Then Zhang Hu saw a scene that surprised him, although he heard about Yang Hongzhang's experience at sea for more than a year along the way, and gradually accepted that Yang Hongzhang was just the third young master of an ordinary merchant family in Hangzhou, but now he actually saw this young master open the box in the carriage, and more than 200 people each distributed a lot of bullets, not to mention, there were several palm thunders in one person, as well as various weapons. If this was the Taiping period, Zhang Hu was just an ordinary person, and he would definitely go to the government to report Yang Hongzhang as soon as possible. This is also the rhythm of rebellion!

Pirate, Zhang Hu remembered the name that those sailors said the most, this Yang Hongzhang has so many people and so many guns, if he returns to the ship with artillery, where is the opponent of ordinary maritime merchants? He finally understood why Yang Hongzhang wanted to provoke the Qing soldiers who were attacking Gaoyang County.

About a stick of incense, Yang Hongzhang led the team towards Gaoyang County, and soon they could clearly see the battle in Gaoyang County.

The battle was fiercer than expected, and the cavalry of the Qing army of six or seven hundred people continued to ride and shoot outside the city wall of the north gate, and people kept falling on the city wall. The city wall was in dilapidation, and many corpses had been piled up under the city wall, but the defenders on the city wall were also very tenacious, constantly returning fire with bows and arrows, a few bird guns, and arquebuses, preventing the Qing army from approaching the city wall.

In a fit of rage, he brandished his horsewhip and urged his troops to attack the city. As Yue Tobel's most courageous subordinate, he was the first to climb over the wall ridge and the first to climb the Miyun city wall, and he was invincible along the way. After entering the Central Plains, he was assigned to attack the line from Hejian Mansion to Baoding Mansion to open up the two roads, and prepare for the future encirclement of Baoding.

Groha had already overestimated the strength of Gaoyang City, but he didn't expect that such a small county town had been delayed for two days, and he hadn't won it at the cost of more than fifty people! In any case, Gao Yang must be taken before dark today, and he could see that the defenders on the city walls were exhausted by the harassment of his cavalry day and night, and the archers rarely shot arrows. This is a signal that the stock of bows and arrows in the county should be running out.

On the city wall of the north gate of Gaoyang City, Wang Lenian, the magistrate of the county, was wearing a green civil official with a sword in his hand and a bloody face in front of a white-haired old man, blocking the bows and arrows of the Qing army and the soldiers who kept climbing the city wall. The old man is none other than Sun Chengzong, a generation of emperors and former governors of Jiliao.

Sun Chengzong has been recuperating in his hometown of Gaoyang after the Shishi, a day before the Qing army came to Gaoyang outside the city, Sun Chengzong took his own soldiers and family to climb the city wall, and vowed to live and die with Gaoyang, it is the old man's decisiveness that greatly inspired the county soldiers and township warriors of Gaoyang City to support until now. However, the Qing army's cavalry and archery did great damage to the defenders, and Gaoyang was originally only a small county town, with insufficient reserves of bows, arrows, knives and guns. Most of the officials below the county level were killed in battle. Nowadays, most of the people who can still stand on the city wall are temporarily recruited strong men, and there are basically no bows and arrows, wood, and rolling stones in their hands, so they can only rely on short guns and even hoes that have been scraped together to resist.

Even so, Sun Chengzong still refused to leave the city wall, let alone abandon the city and escape, and the county commander Wang Lenian had no choice but to sacrifice his life to accompany the gentleman. Looking at the still fierce Qing army under the city, the faces of the old and the young were very lonely, and they knew in their hearts that they would not be able to stop it no matter what......

Bang bang bang! Just when the attacking and defending sides were completely concentrating on the battle for the city gate and the city wall, a dense burst of gunfire suddenly rang out! Almost all of them turned their heads to look at the moment, and then they saw a group of about two hundred people, dressed in leather armor but without any banner.

Sun Chengzong immediately pushed away Wang Lenian, who was in front of him, and lay on the battlements of the city wall, and when he saw the equipment of those people clearly, he let out a long sigh: "If you wait until night, it will be a great help to let these people enter the city to help defend the city." Now in the wilderness outside the city, the Jiannu cavalry can reach them with a single charge, and they will become the cavalryman's sword before they even have time to reload and fire a second shot. The leader was obviously not a man who was good at field warfare either. How could a musket inflict damage on Jiannu at such a distance......"

Sun Chengzong's eyes widened again before he finished speaking, and everything that happened in front of him made the eyes of this former governor of Jiliao almost fall off in his life. Just as he thought, the Qing army, as soon as they discovered this group, mobilized about a Niulu cavalry and rushed towards them. Because in the minds of the cavalry of the Qing army, this group of people was pure infantry, and did not carry swords and shields. After the first round of muskets, they basically fought against the Qing cavalry with burning sticks. Thinking that almost all the cavalry thought so, so they did not shoot on horseback at the first time, but charged directly.

At a distance of more than three hundred paces, the cavalry did not have more than a few breaths.

Then one of Niu Lu's cavalrymen, after paying for nearly half of their lives, did not charge in front of the group, but their own ranks were in disarray.

