When Liu Wenxiu's troops approached the city of Yaoting, Yang Xuan felt that the battle situation had entered a critical link, and on the one hand, he supervised the troops to assemble in the Qianting, and on the other hand, he sent detailed work to check the dynamics of the various units of the Qing army in order to take corresponding combat measures.

On this day, when I heard that the Qing army was going up the river by land and water, and was killing at Yaoting, I heard that the Qing army was divided into two routes, and the main force led by Yang Jie, the chief soldier of the Qing army, went upriver to support Yiting, and after the commander of the navy, Bai Yintu, led the main force to garrison Wuchang and Jingzhou, Yang Xuan laughed and said: "The Qing army will win the world immediately, and its cavalry is really much higher than my Han people."

But when it comes to the use of the navy, it can only be said that the Banmen made a tiger, and in a big battle like Yaoting, in the case of unclear enemy conditions, the navy was divided and used, and it was not far off that the Qing army was defeated. ”

Immediately ordered Yin Chengqi and others to command the Zhulu Infantry Army to go south to support Liu Wenxiu in Yaoting, while Yang Xuan personally led the main force of the navy to the south in the starry night and rushed straight to the Qing army's naval division.

In mid-July, the Volunteer Army and the Qing Army met at Hutou Pond, 20 miles east of Yaoting, and the Yangtze River formed a 90-degree bay at Yiling due to the mountains and rivers.

At noon on this day, the forward came to report that hundreds of enemy ships had been found 20 miles downstream, and judging by the scene, it should be the main force of the Qing army's naval division.

Yang Xuan stood on the Jingjiang-class gunboat Sejong, took out his binoculars and took a closer look, and saw hundreds of ships coming densely in the distance.

A staff officer next to him picked up the earthen phone and ordered the soldiers on the control tower to play the flag, so that the naval guerrilla He Dou led his troops to attack the left and right wings of the opponent, while Yang Xuan and Yang Jingxin led the central army to attack the middle road.

This is the most common tactic used by the volunteers, if they go downstream, attack the opponent's flank with the Flying Tiger warship and sampan boat as the mainstay, and then go upstream, and cooperate with the main force to besiege the opponent.

Just like the famous Battle of Jinggang in history, the whole army must not rush up to fight with the other side when going downstream, if the battle is not conducive to sailing against the current, so it is inevitable that it will not advance or retreat (in history, the Battle of Jinggang was defeated by the Taiping army, and Zeng Guofan almost committed suicide.) ）

After the order was issued, He Dou, who served as the striker, led a group of Flying Tiger battleships and three sampan boats, hung up the hard canopy sails from a distance, and rushed down the river towards the other party.

Yang Jie, the commander-in-chief of the Yangtze River Naval Division of the Qing Army, disagreed, although he had not fought with the Volunteers before, but the Zhejiang Naval Division of the Southern Ming Dynasty and the Fujian Zheng Chenggong Naval Division were still often encountered, and the Volunteers were located inland, so it was stronger than the Great Qingshui Army in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River?

From a distance, there are too many ships of the opponent's navy, and most of them are sand boats in the front, not to mention that compared with the Nanming navy on the southeast coast, it is also much smaller than the ships of the Tartar navy.

Yang Jie, who was far away, kept ordering artillery to obstruct it, but the other party was very powerful, except for a layer of quilts hanging around the side of the ship, there was no obstruction at all, and now he was ignoring the roar of the Tartar artillery.

Yang Jie's first reaction was that the other party was ready to rely on the speed advantage of going down the river to hit his own ship, and he saw the other party kill him from a distance, and some were worried that the two ships would collide and the ship would be destroyed and killed, so he retreated back in fear.

At this moment, there were bursts of exclamations in his own phalanx, and Yang Jie looked up, only to see that the quilt on the bow of the opponent's ship had been torn, revealing a No. 3 Franc cannon in the distance.

Taking into account the combat characteristics of the sampan boats, each sampan boat installed a No. 3 Furlong cannon in its bow boat to bombard the enemy ships in the distance, and now the gun jacket was suddenly opened, and the loader put the gun in the gun chamber, the gun commander lit the fire rope, and the front cannon sounded, and the flowering shell left the gun port and fell into the river, splashing a burst of water droplets, and at the same time everyone secretly rejoiced, an explosion occurred, and a column of water appeared on the river surface.

If it falls in the river, it is not bad, but if it falls on the boat, the flowering bomb rolls several times in a row and then explodes, and the surrounding people are either killed or injured.

In this era, although there were many artillery guns installed on the naval ships, the mainstream combat idea was still the connection station, and now we see dozens of sampan ships in front and several Flying Tiger warships in the back.

