The Safavid Dynasty's war preparations were very good, after all, there were English generals who helped him reorganize the army, both the quality of the soldiers and the firearms were relatively good. Of course, these so-called good are compared with the Ottoman Empire and the tribal forces, and if they are compared to the equipment of the Ming army, they are still much worse.

Abbas I led a 150,000-strong Persian army to the border, and was also equipped with a lot of artillery, and the soldiers were basically armed with a musket, and the vanguard was the famous red-headed soldiers. There are many strange things in the world, the Safavid and the Ottoman Empire believe in the same religion, but not a faction, they have wars with each other, and the Safavid Dynasty is based on these red-headed soldiers of Turkic origin, but these red-headed soldiers often do not listen to the dispatch, which makes the Safavid Dynasty very headache. The situation gradually improved after Abbas I enlisted the help of English generals to train the regular army, and this time they were allowed to take control of Samarkand after they took it, so that these red-headed soldiers were used as the vanguard to seize Samarkand.

When Abbas I's vanguard, those red-headed soldiers crossed the Amu Darya River to Samarkand, Li Hongji had already rushed to Berbad with reinforcements, and Liu Zongmin and Li Guo's troops of more than 10,000 people had already gone to Samarkand to join Harabahar. Harabaha transferred the command, Liu Zongmin was in charge of the all-out war, Li Guo was in charge of the whole military affairs, looking at the defense line established under the supervision of the officers who graduated from the military academy, Liu Zongmin was very satisfied, so he called these officers over to form the wartime staff, the staff was in charge of Li Guo, Liu Zongmin knew that his two brushes were no problem to fight, but the campaign tactics were a difficult problem for him, fortunately, Li Guo was responsible for coordination, Liu Zongmin made up his mind, and finally he was responsible for the implementation of the battle, with a clear division of labor and interference from various departments.

Because Harabaha hopes to keep the ancient city of Samarkand, the preset battlefield is the steppe desert area southwest of the city, and the Ming staff has already built a preset position here, a standard ring fortification, waiting for the arrival of the red-headed soldiers of Abbas I.

The rumbling sound of artillery came from a distance, and the artillery of the Safavid Dynasty began to clear the obstacles on the battlefield, and the shells smashed out large craters after the shells, but these shells had little effect on the Ming soldiers, unless they were directly hit, the soldiers were hiding in the trenches, and the trajectory of the shells coming from a few miles away was clearly visible, and it was not an overwhelming covering bombardment, plus the trenches could block the rolling of the shells, because this kind of shells mainly hurt people by rolling. But even with this kind of shell, the artillery of the Ming Dynasty will not let them continue to fight, and if they continue to fight, it will also cause certain casualties. In the first round of their artillery, the Ming artillery measured their approximate position, after two rounds of shelling, the Ming artillery's * fell on their heads, and what is even more tragic is that their * are scattered on the ground, as a result, after two rounds of shelling, their artillery positions are completely reimbursed.

The red-headed soldiers of the Safavid Dynasty who lost their artillery began to attack the Ming army's position, and the Ming army quickly entered the forward position after the shelling, and when the red-headed soldiers entered the distance of sixty zhang, the sharpshooters among the soldiers began to shoot the competition, and when they entered the distance of thirty zhang, all the hand-cranked machine guns and rifles fired together. They can bear the casualties of the red-headed soldiers with rifle fire, but they can't bear the strafing of hand-cranked machine guns, a bullet can penetrate two people, and after hitting, they will definitely die, and the first charge will be completely defeated in less than two quarters of an hour.

When the infantry charge failed, the red-headed soldiers immediately switched to cavalry and began to attack again, this time in their own right. The weapons of the Ming army were within 60 zhang, and as long as their soldiers rushed over within a distance of 60 zhang, they could achieve victory, so they sent nearly 10,000 cavalry to start a charge at a distance of 120 zhang, trying to rush through the firing range of 60 zhang with strong impact and speed.

