On the twenty-fifth day of December, the Liang army besieged Lingchang City and just broke the city on the fifth day, and the Taiwei Gu Ruquan had an urgent military situation:

"Report, report to Lord Taiwei, three hundred miles west of our army, we found about 30,000 cavalry of the guards, and there were a large number of horses and baggage with them."

The scout said quickly, and Gu Ruquan hurriedly asked the scout without thinking about it:

"What are the guards, what are the horses?"

"Most of the guards are lightly armoured, and there are also light soldiers, and the horses are mixed, and most of them are middle and low-class horses."

"It can be seen whose name the flag of the Guards calls."

"Zhao Qian, Sun and Li have all the banners, and I can't see who the lord is."

"How is the appearance of the army, whether it is a parade or a random walk."

"It's very chaotic to walk around, and there are horses behind the brigade, which looks very embarrassing."

"Where is the Ham Army now?"

"Captain Hui, four hundred and twenty or thirty miles away from me, it seems that this guard army has not been found."

"Do you know where this guard is heading?"

"Coming to the west, but I don't know if I am going west to the north, or I have been informed that our army has broken through Lingchang to intercept our army."

"Let's go again."

"No!"

After the scouts left, Gu Ruquan and his subordinate Kong Lin said:

"General Kong, you immediately order the cavalry of the headquarters, and go to the village fifty miles east of Lingchang with the headquarters of the Metropolitan Governor Wang, and closely monitor the movements of the guards, if the cavalry of the guards dares to attack, I will repel them."

"Lord Taiwei, the guards are coming with 30,000 light cavalry, but the cavalry of the headquarters and General Wang's soldiers and horses may not be able to stop it."

"The cavalry of the guards is all on the eastern and western fronts, and the guards on the eastern front were completely annihilated by the Xian army, where did they come from the cavalry. This group of light cavalry must have been the foot soldiers of the guards who fled on horseback. ”

Bailiyan deliberately asked the sixth and eighth towns to change into the uniforms of the guards and servants, and played various numbers, and the sparse stragglers swaggered through the city, the purpose was to confuse the Liang army.

Under the old military system, light soldiers were equipped with weapons, light leather armor and shields, etc., while conscripts were peasants who were temporarily recruited and trained, and the equipment of conscripts was different according to the national strength and pre-war reserves of each country.

Due to the weak combat effectiveness of the conscripts, and the equipment of ordinary light soldiers was already low, it was a bit wasteful to issue standard armor to conscripts who had not received strict training, so many princes did not issue standard armor to conscripts, but they were issued with bamboo armor.

Those with stronger national strength are distributed with obsolete armor and defective products, but not everyone has them. Some people can't even make a weapon, so the conscripts are often issued with spears and spears, or even bamboo and wood guns to talk about "self-defense".

Gu Ruquan concluded that the "guards" here were a group of guards who were chased and fled by the Xian army, so he did not take this group of "broken troops" in his eyes.

Although they were all on horseback, the infantry on horseback and the cavalry were two different things, and the cavalry storming the infantry array was another different thing.

The greatest advantage of cavalry is its ability to maneuver and combat movement. When the cavalry was confronted with well-trained infantry, especially the tight infantry formations of spears, spears, spears, hooks, and halberds, the cavalry charging in a cluster was tantamount to asking for their own death.

Even the heavy cavalry had no chance of winning by charging head-on against the spear array. Therefore, cavalry is more suitable for roundabout flank attacks, or to hunt down unorganized infantry that has disintegrated battle formations, and in addition to the use of horse-mounted infantry.

The biggest advantage of the heavy cavalry is to dismount in front of the infantry formation, use the heavy cavalry armor to impact the light infantry spearmen and pikemen to kill the gap, and then drive the marchers to use the cavalry to attack.

Gu Ruquan knew very well that 30,000 mounted stragglers posed no threat to the well-equipped Liang army, on the contrary, the tens of thousands of horses that the guards sat on would soon become his trophies.

So Kong Lin Wang Guaner will each lead his headquarters to set off for fifty miles east to Xiazhai, while Gu Ruquan will continue to clean up the mess in Lingchang City, preparing to continue to go south to harvest the fruits of victory.

Two days later, Jiang Jie, Fang Liang, and Tian Peng bypassed the towns along the way and quickly marched westward, while Bai Liyan led Xu Jin and the main force of the Sixth Town Army to bite all the way behind, like officers and soldiers catching thieves.

At dusk of the same day, this "guard army" was eighty miles east of Lingchang and thirty miles away from the second general of Kong Lin.

"General Jiang, there seems to be a large group of people in front, it is reported that it is Liang Jun, let's do it tonight or tomorrow morning."

Fang Liang asked, Jiang Jie put down the binoculars and said:

"Order the brothers, go another fifteen miles and push the Liang army within range of our artillery."

"Yes!"

All town armies have artillery directly under their control, but there are no 36-pound cannons and 72-pound heavy artillery, and the number of heavy artillery is not large, and the heavy artillery is currently only equipped with armed battalions and group army headquarters. In order to catch the Liang army off guard, Bailiyan allocated heavy artillery to Jiang Jie.

So after dark, the Xian army approached fifteen miles east of the Liang army's camp and put the camp within the range of heavy artillery.

At the same time, Kong Lin and Wang Guan were quite confused, and it was extremely abnormal that the guards were not far away or close.

"General Kong, this guard army is a little strange."

"Well, Lord Taiwei concluded that this was a chaotic group of defeated guards, and the camp was strange, perhaps the dragons went down to the village at will without a leader. Just in case, raise the hot air balloon in no time. ”

"That's right, I'll order someone to do it right away."