Although the accuracy of the artillery at this time was very poor, although only 3 percent of the shells fell on the Tartar ship at such a close range, the damage caused by it was still quite strong in terms of spiritual shock.

The soldiers of the Tartar Naval Army had seen this kind of formation, and after two or three rounds of artillery bombardment, the whole formation was in chaos, and now they saw the Volunteers and Naval Army entering the formation, and everyone was fighting separately.

He Dou shouted loudly for everyone not to stop, while directing the gunners to fire cannons at the Tartar ship in the distance, and at the same time directing the sailors to throw the ignited thunderbolt with the handle on the nearby ship.

Although the artillery was fired accurately, the close-range throwing of the earth-shaking thunder with a handle was nine out of ten, and some were even thrown a dozen close to the ship, and the sky-shaking thunder exploded continuously, and the scene was full of burning flames.

Because they are in the downstream, even if the Qing army is difficult to gain the upper hand, Zhou Zheng and Tan Wen led the two partial divisions down the river, pounced on the opponent's flank, shot with rockets and muskets from a distance, and after approaching, they threw the earth-shaking thunder over, these people after years of training, within 20 meters, it can be said that they can throw it wherever they want, and the earth-shaking thunder fell into the crowd, killing and seriously injured.

Even if two ships collide, because the Volunteers are upstream, under the action of the huge impact force, even if the small boat crashes into the opponent's ship, because the bow of the ship has a collision angle, it will not suffer.

Seeing such tactics of the volunteers, the officers and men of the naval army, which was mainly formed by surrendering the Han Chinese, abandoned the connection station one by one, and retreated one after another when they saw the ships killed.

He Dou led the naval army down the river, fighting continuously, and finally killed the opponent's formation in chaos, and his own side took advantage of the situation to withdraw after the Franc cannon was fired. (A No. 3 Furlong cannon has 6 guns.) ）

Yang Jie breathed a long sigh of relief, if the other party all had such tactics, Yang Jie didn't know if his four thousand Qing army sailors would bomb the camp, and now he saw that the other party was disappearing downstream, although it was impossible for the other party to give up like this, but he still breathed a long sigh of relief.

At this moment, someone pointed in horror into the distance, and saw several large ships floating on the river in the distance, and the strangest thing was one with a canvas instead of the usual hard canopy sails.

The canvas is twice as tall and twice as wide as the canopy sails of ordinary boats, and basically covers the entire ship, which is particularly strange to look at from afar.

In addition to this sailboat, Yang Jie also saw that there were two large ships with stiff sails around, and around the big ship were countless small boats that were now slaughtering.

Everyone was shocked, Yang Jie continuously beckoned everyone to re-form a formation, commanding all departments to kill the past, the opponent's ship is equipped with artillery, and the local melee will use the handle of the earth-shaking thunder, and there are only a small number of bow and crossbow rockets on his own ship, a small number of cannons, to reduce casualties, only the two sides are mixed together, so it is difficult for the opponent's artillery to play a role.

At this time, the theory of water warfare was a connection war, that is, Zheng Chenggong's naval army also relied on the connection to win, and also relied on the strong hull of the ship, crashed into the opponent, and then jumped on the ship, killed and injured the enemy on the ship, and captured the ship.

At the end of the 16th century, the Spanish Armada was also preparing to use connection warfare to fight the British warships, but the British took advantage of the speed of the Galen ships and relied on cannon fire, so the British were defeated.

What is strange is that four hundred meters away, the big ship slowly aimed its side at itself, and in the surprised eyes of everyone, everyone suddenly found that the sides of the ship were actually rows of dense artillery.

The large Franc cannon has a range of more than 600 meters, and now it is fired at the same time, like an infantry salvo with a musket, and also like a volley of 10,000 guns aimed at a dreadnought during World War I.

Since then, a large ship of Tartar has been hit by four flowering shells in a row, explosions have been sounded continuously, thick smoke has billowed out, and the entire large ship has been plunged into a sea of fire.

Seeing a cannonball falling on the boat, the officers and men on board jumped into the rolling river one by one, not daring to look up at all.

At the same time as the gunboats opened fire, Chen Huaixi and Tan Wen each led four sampan boat brigades to attack, continuously attacking the Tartar naval army and increasing its confusion.

The two sides fought together, and Yang Jie kept reminding everyone that although the firepower of this Fran cannon was very powerful, it had an Achilles' heel, that is, it was particularly difficult to reload, and the only way to do this was to take advantage of the opponent's loading time to suddenly rush over and fight with the opponent.