Chapter 507: Although retreat is not defeated, less surrounds more

After giving the order to charge, the horse team spread out and rushed towards the Jiaozhou battalion infantry in front, which was unlikely to stop even if they wanted to.

Tens of thousands of cavalry made a big move in one direction, and being in the middle of it was really like a light boat swaying in the stormy waves, and walking down the waves.

The only thing that can stop is the rear team, but Li Zicheng still wants to try it, in his heart, a cavalry charge of this scale, and on such a plain terrain, there is no force in the whole world that can stop it.

If you stop the rear team and cause the power of the impact to be insufficient, it will be a big mistake.

King Chuang thought so, but Tian Jianxiu, who led the army to rush in front, did not have the same idea, seeing the forest firearms array in front, although Tian Jianxiu also felt that his large force of cavalry could break through this array, but the loss would be great, and it was unknown whether the strict infantry formation behind could break through.

Because the distance between the lines of the various brigades of the Jiaozhou battalion is very wide, it is now the time for the horse team to accelerate, if the troops are not restrained now, and part of the cavalry is stopped, it will be too late next.

The generals of the cavalry corps of the Shun army have already begun to order, although the width of the cavalry column is very narrow by the two large phalanxes, but after rushing out, they must spread out and accelerate in order to exert the greatest power.

Ten thousand horses galloped, the sound of horses' hooves was like muffled thunder, Tian Jianxiu wanted to hear the orders of his team but it was unlikely, watching the cavalry around him gradually disperse, and began to beat the horse's belly with the soles of his boots to accelerate, Tian Jianxiu's face had turned pale.

It was less than two hundred steps away from the firearm array that almost blocked the front of the charge, a distance that didn't allow people to look too closely, but the array made people feel a little chilled when they looked at it.

This horizontal team is too thin for the impact of the cavalry, the infantry phalanx of the Jiaozhou battalion is a brigade of forty by forty, which can ensure that it can withstand the impact of the cavalry, and the generals of other forces may not know this drill, but for the general situation, it can still be estimated about the same.

On the opposite side, there are about six rows, which can be easily broken through, but in the face of their own thousands of troops, this thin horizontal team is as stable as Mount Tai.

Tian Jianxiu, the general of the Shun military system, is also an old man, in many cases, far inferior to his current size of the horse team charge, at four or five hundred paces, some of the army will be in a commotion, will disintegrate, and when rushing to this distance, even the main general of the other side will turn his horse and flee.

But the other party is still not moving, is this array stupid, such a neat queue, naturally it will not be stupid, that is, there is absolute confidence to face the impact of the cavalry.

Tian Jianxiu brought the horse to the side, gritted his teeth, and said fiercely in his heart:

"Lao Tzu also knows that the firearms of your Shandong soldiers and horses are fast and powerful, but my tens of thousands of cavalry, I don't believe that I can't break away from your array!!"

The commander of the horse team in front of the formation, at the beginning of the charge, is in front of the team, and is a distance, and when close to the enemy formation, the main general and the personal guard will go to the right side of the large formation, slow down, after all, it is a group action of tens of thousands of people, and a main general is needed to dispatch in the center, rather than to charge into the formation.

The cavalry of the Shun army running in front of them were already desperately beating their horses and began to accelerate their sprints, and the people were tightly attached to their horses, and the spears and swords in their hands were desperately stretched forward.

Since the horses came to the area of Xiangcheng, there has been no shortage of forage supplies, and it is better to let the foot soldiers go hungry than to feed the horses, just in order to use them at a critical time, just now the foot soldiers in front and the soldiers of Shandong fought to death, but the cavalry behind was resting, although it was also caused by the artillery caused chaos.

The cavalrymen crushed their noon rations and gave them to their mounts, so that when they charged, their mounts had enough strength, and the horses did not miss a mistake, and each of them ran as fast as they could.

The cavalry that rushed to the front had the consciousness of death, and they charged into battle, and it was not for nothing that the first wave rushed away, but that kind of army would not hold out until now and still maintain the formation, coldly waiting for the charge to approach.

The cavalry at the front of the Shun army was called the head horse, and he was the most advanced and the closest to the firearms column.

I could hear the shouts and shouts of the column:

"One hundred and fifty steps, one hundred and forty steps, pay attention to the arquebus......"

The voice was faint, and after a while, the cavalry reacted, the other party was talking about the distance between himself and the horizontal team, the cavalryman's face was very tight, and he suddenly smiled at this time, anyway, it was the same end, and when it came to the end, he could see it, and this time he heard it more clearly.

"Ninety steps....... ready to ..... fire!!"

Then there was suddenly gunsmoke in front of me, as if it was the sound of firecrackers on the occasion of the New Year's Festival, when was it, I was still a child, and I was happy with my family for the New Year, and then suffered a disaster, my father and sister starved to death one by one, and I came out to follow the prince to survive.

