Li Yuanyin thought that he had just met the Qing army unexpectedly, but what he didn't know was that Wu Sangui had already mastered his whereabouts. Wu Sangui led his men to lurk in the Black Tiger Temple fifty miles away from Yuncheng ten days ago, and the Qing army scouts had already grasped the whereabouts of the Ming cavalry.

Last night, after Wu Sangui knew that Li Yuanyin had set up camp overnight, he knew that they were going to Ansan Lake to help in the battle, so he also rushed with Qing soldiers and waited for the Ming army in Macun, which was twenty miles away from Ansan Lake.

Wu Sangui has a very bad image in history, and he let the Manchu Qing Dynasty enter the customs for his own benefit. Since the surrender of the Manchu Qing Dynasty wants to sit as a traitor, then do it well, and in the end, you have to oppose the Qing Dynasty again, and be the three surnamed domestic slaves who were spurned by later generations, this is the Wu Sangui recorded in history.

In fact, the real Wu Sangui is much more interesting, Wu Sangui is not a big deal, he just wants his wife and children to live the second half of his life. Therefore, he only lives for the present in this life, and has no long-term planning, and only with this kind of passable character can he repeatedly surrender and betray in history. At the beginning, he surrendered to Li Chuang, and when Li Chuang hit the door and surrendered to the Manchu Dynasty, he surrendered if he surrendered, so he had to save face for himself, and he said that he would borrow troops to help suppress him.

Wu Sangui surrendered to the Manchu Qing Dynasty and originally only wanted to protect his own group of Liaodong brothers, but the Manchu Qing Dynasty pressed forward step by step, and in the end there was no way to retreat, Wu Sangui made a last fight and launched the rebellion of the three feudatories. If Wu Sangui had launched ten years earlier and had not prepared for the Manchu Qing Dynasty for ten years, according to the military literacy of Wu Sangui and his subordinates, it was really unknown what would have happened in the end. But because it was ten years late, Wu Sangui died of illness five years after the rebellion, and none of his subordinates could provoke the Liang to fight against the Manchus, which allowed the Manchus to sit on the country for an extra 200 years.

Although Wu Sangui has no foresight, his military literacy is first-class in the world, and his Liaodong Iron Cavalry is also the only army in East Asia that can confront the Manchu Eight Banners head-on. It is precisely because of the strong army in his hands that Wu Sangui looks down on the Ming army on the other side in his heart, and in his heart the Ming army is just a group of farmers on horseback.

Wu Sangui rode on a horse and said to Li Benshen, the chief soldier beside him: "General Li Bing, the cavalry led by Li Yuanyin is opposite, how about his cavalry and the Liaodong iron cavalry of this king!" ”

Li Benshen was originally the chief soldier of the Ming army, and he was the nephew of Gao Jie, one of the four towns in Jiangbei, and after Gao Jie's death, he and Li Chengdong divided Gao Jie's subordinates into two. Li Benshen is different from Li Chengdong, when the Qing army came, Li Benshen did not resist at all, and directly surrendered to Duoduo. Li Chengdong at least fought a battle with the Qing army, and only surrendered to the Manchus after the defeat of the army.

It is precisely because Li Benshen and Li Chengdong have this relationship that Li Benshen knows Li Yuanyin very well.

"King Pingxi, Li Chengdong is a good hand, but his godson Li Yuanyin! It's much worse! This time, I heard that the Shenwu Emperor of the Southern Ming Dynasty handed over the newly formed 50,000 cavalry to Li Yuanyin to command, but Li Chengdong, who was good at commanding the cavalry, was transferred to Yunnan to quell the rebellion, which is really a war feat given by God to the King of Pingxi! ”

Li Benshen was a sycophant here, and Wu Sangui was naturally happy when he heard it. But it's not that Li Benshen said nonsense, what he said still has some basis. The people present were all cavalry generals of the Liaodong Department, and they knew that a good cavalry could not just ride a horse. Liaodong Iron Cavalry has been founded by Li Chengliang for nearly a hundred years, and it has been passed down to less than 10,000 people, and the Manchu Qing Dynasty is backed by Mongolia, which produces horses, and can go to the Central Plains to grab a handful if it is fine, and it can only afford to raise 60,000 Manchuria and Eight Banners. Therefore, these generals know very well that a brave and warlike cavalryman cannot be trained by training.

