The sun was gradually rising, and the morning fog was beginning to dissipate. The fire cloud snorted and scraped the ground with its hooves. Early in the morning, before dawn, he had a good meal, including soybeans and a lot of eggs, and now, he needs to exercise.

The cavalry company had completed the preparations before departure, and the company Changbai He was now standing next to the fire cloud, explaining the combat mission to the whole company: "Our company was ordered to bypass the enemy defenses from the right side of the enemy fortress, attack the Jianzhi farms along the river, and set fire to the unharvested wheat fields. Lure the enemy cavalry into battle with our army, and kill and wound the enemy cavalry as much as possible. Now make a pre-departure equipment check. ”

The soldiers began to check their equipment: half-body armor, sabers, pistols, double-barreled shotguns, ......, and after the same inspection, the squad leaders checked the soldiers' things again. Then report to the company commander.

Seeing that everyone was ready, Bai He led his horse and set off with a cavalry company. Yes, with a horse. The number of horses in the model army was still limited, and it was not yet possible to make the light cavalry have two horses per person. In fact, this is not necessary, the distance between the target and the fort is limited, and with the speed of a hybrid Arabian horse, even the light cavalry of the opponent can quickly pull away and run out of the opponent's line of sight if it needs to get rid of it. However, the premise of this is that the horse's physical strength must be guaranteed. Therefore, when marching, you can only go on foot. Even in order to reduce the loss of horsepower. Weapons and armor and other things were carried by the riders themselves.

The soldiers led their horses along the barren beach by the river for a while, and the two castles built by the Great Liao River were in front of them.

Both forts are bastion pattern. Speaking of which, when Sun Yuanhua was in Dengzhou, he studied the construction of a fortress. Later, after the Denglai Rebellion, the relevant personnel and materials fell into the hands of the Manchus. The Manchus attached great importance to techniques such as cannon casting, but not much to things like fortification. This is also normal, under the conditions of invincibility in the field, who wants to bother to study how to build a city?

However, after the model army began to show its strength on the main road, the Manchu Qing Dynasty's self-confidence in their "invincibility in the field" had been shaken somewhat, and coupled with the limitation of insufficient troops, they paid attention to the construction of cities again. However, at this time, it has been more than ten years since the Denglai Rebellion, and most of the original people and materials are gone. However, after repeatedly encountering each other in front of the model army's fortress, my understanding of the fortress in the Qing Dynasty has made a qualitative leap, and now the two small fortresses they built are also similar.

Of course, the Qing army on the fortress also discovered these cavalry, in fact, the cavalry dispatched today was not only a company of Baihe, but two entire battalions, more than 600 cavalry.

White River's company was a company of dragoons, only it had just been replaced with better horses and double-barreled shotguns specially prepared for horse combat. Nowadays, there are more and more such dragoon companies, and even some of the original light cavalry units have begun to be equipped with carbines and used as dragoons. However, these teams are not comparable to Baihe's company, and their horsemanship and sword skills are far superior to Baihe's company, which was originally only a horse infantry.

The artillery on the Qing fortress had a limited range, but it also covered the roads along the river. So Shirakawa had to leave the main road with his company and make a detour in the field. The wild land next to this road was originally a patch of fertile land, but it has been abandoned for a long time. Now there is only a faint shadow of the field, and most of the places are no different from the wilderness.

In this field, there were all kinds of wild grasses, wild wheat, wild sorghum growing freely in this field, and in many places the weeds were so deep that they could be higher than a human head. If there is an ambush of a group of men and horses and a few cannons, it will definitely cause great damage to the passing team. But that's not a problem anymore. Because the day before yesterday, the model army took advantage of the opportunity of the south wind to set a fire, and the fire burned for a whole day and a night, and I don't know how much of a wilderness was burned, anyway, even the fortress of Jianzhi was burned down. So now there is no vegetation in this field, only an endless gray-black remnant of ash. In addition, the fire also burned the ground more dry, which reduced the possibility of the horses' hooves getting stuck in the mud.

Shirakawa stopped the horse, and he quickly climbed onto the horse, stood in the saddle, and raised his binoculars to look over the fortress. I saw that a group of cavalry came out from the fortress, but the number was not large, Bai He counted, but there were only thirteen horsemen. Such a small force, of course, could not be used to intercept itself. At the same time, he also noticed that Jian Yan had already lit up wolf smoke.

