Autumn of the 17th year of Chongzhen

Chapter 207
Let's say that Geng Zhongming was ordered by Luck Dehun to lead an army of [-] horsemen to attack Yuezhou, so as to cut off Wang Yan's return, but Wang Yan didn't want to take Wuchang, but wanted to attack Jingzhou.

The Ming and Qing sides used their own strategies. The Qing army wanted to kill Wang Yan under the city of Wuchang, but the Ming army wanted to go to Jingzhou to regain the initiative on the battlefield.

After withdrawing troops from Yongding, Geng Zhongming still asked Xu Shungong Shen Zhixiang to lead the Han army Zhengbai Banner to garrison Changde so that the Qing army could go south again after destroying Wang Yan.

At that time, he and Luck Dehun parted ways in Jingzhou. Luck Dehun led more than [-] elite men from Manchuria and Mongolia to rescue Wuchang along the Han River via Qianjiang and Xiantao, while he went along the Yangtze River and rushed to Yuezhou. As for Jingzhou City, Zheng Siwei led [-] soldiers to defend it.

At this time, Wang Yan was going west, and Geng Zhongming was going east. The two armies, both of which wanted to sneak attack on the other side, met unexpectedly at the border of Jiangling. An encounter that neither side had made any preparations took place.

At this time, the distance between the two armies was only ten miles, and the cavalry could reach the front in half an hour, so even if Wang Yan learned of Geng Zhongming's whereabouts first, he didn't have much time to prepare.

At this time, in the dense forest, Wang Yan and the generals sat on the ground, forming a circle, and among them was a topographic map of Jingchu.

Wang Yan asked the generals about their plans, and Wang Shixiu of Qianhu said: "You can ambush your troops in the dense forest, wait for the Qing army to pass by, and suddenly kill them, you can defeat their army."

General Dai Zhifan said: "That's not right. Most of our army is a chariot battalion. We are good at fighting in formation. If we suddenly attack, we use short to attack long. Besides, the Qing army has many cavalry. Once they react, he will use the advantage of cavalry to attack us in a loose manner. Bing, our army will be defeated."

After hearing what the generals said, Wang Yan said, "Since that's the case, Dai Zhifan and Ben Du led the chariot battalion to meet the enemy head-on. Wang Shixiu led [-] cavalry and Zhang Youde led [-] infantry. , you two can look at the banner of the governor, choose the opportunity to fight out, and you will definitely defeat the Qing army in one fell swoop."

"No~" All the generals stood up immediately, Qiqi clasped his fists in response.

The distance between the Ming and Qing armies was too close, and soon the Qing army also discovered the sentry cavalry of the Ming army.

At this time, Geng Zhongming, who noticed the movement of the Ming army, couldn't help being startled. Just like Wang Yan was shocked when he met him suddenly, Geng Zhongming was surprised in his heart, "Isn't Wang Yan attacking Wuchang? Why did he appear here?"

In the encounter between the two armies, all kinds of information are very expensive. Geng Zhongming soon knew that Wang Yan had already taken the upper hand.

At this time, he wanted to recover the disadvantages discovered by Wang Yanxian, so he had to send sentry cavalry to sweep the land within a radius of ten miles, so as to find out the layout of the Ming army and whether there would be ambushes.

At this time, the sentry cavalry of the two sides started to fight first. Geng Zhongming was eager to find out the situation of the Ming army, while the sentry cavalry of the Ming army tried their best to interfere with the Qing army's vision, preventing the sentry scouts from approaching the place where the Ming army's ambush was.

In the wilderness, the sentry cavalry of the two armies fought everywhere, and from time to time, some knights fell from their horses. The battle was extremely fierce, and both sides were trying their best to compress the other's room for movement.

The Qing army's cavalry was powerful, and the sentry cavalry were naturally very elite. Because of this, Geng Zhongming was overconfident, and instead of taking advantage of his superior force to wipe out the Ming army's sentry cavalry, he only dispatched more than a hundred cavalry.