It was a very short moment, and then he felt something hit him heavily on his chest, and then he didn't feel anything, the cavalry rushing like thunder behind him, the dense explosion of fire in front of him, he couldn't hear anything, he couldn't see anything, there was darkness in front of him, and then the smiling faces of his parents appeared.

"I want to go home......"

He would never be able to utter it.

The horse's instinct is more sensitive and rapid than that of a human, and it wants to make a turning movement during the run, but how to adjust it, the mount loses its balance and is about to overturn directly, and the dense rain of bullets will not stop at the beginning, and countless blood flowers burst out on the horses and knights.

The same is true of the cavalry in the back, who put their bodies against their horses regardless of whether they can shield themselves from bullets, and hope to take advantage of this opportunity to rush to them.

There is always a cruel gap between fantasy and reality, the firecrackers in the horizontal team are not aiming at anything, just shooting flat, and after firing, they immediately hold the firecrackers vertically, and retreat back to the last column from the gap in the line, nervously reloading ammunition, and the second row is shooting with expressionless faces.

The horse was hit by a rushing lead bullet, and the lead bullet hit the horse at this speed, which did not have any penetrating effect, but with great momentum, and when it was hit, the wound and internal injuries did not know through the wound, but seemed to be hit hard by a blunt object.

This kind of injury, whether it is a person or a horse, is a direct loss of mobility, and the flat end of the fire gun often hits only the horse.

But the horse fell to the ground in the midst of a high-speed gallop, and it was the charge of such a large group of cavalry, and the knight who fell basically had no chance to get up again, and even if he could continue to stand up, he would be knocked down by the next shot.

This time, the rotation of the various horizontal platoons of the firearms platoon was somewhat different from usual, and when the first platoon retreated, the second platoon did not step forward, but stood still and fired.

In fact, the horizontal line of this firearm is constantly retreating, getting closer and closer to the spear phalanx behind.

Although the firearms platoon was retreating in an orderly manner, the distance of about eighty-five paces in front of the firearms platoon was like an invisible wall.

If the firearms of the Jiaozhou battalion did not move, the cavalry of the Shun army would definitely be blocked eighty-five steps away, and would be repelled little by little by this continuous firepower.

But in that case, the cavalry of the Shun army, which was bleeding from the head in front of the firearms cross, would be confused because the front team could not enter, but they would be pushed farther and farther, and sooner or later they would be out of range.

At that time, the cavalry of the Shun army, which was hard braked, would definitely not continue to rush forward, but would find other ways out of the chaos, or directly turn in other directions.

Each platoon fires and then turns back to the back, which is effectively the entire horizontal line having to take two to three steps back after each platoon has fired.

Such a retreat is not because of the fierce momentum of the opponent's cavalry, but in order to lead the opponent's cavalry to continue to move forward, and the firearms horizontal team continues to retreat, that is, to prevent the corpses on the ground from accumulating, not to hinder the cavalry behind, and at the same time to give the opponent a false impression that they can rush closer.

There were nine hundred muskets in each row, and because there was still a distance between the musketeers and the musketeers, a large horizontal row of nine hundred men should be two and a half to three times the length of a spear queue of the same number.

In contrast, the Shunjun horse team that rushed between the two large phalanxes in front of it, because of the limitation of space, the width of the unfolded formation was not as long as this horizontal row, and the firecrackers on both sides actually had to deviate inward, that is, the front of the Shunjun horse team was completely within the range of firearm firearms.

If you look down on this battlefield, you will find that whether it is the Shun army or the Shandong soldiers and horses, the teams everywhere are very neat and orderly.

The only chaotic place is the front of the Shun army's horse team, and there is no sound here, all of which are waves of dense firecrackers, the dust raised by the horses' hooves, and the smoke of gunpowder emitted by the firecrackers, which is also full of here, and the cavalry of the Shun army often can't see the teammates in front and the companions around them.

The people in the front row fell in the rain of bullets flying everywhere, and the people behind continued to follow, but the cavalry who followed behind did not feel that there was any obstacle in front of them, and always accelerated forward.

But Li Zicheng and Liu Zongmin, who were watching the battle from a high place on the slope, had already changed their faces, and their position was a temporary earthen platform, and the position on the slope was even higher.

Looking far from the heights, this side can also see the battlefield more comprehensively, and you can see that your cavalry is moving forward, but on the dusty side, the firearms squad is rotated neatly.

This is simply a flesh-and-blood grinding plate, the elite of the Shun army's horse team, and the horsemen of a hundred battles, constantly filling it in, and being ground into meat by this grinding plate.

General Liu Zongmin couldn't help but shout:

"Stop the team, stop the team......"

While speaking, Liu Zongmin took the whip and whipped it around, driving away the personal guards around him who were a little slower to react, and after a while, he didn't know how many lives were filled in front.

