On May 29, the fifth year of Chongzhen, when it was ugly.

The sky is full of stars, and bonfires are dancing on the hillsides on both sides.

Sakhalian felt as if his men were surrounded by firelight.

Sakhalian led a thousand Manchurian soldiers who had lost their horses, and crossed the mountains and mountains to make a detour behind enemy lines. In order to lighten the load, no tents were carried with them, and Sakhalian was no exception.

However, the Manchurian soldiers could not afford not to bring their armor, and they carried fifty or sixty pounds of armor on a mountain road for a day, and the soldiers and soldiers all got up the next day with sore calves and stomachs, and they could only be more comfortable when they walked backwards.

Sakhalian sighed involuntarily.

Just when the soldiers were tired, while the Manchurian soldiers could not wear armor while the weather was hot, the thieves launched several shameless sneak attacks.

When the thieves attacked, they first emitted smoke. The smoke screen blocked the view of the Manchurian soldiers, and the soldiers could not see the red tassels on the generals' helmets, so the soldiers could not advance and retreat with the generals.

Then the thieves took advantage of the chaos to launch a rain of arrows to cover the approach of the Three-Eyed Gunner, and after the Three-Eyed Gunner bombarded at close range, the knife and shield hand threw a wooden flying thunder.

If the soldiers are in disarray, the thieves' sword and shield men will rush in and slash under the cover of the archers;

If the soldiers can still fight at this time, the thieves will drop a few smoke and fly away.

But Sakhalian did not dare to lead his troops in pursuit.

These are the lessons of blood.

The first time Sakhalian sent the armoured soldiers in pursuit, the thieves lured the armoured soldiers out of a short mountain road, and when the armoured soldiers were tired and full of gold stars, the thieves suddenly turned around and attacked with a wave of smoke and three-eyed guns, and then continued to retreat.

The second time, Sakhalian himself led a large number of unarmored soldiers to pursue, but the thieves led the unarmored Manchurian soldiers through a long mountain road, and then suddenly accelerated to shake off the Manchurian soldiers, and at the same time, Sakhalian's headquarters was attacked by another group of thieves.

Only then did Sakhalian realize that the Manchurian soldiers marching in the mountains could not catch up with the thieves at all.

It stands to reason that many Manchurian soldiers were mountain people, and they were no strangers to walking mountain roads.

But the Manchurian soldiers had a shortcoming that they couldn't get around, and that was their armor.

The reason why the Manchurian soldiers were strong was almost entirely due to their armor. Without armor, Sakhalian simply did not know how to fight. This time over the mountains and behind the enemy, if the Manchurian soldiers did not bring armor, it was better not to go.

But in the mountains, the heavy armor seriously slowed down the speed of the march and drained the physical strength of the soldiers, and it was impossible to start a battle.

Sakhalian had the intention of arranging for some of his soldiers to abandon their armor, but none of them did it.

Because armor is one of the few private valuables they have, and it is also a guarantee of their status.

Without armor, armor is reduced to "Yu Ding". Yu Ding, as the name suggests, is a superfluous person.

There is no more horse, and the armor must not be lost again; So the Manchurian soldiers preferred to risk their lives and march with armor.

Sakhalian had no choice but to shrink the formation and move slowly, but the dense formation soon ran into unguardable mines.

Sakhalian has already been blown up.

The mine is neither a thunderbolt, nor an earthquake, nor a monster, but a poisonous weapon that is stepped on and bombed by the soldiers.

The soldiers who were hit by the mines had blurred flesh and blood on their lower limbs, could not walk, and cried and howled, affecting their morale.

If a soldier is hit by thunder, one or two able-bodied soldiers must be sent to take care of it. The attrition caused by landmines is actually more severe than a direct raid by thieves.

So Saharan had no choice but to disperse the formation again.

As soon as the formation was dispersed, the thieves re-attached them and took a bite like a hungry wolf when they were unprepared.

Eventually, Sakhalian led his army down to a valley in the latter days.

According to the guide who led the way, you only need to climb another mountain and follow the ravine to reach the golden ditch.

But Sakhalian did not dare to climb the mountain at night, let alone camp on the mountain at night. So I found a fairly open place in the valley and set up camp.

Because there were no horses and no tents, the camp did not need to be very large. Sakhalian ordered his soldiers to dig two trenches outside the camp before dark to prevent thieves from stealing the camp.

After dark, there were a few campfires on the mountains on both sides at first, and then there were more and more bonfires, as if there were thousands of troops in ambush on the mountain.

Sakhalian sent people up the hill to inspect and found that there were only fires and no one in succession.

Confirming that it was the thief's suspicious plan, Saharan was relieved.

But in the second half of the night, many bonfires began to flicker and flicker, and Sakhalian's heart rose again.

The groans of the wounded in the camp made Sakhalian even more annoyed. He really wanted to leave the wounded behind early tomorrow morning, but he didn't dare, because then the morale of the army would be completely lost.