In his opinion, the Eight Banners is the most powerful army in the world, and these one hundred cavalry are enough to defeat a thousand Ming troops, but in the end it was the sentry cavalry of the Ming army who drove the sentry cavalry of the Qing army back into the brigade based on their numbers.

One of the general banners of the Ming army with a small flag on his back, even more aggressively, nine cavalrymen chased down the sentry cavalry of the Qing soldiers, and came within the sight of the Qing army.

Geng Zhongming was riding on a war horse, watching a sentry cavalry of the Qing army, being chased by this group of Ming army cavalry, beheaded, leaving only the ownerless horse, running back into the formation in panic, he couldn't help but feel a little sad. angry.

At this moment, he frowned, waved his arm, and a group of yellow cavalry behind him greeted him.

The name of the general flag of the Ming Army is Zhou Zebin, whose style name is Gongjian. He is the son of Zhou Zhiwei. He is eighteen years old.

At this time, Zhou Zebin looked at the elite soldiers of the Eight Banners rolling in, and there was a trace of hope for war on his face. The Ming army on the side just wanted to remind him to evacuate, but he clamped his horse's belly and went up to the Qing soldiers. The Ming army behind him Seeing this, the knight was shocked immediately, hesitating for a while, but in the end he swung his whip and rushed forward.

Seeing this, Geng Zhongming couldn't help becoming interested. Since the Manchus entered the customs, all the Ming troops had fled at the wind, and he himself had no defeats. His iron cavalry pointed at him, and he was invincible. Almost no Ming army dared to fight him.

At this time, before his [-] army, the Ming army sentry cavalry was no more than ten cavalry, and they dared to chase him without fear. Even the Guan Ning cavalry back then did not have the courage, but in Geng Zhongming's eyes , except for a trace of surprise, it was more of a sneer at him.

Zhou Zebin guarded the city when he was in Yangzhou, but because of his young age and because of his father, he was not assigned to the most dangerous place, so he did not fight against the Qing soldiers a few times.

In Yangzhou City, the youngsters of his age, such as the three Wang brothers, Wang Ji, Wang Xu, and Wang Shixiu, who were not much older than him, had already become great talents under Wang Yan's subordinates, which made Zhou Zebin very envious, and often Blame Zhou Zhiwei for not letting him rush to the front line, otherwise he would have become a young general with a white horse and silver spear by now.

It was this regret in his heart that made Zhou Zebin work extremely hard. He learned from the general Wang Wei and was good at using long swords, and because he had practiced pretty good equestrian skills on the thousands of miles south of Yangzhou, so he reorganized the army under Wang Yan. At that time, he was selected as the General Banner of Exploring Horses.

This time, it was Zhou Zebin's debut to fight in Chu, so he was extraordinarily excited, and it was his excitement that made him forget what Baihu Ma Zhanji had said.

At that time, there were more than [-] Qing cavalrymen, twice as many as them, and they were all elite Han Eight Banners in armor.

"General Banner, don't love to fight, retreat quickly~" a sentinel rushed up to Zhou Zebin and reminded him repeatedly. "嗖~" But before he finished speaking, he was shot by a feathered arrow and fell off his horse to death.

Seeing this, Zhou Zebin regained consciousness slightly, but the war horse was already close to the Qing soldiers, and he couldn't turn around at all.

At this time, the soldiers of the Qing Dynasty had drawn their bows and arrows one after another, so Zhou Zebin had no choice but to run with the knight behind him while holding up the three-eyed gun.

"嗖~嗖~" Another wave of arrow feathers came, and two more Ming soldiers were shot off their horses.

"Bang bang~ bang~" While the Qing soldiers were shooting arrows, the firearms of the Ming army finally spewed out a burst of anger, and unexpectedly took away four Qing soldiers.

Immediately afterwards, the two teams of cavalry had already staggered together. After the Ming army finished unifying, they raised their poles and smashed the Qing army, while the Qing army cut open the Ming army's armor with a knife.

(End of this chapter)