Now Liu Zongmin and Li Zicheng, the king of Chuang, are in one place, compared to the anxious Liu Zongmin on the side, Li Zicheng is extremely calm, but if you look closely, you can find that there is some gray between his eyebrows and eyes, Li Zicheng has more than 100,000 troops several times, and only a dozen horses are left after being beaten several times, such ups and downs have been experienced a lot, although the situation in front of him is tragic, but it will not make him desperate.

After all, in Xiangyang, he still has the rest of his strength around the battlefield, but Li Zicheng is uncomfortable, he has been operating for so long, and he thinks that he can fight, but who would have thought that it would be such a situation, the other party's 40,000 to his own 100,000, calmly attack first, and then lure his cavalry out.

Li Zicheng really doesn't understand, isn't the fire gun just a weapon on the cake, why is it used so fiercely by the other party, for so many years, I only heard that the battalion head relied too much on firearms, but he was rushed to the front and dispersed in hand-to-hand combat, but looking at this situation, it is completely the opposite.

It's really incomprehensible, but now is obviously not the time to take care of this, King Li Zicheng said in a deep voice:

"Zong Min, after stopping the horse team, let's go towards Lushan, and the rest of the people let them come up with their own soldiers and horses, and those who don't have horses below can't take care of it."

At present, Xiangyang is the base camp of the Shun army, from Henan to Huguang, there must be Nanyang Mansion, the nearest road to Xiangcheng is Ye County, but Ye County, nine times out of ten it is blocked by the army of Chen Liu, the general of Shandong's expedition to the west, then it can only go around and go straight to Nanyang Mansion by Lushan, which is also a road.

But if you run like this, it is equivalent to discarding all the foot soldiers here, and the left and right wings are blocking the foot soldiers on the other side of Jiaxian.

Looking at the way it is today, not to mention the foot soldiers, how many of these withdrawn cavalry can follow back to Xiangyang, and the withdrawal is okay.

But now this situation is a rout, as soon as the other party pursues, his side will not be able to catch the troops at all, and he doesn't know how much to disperse halfway?

With Liu Zongmin's hard-hearted heart, he couldn't stand King Chuang's words, and said in a dry voice:

"Big brother, the situation that has been laid down after so many years of hard work is just thrown here!"

Since the establishment of "Shun", Liu Zongmin and his party have called King Chuang much more formal, and now he is calling out this "big brother", which shows how excited he is.

King Li Zicheng's face finally had a hint of decline, and he said in a low voice:

"If we don't do this, we will all have to leave it here, stay in the green mountains and not be afraid of no firewood, wave the flag is reasonable, let's go back, we can still support it by relying on natural dangers, this Shandong ...... What do we do, it's not an opponent! ”

When it came to the end, he was almost inaudible, seeing the power of the other party, Li Zicheng only felt that the eagerness in his heart for so many years seemed to have been poured with snow water, and it was all cold.

The gap in strength is the easiest to calm down, Li Zicheng is extremely calm now, the so-called division of the world, and the ambition and desire to win the championship are just shattered.

What "eighteen children are the main artifact", this Li character, I'm afraid it means this Qi Guogong Li Meng, what is the other party low-key, what just wants to be in a corner of peace, no ambition, I am afraid that he wants to mess up the world, the other party sent troops by virtue of righteousness, giving himself a justifiable excuse.

After more than ten years of fighting and dying, he got up in several desperate situations, occupied most of Huguang and Henan, and all the Ming troops were annihilated by themselves, but they worked hard, but in the end they made wedding clothes for each other.

Now Li Zicheng has no anger, and even his despair is not high, he is just like ashes, so he is very calm, and there may be a chance to return to Xiangyang.

The battle situation that Li Zicheng and Hao Shaoqi saw at a high place, Tian Jianxiu also saw it on the battlefield, he and Hao Shaoqi had seen each other's firearms shooting, and when they heard the gunshots, they knew that something was wrong.

This was the most dense gunfire he had ever heard, but the cavalry brigade did not appear to be in a state of confusion in front of it, but kept running forward.

The gunfire continued, and the onslaught of the horse team did not stop, which did not last long, but the screams and neighing of the horses that could not be concealed in the smoke and dust made him desperate.

According to his own calculations, how many cavalry will die in front of the formation in this array of firearm shooting, this is the biggest bet and strength under the Shun army, but what I didn't expect is that the horse team that the Shun army thought was extremely powerful was just a target for the other party to slaughter.

If the firecrackers retreated, they would have to get close to the eight infantry regiments behind, and the distance between the eight infantry teams was very wide, which was the gap left for the firecrackers.

If taken together, this is the standard repulsion formation, and it is impossible for the Shun army horse team, which has been completely devoid of sharpness by the dense continuous fire of the firearms, to break through the infantry formation on the opposite side.