"It seems that it is difficult to catch the peasants of Jianxuan, and when they see this wolf smoke, most of them will hide back in Dao Zhuangzi. But they can run people, not the grain in the field. In addition, maybe there will be interceptions ahead. Shirakawa thought.

However, Shirakawa is not too worried about interception. Liaodong is a large plain, and it is not easy to intercept a highly mobile cavalry in such an environment. It requires the use of a large number of troops and the consumption of a large number of resources. Of course, they have enough cavalry, and they have enough resources to support such large-scale interceptions and ambushes, but they may not have the will to do so, because it would consume too many resources. Even if you win, most of the gains outweigh the losses.

Bai He led the cavalry company down the main road, and the dozen or so Jianzhi cavalry still led their horses from a distance to follow. Bai He didn't care much, and in a short time, the cavalry company bypassed the two small fortresses of Jianxi. These two forts were not large, and it was impossible to have a large cavalry stationed in them.

The cavalry company went up the road again, and when Bai He looked forward, another pillar of smoke had risen in front of him. Shirakawa waved at the soldiers and mounted his horse. The soldiers also got on their horses, and the cavalry company began to speed up, trotting along the official road.

Now the cavalry company is just trotting, but the half-breed horses are also trotting faster than the Mongolian horses, so the dozen or so Jianqi scouts who are following them are in trouble, and they can only let their war horses really run, so that they can barely keep up with Baihe. But in this way, the physical exertion of the horse will naturally be greater.

After about a quarter of an hour of marching forward, the cavalry company began to slow down, and the soldiers all took their carbines in their hands. Not far ahead, there is a camp in Jianxin, and according to the intelligence of the previous scouts, some cavalry units of Jianshen may be stationed here. So the soldiers need to be more vigilant.

About 500 paces ahead, there was a wooded field, where the river had made a turn, and the road had also turned. The woods blocked Shirakawa's view, and Shirakawa felt that if Kengyu was going to ambush him, then the back of the woods would be a good place. If he follows the official road, there will be a sharp turn in the road. If the opponent hides there, he can give himself a hard shot.

And if you pass through this section, there is a large field behind you.

White River was sure that his opponent must be hiding behind the woods. Because out of this place, there is no better place to ambush him. Shirakawa wasn't too afraid of an encounter with his opponent's cavalry, and he was most worried about whether his opponent would hide a few cannons behind the woods. So he led the party out of the official road, through a wasteland overgrown with weeds, intending to bypass the woods from the other side.

There must have been enemy spies on the other side of the woods, and after a while, White River noticed that some dust had risen from behind the woods. It was clearly the enemy cavalry that was lying in ambush here on the move. The undulating ground of the wilderness where White River was now located made it difficult for them to form a tight formation, and he had to get his soldiers through the area as quickly as possible.

The dragoons began to speed up and ran straight into the field. The change in speed was clearly beyond the expectations of the enemy, and by the time their cavalry appeared, the dragoons had already bypassed the woods and returned to the official road.

About two hundred Mongol cavalry pursued from behind. However, Baihe was not worried, the Mongols could not keep up with them. As soon as he accelerated, he could easily shake off the Mongols. But at this moment, seven or eight cavalry suddenly came out from behind an inconspicuous mound. They drew their sabers and rushed forward.

The small mound was small, and there weren't many people hiding behind it, so Baihe didn't pay much attention to it at all. However, the cavalry that appeared at this time would slow down the speed of the horse team, so that the Mongols behind might catch up.

Jianshen had never fought against the Dragoons of the Model Army. So they did not know the usual way of fighting of the model army dragoons. Seeing Jian Yan rushing towards him, the dragoons all raised their shotguns in their hands.

Compared to their previous carbines, the shotguns had a much shorter range, and were basically only effective at targets at a distance of thirty paces. However, the shotgun is a face attack, so its hit rate is much higher than that of a regular carbine on a galloping horse. The dragoons used large shotguns, each barrel loaded with six half-penny shotguns. At close range, it is enough to penetrate the armor commonly used by Jianshen, or kill Jianshen's horses.

"Bang! Bang! Bang ......" A gunshot rang out, and the oncoming Jianzhi was swept away almost instantly. Of course, at this time, the Mongolian cavalry behind also chased closer.

White River raised his whistle and blew it, and the dragoons slowed down even further. The Mongols were getting closer, and some of them were even starting to shoot at them with their cavalry bows. Of course, the threat of these soft bows is limited, and it is more than harassment.

"Let's show the Mongols our Mangu tactics." Shirakawa thought so.