At the same time, the sights of the past ten days have also confirmed this, Li Yuanyin's cavalry only knows that they will send the scouts out for five miles, and they are all fanfare, wearing that bright red Ming army uniform, don't they know that the scouts are going to hide their whereabouts? From this point, Wu Sangui also knew that although the Ming army on the other side was very numerous, it was still a novice in playing cavalry.

Wu Sangui's cousin, Zu Zerun, the son of Zu Dashou, another general of the Liaodong Army, shouted: "Cousin, now that the Ming army has seen us, let the younger brother bring 10,000 horses to try their skills!" ”

At this time, the Ming army on the opposite side had already discovered that Wu Sangui's Qing army was hurriedly turning the horse's head to organize the formation. Seeing Ming Jun like this, Wu Sangui sneered and said, "What else do these peasants need to try!" The order went down, Zu Zerun led 20,000 horses to attack the left flank, Wu Sanmei led 20,000 to attack the right flank, and this king led 10,000 Chinese troops to attack their Chinese army, defeating this Ming army in one fell swoop, and then we can go to Ansan Lake to help in the war! Don't go late and you won't be able to drink the soup! ”

When the generals heard what Wu Sangui said, they laughed heartily one by one, and went down to start preparations.

Li Yuanyin, the Ming army on the opposite side, also discovered the Qing army, but the Ming cavalry was trained according to the standards of European dragoons when they were trained, and to put it bluntly, they were motorized infantry, they could only ride into the battlefield on horseback, and they still had to dismount and line up to set fire guns when they really fought. Therefore, after the Ming army discovered the Qing army, under the organization of officers at all levels, they dismounted one after another to prepare for defense, so that the Qing army in the distance seemed to be in a hurry at a glance.

This was Li Yuanyin's first time commanding a battle, and he was also very nervous, but he was forced to be excited, and asked calmly: "General Zhao, how can you see the Qing army move?" ”

Zhao Hu is different from Li Yuanyin, Zhao Hu has fought with real swords and guns on the battlefield, and he fought countless battles with Vietnamese monkeys on the battlefield of Annam, so he is naturally no stranger to the battlefield.

Zhao Hu looked at the Qing army in the distance, it had been divided into three teams and started to act, Zhao Hu said: "Marshal, it seems that the Qing army wants to attack the two wings of our army, and then use the tactics of breaking through the center, Wu Sangui seems to want to defeat our army in one fell swoop!" ”

The Ming army had already done countless drills before, and had long been prepared for the most common central breakthrough tactics of this cavalry, that is, to use the infantry phalanx to resist the first wave of cavalry charges, and then use heavy cavalry to counterattack the enemy's flank, and after the heavy cavalry disrupted the enemy formation, it was the slaughter of the dragoons.

Li Yuanyin nodded when he heard Zhao Hu say this, and said to the officer behind him: "You all heard it clearly!" Let's go down and prepare! General Zhao, the 2,000 heavy cavalry is please! ”

"Please rest assured, the last general will definitely crush the flank of the Qing army!"

The cavalry had a total of three divisions and fifteen cavalry regiments, and under the order of Li Yuanyin, fifteen large phalanxes were formed, with horses in the middle, and three layers of musketeers outside, and the front row was half-squatting, using bayonets to form a knife mountain to defend the horses.

This configuration of the new army of the Southern Ming Dynasty is similar to that of the previous Ming army, and the use of firearms in the Ming army during the Wanli period is the highest in the world, and a total of seventy percent of the whole army uses firearms. It's just that there is a brand new weapon in the new army of the Southern Ming Dynasty, the Franc cannon.