Liu Zongmin, who commanded the battle, had already seen in the telescope that the cavalry of the red-headed soldiers began to assemble, and glanced back at Harabaha, who immediately understood what Liu Zongmin meant, and immediately ordered his five thousand soldiers to gather, and then glanced at his own guard, who immediately went to the whole team and told Li Guo to prepare for a full fire attack.

All hand-cranked machine guns were arranged in the second line of trenches, all mortars were erected, and when the cavalry units of the red-headed soldiers entered a distance of sixty feet from the first trench, the soldiers of both trenches opened fire at the same time. The speed of the cavalry is indeed very fast, although the casualties are very large, but the distance of thirty zhang, when the horse reaches the limit speed is a few seconds, the soldiers of the first trench quickly retreat along the communication trench to the second trench to prevent being injured by the fallen horse and cavalry.

The second thirty zhang is not the same as the number of casualties within a distance of thirty zhang, first of all, the dead and wounded war horses and soldiers blocked the way of the charge, and it was easy to trip the charging war horses, and secondly, the mortars of the Ming army blew up the formation of the charge, causing confusion, stampede, and the speed of the red-headed soldier cavalry unit slowed down suddenly.

Just a kilometer away from the edge of the first trench, the red-headed soldiers found in despair that they were now the target of shooting, and the horses that had lost their speed could not jump over the trench, so they stopped on the edge of the trench and waited for death. In a short time, without waiting for them to make a choice, the cavalry and war horses in the front row had already fallen in front of the hand-cranked machine guns of the Ming army.

The soldiers in front were all dead, machine guns and mortars extended to fire, Liu Zongmin waved his hand, and all the cavalry got on their horses and began to attack along the reserved charging line. The red-headed soldiers, who had been killed and wounded by machine guns and mortars, saw the charging Ming cavalry, and completely lost the courage to resist.

It was impossible for Liu Zongmin to charge himself, but his men were all fierce cavalry, the captains of their respective squads took the lead, and the soldiers followed, this was a big pursuit, the retreating cavalry rushed away from the rear positions, resulting in greater chaos, and the final result was an even worse defeat, a full 30,000 horses lost more than 20,000 people in this battle, and less than 5,000 soldiers were able to escape back.

Liu Zongmin's cavalry pursued for more than thirty miles, and the famous red-headed soldiers were killed and lost their souls, losing everything they could throw away. Cleaning up the battlefield was very simple, except for the food they brought, there was not much left, and there were quite a few corpses. In order to prevent the corpses from becoming moldy and causing diseases, Liu Zongmin ordered the soldiers to pile all the corpses together, then pour grease on them, and burn them with a fire.

The victorious Ming soldiers returned to Samarkand with high morale, and rewarding the three armies was unavoidable. Samarkand is an ancient city, but its inhabitants live very scattered, because it is composed of several scattered markets, if there is a larger war here, it will definitely affect the future development, not to mention, that is, if the hundreds of thousands of troops of Abbas I are all together, separate attacks, Liu Zongmin's more than 10,000 people will definitely not be able to block them all outside the city, if you don't want to affect the city, then you must choose the battlefield again. This determination is very difficult to make, because it can cause defeat in the battle, or huge casualties.

After careful reconnaissance, it was found that the main army of Abbas I was now assembling in the city of Bukhara, this red-headed soldier was probably eager to rob, and rushed over first without waiting for the complete assembly of the main force, between Bukhara and Samarkand, in addition to deserts, hills, and wetlands, the best way is to walk along the mountain valleys along the river on both sides, since the main force of Abbas I is assembled in Hawala, then they will definitely come along the river on the north side, if they find a blocking position from the mountain valley, It is undoubtedly the best means of defense.

Having been stationed in this area for more than a year, Harabaja was relatively familiar with the terrain, and the place he proposed was the small town of Navoi, which had a relatively good topography and was just stuck in the main road of the mountain valley. Through comprehensive analysis, Liu Zongmin decided that the troops would go out of Navoi, choke the throat of this mountain trail, block the troops of Abbas I, and minimize the losses of the war here.