Solid iron bullets roared over the battlefield, shocking the soldiers who had not experienced war for many years. People ran on the river beach dragging their soaked cotton trousers, but involuntarily slowed down when they were 300 steps away from the enemy line.
Seven kilograms of artillery shells whizzed past, rolled and smashed into the phalanx, scaring dozens of soldiers in half of the phalanx into fleeing in almost an instant.
The northwest has been at peace for a long time, and the latest war has been nearly ten years. Even the selected top soldiers, most of them are just physically stronger and more skilled recruits, and they also have little experience in facing artillery shells.
The artillery shell hit Li Hua'ao more than ten steps in front of his formation. Fortunately, the cultivated land was plowed in the autumn, and the artillery shell was stuck in the soil and did not bounce up. Even so, the flying soil fragments hit Li Hua'ao on the face, which still shocked him. You have to stop and swallow slowly.
He was stunned for a moment before he came back to his senses. Looking around, he saw that the first three military formations were frightened by the artillery and were on the verge of collapse. They could no longer advance in parallel.
But no one retreated, because the military regulations of the soldiers on this point were very simple: take a step back, and chop off your hands after the war.
Li Hua'ao raised his eyebrows and held the Li-character flag spear in his palm. He stood at the front of the team and shouted: "My family and my life depend on this battle. The disciples of Dongli will follow me forward!"
The imperial court can lose this battle, and so can the Marshal's Mansion, but they, the chieftains, cannot lose.
Since they chose to go to war, either the head of the family, Li Tianyu, died on the battlefield, or they helped the court win the battle, otherwise they would definitely die.
The enterprising soldiers of the Li family also inspired other soldiers. People's fear of family law was greater than the roaring cannonballs. They regrouped and pushed the artillery carts and rocket cars towards Basang's soldiers formation.
On the contrary, the soldiers of the Ye family, who led the attack at the beginning, were not under pressure to survive. Under the shock of the shelling on both wings, no one was injured, but they were frightened to stop several times.
They didn't retreat, but when others entered, they didn't, so they fell to the end.
In the blink of an eye, two hundred steps were approaching, and the phalanx with sharp knives was still advancing steadily, but at the end of each phalanx there were six native soldiers pushing the prisoner-killing artillery cart to the right side of the phalanx, advancing parallel to the team.
Liu Chengzong held a telescope and saw at a glance, twenty-four small square formations of infantry and cavalry, and twenty-four prisoner-killing artillery carts, carrying a total of seventy-two light cannons.
Originally there were still six Hundred Tigers and some swarms of bees, but the wind was blowing from the west now, and the soldiers left their rockets on the other side of the river when they crossed the river.
Great firepower and smart.
They moved the prisoner-killing artillery carriage to the right side of the military formation, that is, to the north, because Liu Chengzong's heavy artillery team was in the south, and the native soldiers wanted to use the military formation formed by flesh and blood as a cover for the artillery carriage.
Liu Chengzong frowned slightly and begged for mercy.
At this moment, a Mongolian soldier with an order flag on his back ran to the foot of the mountain and shouted something. The guard who was proficient in Mongolian language reported loudly at the foot of the mountain: "Commander, Xie Erhu of the fishing camp is asking for a fight to seize the cannon!" "
Liu Shizixin said, seize the cannon, that cannon is called the destroyer cannon, and you are the one who will be destroyed. Do you think you are professional enough to get up on the pole?
He said angrily: "Why don't you fight? Don't move! Tell him to defend the cavalry. If the enemy's formation is not broken, they are not allowed to attack; if the enemy's formation is broken, they are not allowed to chase across the river."
Turning around, in the heavy artillery position not far away, twelve artillery pieces had been loaded, but Huang Shengxiao was not nervous. Liu Chengzong even looked through the telescope and saw Huang Xiao picking his ears and raising his right arm to send someone to wave the order in front of the horizontal array. flag.
On the contrary, the soldiers on the right wing were gearing up. When Liu Chengzong saw their appearance, he knew that Huang Shengxiao was planning to break the formation.
The most powerful firearms force under Liu Chengzong was gathered on the right wing, where there were heavy artillery, 60 Mongol Lele vehicles converted into reverse gun-carrying tanks, and 800 heavy gunners who were good at charging.
Although Xie Erhu was also on the right wing, he was not included in the elite troops. His main task at this time was to disperse the troops at the foot of the mountain and use his war horses to help the people eat weeds in the ground.
Basang exhaled heavily and stared straight into the distance. The enemy was getting closer and closer, which made him hold his breath involuntarily until he could no longer hold his breath.
He was waiting for the Han infantry in front of the formation to fire, but for a long time he heard no gunshots. He could only see the enemy getting closer and closer, so that he could even see clearly the weird little car with three iron cylinders not far away.
