(Let's talk about a bug first, according to the original outline, Tan Xiao's Yuezhou battalion came to fight Zhaojiawan, and it was Teng Shuanglin who blocked Lekdehun, but when I wrote Chapter 150, my brain suddenly short-circuited, and Teng Shuanglin was written as Tan Xiao, and I apologize here, saying that it has been revised.) ）

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Although he was full of confidence before the war, after the Chu army launched an attack, Hutab immediately felt great pressure.

The first to be attacked was the Henan Green Battalion.

In the face of the Henan Green Battalion, the soldiers of the Yuezhou Battalion obviously had a psychological advantage, and the attack was wide open and closed, wave after wave, which appeared to be full of momentum, on the other hand, Zhang Yingxiang's Green Battalion soldiers shrank back and defended passively everywhere, basically holding their heads and being beaten.

Zhang Yingxiang's troops were already small, and he was pressed and beaten by the Yuezhou battalion, and he couldn't support it, so Hutabu had to send the Eight Banners soldiers to help in the battle, and finally regained the shape. But his face was obviously a little ugly, and the fact that the reserves had just begun showed that the enemy's combat effectiveness was significantly higher than expected, and the battle would be more difficult later.

Seeing the Eight Banners cavalry fighting, the rangers of the Chu army immediately met the battle, the number of both sides was about the same, but the Eight Banners cavalry was still more courageous, and soon gained the upper hand, killing the Chu cavalry to retreat, so they had to move closer to the infantry of the Yuezhou battalion to jointly resist the charge of the Eight Banners cavalry.

At this time, the infantry and cavalry on both sides were mixed together, the cavalry of the Ming army was weaker, but it was strongly supported by the infantry, and the cavalry of the Qing army was stronger, but the infantry was pulling back legs. The two sides were evenly matched, and it was difficult to tell the winner for a long time.

As soon as the Eight Banners cavalry left Tushan, the Chu army launched an attack on the Tianyou soldiers.

In order to deal with the Heavenly Blessing Soldiers. Wang Kefan made targeted preparations before the battle, and transferred 1,200 bird-gun soldiers from various battalions to use them in a centralized manner, plus more than 500 flintlock muskets, to raise 1,800 musketeers, nearly twice the strength of the Qing army's musketeers.

There were more people than him, more guns than him, and more than five hundred new flintlock pistols. The Ming army clearly had an advantage, the only disadvantage was that the Qing army had six tiger squat guns.

The Tiger Squat Cannon was originally the standard weapon of the Ming Army. After Kong Youde, Geng Zhongming and others surrendered to the Qing Dynasty, they became a killing weapon in the hands of the Qing army, and this kind of lightweight artillery weighed only a few dozen catties, and it could not be regarded as a cannon. It should be regarded as a "mortar" of the Ming Dynasty.

The tiger squat cannon is Qi Jiguang's invention because of his ugliness. It has many disadvantages, first of all, the firing range is short, its effective killing distance does not exceed a hundred steps, and secondly, the rate of fire is slow, due to the complex reloading steps, it takes two or three minutes to shoot one shot, and secondly, the heat dissipation performance is very poor, and it can be fired three times in a row at most. It will have to carry out cumbersome cooling treatment, and it will lose its combat effectiveness for a long time.

But. The Tiger Squat Cannon has flexible mobility and can be equipped to fight with the infantry unit, and can also be loaded with lead used by the bird's gun, firing a hundred shots at a time, which is powerful in close combat, especially against enemies in dense formations.

The general staff of the Chu army repeatedly conducted deductions before the battle, and whether it was launched by infantry or cavalry, it would cause unbearable casualties under the bombardment of tiger squat artillery.

Even if it was filled with human lives at any cost, as long as the Qing army set up a barricade in front of the artillery position, the Chu army would be forced to stop the charge and use its flesh and blood to withstand the shotgun fired by the tiger squat cannon...... Like the flintlock gun, the closer the tiger squat cannon is, the greater the lethality, if this roadblock is at a position of twenty or thirty steps, what awaits the Chu army will be a dense raindrop of shotguns, and the Tianyou soldiers still have a thousand bird guns, such a dense firepower will inevitably cause heavy casualties, so that the soldiers lose their fighting spirit, and eventually collapse.

Since neither infantry nor cavalry were adequate, the General Staff, after repeated discussions, used a completely new tactic to attack the Tiger Squat Artillery directly with musketeers...... The Chu army had superior musketeers and were armed with new flintlock muskets, and their firepower was enough to rival the Tianyou soldiers and eventually defeat them.

This tactic completely violated the previous battlefield experience, many Chu generals doubted this, it is not uncommon to use a large number of musketeers in defense, there is no precedent for relying entirely on musketeers to attack, even the best at using firearms, Tianyou soldiers, when attacking, only let the musketeers be responsible for fire support and cover.

Wang Kefan, however, expressed clear support for the General Staff and strongly advocated their battle plan.

In addition to the Chongyang battalion and the Tongcheng battalion, the musketeers of the other battalions were used intensively, and spent two days for assault training in terms of coordination, and the battalions of the Chu army often fought together, and soon completed the integration work, and 1,800 musketeers formed an organic combat collective, which made a shining appearance in the battle of Zhaojiawan......

More than 500 flintlock musketeers were in the center, followed by 200 spearmen, in front were 500 bird guns, and there were more than 300 bird guns on the left and right.

The Gongyi battalion was responsible for protecting their flanks, and more than 2,000 soldiers formed a spear formation, but the distance between the soldiers was much smaller, so the formation was closer, and their task was to intercept the infantry and cavalry of the Qing army and prevent the enemy from launching a counterattack on the musketeers.