The voice of "Dangdangdang" suddenly remembered, Mingjin retreated! A large number of companions died under the fire, and the space gradually became empty, and the speed of the horse team's impact had slowed down.

Although the whole brigade rushed forward as if attracted by something, the cavalry of the horse team also came back to their senses at this time, and although they could not see clearly on the smoke and dust, although the team had no obstacle to move forward, there was a dead end ahead.

Hearing the sound of Mingjin retreating, many people were like amnesty, reining in their horses, wanting to turn their horses around, or go around their wings to go back.

The clouds gradually increased, and the wind became stronger, and the smoke and dust that had just been diffused were blown away a lot, and the gray-faced fire-fired soldiers appeared in the dust.

Although the people were all gray, the formation was still not scattered, and they could not see the situation on the other side clearly, and judged whether they were firing continuously, relying on the sound of horses' hooves coming from the dust.

Now that the horse team has stopped attacking, there is no need for them to consume their ammunition casually, there are corpses of people and horses all over the ground, but the queue of the Jiaozhou battalion is still not shaken.

This fact made the Shun army horse team, which had no intention of continuing to fight, even more frightened, and rushed forward with their heads bored, thinking that with so many cavalry charges, there was no enemy formation that could not be rushed.

But looking at those corpses, just the other party was fighting while retreating, how many corpses were left on his side, and he didn't even dare to think about this number, listening to the sound of Mingjin in the rear, everyone had no intention of fighting.

With Mingjin's voice, not only did the horse team of the Shun army stop charging, but the two large phalanxes that had been stopping the defense just now also moved.

A large number of cavalry rushed down from the mountain, and if the two infantry formations on both sides were rashly involved, it was very likely that they would be directly disrupted and scattered by the momentum of this brigade.

But after fighting for a while, there were constant casualties, and the space gradually opened up, and the momentum of the Shunjun horse team slowed down, and the formation was not so dense.

Waiting for the order of Mingjin to retreat, everyone was thinking about turning the horse, which made the speed even slower, and when they rushed over, the edge was in full swing, and the hard-fighting infantry regiment naturally had to form a formation to protect itself and avoid the sharpness, and now the sharpness has been lost, and it is not so easy to go back.

Together, Mingjin's voice seemed to give an order to the eight infantry regiments of the first front, and the trumpets and drums began to sound, and the two large phalanxes began to close towards the middle.

The horse team of the Shun army was in the middle, and the large phalanx on both sides leaned towards the middle, and the horse cavalry in the panic had no way to resist it. If the cavalry does not rush up, it has no advantage in the face of the infantry, especially in the face of formation, and it is a foot soldier with a long weapon, not to mention, this is still the elite infantry of Shandong.

The cavalry faced the infantry formation that was approaching in great stride, and only avoided it, and the first to eighth regiments were closed on the rear road of the Shun army as if they were two gates.

The generals of the Shun army saw it well, the eight regiments in front of the Jiaozhou battalion, the eight regiments in the back, the reserves, and the firearms troops in the middle and even where Li Meng's handsome flag was located, were too far apart, and it could already be said that they were disjointed.

But now, because the distance between each other was too far, two-thirds of the remaining horses of the Shun army were intercepted between the two fronts, and at this moment, the situation was reversed.

The four regiments on the side of the first front near the slope turned in unison, and in the face of King Chuang's main formation, they did not pursue, but the spears were stacked on top of each other to make a defensive appearance, while the four regiments near the inner circle, after a little formation, began to advance in the direction of the second front under the rhythm of the drums and drums.

The firearms platoon that crossed the spear phalanx in front of the second front line was divided into two teams from the middle according to the predetermined arrangement, and the soldiers ran quickly to the sides.

"Forward!!"

The order was quickly issued after the firearms troops ran away, and the eight regiments of the second front, which had been on standby, also began to move forward, and the firecrackers were divided into two formations on both sides of the second front, with Guo Liang's artillery formation on the right, and Li Meng, the commander on the left, had already arrived with fifteen artillery pieces and a personal army.

There were infantry soldiers in the front and back, and the Shun army horse team had no way to retreat, and if they wanted to go to both sides, they were blocked by guns and artillery.

Rushing through the spear phalanx of the Jiaozhou battalion, every cavalry did not dare to hope, but now there is no way forward, left and right, and there is death when they go there, there seems to be a moment of silence, and the remnants of the Shun army who were sealed in the formation seemed to explode into a pot, and immediately became in chaos.

Li Zicheng at the top of the slope was trembling, only 4,000 horse troops could be recovered, and the rest of the people were encircled over there, as for the rest of the foot soldiers, it was no longer considered.

"Let's go...... Come on!! ”

Li Meng, who was on the left side of the large array, exhaled lightly after the dozen or so cannons were set up and the firearms troops running in the formation were lined up, and said to himself with a smile:

"Won!"