The loud trumpets sounded, and after a night of guarding each other, the soldiers on duty on both sides, who had just fallen asleep, climbed out of their tents one after another, buried their pots and cooked food, and prepared to start the day's battle.

Not many people know about last night's schemes and intrigues.

For the Portuguese, defeating these Ming armies in front of them, they can take advantage of the current internal and external turmoil in the Ming Dynasty, and then move forward, advance, and restore to the territory they have previously captured.

This meant that untold wealth, higher positions, greater powers, and the glory of transforming from a governor of the Far East to a high nobleman beckoned him.

The meaning is different for everyone, for each force, for Feng Quan, it means high-ranking officials, it means the opportunity to enter the court, and for Kong Youxing, it means more money and more plates.

For the Huaxia Army, it means that if it can't hold on, then the Huaxia Army may be wiped out from now on.

China's political power has always been strongman politics, emperor politics, an emperor is in power, everything he does will be continued, will be carried forward, but once he is gone, then everything will change, the glory and wealth of his subordinates, his policy of governance, will be overthrown by the latecomers, and his past will become history, and even history will not remember him.

If you want to say that Zhang Qiang is not worried, it is false, he is not a crossing master, he is not an engineering student, he is not a graduate student, he is not a doctor in the United States, a scholar with several master's degrees in Australia, not to mention Bai Fumei, and he is not a king of soldiers, you said that he wants him to be a game lover who has never seen the world, a part-time worker who is not worried about such a complex situation and such a disparity in strength, that is lying, pretending to be thirteen, and the result must be miserable.

Hurriedly and the water in the deerskin bag sent down the hard-to-swallow rations of the Huaxia Army, a kind of biscuit-like cut boxy made of wild vegetables, sorghum flour, white flour, and rice paste, which was a little sweet when just eaten, a little salty to eat, and a little bitter in the mouth.

I drank two more sips of water, and the water had a bit of a fishy smell of animal skin, but this was nothing, just pinched my nose and drank it, just like the kind of salty water with a coarse benzene smell and sulfur smell often drunk in the factory, and I endured it and passed.

What could be more important on the battlefield than life?

What is worse than life?

Anyway, it won't be long before you can't talk about it, and everything will be over.

In the loud sound of military trumpets, the opposing Portuguese coalition responded with the rumbling of cannons.

The piercing shells streaked across the sky, and then smashed heavily on the sandbags on the already dilapidated camp wall, breaking several sandbags, and then helplessly found their home in a pile of quicksand and loess.

Not a single soldier of the Huaxia Army and the Ming Army was injured.

The soldiers took turns eating, and after eating, the soldiers returned to the bomb shelter or cellar to stay, waiting for orders, and the defending soldiers returned to their posts, and the flags were only seen waving in the sky above the three camps, passing information of inquiries to each other.

The commander of the scout battalion came to Zhang Qiang after eating, "Governor, the Portuguese broke the camp last night, and more than 2,000 people were trapped in the camp, and the rest were either dead or escaped and captured. Today I am afraid that the Portuguese will go to war with us head-on. ”

While listening to the report, Zhang Qiang walked up to a hidden observation point on the wall, and observed the movements of the Portuguese from the inside of the lookout.

"Let those soldiers and civilians of the Ming army change into captured armor, and those who don't have armor put on our leather armor, those who can shoot arrows are centralized and managed, and those who can't shoot arrows are filled into the melee team, placed under the wall, ready to support the fight on the wall, and those who don't know anything will be assigned to arrange for them to fill our soldiers with gunpowder and lead bullets, and then hide below and arrange a few officers in the Ming army who know how to manage people, manage them, let them transport supplies and carry away the wounded."

"Hold on for two days, at least until tomorrow morning, and our troops can rush over," said here, Zhang Qiang looked gloomy, he didn't want to, he didn't expect that nearly 100,000 Ming troops couldn't stop the impact of the Portuguese 10,000 or 20,000, and they dispersed, he thought that he was just here to observe the battle, mainly to let Nanming and the Portuguese fight, after all, this side is not the territory of his Huaxia army, and they don't seem to need them to fight.

But it's always like this, the plan can't keep up with the change, and they're stuck here.

The key is that there is no artillery, and the number of troops is small, if you can bring 2,000 artillery, 3,000 field brigades, and 2,000 people here, then Zhang Qiang is sure that the Ming army will definitely not be defeated so badly.

Shaking his head, he drove away the negative emotions of unhappiness and regret in his heart, and carefully observed the movements of the Portuguese.

Next up is the attack of the Portuguese, and it will be up to them to see how they make their moves.

Yesterday was the bombardment of artillery, and no troops were sent to storm here, but it was only a symbolic test of where Su Zhengqing was and the camp behind Li Guangdi, but fortunately it was not lost, otherwise the Huaxia Army Guard Regiment would have suffered casualties.

