Huang Taiji looked at the Ming army camp opposite from the monocular in his hand, and saw that after the Ming army troops and Mongolian troops on the opposite side had finished lining up, they stood quietly in place and stopped moving, and did not intend to take advantage of the situation to attack their own camp.

Soon the gate on the right side of the camp on the opposite side opened again, and first a group of knights wearing red cloaks and shiny silver-white cuirass dressed in wipes led out, followed by a noble man wearing a golden helmet, wearing full-length armor, with golden protruding shoulder armor on both shoulders, and red shoulder tassels, slowly came out under the escort of four generals, and then a team of knights in gorgeous armor followed out from the gate.

Huang Taiji was thinking about what the nobleman who seemed to be the emperor on the other side was going to do, but he had already heard the Ming army array passing by by the Ming army suddenly erupted in an astonishing cry, and he listened intently, and the soldiers on the opposite side shouted "Long live my emperor... Long live the emperor...", slowly distinguishing in his ears.

If at the beginning, these soldiers on the opposite side had no experience, and the shouting voices were still a little up and down, then when Chongzhen walked through two or three arrays, the uniform cry of "Long live my emperor" had already covered up all the noise on the battlefield, and also made Huang Taiji hear it even more clearly.

Although the Ming army on the opposite side only shouted a few slogans, for the commanders who had fought old battles, such as Huang Taiji, Dai Shan, and Mang Gurtai, they could naturally hear that the morale of the troops on the opposite side was constantly rising.

Mang Gurtai pressed his temple with his hand, and seemed to be a little impetuous, and he was a little upset to Huang Taiji and Dai Shan, and he said to Huang Taiji and Dai Shan in some distraught: "Which little emperor is simply too deceitful, and actually inspects the army in front of us, which is treating us as dead."

Did you let me bring a team of men and horses to rush, interrupt their momentum, so as not to demoralize our army? ”

Dai Shan glanced at the Mongolian leaders whispering on the left and right sides under the high platform, and couldn't help but sigh and said: "I'm afraid it's too late, now the allies of our army are in doubt, and I am afraid that they can only bring humiliation on themselves by transferring them to attack the Ming army position that has just been incited by the emperor." Unless, when the Emperor sees us attacking, he looks away and runs away. ”

Huang Taiji's face sank like water, shook his head and said: "Since the emperor dares to review the three armies in front of us, either he himself has a strong temperament, or he has a famous general in the other camp, so he can come up with such a risky trick."

If it was the former, the emperor would not retreat, and the morale of the three armies was stimulated, and the battle became a melee, although the number of the enemy and our armies was not much different. But the soldiers in the army who can obey the order to fight to the death, I am not as good as him, and who wins and who loses this battle depends on the will of God.

If we win, it will be a great victory if we can hold the emperor, but the Ming Kingdom will not perish. But if it fails, the three of us will be captured or killed, will Houjin still exist?

If it's the latter, the result will be even worse, since the other party can let the emperor review the three armies before the two armies, there must be a backhand..."

Mang Gurtai suddenly stopped, although he was short-tempered, he didn't intend to use his life as a bet on whether the emperor on the other side would be captured.

Huang Taiji stared at Chongzhen and reviewed two-thirds of the army, and after crossing the Ulanqab River, which was eighty or ninety zhang wide, he put down his binoculars and instructed the guards on the side: "Order all troops to guard the flood land today, and not leave the flood land without authorization to contact the enemy army."

Sony, you go down and prepare pen and ink, I will write a letter to the emperor, and you and Azhuhu will go to the emperor as my messengers..."

When Sonny and Azhuhu walked out of their camp with three cavalrymen, the Ming army on the opposite side was retreating to the camp in an orderly manner.

The basin of Ulanqab is known as three mountains and two rivers. The three mountains naturally refer to the mountains such as the Daqingshan branch and the gray Tengliang in the west and north and east; The first of the two rivers refers to the Ulanqab River that crosses the west and east from the front of the camp and then turns to the south.

The other is the Quanyuling River, which is smaller than the Ulanqab River, although it also originates in the Daqing Mountains in the northwest like the Ulanqab River, but flows from behind the camp to the southeast, until it is almost at the foot of the mountain to the east, and then turns to the south. The water of the two rivers was eventually poured into Jining Haizi.

The Ulanqab River, which flows through his own camp, is nearly half narrower than the lower reaches of the Ulanqab River, which turns south, after all, there are still several small rivers in the east that also flow into the lower reaches of the Ulanqab River in the south.

Thanks to the efforts of the Han craftsmen in the camp, three pontoon bridges were erected on the river in just a few days, and four more spacious pontoon bridges were under construction.

After Sonny led people across the pontoon bridge, it was an extremely flat grassland, of course, if you look at it from the side, this plain has a little angle to the south, but Sonny and the others naturally can't feel it.

The distance between the Houjin camp and the Ming army camp is about eight or nine miles, and this grassland occupies about seven or eight miles. Previously, the Ming army went out of the camp for three miles to line up, and it was only five or six miles away from the Houjin camp, so that the soldiers in the Houjin camp could hear the call of the Ming army.