The Franc cannon was actually a large musket, which was shorter and larger in caliber than the later guns. However, there is a function that the Franc cannon does not have to carry the gun, that is, it is divided into sub-mother guns. The mother gun is the gun itself, and the child gun is used for loading ammunition, so that the mother gun is equipped with multiple child guns, and it can have a fast firing speed. Of course, because the ancient craftsmanship is not good, this kind of Franc cannon is not well sealed, and the firing range is not as far as that of an authentic smoothbore gun.

However, the terrifying firing speed of the Franc cannon can completely make up for the shortcomings of the lack of range, plus the cavalry does not need any long-range weapons, so it is good to get on the horse and walk for a while far away. Therefore, this kind of Franc cannon, which is only more than 100 catties, is heavily equipped in the cavalry of the Southern Ming Dynasty and is used to deal with today's dense charging formation.

The Ming army unloaded the small cannons of the Franc machine on the horses, and then put them on the rudimentary gun carriages, pushed them to the gap, and waited for the arrival of the Qing army.

On the other hand, looking at the Qing army, Wu Sangui saw that the Ming army had dismounted and lined up in formation to prepare firearms, and Wu Sangui was overjoyed. Wu Sangui had never fought with the Nanming Army, he had only seen the power of the Nanming Navy in Hanyang, and that kind of cannon salvo was earth-shattering, and it was not something that the body could fight against at all. Therefore, Wu Sangui thought that the musket used by the Ming army was still the old-fashioned bird gun used by the Ming army in the past, and it could only be fired once in a minute or two, but he didn't know that the Ming army had changed to a flintlock pistol, and it could be fired three times a minute. And the power of the Ming army musket is also different, with the blessing of the new gunpowder, the Ming army musket will penetrate the Qing army's three-layer heavy armor at a distance of 100 meters, and it is really like a knife to deal with this group of old hats from Shaanxi.

Wu Sangui saw the Ming army dismount and line up, laughed and said to Li Benshen beside him: "Lao Li, you saw it!" The people trained by the miraculous mountain harrier you blow are at this level, and the cavalry should be mobile to fight, so if you can dismount and fight on foot, then what are you doing on horseback? ”

The mountain harrier is talking about Li Benshen's uncle Gao Jie, and Gao Jie's nickname was Gao Harrier back then. Li Benshen heard that Wu Sangui looked down on his uncle, but he didn't dare to say anything, who told him to eat with others now. Li Benshen had no choice but to say: "Of course it can't be compared with the prince's Liaodong Iron Cavalry!" ”

Now that the Qing army has walked two miles away from the Ming army, the cavalry began to slowly accelerate, and Wu Sangui no longer harbored Li Benshen, but paid attention to the war with all his attention.

If you are unlucky enough to fall off the horse, then don't hope that the comrades in the rear team can avoid you, because now the speed of the horse is fifty or sixty kilometers, if you can only end up with one end, that is, the horse will be ruined, so the unlucky person who falls off the horse can only ask for more blessings!

Soon the Qing army entered the range of 500 meters, and at this time, the Ming army's Franc machine gun began to fire. In order to maintain the mobility of the cavalry, the weight of the Franc machine must be strictly limited, and it must not exceed 100 catties. Under such a goal, in order to ensure the power, it is necessary to write up and down the barrel. Fortunately, the hydraulic press was newly put into production in Guangdong, and the steel used by the Ming army's artillery, so the gun barrel designed by the cavalry special Franc machine was very thin. This reduces the natural range to only 500 meters, which is only slightly stronger than a musket, but the advantage of this is that more pellets can be stuffed into the barrel.

In addition to gunpowder, a Franc machine gun can be stuffed with a hundred musket lead bullets, and this kind of thing is still fired in bursts, six guns, under the loading of ten people, can ensure a rate of fire of four rounds a minute, this kind of thing is a slaughter for the cavalry on the dense charge.