Today, it seems that the casualties are small, and the Huaxia Army Guard Regiment may be destroyed.

In less than half an hour, the Portuguese attacked.

Loosely scattered a phalanx of thousands of people, respectively towards the side of Su Zhengqing's camp and Zhang Qiang's side, the enemy's artillery above the head was almost fully opened, and there were constantly shells falling, smashing around the camp, some smashed the camp wall, the wall reinforced with wood and soil was like paper paste in front of a few catties of projectiles, and they collapsed one after another, raising up a burst of dust, almost obscuring Zhang Qiang's line of sight.

Five hundred meters, several phalanxes of thousands of people walked, and their steps accelerated.

It seems that they came from the county seat in the rear, and there were also from the nearby camps, and then they gathered together to find trouble with the Ming army.

Three hundred meters, these phalanxes can gradually see the outline from one cluster to another, and they are the mercenary groups of those natives and Ming vassal states.

Cannon fodder-like existence.

Two hundred meters, they crossed the trench and the breastwork guarded by the Portuguese and appeared in the field of vision of the Ming army.

"Let the small cannon fire, with solid shells." Zhang Qiang said to the herald soldiers beside him.

As he spoke, those people had already accelerated to a distance of more than 100 meters, brandishing their weapons, showing off their might, and they looked like they couldn't be beaten.

It seems that these people are not the mercenaries who have experienced the war yesterday who attacked for a day, but they seem to be a group of stunned young people who have not seen the world and come out of the mountains organized by the Portuguese somewhere.

Eighty meters, these people began to have a division of labor, it seems that there are some veterans in the team who are directing them and restraining them, probably those mercenaries who fought yesterday and fought specifically for the sake of war.

In the camp occupied by the Huaxia army, some of the gorgeously dressed, brightly colored, but tattered, barefoot, holding bamboo poles, wielding broken large blades, or carrying axes, or holding a wooden stick in their hands, two thousand mercenaries used small cannons, and the Ming army's long cannons like raising guns fired at those people, Su Zhengqing's camp over there also responded to the action here and also opened fire.

Solid bullets cut a bloody path in the stormtroopers' ranks, and the mercenaries began to panic, and the ranks became scattered, gathering together one by one, trying to turn around.

Scolding, driving, killing, a group of relatively strong-looking men slapped the natives with large knives.

"Come on, let the rifled gunners shoot me specifically against these guys."

There were always a dozen of these rifled gunners in each team, that is, rifled musketeers with three bullets and could be quickly reloaded, just against these people.

Eighty meters may be a smoothbore gun, whether it is a flintlock musket or an arquebus smoothbore gun, the accuracy must not be too good, get people together, hit a rough target, as for who to hit, that day, I know, if you want to accurately hit the target you want to hit, you don't have to think about it, thirty meters may be able to do it, eighty meters, God doesn't know where the bullets are flying.

Rifled guns can, or rifled guns that can fire three shots in a row, flintlock rifled guns, the British gave the name to this gun, rifles.

Of course, the current rifles are different from the British's rifles, their rifles were the first arquebuses, or front-loaded, this kind of rear-loading is not far, but the accuracy is excellent, and the rate of fire is fast.

With the shooting of the riflemen, those who did not run fifty meters in front of Zhang Qiang's Huaxia military camp fell to death one after another, and of course their team was also chaotic.

There was chaos, fear made them turn around and run, one or two people who were looking for death were also killed by small cannons, and there were few who could rush to thirty meters in front of the camp.

Thirty meters, the archers can handle them, the Ming army archers on duty in the camp are called one by one, and those people turn around and run.

It's messed up, it's all messed up, it's like a farce.

Su Zhengqing didn't have such manpower, but there were only a few rows of arquebus gunfire, and then the small cannons, the tiger squat cannon was replaced with iron sand, and one cannon after another was fired downward, and it was also chaotic, with one dead and wounded.

The casualties caused those people to flee one after another, and the restraint of those who had overseers was still not enough, and even the overseers were beaten to pockmarks by artillery.

Those who tried to bypass or pass through the middle of the two camps, who were also hit by small cannons, fled before they reached the camp where Li Guangdi was located behind.

The first battle lasted for half an hour, and the Ming army and the Huaxia army won the victory.

On the ground, two or three hundred corpses were lying, more than a hundred wounded were wailing, but no one could save them, and their companions had all run away or ran back.

Behind the Portuguese, two hundred meters away, a team of neatly equipped, at least with knives and guns in their hands, it seemed that the mercenaries in a neat team waved butcher knives at those people, and the tasks that the Ming army and the Huaxia army did not complete, they solved them, at least causing several times more casualties than the attack.

This way is obvious, and even fools can see that the use of cannon fodder consumes the ammunition here.

The situation remains dire.

(End of chapter)