered the noble-born slave cavalry to lean in from the left wing-to cheat the artillery.

Liu Chengzu in the north also arrived at the bank of Huangshui River at this time, while deploying defenses along the bank to prevent the enemy from crossing the river, by the way, he and Basang came to a coordinated battle in a dreamlike manner.

He asked Li Wanqing to bring five cannons to fire a round of cannons and a Hundred Tigers Mercedes-Benz to the front of Basang's left flank. Not to kill, but to let the rocket hit the ground and smoke.

In a blink of an eye, gunpowder smoke was everywhere in front of the left wing. Basang's cavalry took the opportunity to disperse and slant towards the enemy through the smoke.

The Liu brothers had a clear division of labor in the past two years. Liu Shishi was thinking about new weapons during the war, and Liu Chengzu was trying out old firearms in Xiningwei. Anyway, Xiningwei has this convenient condition.

However, Liu Chengzu didn’t make large-scale production of all kinds of godfire and poisonous smoke. These things are useful, but they are not so useful. In addition, it is easy to hurt one's own people in field battles.

Therefore, only a few weapons such as smoke balls, rockets, and caltrop bombs are really produced in large quantities.

The smoke ball he put was not poisonous, but it was a bit choking. Its main purpose was to obscure the sight of the soldiers and launch an assault;

But whether it is easy to use or not, this is the first time Liu Chengzu has used it on the battlefield, and he himself is not sure.

When the No. 1 Spanish noble cavalry passed through the smoke, they stretched their bows and set up arrows to shoot at the rushing soldiers, and a car that killed captives launched a bombardment. Three one-pound iron bullets pierced through the smoke one after another, and missed the cavalry. Instead, it killed the two horses behind.

The battle on the flanks started in no time, and the horse team following the infantry formation also took advantage of the situation and rushed into the smoke to fight with the Zepan horse team, so as to protect the frontal infantry formation from attacking the enemy's formation.

This further accelerated the marching speed of the soldiers on the front, and the strides of each formation involuntarily accelerated until the distance was advanced to [-] steps, and the artillery carts loaded with captive guns were laid down one after another, and the angles were adjusted to prepare for firing.

But before they launched, Huang Shengxiao, who was on the right wing of the Marshal's Mansion, waved his hand suddenly: "Let it go!"

A bronze jack-of-pound cannon blasted at the flanking formation of the soldiers. People covered their ears and turned sideways. In the huge flames and gunpowder smoke emitted from the barrel, blackened wooden horses sprayed out with pieces of red-hot scatter, forming a Forty steps across the fan, 370 lead pieces almost cut off a layer of the nearest hundred soldiers in unison.

Before people could react from the panic of the sudden attack, the second heavy bronze cannon fired at the same position again. Huang Shengxiao called the firing gap between the two cannons the time when a person fell down.

Immediately the third cannon fired again.

In a very short period of time, the people didn't even have a chance to escape, so they endured three consecutive bombardments of scattered particles in a daze. Thousands of lead stones smashed an army formation into a sieve.

The military officer holding the Korean flag at the front was so frightened by the bombardment that he couldn't help launching a charge. He roared and ran six or seven steps. Tusi Qi looked down at Mianjia.

The blue armor skirt was punched with several holes, blood was flowing down the trouser legs under the armor skirt to the upper of the boots, the front chest was pierced somewhere, and the dragon pattern was dyed bright red.

He opened his mouth wide, as if he wanted to breathe hard, but this made the pain in his body even more unbearable, and every inch of his face was twitching, which made him look at the opposite side extremely fiercely, and his movements were drawn out stiffly. With a knife on his waist, he pointed hard at the Fanbing formation which was only fifty steps away, and took another step forward before he fell heavily to the ground.

After his corpse, several survivors were frightened and ran away screaming strangely. Only one person remained in the army surrounded by the corpse, but that person was holding his hair bun and squatting on the ground crying, Already crazy.

The smoke from the three heavy cannons gradually dissipated, Huang Shengxiao didn't show any expression on his face, but he couldn't help but reached out and touched the half ear on the right, and turned his head to order: "You two fire alternately, forgetting to leave time for the rout. "

Huang Xiao grew up in Yulin since he was a child. In his hometown, there has never been a year without fighting without death. In his 26 years, he has a fixed understanding that it is not just that the sea is full of sand.

