Li Xuan guessed that these ships should have been built by them in the rear, and then directly used a lot of manpower to carry them.

The boats and rafts they built were small enough to be carried by a little more people.

In this way, it is no wonder that the spies of the New Army of the Tang Dynasty did not find any traces of their large-scale construction of river-crossing tools.

"It seems that they are going to prepare to cross the river in the near future!" On the hillside on the west bank, Zeng Ziwen said to Li Xuan: "And I'm afraid this crossing of the river will be very fast, they are going to hit the shore in one go!" ”

The Ming army deliberately concealed that the construction of river-crossing tools in the rear must have been with the idea of attacking it by surprise.

Otherwise, they would not be in the way if they generously built river crossing tools directly on the river beach!

Li Xuan turned his head to Xie Ziwei at this time and said, "The artillery team is ready here, as long as the ships of the Puppet Ming Thief Army appear on the river beach in a dense manner, they will open fire!" ”

The Ming army already knew that the artillery of the Datang New Army could hit the river beach almost 400 meters away, so although they also built some fortifications on the river beach, they were all scattered repairs, and the barracks were built hundreds of meters away from the river, so that they could effectively avoid the artillery attack of the Datang New Army.

But if the Ming army wants to cross the river, they always have to carry the boat to the river beach, or even directly into the river, and the Ming soldiers also have to come out of the barracks and then crowd on the river beach to board the boat, and at this time, they will become the target of the artillery team.

The dense crowd will keep every shot of the artillery team from failing.

The only pity is that the ground on the river beach is too soft, and its kinetic energy will be quickly absorbed by the soft ground after the solid bullet is hit, which greatly reduces the lethality of the solid bullet.

Xie Ziwei also said at this time: "The minister obeys the order, as long as the puppet Ming thief army sets foot on the river beach, our artillery team will fire six cannons at once!" ”

Xie Ziwei's artillery team now has one 800-pound artillery and five 500-pound guns, needless to say which Italian cannon is 800 catties, which is quite powerful.

Even if it is a small cannon of 500 catties, it is actually not small, but it is only smaller than the Italian cannon, and its longest effective range can reach about 400 meters.

This distance is enough to effectively kill the river beach area on the east bank.

These two kinds of artillery, in fact, except for the difference in weight, the structure is basically the same, you can simply think that the 500-pound gun is a miniature version of the 800-pound artillery.

Because it is the same style of artillery, the weight and size have been reduced, and its power has naturally been relatively reduced, but the effective range of 100 meters has been shortened and the actual effectiveness of this small artillery Lanjiang defensive battle is not put into account.

Sure enough, as expected, the Ming army took advantage of the cover of the night to start carrying boats, rafts and other means of crossing the river to the river beach that night.

At this time, Xie Ziwei's artillerymen also opened fire for the first time!

This is also the first night combat artillery bombardment of the Datang New Army, but they have also fired a few cannons at night before, one is used to scare and scare the Ming army, and by the way to see if they can hit a few people, and the second is also for training.

In addition, they have been in this ghost place for more than three months, not to mention that they are familiar with every inch of land on the east bank, but at least the hundreds of meters of river beach on the east bank, they are absolutely well aware, not to mention the last battle of the Lanjiang River, that is, in the past three months, as soon as they saw a relatively large number of Ming troops appear on the river beach, they would shoot such a cannon.

Sometimes when I saw the generals of the Ming army inspecting the riverside and the like, I would also fire so many cannons to see if I could get a Ming army official.

Although the results of the past three months are only a handful, let alone any big officials, but this cannon has been beaten, and naturally they will become old drivers, and now Xie Ziwei They are quite familiar with the terrain over there, even in the dark, they know how to adjust the gun position, and then open fire.

With the rumbling of cannons, the night on the Lanjiang River became lively again.

On the west bank, the six gun emplacements on the chest wall built by the Datang New Army rose from time to time with an orange-red fire, and as the fire flashed, the rumbling cannon sound also spread across the Lanjiang River within a radius of several miles.

At this time, on the beach on the other side of the river, a solid iron ball that does not slip black will flash out of the night and then smash on the land of the river beach.

The cannonballs picked up and fell, piercing the rafts that had just been brought up, tearing these rafts built by the Ming army apart and flying sawdust.

Some of the shells hit the Ming soldiers who carried these boats and rafts, and most of the Ming soldiers who were hit by the solid ball cannonballs died on the spot without saying a word, because such a large solid iron ball hit the person's body at high speed, and the whole person could be smashed by the collision.

Those who did not die on the spot were some of those who had been hit in the limbs, but at best they screamed a few more times, because most of their limbs had already been carried away by shells, and they would soon die of blood loss due to broken hands and legs.

However, although the screams of the rumbling artillery continued to come out, the Ming army's move to transport the means of crossing the river to the river did not stop, but accelerated the progress.

