Two quarters of an hour passed quickly, and Ye Lincheng ordered his soldiers to light lanterns and send a signal to Chen San on the river, and then ordered Ye Jiajie, including four outposts, to prepare to launch a second round of attacks on the French position.

After Ye Jiajie received the order, he asked the soldiers of the whole outpost to re-check the equipment, especially the waist knife that was prepared for melee assault. The guns of the Black Flag Army were not and are not equipped with any bayonets, and their realization was the same throughout the Qing Dynasty.

After receiving the signal and replying at the slow flow on the south bank of the Nanding River, Chen San put away the anchor stone and let the boat follow the current along the diagonal line to the river beach on the south side of the French army.

The second round of the contest is about to begin.

At about seven o'clock (4:45 a.m.), the Black Flag Army, taking advantage of the last bit of darkness before dawn, again hurried forward and whispered close to the French camp.

As the battlefield approached the previous fierce battle, although the soldiers of the Black Flag Army rushed forward, the wounded soldiers who had been left on the battlefield before shouted for help. These wounded soldiers who were left on the battlefield naturally knew that it was their own people who came from that side, and driven by the instinct to survive, all kinds of pleading, scolding, and shouting rang out one after another.

Ye Jiajie heard the various shouts that rose up in a chaotic manner, and knew that something was wrong, so he straightened up and shouted loudly to the brothers in his post to follow him and rush forward.

And Ye Chenglin was also behind, and heard a call from the night ahead. In an instant, his red eyes grabbed the herald's own soldiers, pushed forward hard, and shouted, "Come forward, let them shoot quickly to cover Jiajie, go quickly!" ”

As the battlefield resounded with the scrambled voices of people, the French, although they could not understand the shouts, knew that the enemy was close at hand.

The dead branches and weeds that had been ignited in the previous battle were almost all burned away, leaving only a small pile of unfinished embers, which shimmered red in the night. When the figure crosses the red light, the gunfire resumes! This time it was the French who fired first.

Ye Jiajie squinted his eyes and nervously calculated the distance between himself and the Frenchman on the top of the hillside, and when it was almost fifty meters, Ye Jiajie shouted loudly, "Fire!" Ye Jiajie and the Black Flag Army quickly straightened up, pulled the trigger and fired desperately at the French position.

Between each time they pulled the trigger straight and pulled the bolt backwards to put in the bullets, the Black Flags rushed forward two steps with all their might, repeating the cycle.

Although Lin Mingdun's needle gun was still a single-shot rifle, the firepower of the rear-loading ammunition and the accuracy of the rifled gun were obviously far more than MLE1853, and the concentrated fire of nearly 100 people instantly shot a series of white smoke from the French army's hillside position.

Second Lieutenant Tyrek was a little surprised by the firepower of the Black Flag Army, in his opinion, this round of firepower was like an infantry unit should have firepower, and the previous firepower was a child's play.

"Keep your body down, be hidden, shoot alternately, be careful to reload, be careful to shoot frequency!" Ensign Tyrek shouted back and forth, reminding his soldiers of the shooting essentials they should be aware of.

At the same time that Ye Jiajie's team began to attack, Chen San's fleet also smoothly approached the position of the French on the north bank of the Nanding River. Hearing the dense gunfire coming from his right, Chen San anxiously urged the helmsman to quickly dock, and after feeling the friction between the bottom of the boat and the silt at the bottom of the river, Chen San shouted at his subordinates, jumped into the water, and prepared to rush to the position of the French first.

The river water and silt instantly flooded the top of Chen San's head who had just jumped into the river beach, and as the muddy water rushed into Chen San's nose and mouth, Chen San, whose big name was Chen Congqin, the last conscious "grass" in his life, was also held alive in his stomach. Not only Chen San, but also the soldiers of the Black Flag Army who jumped from the ten small boats together also suffered from this bad luck, and a few clever guys who were dragging behind, seeing that the situation was not right, while pulling the smoothbore gun to shoot, shouted and asked the helmsman to operate the boat to retreat immediately, but the bottom of the boat had been sucked up by the mud at the bottom of the river, and several small boats did not move at all.

Facing the French position on the Nanding River, gunfire also rang out at this time, and bullets rang out from the boats. The remaining clever ghosts and helmsmen ran to the stern of the boat, turned over and jumped into the Nanding River and went downstream.

In the dark night, Ye Jiajie's troops had already fired nearly ten rounds, and in these ten rounds of shooting, Ye Jiajie gradually figured out the shooting pattern of the French on the opposite side, and the French would also pause slightly after about 7-8 gunshots. These ten rounds of shooting also allowed Ye Jiajie's troops to advance about twenty meters and reach the bottom of the dirt slope. But this 20-meter section of the road is also full of blood, more than 30 of Ye Jiajie's troops have fallen forever, and most of the remaining 60 people have gunshot wounds.

When he heard the ridiculous gunshots that sounded by the dark river, Ye Jiajie's spirit was shocked, and it was only Chen San who released sporadic gunshots in order to attack the French position and cooperate with himself.

