There were a hundred bandits in the stone fortress, and apart from those who escaped and were killed, there were still more than sixty. Except for the seriously injured bandit, Ouyang Xuan ordered the rest of the prisoners to be tied up hand and foot, leaving a squad to guard them, and then led a company to continue along the mountain road to attack Wanjiazhai halfway up the mountain.
When they advanced more than 500 meters away from the gate of Wanjiaping Village, Ouyang Xuan ordered the team to stop and asked Cao Ergou to seize the time to organize the formation and prepare for the attack. While the Pili Army was building fortifications and installing artillery, the soldiers at the front brought a bandit with an arrow in his arm to Ouyang Xuan and Cao Ergou. According to the bandit, he was one of the few people who had just escaped from the fortress. These people jumped out with agility and ran all the way back to report the news, but they could not enter the gate of Wanjiaping Village. A familiar bandit on the wall of the village told them that the gate of the village had been blocked and could not be opened. To hang them into the village, Xiong Ben's personal order was required. Shocked and tired, they begged the bandits on the wall and told them about the fierce artillery fire of the Pili Army and the disastrous defeat of the fortress. However, Xiong Ben, who came after hearing the news, angrily denounced them as greedy for life and fear of death and disturbing the morale of the army.
When these bandits saw Xiong Ben standing on the gate of the village, they immediately kowtowed, crying and telling Xia Qihu how incompetent he was and how brave he was. But no matter how hard he begged, Xiong Ben still refused to hang a few people into the village. To say that these bandits were bachelors in character, seeing the Perak Army getting closer and closer to the village, and thinking that they were about to die, they cursed in despair. Most of their words were greetings to Xiong Ben's ancestors and female relatives. This directly poked a hornet's nest, and Xiong Ben ordered people to fire arrows at random. Among the few people who managed to escape, he was the only one who escaped by chance, and the rest were shot into hedgehogs.
But what the bandit didn't know was that no matter whether they scolded him or not, he would eventually be executed by a bear. Xiong Ben originally thought that with the favorable terrain and solid stone walls, the fortress could hold up for at least ten and a half days, but it could only hold up for one night. This made him shocked and angry, and cursed Xia Qihu and his men as idiots. Fool. These deserters also cried and howled while exaggerating the Pili Army's artillery, disrupting the morale of the troops in the village and making Xiong Ben's ears extremely harsh. Just when Zhengchou couldn't find an excuse for punishment, these deserters actually dared to scold him, and he just killed them to sacrifice the flag.
After listening to the bandit's story, Ouyang Xuan ordered him to be taken away for medical treatment. It was these words that made the bandit turn his head. He bowed deeply and said, "Sir, after the stronghold is broken, Xiong Ben will definitely pass through the back gate of the stronghold." Please make plans in advance to escape to other places." After finishing speaking, the bandit was escorted by two soldiers and walked toward the fortress. Ouyang Xuan expected that Xiong Ben would run away. As the saying goes, "A cunning rabbit has three burrows". After so many years of business, it was strange that Xiong Ben had no way out. He was not afraid of Xiong Ben running away, but he was afraid that Xiong Ben would take away too many things when he ran away. It seemed that Cao Ergou had to seize the time to attack and catch Xiong Ben off guard.
Before the attack, Cao Ergou ordered people to dig three trenches one meter wide and one meter deep on the mountain road. The trenches were five meters apart. After the three trenches are three sacks of earth walls, and after the earth walls are the artillery. The widest part of this mountain road is only three or four meters wide, and a row of cannons can be placed there. In terms of the artillery layout, the direct-firing mother-child cannon is placed at the front, and the curved-firing Tiger Crouching Cannon is placed at the back. The ensuing battle proved that Cao Ergou's elaborate arrangement was very necessary.