After defecting to Liu Chengzong, he was Feng Ru's soldier at first, because he heard that Feng Ru survived on one human leg when he fled Sarhu, so he went to ask Feng Ru what human flesh tasted like.

Although Feng Lu didn't tell him and beat him up, he knew the answer.

Bitter, Huang Shengxiao firmly believes that human flesh is bitter, at least the flesh of ordinary people must be bitter.

They are born soaked in bitter water and will not have other flavors.

A cannon shot in the distance interrupted Huang Shengxiao's thoughts, and a small iron bullet weighing a pound flew past him, breaking the neck of a heavy gunner and collapsing the chest of a soldier again.

It's an extermination cannon.

Not far away from the local army formation, someone took over their extermination guns after the flank formation was flattened by Sanzi, but they didn't seem to have received much artillery training, and tremblingly only ignited one of the three cannons.

But this cannon was like the clarion call to start the battle, followed by the cannons of the local soldiers on the front of the battlefield bang, forming a full-scale attack on Basang's army formation.

It wasn't until this moment that the native soldiers looked at the opposite side dumbfounded. The distance between them was so close that it could be seen that the one standing on the opposite side was not a dismounted Mongol, but a fan soldier carrying a Mongolian sword, shield and spear.

But these Fanbing were different from the Fanbing they had come into contact with. They were more like the hungry people who were near death under the drought in Han.

A burst of shelling was like hitting the line of walking dead. Instead of bringing terror and rout to the enemy, it exchanged for a more violent arrow rain.

In fact, Basang was relieved by the shelling.

He and his soldiers lacked knowledge of the types and firepower of artillery. People made preparations to resist shelling and were worried about it. The shells penetrated the entire column of soldiers.

After being bombarded, the people relaxed, and then there was a shout, a muffled sound of heavy guns, gunpowder smoke rose immediately, and pieces of feathered arrows fell on the enemy's formation like locusts falling from the sky.

The native soldiers also used bird guns and bows and arrows to project, but the distance between the two sides was [-] steps, and the threat posed by the bird guns to the Fan soldiers was not even as great as the Mielu gun.

Liu Chengzong, who was on the mountain, felt relieved when he saw this scene. He just clenched his fists. Behind the mountain, the cavalry of Yang Yao's Marshal's Mansion was ready to counterattack after the Fanbing was defeated.

But Basang stabilized the front line, and even with the help of the heavy gun team, he overwhelmed the enemy in momentum, so he was relieved, as long as the front could form a stalemate, his flanks would surely win.

Liu Shizi immediately waved the command flag, and the drums behind him roared, and the right wing quickly received the news.

Huang Shengxiao got on his horse, held the reins, drew out his saber and waved it around his head, pointing obliquely in the direction of the army formation that had just been bombarded: "Artillery team, go forward...to meet the impact!"

Just halfway through his order, he suddenly saw the enemy's left wing cavalry galloping towards the artillery position, and immediately ordered the army to prepare for the impact.

The infantry composed of heavy guns immediately formed a slightly loose formation, and the artillery pushed the big wheels of the artillery carts without aiming, and the galloping cavalry took the lead.

At the moment before the gunpowder smoke gushed out, Huang Shengxiao saw the leader of the leading cavalry team pull the reins to the left, turn around and shout something, and at the same time use his stirrups to hide.

In the next moment, people turned on their backs.

The horses in front either fell to the ground, or stood up, and the horsemen behind bumped into the front. When they were congested, they fired a few more shots.

Facing the cavalry attack, Huang Shengxiao's artillery could not help but panic. No one cared about giving time for people to fall and flee. The soil in front of the position plowed out a fan-shaped area full of holes.

The horse team among them was even more horrible. Group after group of war horses fell down and struggled to get up, but the bullet holes in their bodies made them drag their necks and hiss helplessly.

The native official, who had avoided the shelling by hiding in his stirrups, jumped up, turned around and raised his sword to call on the native soldiers to form an infantry formation. .

Unexpectedly, as soon as they put on a posture, the native officials, foot soldiers and even the native horse soldiers behind them turned around and ran away in fright.

Just as they were amazed at their majesty, there was the sound of trampling horseshoes behind them. It was Xie Erhu, a young grass-grazing expert, leading the Mongolian cavalry galloping with sabers raised.

Huang Shengxiao, who was on the horseback, laughed and waved his waist knife and ordered: "The heavy guns advance from the flanks, the gun carts shoot from the flanks, and defeat the Chinese army!"

　Good morning!

　　
　
(End of this chapter)