Ye Jiajie shouted loudly and pulled out the waist knife on his back, "Brothers, come with me!" ”

"Rapid Shooting!" Ensign Tyrek saw the dark shadow rushing up from the shadow, and shouted in the same voice! Instead of reloading, all French soldiers quickly grabbed another rifle that had been loaded next to them after one gun ran out of bullets, and continued to fire rapidly.

The last thirty meters of the charging distance made Ye Jiajie scold his mother in his heart, the French army is on this small dirt slope, the vertical distance from the bottom of the slope to the top of the slope is at most ten meters high, the slope is not high, and the slope is gentle, but the pit is covered by weeds, this gentle slope is hidden in many places, and the vertical drop that cannot be seen during the day is close to one meter to two meters of soil depression.

During the Black Flag Army's final charge, some of them either stepped into the air or were blocked in the hollows. More than 70 people overcame the barricades and endured at least three rounds of rapid bullet rain from the French army, and finally less than 19 people rushed to less than 10 meters in front of the French position.

"Turks, get on the bayonet!" Ensign Tyrek screamed! Seven Algerian snipers, including Ensign Tyrek, loaded the MLE1878 with a Yakante scimitar-style bayonet, and a spear close to 1.88 meters appeared.

"Turks, assemble! Advance! Ensign Tyrek shouted as he walked alongside the seven Turks.

"Brothers, people are dead and birds are facing the sky, fight with them!" Ye Jiajie brandished his waist knife and shouted, leading the last nineteen men of this sentry, and also shouted fearlessly and pounced into the darkness ahead.

Just after five o'clock in the morning, the first rays of morning light in the sky pierced the night and shone on the top of the dirt slope, under this ray of sunlight, Ye Chenglin saw the last figure of his nephew when he fell, and the flickering light on the French bayonet in the sun pierced Ye Chenglin's heartache.

As the sky grew brighter, the battlefield outside Nanding City also showed its hideous face. On the river beach at the southern end of the French position, there were a few small boats scattered around, and several corpses lay in the boats, but there was nothing unusual on the pitch-black river beach.

On the northern position, Li Da's troops were still firing at the French from a distance, and when the sky was already dark, the French army relied on the MLE1878's own ruler to easily shoot the soldiers in Li Da's army at a long distance, and the retreat of Li Da's army was inevitable.

In the eastern position, a distance of nearly five hundred meters was scattered with the corpses of the Black Flag Army, and the closer the corpses got to the French position, the denser they became. Although Zhang Si and Liu Mazi's team still insisted on the eastern battlefield, from the sparse gunfire, it had long been clear that they had no intention of fighting, and like Li Da, they were just waiting for the sound of the gong.

Ye Chenglin looked at the tragic situation on the battlefield, gritted his teeth and clenched his fists, and finally spit out two words in his mouth: "Collect the troops!" The gong sounded, and the remaining Black Flag troops on the battlefield breathed a sigh of relief and hurriedly retreated again.

Ensign Tyrek nervously watched the Black Flag Army retreat, and then inspected the defense line again, although many of the twelve people were slightly wounded, but the team was still intact, even if this round was subjected to more fierce fire from the Black Flag Army, but under the protection of the trench defense system, the Turks' lives were still unharmed. After arranging and guarding the personnel, Second Lieutenant Tyrek asked everyone to hurry up and eat and rest, and prepare themselves for the rest of the battle.

Ye Chenglin looked at his Chengzi battalion and wanted to cry without tears, the whole army led by his nephew Ye Jiajie was wiped out, Chen San's surprise attack force was nowhere to be seen, and it was estimated that there was more than one bad luck, and the remaining three outposts were responsible for the feint attack, and fortunately they lost more than ten people this time. Up to now, of the more than 500 people in the Chengzi battalion, only 221 people are standing in front of him.

Fighting, the heart is more than enough but the strength is insufficient, withdrawing, the heart is unwilling. This is the current state of mind of Ye Chenglin, the leader of the Chengzi camp, and when he was hesitating, the whistle of the steam wheel suddenly came from the river.

A steamer flying the French flag came slowly from the lower reaches of the Nanding River.

Looking at the steamer slowly rising, Ye Chenglin no longer hesitated, gritted his teeth and shouted, "Withdraw!" Then he took the remnants to the north, moved to the south of Dingxian County, and left the river far away. While Ye Chenglin was retreating, a sharp-eyed soldier of the Black Flag Army suddenly shouted, "Look, the French devil has taken off the flag!" They're leaving! ”

Ye Chenglin sent a scout team to reconnoiter the French camp again, and after half an hour he was told that the French had indeed gone down the river by boat, Ye Chenglin couldn't help but shout with tears in his eyes, "Your mother, why can't you delay it for another half a day, Jiajie, it's the uncle who is sorry for you!" ”

The battle between the French and the Black Flag was only a small wave in the long river of entanglement between the two in the decade from 1874 to 1884.

Professional soldiers vs. armed peasants, systematic theory of war vs. spontaneous combat experience, repeating rear-loading guns vs. front-loading / rear-loading single-shot guns, prone fire vs. upright dense firing arrays of protected trench systems, history has proven who will win.

A few days later, Feng Zicai, the governor of Guangxi, wrote down the battle of the Black Flag Army against the French in Annam, along with his appeal that the Qing should be equipped with repeated-fire guns as soon as possible.