……

At this moment, the three battalions were reduced to zero. Sun Yi, Yang Ritian, and Li Guang each led a team and faintly surrounded Sakhalian's Manchurian soldiers.

After an afternoon of attacking the Manchurian soldiers, the officers and men of the third battalion had already gained confidence.

On the wild mountains, the Manchurian soldiers could not catch up with the three battalions at all, and the tactics of the three battalions were to fight if they could win, run away if they could not win, and hide the booty when they ran away, and return lightly, completely grasping the initiative on the battlefield.

The third battalion also played a special role. Yang Ritian is good at using sword and shield soldiers, and his short and powerful sword and shield hand impact always hurts the Manchurian soldiers; Li Guang prefers to kill the enemy from a distance, and if he can not entangle with the Manchurian soldiers, he will not entangle, and his own casualties will be the lightest; Sun Yi is inclined to calculation and is good at making full use of all favorable conditions.

According to Sun Yi's calculations, there were not 100 seriously wounded in the Manchurian soldiers at this time, but 80, which was the time when morale was low and fatigue was excessive.

There was no moonlight tonight, and the proportion of Manchurian soldiers suffering from night blindness was much higher than that of the local soldiers of the third battalion.

Sun Yi decided to take advantage of the fatigue and low morale of the Manchurian soldiers for several days, and use the night to give the Manchurian soldiers another hard blow.

The bonfires on the mountains on both sides were not only Sun Yi's suspicious tactics, but also the cover of the three battalions.

Between the bonfires, the three teams of Sun Yi, Yang Ritian, and Li Guang can blatantly communicate with each other with lantern language.

Yang Ritian and Li Guang led a group of men and horses, and had already detoured back to both sides of the Manchurian camp with the help of the lighting of the bonfire.

Sun Yi led a team of men and horses to lurk in the valley half a mile from the front of the Manchurian camp.

Circumference three is missing one, which is in line with the art of war.

Sun Yi's group of pioneers were all locals without night blindness, with their helmets covered with branches and camouflage, led by calves.

Niu Li'er led the vanguard all the way to the outside of the trench of the Manchurian camp and assembled the cicada ballista in the dark.

The cicada ballista has limited effect during the day, but becomes an artifact at night.

The cicada ballista is silent when fired, and does not reveal its position; Reload quickly, and you won't have to stop to cool the barrel after a few shots like artillery; Easy to carry and assemble.

The cicada ballista cannon can fire a bale of lightning at 250 feet on flat ground. Two hundred and fifty feet is not a long distance during the day, but in the dark at night, two hundred and fifty feet of mountain road is a long way for the Manchurian soldiers, who have many night blindness.

After three slight bowstring sounds, three loud "booms", "booms", "booms" were heard from the other side of the trench, but no one knew where they landed.

The Manchurian camp suddenly seemed to have exploded.

At the two corners of the outer ditch, two hook poles for climbing the mountain were erected in a flicker.

On the top of the hook pole hangs an electric candle that lights an electric arc, and behind the candle there is a reflective baffle.

The Manchurian camp was suddenly illuminated by electric candles, and the panicked Manchurian soldiers stumbled and ran while shouting.

"Boom", "boom", "boom" are three loud bangs.

With the illumination of electric candles, the three cannons were fired accurately, and all fell into the Manchurian camp.

Due to the reflective baffle behind the electric candles, the Manchurian soldiers could not see clearly beyond the camp trench.

There were Manchurian soldiers who reacted quickly and shot at the high electric candle, but the electric candle was unmoved.

Sun Yi led the follow-up men and horses to rush in, set up a cicada ballista on the spot, and aimed at the light of the electric candle as a reference, aiming between the two lights and firing immediately.

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Resources

Electric candles

Electric candles, the early lighting tools, existed for a relatively short time, and were eliminated with the popularity of Edison's incandescent lamps.

Electric candles were invented by Yoblochkov to improve the arc lamp. He used plaster to separate the two carbon poles of the arc lamp, and when the arc was excited, the gypsum and the carbon electrode burned at the same time to emit white light, and the longest candle illuminated for two hours without adjusting the spacing of the carbon poles.

In 1876, the avenue in front of the Paris Opera House and on the banks of the River Thames in London were all lit up with electric candles. The royal palaces of Cambodia have also been lit with electric candles.

The making of electric candles is very simple. Modern people can take two 3 cm long pencil hearts and sharpen one end of them. Use a bare copper wire with a diameter of 0.5 mm and a length of 200 mm to wrap four or five times around the pencil core, so that the pencil core can move back and forth, so that the tips of the two pencil cores are exactly opposite. Connect the two ends of the copper wire to the 9-volt battery, rotate the pencil core by hand so that they touch each other, and move the pencil center at the moment when a bright electric spark appears at the contact point, so that there is a small gap between the two tips, so that a bright arc will be formed, and a continuous bright light will be emitted. It's a small electric candle.