When there were still about 600 steps away from Tushan, the Qing army sailors on the steaming water river opened artillery from afar to try to help the friendly troops on the Tushan, but due to the distance, most of the shells fell 100 steps away, and after the Ming army gradually approached Tushan, the Qing army sailors were worried about hurting their own people and stopped shelling.

On the left flank of the Qing army, the Eight Banners and the Green Battalion were fighting with the Yuezhou battalion, and when they found that a large force of the Chu army was attacking Tushan, they divided one hundred and ten cavalry to harass them.

The Gongyi battalion pressed forward in time, blocking the direction of their advance, seeing the dense spear array of the Gongyi battalion, the self-proclaimed invincible Eight Banners cavalry could only retreat, but in the blink of an eye they were entangled by Wang Meng and Tan Xiao, Zhang Yingxiang hurriedly ordered the green battalion soldiers to support, and under a chaotic battle, they returned to the rhythm of the "two people and three legs" game.

On the earth mountain, Hutab's expression was very strict, staring at the Gongyi camp that was getting closer and closer, but there was a faint trace of eagerness in his eyes.

"The Gongyi battalion is the number one main force of the Chu army, as long as they are defeated, Zhaojiawan will almost win this battle."

The Chu army sent the strongest battalion of Gongyi to deal with him, and Hutabu was both nervous and proud, eager to defeat a powerful enemy and become famous in a battle.

"Please rest assured, Lord Zhangjing, although the Gongyi Battalion is famous, it will never be able to attack Tushan, and the cannons of the Heavenly Blessing Soldiers will make them bleed!" Jiang Dingyuan was also very excited, the spear formation of the Gongyi battalion was so close, he seemed to have seen groups of Chu soldiers being knocked down by the tiger squat cannon.

They immediately ordered to prepare for battle, and the firepower advantage of the Heavenly Blessing Soldiers could only be fully exploited in the defense, and what they had to do now was to wait for the Gongyi Battalion to hit their heads on the stones.

However, as the enemy continued to approach, Hutab and Jiang Dingyuan soon discovered that the situation was not right, judging from the offensive formation of the Chu army, the Gongyi battalion seemed to be the covering force, and the musket force of nearly 2,000 men was the real main force of the attack.

"I heard that the muskets of the southern thieves were equipped with short swords (bayonets), are they going to use musketeers to fight hand-to-hand?" Jiang Dingyuan was very sensitive to the news about muskets, and knew that the musketeers of the Chu army could engage in white-knuckle combat, but from a distance, the muzzles of the musketeers of the Chu army were bare, and they were not equipped with the legendary short swords.

"It doesn't make sense, even if the musketeers could rush to the cannons, we would only need to send the shieldmen and pikemen to break their daggers." Hutab's heart is also very strange, even if the musketeers use bayonets, the ability to fight with white knives is not as good as that of real infantry, since the Chu army sent them up, they must use muskets to fight, but are they not afraid of the counterattack of the Qing army's infantry?

Now was not the time to discuss the reason, the two discussed briefly and ordered the infantry of the Tianyou soldiers to prepare and launch a counter-charge if necessary to crush the musketeers of the Chu army......

The Qing army did not have real artillery, and the musketeers of the Chu army approached Tushan along the lì, and within eighty paces, the tiger squat cannon of the Qing army opened fire, and the six tiger squat cannons spit out puffs of white smoke in turn, and dense lead broke through the air and shot towards the musket team.

At the same time, the 1,000 bird-fired soldiers of the Heavenly Blessed Soldiers formed two phalanxes, arched on both sides of the artillery position, and with the order of the officer, they took another ten steps forward, the soldiers in the front row crouched, the soldiers in the second row with muskets on their shoulders, and the soldiers in the third row stood with their guns in their hands.

"Fire!"

More than 300 bird guns fired together, shooting at the approaching Chu army fifty paces away.

……

There were lead whistling above his head and beside him, Wang Kebin held the gun in both hands, the body of the gun was close to his chest, and he took as big a stride as possible, hoping to walk faster.

The drum beat did not seem to have changed, and it seemed to be a little more urgent than just now, and the soldiers of the Chu army continued to advance under the fire of tiger squat cannons and bird guns.

Forty paces was the firing position set by Wang Kefan before the war, and at this distance, he had not yet entered the death zone of the Tiger Squat Cannon, but the accuracy of the flintlock gun could reach about 60 percent.

Due to the pre-loading of ammunition, the rhythm of the Tianyou soldiers was very fast, and the first round of three-stage salvo was quickly completed, and the soldiers of the Chu army also appeared three times of attrition, and then, the six tiger squat cannons also fired for the second time, and the dense rain of bullets was like an invisible big iron brush, and the soldiers in the front row of the Chu army immediately thinned out a lot.

Companions kept falling, Wang Kebin stepped forward twice to fill the position, and unconsciously came to the third row, and then the ground trembled slightly, and the big bull also came to his side.

"Stand!"

Finally waiting for the order to stop advancing, Wang Kebin felt that his heart was almost jumping out of his chest, and the short distance of dozens of steps just now was a difficult and dangerous road that he had never experienced in his life.

"Aim!"

Wang Kebin immediately raised the flintlock pistol, and around him, Da Guniu, Zhu Huaqi, and Wu veterans also raised their guns at the same time, 500 flintlock musketeers raised their guns at the same time, and more than 1,700 musketeers raised their guns at the same time, and the muzzles of the guns were densely pointed at the Tianyou soldiers. (To be continued......)