When the Pili Army began testing artillery at Wanjiazhai, Xiong Ben knew that Xia Qihu had not died unjustly. Although the cannons brought by the Perak Army this time were small, their firepower was very fierce. Especially the two cannons at the front, although much smaller than the cannons on the walls of Liuliba Village, fired solid iron bullets. The test firing The first shot knocked down a tree as thick as a bowl in front of the village gate. Xiong Ben knew in his heart that although the walls of Wanjiazhai had been reinforced during this period, they would definitely not be able to withstand a few blows. As for the human body... The power of this artillery made all the bandits frightened, and some bandits even turned pale with fear. Seeing that his morale was so low, Xiong Ben knew that he could no longer sit back and be beaten passively. He immediately gathered his troops and selected fifty bandits to be led by himself, preparing to move out of the stronghold and raid the Perak Army's artillery positions.
While the bandits were lowering themselves out of the stronghold, the Pili Army was still stepping up its artillery testing and constantly correcting the impact points. In order to interfere with the firing of Pili artillery and to increase the momentum of the raid, Xiong Ben ordered the bandits in the village to launch a counterattack with long-range weapons. For a time, flying stones, crossbow arrows, etc. flew from the wall to the Thunderbolt Army on the mountain road. The dust on the mountain road was flying, and small trees and weeds fell down on the roadside. This scene was very impressive, but the actual effect was very little. . The flying stones and arrows fired by the bandits' light crossbows and trebuchets mostly landed within three hundred meters, which still gave them the advantage of being launched from high places. The heavy three-bow crossbow of the Song Dynasty had a range of up to 1,500 meters, but it required thirty people to pull it. The manufacturing technology of this kind of large-scale murderous weapon was definitely beyond the control of the bandits in Wanjiaping. Ouyang Xuan set up the artillery position about a mile in front of the stronghold, because he was sure that the bandits' siege weapons could not reach here.
Of course, this distance does not mean you can sit back and relax. The bandits also have a powerful defensive weapon - stone balls. From the entrance of Wanjiazhai to the Pili Army artillery position, the terrain is a straight and long gentle slope. In order to prepare for the attack of the Perak Army, the bandits had already dug a small ditch in the middle of the road and prepared many watermelon-sized pebble balls. Now Xiong Ben ordered people to push the round stones into the small ditch in the middle of the road. These boulders rolled down the slope, rolling faster and faster under the influence of gravity, and the impact was terrifying. However, due to the rolling distance being too far, most of the stone balls rolled down the mountain road, and the remaining stones were blocked by the trenches and earthen walls in front of the artillery position, causing no casualties. Even so, the faces of the Perak soldiers in the first few rows were so frightened that they turned pale.
As soon as the last batch of stone balls was pushed down the mountain road, Xiong Ben gave the order to raid. This battle was related to the life and death of the Wanjiaping bandits, so this time he put the personal troops at the front, followed by the selected bandits, while he continued to supervise the formation at the back of the queue as always. Since the charge was going downhill and the guardsmen were very elite, the bandits attacked very quickly. When the last batch of stone balls was blocked by the earth wall, the bandits had already rushed a third of the way. When Cao Ergou saw the black bandits rushing down with swords and shields, he quickly ordered the spearmen and giant shield soldiers to quickly form a formation behind the earthen wall, and ordered the gunners to stop shooting and retreat to the rear. The artillery of the Perak Army needs to be readjusted when shooting at new fixed targets, let alone shooting at fast-moving bandits.
It is not an exaggeration to say that Xiong Ben's personal troops are definitely the elite of the light infantry in the cold weapon era, and they are the most powerful soldiers in the mountainous area northwest of Chongqing Prefecture. In terms of close combat, the 100 soldiers of the Perak Army's First Company would definitely not be able to defeat the 50 bandits of the Guards. Cao Ergou and others also admitted this. It's just that times have changed, and the rules of war have been rewritten by Ouyang Xuan. Xiong Ben's personal troops will be completely defeated by the Perak Army, which is equipped with firearms and adopts advanced tactics.