The people who came were naturally Yang Hongzhang and the two hundred people he carried. Two hundred flintlock muskets were scattered in three horizontal formations, because the Qing army was attacking the city with all its might, and it was about to be taken, so there were no scouts on the periphery, which gave Yang Hongzhang and others the opportunity to approach the back of the Qing army, and fired the first shot two hundred steps away, and then replaced it with a flintlock pistol In the case of the Qing soldiers being unprepared, the second shot was issued in a few breaths! Then reload the third shot! By the time the cavalry at the front was about to charge forward, the least of the two hundred had already fired the third shot, and the faster one had already fired the fourth.

Of course, this is not the most terrifying, when those skilled cavalry of the Qing army were about to approach Yang Hongzhang's infantry team after successfully dodging the flintlock, they saw the first row of people almost at the same time put down the flintlock pistols in their hands, took out a black thing and threw it at the rapidly charging cavalry.

Boom, rumbling, explosions, and burning, so that the Qing cavalry completely fell into chaos, even if they were lucky not to be struck by the palm of the lightning, they were all thrown out of the crotch war horse, and for a time the place where the two armies came into contact was either the corpse of the Qing soldier on the ground or the panicked war horse!

More Qing cavalry in the back were not hit by flintlock muskets, but tripped over the horses in front and the corpses of their own soldiers.

Groha was as dumbfounded as Sun Chengzong on the city wall, and when his soldiers told him that a group of infantry of unknown origin was approaching, he didn't bother at all, and randomly ordered one of his men to lead people to annihilate these rabble without swords and shields. However, he was wrong, and in just one round, he lost almost a Niulu's cavalry. You must know that he besieged Gaoyang City for two days and one night, and did not lose so much.

However, Groha did not panic, but immediately gathered the remaining cavalry to break away from the Gaoyang city wall, and turned around to meet this group of people of unknown origin. However, 200 paces is already the limit of cavalry archery, even if Groha leads the elite of the Qing army, there will be no more than 20 people who can shoot a bow and arrow so far in a single armor, so he needs to disperse the team and get close to the enemy by 100 paces.

Of course, after observing the enemy's firing speed and distance, Groha did not intend to shoot at the opponent in the same place, he had an absolute superiority in numbers, and could charge on three sides at the same time.

The well-trained cavalry of the Qing army immediately assembled in place and prepared to attack on three sides.

Yang Hongzhang naturally did not stay idle, taking advantage of the chaos of the first wave of cavalry charges, everyone raised their guns again to shoot again, cleaning up those cavalry who had no time to escape back. Then the two flintlock muskets were loaded with ammunition at the same time, and the team was gathered and waited.

The horses' hooves trampled, the bows and arrows were fired, the formation of the Qing army was very terrifying, and even Sun Chengzong on the city wall felt a feeling that the ground was shaking and the mountains were shaking, in his opinion, the Qing army that adjusted the formation might be wiped out in the next moment.

However, the situation is not as Sun Chengzong imagined and Groha hoped, Yang Hongzhang's firing speed is almost the same as the cavalry shooting speed of the Qing soldiers, plus the advantage of range, in the process of the Qing cavalry charge, almost each of the two hundred people shot two more than the cavalry, this is not the most terrifying, the Qing soldiers on both sides who tried to impact were all suppressed by the palm thunder fifty steps away.

Then Groha was surprised to find that the front was beaten and blown up by fourteen or fifteen people, and there was actually a pair of piercings. Those men shuttled through the ranks of cavalry like ghosts. When the Qing army charged at high speed, they threw palm mines, and when the cavalry stopped to ride and shoot, they got up and down and entangled with the Qing soldiers on their horses. Especially Yang Hongzhang at the front, who was obviously hit by five or six arrows on his body, but he was still alive. Seeing that the two Qing soldiers cooperated to block him, they saw him touch his waist and then heard the gunfire again!

It was with each person's two flintlock pistols and two short muskets, as well as countless palm mines, that Yang Hongzhang led fifteen people to kill the Qing cavalry team that tried to strangle them head-on. Yang Hongzhang's team alone killed at least forty or fifty Qing soldiers. The most important thing is that the palm thunder explosions along the way and the sudden attack of the short musket frightened almost all the nearby Qing army horses.

Groha, who was originally commanding in the rear, found that the enemy suddenly came to his side, and several personal soldiers desperately blocked Yang Hongzhang and the others, and Yang Hongzhang also unceremoniously invited them to eat palm thunder. Seeing Yang Hongzhang pick up the musket again, Groha subconsciously turned his horse's head and went in another direction, followed by more than a dozen of his own soldiers behind him. Yang Hongzhang, Yang Hong and others actually had a large piece vacant around them.

Yang Hongzhang said a few words to a few partners around him, and the five people immediately came closer, three of them pointed in three directions with palm mines, and the remaining two people aimed at the direction of Hagroha with Yang Hongzhang.

Bang bang bang, the shot at close range was almost missed. When Groha looked back, he found that only two of his followers were left with his own soldiers, and even more of them were dead, and the horsewhip slapped the horse's butt desperately.

Weird, Sun Chengzong looked at everything in front of him with only two words to describe. Hundreds of Qing cavalry surrounded two hundred infantry on three sides, but the advantage of the cavalry could not be brought into play, and they were suppressed fifty paces away. The two sides are firing back and forth. The infantry team continued to have arrows but no one came down, and the ranks of the Qing army and Qing soldiers became more and more chaotic, because although the explosion power of the palm thunder was not large, the sound was enough to frighten the war horses in front. And the Qing soldiers who were shot were not as lucky as the infantry, basically dozens of Qing soldiers fell after a round of shooting!