Also, although Xie Ziwei's artillery team kept firing artillery very hard, the distance of more than 300 meters was also a bit far, and it was impossible to say where to fight.

And it is very important that it is night, and the Ming army on the other side of the river is not stupid to light a large number of torches to carry the tools for crossing the river, they only light a few torches, and carry them by the faint light of the fire.

And after these faint fires were separated by a few hundred meters, the artillerymen on the other side of the river could not see clearly, and they could only vaguely see some figures, and they could not hit the shells at all where there were dense Ming troops, so it naturally reduced the lethality of the shells.

After all, this kind of solid cannonball has to hit the enemy directly to cause a lethal effect, otherwise, even if this cannonball flies a few centimeters away from the Ming army, it is useless.

This also means that if you want to achieve a good killing effect, you have to hit the pile, and if the enemy disperses quickly, then the lethal effect of solid shells will be greatly reduced.

After fighting like this in the middle of the night, even if Li Xuan could not see the effect of the shelling, but from the time when the Ming army did not retreat, but instead accelerated the speed and sent more people to carry the rafts of the boats, Li Xuan knew that the shelling at night was unreliable.

If you fight all night, it is estimated that you will not be able to hit many Ming troops, but will cause a waste of ammunition and a reduction in the life of artillery.

The ammunition of the Datang New Army is very precious, every shell, every package of gunpowder, it is produced after purchasing materials from outside at a high price, and the cost is quite high.

So after waiting for the second half of the night, Li Xuan simply ordered the shelling to stop, and then gave an order to the whole army, except for the vigilant troops on duty, all others slept.

Now a fool can guess that the Ming army will definitely cross the river on a large scale early tomorrow morning, and if you don't raise enough spirit tonight, it will not be good to fight tomorrow with black circles.

At the same time, he also asked the herald to pass the news of the Ming army's preparation to cross the river to the first and second mixed battalions overnight, so that these two troops could rush back overnight.

Since the Ming army has decided to cross the river here, there is no need to guard against the Ming army coming from other places, and as for the Ming army that secretly crossed the river on a small scale, it will not affect the battle situation for a while.

Now the most critical thing is the Lanjiang ferry, Li Xuan must gather all the main forces and the Ming army to have another life-and-death decisive battle!

After all, it is expected that the battle that may come tomorrow will be another battle of national fortune faced by the Tang Dynasty, and it is hard to say what will happen if it wins, but it is definitely impossible for everyone to end up with a good end.

The rebellion of the Tang Dynasty has reached this point, not only Li Xuan can't be good, but other senior civil and military officials don't expect the Ming Dynasty to let them go.

You have occupied every county, and you have killed and wounded thousands of Ming troops before and after, and most importantly, you have been defeated.

In such a situation, the Ming Dynasty must have caught one and killed the other!

If you want to live, you can only pray that you can escape fast enough.

After the two mixed battalions of the Tang New Army received orders from Li Xuan from the heralds one after another, they naturally did not dare to delay and set off overnight to rush back to the Lanjiang Ferry.

The 1st Mixed Battalion is about eight miles away from the Lanjiang Ferry, and they don't bring any baggage, and the daily supplies are directly transported to them by the baggage troops, and they are also fighting at home, and the road is also quite familiar, so it is relatively fast in the case of light equipment, and it is expected that they will be able to return tomorrow morning.

The second mixed battalion was a little farther away, ten miles away, and it was also a lightly armed march, and it was estimated that it would not be able to rush back until dawn.

And they didn't know that when they left the tiger for two hours, it was about three o'clock in the morning, a small ferry not far from the original first mixed battalion, suddenly a large number of Ming troops appeared, and then they directly moved out a large number of boats and rafts from behind, and after walking to the river, they put down the boats and rafts to start crossing the river.

The movements of these Ming troops were naturally discovered by more than a dozen soldiers of the Datang New Army who stayed here to monitor.

"There are so many of them, at least hundreds of boats!" The platoon commanders of these soldiers looked at the rafts on the river and the lights on the boats, and their faces changed suddenly.

These hundreds of boats can at least load more than 1,000 Ming troops to cross the river!

"Quick, immediately ride a fast horse back and tell the adults that the Ming army is going to cross the river." As soon as he saw the scale of the Ming army's crossing of the river, this platoon commander knew that something bad was coming.

This is not the kind of petty fight before, the Ming army only sent a few boats, dozens of people and hundreds of people to cross the river, but there are hundreds of boats at one time, and the Ming army crossing the river is at least thousands, and it may even reach two or three thousand.

Now that the main forces of our side are guarding against the Ming army on the other side of the Lanjiang crossing, if there are two or three thousand Ming troops detouring to the rear of our main forces at this time, then it will be a big trouble!

Immediately, two soldiers turned over and got on their horses, and then regardless of the physical strength of the horses, they directly whipped their horses, urging the horses to gallop quickly, they wanted to tell the news to the battalion official of the first mixed battalion, and even more to tell Li Xuan in the rear.