In order to show his identity as a messenger, Sony suppressed the speed of the team, and it took more than 20 minutes to arrive in front of the Ming army's camp, and the actions of their four or five people had already been seen by the Ming army from afar, and before they arrived at the first trench outside the Ming army's camp, there was already a small group of Ming cavalry to meet them.

After Sonny explained his intention to the leader of the cavalry, the middle-aged knight with a sloppy beard nodded lazily at him and said, "Since you are an envoy, then follow our team and do not leave the team, otherwise we will treat you as Houjin's sentinels." ”

Although the middle-aged knight did not say how he would deal with them if they were Houjin's sentinels. But looking at the posture of this team of more than a dozen Ming army knights sandwiching their team in the middle, Sony also knew that it would definitely not be a good treatment.

However, even if these Ming troops blocked his view, when he went to the camp of the Ming army, Sony still found a lot of things. At a distance of about 120 paces from the camp, the Ming dug a shallow, wide trench with river water in the trench, and only a few places did the Ming set up movable planks for walking.

Thirty paces further into the trench were two barbed wire stakes that were only one step apart, and the two barbed wire fences were not of the same height, the outward one about as high as a horse's back, and the inward one as high as a horse's head.

The stakes in the two barbed wire fences seemed to be quite solid, and in the clearing between the barbed wire, there were many shiny pieces of glass, the edges of which were extremely sharp, apparently used against climbers.

After seeing these two barbed wires, Sonny immediately figured out the purpose of the shallow trench before, which was to slow down the cavalry, so that the cavalry could not directly charge the two barbed wires.

Forty-five steps further forward from the barbed wire, there is another 1.5-meter-wide trench, but this trench seems a little deep, and Sony estimates that if you fall down, you may not be able to reach the upper edge of the trench if you raise your hand.

To make matters worse, the earth dug out of the trench was piled up on the side of the camp to form a half-man-high earthen wall, which was obviously intended to allow the enemy who had fallen from the trench to climb back, which in turn hindered the attacker's route.

Although there are no further defenses from this earthen wall to the camp, the wooden wall outside the camp is not fixed by the traditional wooden planks, but the barbed wire on the outside and the side vans on the inside. It's all something that can be disassembled and reused, and it's no wonder that the camp of the Ming army will be set up so quickly, Sony couldn't help but think so after looking at these defense facilities.

Chongzhen wore his armor and reviewed it in front of the three armies for a morning, and when he returned to the camp, he was already sweating profusely, and his hands and feet were sore. Although the temperature is not high today, it still makes people feel hot and dry under the direct sun.

However, when he returned to the big tent on the mountain behind the west side of the camp, he soon felt a coolness. Because there was a natural pool next to his tent, and the water source came from a clear spring on the side of the mountain, and when the breeze blew, it immediately cooled the surroundings.

Don't look at the plain of nearly 10 miles between the Ming army and the Houjin camp, but on the west and southwest sides of the Ming army camp, there are three protruding stone mountains. The back mountain near the Chongzhen Big Tent has the widest radius and the highest altitude, but the slope is also the most soothing.

Houshan is the foothold, there is an unnamed hill 6, 700 places away from its north, the mountain is steep in the east and gentle in the west, the mountain is about 50 or 60 meters high, the top is relatively flat, it is one kilometer wide from east to west, and it is 3 kilometers long from north to south.

Standing on this hill, you can observe the situation of the entire Ming army camp, and after placing a few artillery pieces on it, it is to control the passage outside the west camp and the west side of the camp, so this hill is completely enclosed in the Ming army camp. Because of its resemblance to a tiger, it was named Tiger Mountain by a staff officer of the base camp.

And 800 meters away from the west of Houshan, there is another mountain that covers an area of nearly half of the back mountain, according to the principle of the left dragon and the right tiger, this mountain is named Wolong Mountain. Although there is only an 800-meter passage between Wolong Mountain and Houshan, it is the main road from Jining Fort to the Ming army camp. Further west of Wolong Mountain are the hills with complex terrain and the branches of Daqing Mountain.

It should be said that Yuan Chonghuan and the staff headquarters of the base camp chose to build a defensive line here to resist the attack of the Houjin army, and they still had a great advantage.

However, it was precisely because the Ming army had the advantage that the Houjin army refused to attack now, but set up a large camp to find a loophole in the Ming army.

Although Chongzhen saved a lot of morale with a school review, he also knew that this alone was not enough to make the Later Jin army retreat to Liaodong.

Even if he once made the Houjin army suffer a small loss in Jizhou and Yizhou, the Houjin people would only think that it was an opportunistic trick for him, and in such a head-on battle, the Houjin army was still extremely superstitious about their past achievements.

Only by defeating the opposing Houjin army in such a frontal battle can we really boost the morale of the Ming army, reverse the impression that the Houjin are good at attacking and the Ming army is good at defending the city, and get rid of the Ming army's fear of war as soon as it encounters the Jurchens.

Chongzhen, who had cooled down a little, asked the staff officers to take the nearby terrain sand table and drawings, and began to study the battle plan formulated by the staff headquarters against these tools.