The two armies were approaching a hundred paces, and Basang couldn't wait any longer. He had never played with artillery, but he had seen it many times and knew the threat these weapons posed to the infantry phalanx when fired at close range.
Therefore, he ordered the archers in front of the formation to throw rain of arrows at the formation, and ordered the slave cavalry of noble origin to enter diagonally from the left wing to deceive the cannon.
Liu Chengzu from the north also arrived at the Huangshui River at this time. On one side, he set up defenses along the bank to prevent the enemy from crossing the river. At the same time, he and Basang had a dream-style coordinated operation.
He asked Li Wanqing to bring five cannons and fired a round of cannons in front of Basang's left wing formation, and fired a hundred tigers chariot. However, what was fired were not cannonballs, but smoke balls made of gunpowder wrapped with mugwort. Not to kill people, but to let the rockets stick to the ground and smoke.
In the blink of an eye, gunpowder smoke filled the front of the left formation. Basan's cavalry took the opportunity to disperse and moved diagonally toward the enemy through the smoke. The sound of exploding horse hooves immediately panicked the enemy's three formations on the right flank.
The two Liu brothers had a clear division of labor in the past two years. Liu Shizi was thinking about new weapons during the war, and Liu Chengzu was trying out old firearms at Xining Guard. Anyway, Xining Guard had this convenient condition.
However, after experimenting with various kinds of divine fire and poisonous smoke, Liu Chengzu did not produce them on a large scale. These things are useful, but they are not that useful. The poisonous smoke and divine fire rely on the wind, and no one can tell which way the wind will blow, except when attacking the camp. In addition, it is easy to hurt your own people in field battles.
Therefore, only a few weapons such as smoke balls, rockets, and caltrop bombs were actually mass-produced.
The smoke ball he released was not toxic at all, but it was a bit choking. Its main purpose was to block the line of sight. First, it blocked the soldiers' line of sight and launched an assault. Second, it blocked the general's line of sight and caused difficulties in command.
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 cannot tell.
When the first Spanish noble cavalryman passed through the smoke, he drew his bow and shot an arrow at the running formation of native soldiers. A prisoner-killing artillery car launched a bombardment. Three one-pound iron bullets pierced the smoke one after another and missed the cavalryman. Instead, the two horses behind him were killed.
The battle on the flanks started in an instant, and the cavalry soldiers following the infantry formation also took advantage of the situation and rushed into the smoke to fight with the Spanish cavalry in order to protect the frontal infantry formation and attack the enemy's formation.
This further accelerated the march of the soldiers on the front, and each formation involuntarily accelerated its pace until the distance was advanced to seventy steps. The artillery carts loaded with anti-captive cannons were put down one by one, 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 military formation, suddenly waved his hand: "Let go!"
A thousand-pound bronze cannon roared towards the flanking army formation of the soldiers. People covered their ears and turned sideways. Amidst the huge fire and gunpowder smoke erupted from the barrel, the blackened wooden horses spurted out in sheets of red-hot powder. The fan struck across forty steps, and the three hundred and seventy lead pellets almost chipped away a layer of the nearest hundred-man formation.
Before people could react from the panic of the sudden attack, the second bronze heavy cannon fired at the same position again. Huang Shengxiao called the firing gap between the two cannons the time when a person fell.
Immediately the third gun fired again.
In a very short period of time, the people did not even have a chance to escape, so they endured three consecutive bombardments from scatterers in a daze. Thousands of lead particles smashed a military formation into a sieve.
The military attaché holding the Korean flag at the front was so frightened by the bombardment that he couldn't help but launch a charge. He roared and ran for six or seven steps, stumbling, and finally shook his body, tied the battle flag to his side, and held on to his body which was riddled with holes. Tusi Qi lowered his head and looked at Mian Jia.
There were several holes punched in the blue armor skirt, and blood was flowing down the trouser legs under the armor skirt to the top of the boots. The chest was punctured somewhere, dyeing the dragon pattern 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. Every muscle in his entire face was twitching, which made his eyes look extremely fierce when he looked at the opposite side, and his movements were stiff. With the salar knife on his waist, he pointed hard at the military formation of the Fan soldiers, which was only fifty steps away. He took another step forward and then fell heavily to the ground.
After his body, several survivors were frightened and ran around screaming. Only one person remained in the military formation surrounded by the body, but that person was squatting on the ground and crying, holding his bun. Already crazy.
The smoke from the three heavy cannons gradually dissipated. There was no expression on Huang Shengxiao's face, but he couldn't help but stretched out his hand to touch the only half of his right ear. He turned around and ordered: "You two take turns to fire, and you forgot to leave time to escape." "
Huang Xiao grew up in Yulin since he was a child. There was never a year without a fight in his hometown without killing someone. During his twenty-six years, he had a fixed understanding that the sea was not just sand.
After defecting to Liu Chengzong, he was first a soldier of Feng Lei. Because he heard that Feng Lei survived on a human leg during the Saarhu rout, he went to ask Feng Lei what human flesh tasted like.
