Chapter 401: The True Goal
Cavalry is the most lethal class in the Cold Weapon Age! With the speed of the war horse, those enemies who were in front of them were chased by the cavalry before they had time to escape, either knocked down by the galloping war horses or cut down by the cavalry's swords, and after falling to the ground, they would even be trampled by the iron hooves of the war horses following the cavalry, and finally turned into a puddle of flesh!
And from Gao Changgong's order to let the cavalry charge Xiao Yao's position to now order the whole army to retreat, less than half an hour has passed, but Gao Changgong's order has been changing, first the cavalry attacked, then the cavalry retreated, first to the west to break through, and then to the east of Xiapi County, so such a chaotic command, then this Qi army of nearly 20,000 people fell into an even more chaotic situation!
Even before, in order to allow the collapsed cavalry and the half-beaten artillery units to withdraw from the battlefield and preserve their strength for future counterattacks, Gao Changgong had just issued an order to use infantry to resist the cavalry of the forward brigade to rush and kill and buy time for the retreat of the army, so when Huang Wenyuan led 3,000 cavalry to rush to the position of the Qi army, an infantry phalanx with long hair in his hand stopped in front of them!
"Battalion Commander Huang, this unit will be handed over to our musket battalion to deal with! Your cavalry battalion made a detour to break into the position of the Qi army's artillery unit, captured Zhang Dabao's traitor alive, and presented it to the commander! He Fu shouted to Huang Wenyuan.
"Good! Then the heads of this group of Qi infantry will be harvested for the brothers of the musket battalion! Brothers, rush to their artillery position, except for Zhang Dabao, the traitor, everyone else will be slashed and killed, leaving no one alive! Huang Wenyuan also nodded and shouted, after all, the task that Xiao Yao gave to the cavalry battalion was to completely solve the artillery units of the Qi army, not to chase and kill the Qi cavalry who had fled.
Because although Huang Wenyuan's cavalry battalion can now catch up with those fleeing cavalry in terms of speed, and can also defeat the enemy in terms of morale, because the forward brigade also has a slow-moving artillery battalion, in order to prevent the artillery battalion from losing the protection of the cavalry battalion and the musket battalion, Xiao Yao asked them to keep a distance from the artillery battalion so that they can respond at any time!
As a result, the Qi army's artillery unit, which also needed to pull the artillery and caused it to move slowly, became the real target of Xiao Yao's killing!
Coupled with Zhang Dabao's traitor status, during the battle of Linying County before, he assisted Wei Xiangyuan and them to blend into the artillery battalion, and then blew up all the ammunition, which directly led to the defeat of the forward brigade, and also made nearly half of the soldiers of the forward brigade die on the battlefield, and there is no life left, this kind of deep hatred and hatred made Xiao Yao and all the soldiers of the forward brigade hate him to the core, and vowed to capture Zhang Dabao alive today, and then avenge those brothers who died in battle!
At this time, on the artillery position of the Qi army, although Xiao Yao had already ceased the shelling of them, it had already been blown up by the grenades fired by the four bronze artillery, and there were scorched black after the explosion everywhere, bright red blood stains and those wreckage and broken limbs!
Zhang Dabao, like those surviving soldiers, was already frightened to a blank in his mind after being bombarded with such a fierce shelling, and he was holding his head at this time, lying on the snow, and the whole person was still trembling in extreme fear!
"Zhang Dabao, what are you doing! Get up for me, you all stand up for Lao Tzu! How can you show such cowardice, you are still not men! Wei Xiangyuan, who was responsible for organizing the retreat of the artillery troops, rushed into the artillery position, and saw Zhang Dabao and them all lying on the ground like rats.
"It's scary! It's horrible! Xiao Yao, Xiao Yao He can actually make a grenade into a cannonball, and then fire it directly with artillery, so that the cannonball can not only kill the enemy with impact, but also explode later, just like a dynamite pack, it will explode violently, kill the people near the explosion with flames and scattered fragments, we can't defeat Xiao Yao at all, we will lose this battle, we will definitely lose! Zhang Dabao said with a nervous breakdown.
Just now he had clearly seen how these grenades completely destroyed his artillery position, and the explosion power of a shell the size of a child's head was even more powerful than that of a ten-pound explosive bag, and the lethality was even stronger, so that many soldiers of the artillery unit died in the explosion!
Such a tragic picture made Zhang Dabao completely lose confidence in this battle, and there was only one thought in his heart, which was to pray that this battle would end soon, and then he could escape and save his life!
"Your artillery unit didn't return a single shell, and now you're thinking about losing? Zhang Dabao, you wretched, I really want to cut you down with one knife! After speaking, Wei Xiangyuan kicked Zhang Dabao fiercely again, and continued to say angrily: "Hurry up, the prince has already given the order to retreat, Zhang Dabao, now that Xiao Yao and they have stopped shelling, you quickly organize your artillery troops to withdraw from the position!" Fast! Don't grind around here, quickly pull all the artillery, and all the staff retreat to Xia Pi County! ”
"Retreat? Fall back! Quick, everyone get up, retreat! When Zhang Dabao heard the word retreat, he immediately jumped up from the ground, and then shouted excitedly, he was also ready to turn around and find his war horse! When the other soldiers heard that they could leave this hellish position, they immediately recovered their spirits, and then they all got up and prepared to escape!
"Bastard, who let you escape like this!" The furious Wei Xiangyuan drew his sword, casually cut down a soldier closest to him, and then continued to scold: "The prince has an order, it is for you to immediately pull these cannons and withdraw from the position, instead of letting you just careabout escaping!" If you can't take these cannons with you, it's useless to ask for them! ”
Then Wei Xiangyuan pointed at Zhang Dabao with a sword and scolded: "Your life is far less precious than these artillery, if it weren't for taking away these cannons and preserving strength for future counterattacks, I wouldn't dare to live or die for you!" ”
"Listen to me, all of you, you are all soldiers of the artillery unit, these artillery pieces are your comrades-in-arms, your relatives and brothers, how can you leave your brothers and run away by yourself? Quick, pull these guns and withdraw from the position! You must know that the brothers of the other troops are already desperate to stop Xiao Yao's cavalry in order to allow you to evacuate safely, and we can't let them die in vain! We're going to take these guns with us, and we're going to avenge them for today! Wei Xiangyuan excitedly mobilized these soldiers who fled for their lives.
"Quick, quickly put all the artillery on the horses, and retreat as soon as possible! Hands and feet are sharper! We cannot afford to live up to the sacrifices of those brothers who sacrificed their lives to hold us back from the enemy! Zhang Dabao also reacted a little, knowing that if there were no artillery, then Gao Changgong would indeed have no reason to keep him, a traitor to the Chen State!
On this position, the two people with the highest official positions both spoke, and just now they also slashed and killed a soldier on the spot, which really shocked these soldiers who all wanted to flee immediately, and then they were also moved and inspired by Wei Xiangyuan's words just now, and then they all recovered some fighting spirit, and quickly stood up and ran around the position, some leading horses, some pushing artillery, ready to take these artillery pieces away from the battlefield.
But they were less than a minute of rejoicing, when they suddenly heard a rush of horses' hooves and a deafening shout of slaughter coming from far and near, and when they looked up, they saw a troop of horsemen with sabers in their arms, and they were rushing towards them with murderous vigour!