Due to the restriction of the field of vision, the appearance of the telescope increased the plane field of view, and the hot air balloon increased the altitude latitude field of view, making most of the information of the battlefield situation within 20 to 40 kilometers transparent, so after the appearance of the hot air balloon 20 years, it has become a reconnaissance equipment commonly used by the princes of various countries.

Some of them are exported by the salty countries, and some are imitated by the countries themselves, and the exports are largely because of the imitation of various countries, and exports can hit the industries of various countries, and the hot air balloon is theoretically not difficult, and the difficulty is the production of inflatable balloons.

The imitation shapes of various countries are all kinds of strange shapes, some are long cylinders, some are square, and some are easy to make into triangles.

There are two reasons for this, one is the lack of knowledge of mathematics and physics, and countries do not know that spheres are the largest under the same material. The sewing process of the second sphere inflatable cavity is the most difficult, and it is easy to sew up, but it is very difficult to withstand the pressure of gas thermal expansion without breaking, and even reduce air leakage, which requires a complete set of mathematical and physical calculations and strict process design guarantees.

The princes of various countries rely on the gourd to draw the scoop, and can not imitate the spherical hot air balloon from beginning to end, even if the spherical shape is imitated, it is also based on a lot of materials, the empty weight is too large, and the volume is too small, resulting in insufficient lift-off height, and it is difficult to put into practice.

The rectangular square triangle can be transformed by the loom, weaving a wider cloth to obtain an effective measure to reduce the sewing surface, so all kinds of special-shaped hot air balloons began to become popular, but the lifting height is still limited.

The hot air balloons sold by Bailiyan without exception limit the inflatable volume, making the height less than 700 meters, which is higher than the hot air balloons used by the princes of various countries, but they restrict their high-altitude vision, but they have no choice.

In the middle of the night that night, the "Guards" battalion fifteen miles away was busy, and the camouflaged artillery had lost its armor and camouflage, and pulled to the west side of the camp to build an artillery position, and the muzzle of the black hole was aimed at the Liang army camp.

In the second half of the night, there was silence for a while, and the guards suddenly became busy here:

"Governor Jiang, everything is ready."

Du Wei said quickly, Jiang Jie once again observed the Liang army camp with a telescope and confirmed that there was nothing abnormal.

"Increase the projectile delay, let the shell hit the ground and then explode, and observe the falling situation."

"No!"

After speaking, Du Wei turned around and left, Jiang Jie and Fang Liang Tian Peng said:

"After the artillery was fired, the battalions buried the pot and began to eat, and then pursued after dawn."

"Wouldn't it be better to blow up his mother's breath and kill it, wait until dawn to chase it, these rabbit cubs won't run away early!"

Tian Peng said unhappily, Jiang Jie raised his eyebrows and raised his face:

"Our army's intention to defeat the Liang army is not to strangle and kill it, if it attacks behind the artillery, it will be entangled with the Liang army, and it will only increase the casualties of our army, just defeat it and flee back to Lingchang."

Bailiyan explained that Jiang Jie attacked the Liang State to the west, but did not explain how he fought and captured the city, so only relying on the more than 30,000 people he led to attack the Liang army head-on after the artillery bombardment, it was possible to completely defeat and annihilate them, but it would also increase unnecessary casualties on his own side, and it was not in line with Bailiyan's goal of avoiding casualties among the two armies and achieving the strategic goal as soon as possible.

Therefore, Jiang Jie had to decide for himself how to choose the best tactical method of operation to solve all the contradictions and problems.

A quarter of an hour later, the guns were loaded:

"Governor Qi, all cannons are ready."

"Well, start preparing for fire."

"No!"

With a single order, dozens of heavy artillery pieces began to fire:

"Artillery ready...... Put! ”

"Put!"

……

The deafening sound of artillery broke the silence before dawn, dozens of heavy cannons spit fire snakes, and projectiles dragged fire meteors out of the roar, and occasionally fell on the camp of the Liang army and exploded with amazing power. Kong Lin woke up in shock when he heard the news, jumped up and shouted:

"Where it explodes, where it explodes!"

When the guards heard the news, they rushed into the tent in a panic and hurriedly said:

"Qi Yu Metropolitan Governor, there was an explosion in the front camp and the left and right camps, and the fire can be seen. It looks like black fire powder has been fried. ”

"What, the black fire powder is fried! Where did the left and right battalions come from black fire powder. Not good, it's the Guards. Quick, blow the drum and trumpet. ”

"No!"

Kong Lin arranged a swarm of overlord cannons with bee rope cap guns in the front battalion, artillery in the middle army, half of the gunpowder hoarded in the rear army, and the left and right battalions only had earthen grenades, which could not cause a deafening explosion.

When he put on his armor and jumped out of the camp tent to take a closer look, he saw that the first three battalions on the left and right were in chaos, the fire in the three battalions was not small, and the fire of the "guards" camp was faintly visible from time to time more than ten miles away on the east side, and it was clear that the "guards" were firing, and the sky was still dark at this time, and it was completely impossible to see the distance of the guards' artillery.

In order to cover up the characteristics of the Xian army's firearms and tactics, Jiang Jie deliberately slowed down the speed of artillery bombardment, and prepared artillery fire on the Liang army's camp at a rate of one shot per five minutes.

In the chaos, the Metropolitan Governor Wang Guan found Kong Lin in a panic and said:

"It's the guards, it's the guards who sneak attack!"

"What's the panic, the guards have a sky-shattering fire, is our army a vegetarian? You can send orders to the earth-shattering fires everywhere to fight back against the general! ”

"No!"

Kong Lin and Wang Guan are both the governors of the capital, and Kong Lin is the commander designated by the Taiwei Gu Ruquan, and Wang Guan can only obey him.

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