Although Feng Lei didn't tell him and even beat him up, he knew the answer.
Bitter, Huang Shengxiao was sure that human flesh was bitter, at least the flesh of ordinary people must be bitter.
They are born soaked in bitter water and will have no other taste.
The sound of a cannon in the distance interrupted Huang Shengxiao's thoughts. A small iron bullet weighing one kilogram flew in front of him, breaking the neck of a heavy gunman, and then smashing the chest of a soldier again.
It's a prisoner-killing cannon.
In the Turkish army formation not far away, someone took over their prisoner-killing artillery truck after the flanking army formation was flattened by the scatterers. However, they seemed to have received little artillery training, and only one of the three cannons was tremblingly lit.
But this cannon was like the clarion call to start the battle, followed closely by the barbarian-killing cannons of the various formations of soldiers on the front of the battlefield, forming a full-scale attack on Basang's military formation.
Until then, the soldiers looked at the opposite side in stunned silence. The distance between them was close enough that they could see that the people standing opposite were not dismounted Mongolians, but soldiers carrying Mongolian swords, shields and spears.
But these soldiers were different from the soldiers they had come into contact with. They were more like the hungry people who were close to death under the drought in Han Dynasty. They were afraid, but they could remain indifferent in the face of shelling and the collapse of their robes.
A burst of artillery fire was like hitting a front line composed of walking zombies. Instead of causing shock and flight to the enemy, it was replaced by a more violent rain of arrows.
In fact, the bombardment made Basan relieved.
He and his soldiers lacked knowledge of the types and firepower of artillery. People were prepared to resist the artillery bombardment and were worried about it. The premise was that they had seen the kind of bronze cannons that weighed more than a thousand kilograms, and seven kilograms. The shell penetrated the entire column of soldiers.
People relaxed after being bombarded. Immediately, there were shouts of peace in front of the formation, a muffled sound of heavy gunfire, smoke rose immediately, and patches of feathers and arrows fell on the enemy's formation like locusts descending from the sky.
The native soldiers also used blunderbuss and bows and arrows for projection, but the distance between the two sides was 70 steps, and the threat posed by the blunderbuss to the foreign soldiers was not even as great as the cannon that destroyed the captives.
Liu Chengzong on the mountain was relieved when he saw this scene. He had only clenched his fists. Behind the mountain, Marshal Yang Yao's cavalry team was ready to counterattack after the enemy soldiers were defeated.
But Basang stabilized the front, and even with the help of the heavy gun team, he overwhelmed the enemy's momentum. He was relieved. As long as the front could form a stalemate, his flank would win.
Liu Shizi immediately waved his command flag, the war drums behind him rumbled, and the right wing quickly received the news.
Huang Shengxiao got on his horse, held the reins, drew out his saber, and waved it above his head, pointing diagonally in the direction of the military formation that had just been bombarded: "Artillery team, go forward... to welcome the impact!"
He had just given the order halfway when he suddenly saw the enemy's cavalry on the left wing galloping towards the artillery position, and immediately ordered the army to prepare for the impact.
The infantry consisting of heavy muskets immediately formed a slightly loose formation, and the artillery pushed the artillery cart without aiming its wheels, and fired a shot at the head of the galloping cavalry.
The moment before the smoke spurted out, Huang Shengxiao saw the leader of the leading cavalry unit pulling the reins to the left, turning back and shouting something, and at the same time using the stirrups to hide.
The next moment, people fell on their backs.
The horses in front either fell to the ground or stood up, and the horsemen in the back bumped into the front. During the congestion, several more shots were fired.
Faced with the cavalry attack, Huang Shengxiao's artillery could not help but panic. At this moment, no one could care about the enemy falling or giving them time to flee. In the blink of an eye, the remaining heavy artillery was discharged. The soil in front of the position was plowed into a fan-shaped area full of holes.
The horse teams among them were even more miserable. Groups of horses fell down and struggled to get up, but the bullet holes in their bodies made them only pull their necks and hiss weakly.
The native officer, who had hid in his stirrup to avoid the bombardment, jumped up, turned around and raised his sword to beckon the native soldiers to advance in infantry formation. After firing the shells, the artillerymen of the Marshal's Mansion did not bother to reload, and drew out their sabers to prepare for a charge. .
Unexpectedly, as soon as they set up a posture, the native officials, the soldiers on foot and even the soldiers on horseback behind them were so frightened that they turned around and ran away.
Just when they were surprised by their majesty, the sound of horse hooves came from behind. It was the Mongolian horse team led by Xie Erhu, a young grass-eating expert, galloping in with their sabers raised.
Huang Shengxiao on horseback laughed and waved his saber and ordered: "Advance the heavy guns from the flanks, shoot from the flanks with the gun carriages, and defeat the Chinese army!"
