Both sides are scrambling for time, one side wants to arm, the other side wants to disrupt the other, and the speed of both sides can be described as racing against time on the battlefield. Pen × fun × Pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 The cavalry of the Qing army rushed straight to the right flank, and they came too fast, and when they reached a distance of 100 paces, the line of the A brigade had just been completed, and many soldiers with guns in front had not even finished loading gunpowder.

"Steady, steady!"

Li Guoan raised his spear and shouted loudly. Officers at all levels are also constantly roaring, and the sound of suona is constantly sounding. In the night, there is no way to convey orders with banners, so you can only rely on the sound of suona used for training on weekdays, and the dispatch at the town level needs to be distinguished by the sound of drums. In the Taiping Army, there were drummers at and above the battalion level who were responsible for the identification and transmission of orders. Below the battalion level, it is necessary to rely on suona and officer orders to carry out.

The cavalry of the Qing army suddenly divided into two groups more than 100 paces away, one group continued to speed up and rushed towards the Ming army front, and the other group was to strangle the mount and dismount, and then take out the big bow from the horse and start shooting arrows at the Ming army. The arrows of the Qing army are very large and very heavy, and the range of this kind of arrows is not far, at most no more than 100 steps, but although the range is not far, the arrows are very effective in breaking armor. If a person is shot by such a large arrow, the wound will generally be very large, causing the blood to flow more than and lose combat effectiveness instantly.

The Manchurian soldiers are good at riding and shooting, Li Guoan knows it, but these eight banners of the Han army on the opposite side can also ride and shoot, and it is the first time he has seen it.

........

If you want to shoot the arrow accurately and fiercely on the horse, the difficulty is not ordinary, because when the horse rushes forward, the knight on the horse will be bumped badly, and the arrow shot on the horse at this time will not be accurate. Therefore, when the Manchurian Eight Banners and those Mongolian soldiers encountered the Ming army with an array, most of them chose to dismount and shoot on foot. If there is a gap in the enemy's formation, immediately get on the horse and charge into battle, which is extremely useful against the infantry formation. After all, the formation is very closely combined with the infantry formation, and the cavalry is often difficult to shake directly, and even if the charge is successful, the casualties will be very large, which is a tactic that must be avoided for the Qing army with few children in Manchuria.

Since the formation of the Han Army Banner, everything is modeled on the Manchu Eight Banners, and the tactics are also learned from the Manchu Eight Banners, the Qing court is counting on these Han troops to supervise the green battalions for them, and counting on these Han troops to be able to replace the Manchurian children to work for the Qing Dynasty, so they naturally train them more, and teach them the riding and archery skills of the Manchurian children.

Geng Juxian changed his mind in the middle of the road, and divided the subordinates who originally all rushed into the formation into two groups, half rushed, and half shot, because he found that although the Ming army on the opposite side was chaotic, it had formed the rudimentary shape of the defense line, and the outermost rows of Ming troops had been lined up and ready for battle. In order to reduce losses and to maximize the killing and wounding of the Ming army, Geng Juxian was a little conservative and attacked the Ming army by combining "horseing" and "shooting". Anyway, his purpose is to defeat the Ming army is the best, and it doesn't matter if it is not defeated, if the infantry brigade behind comes up, it can also bombard the Ming army with artillery alone.

The battle came too suddenly, too quickly, the adjustment of the defense line and the deployment of personnel of the First Brigade were not in place, and the soldiers only relied on ordinary training, those instinctive reactions developed under the supervision of sticks, whips and military discipline to stand in their own formation, and put their spears either flat or diagonally fingered. Rao is like this, and there is still some confusion in the array. The soldiers, who had not yet been reloaded because of their nervousness, were mercilessly whipped to the back by the officers, lest they take the burning sticks without the medicine and act against them in front.

Li Guoan's personal brigade guards followed him, firmly guarding the brigade school. Compared with the old fourth town, there are not many firecrackers in the fifth town, and there are only more than 1,000 guns in the whole town, half of which belongs to Yu Shizhong's C Brigade, because the C Brigade is trained according to the tactics of the Qi family army, and there is a great demand for firearms. Brigade C took half of it, and the remaining 500 brigades A and B took half of their families. Therefore, the First Brigade actually only has more than 200 firearms, and the firearms that can be fired in time after removing those that have not had time to load the medicine are only a little more than 100 firecrackers.

Hundreds of Qing troops rushed over with a roar, and hundreds of Qing troops were shooting arrows with their bows, and with the officer's order, a round of arrows rained down on the cavalry in front of them before they could rush to the front of the Ming army.

"Raise your shield!"

More than 500 shieldmen put the cards on top of their heads, protecting themselves and their comrades who carried guns and spears.

In the "whoosh" sound, hundreds of sharp arrows drilled into the Ming army's formation, falling on the cards and making a muffled sound of "poof", the sound seemed to be a sudden hail. The arrows of the Qing army caused dozens of casualties, and many Ming troops were killed by large arrows that fell from the gaps between the cards and the cards.

A round of arrows was fired, but the Ming army array was not much chaotic, which made the Qing army officers in charge of "shooting" very dissatisfied, shouting something in that wah. The two sides were separated by more than 100 steps, and the Ming army naturally couldn't hear what the other party was saying, but even if the two sides were face to face, the officers and soldiers of the Fifth Town, who were mostly Cantonese, couldn't understand what these northerners were saying.

The fifth town formed two phalanxes, Brigade A on the right and Brigade B on the left, while the town command post was in the middle, and the guards directly under the town protected the town command post and also played the role of supervising the battle team. If a soldier retreats, the town guard will step forward and kill him as soon as possible, which is exactly the same as the Qing army's practice. In essence, the Fifth Town, including the C Brigade, still belongs to the army of this era, not the new army that their commander Zhou Shixiang expected. The main reason for this is the old division in the Taiping army, as well as the gap in weapons and equipment, money and food resources, and officer training.

So far, the snowballing development has made the Taiping army have more than 100,000 troops, but because the foundation is too thin, all military and political construction is starting, and the foundation is too weak, so that the Taiping army has not been able to achieve what Zhou Shixiang expected, or in other words, they have no time and no resources to carry out equipment training and rotation of the new army. Zhou Shixiang could only tilt his limited resources as much as possible towards the four towns of the lineage, which led to the lack of training in the non-lineage towns, and the training of officers was also extremely insufficient, making these non-lineage towns similar to the Qing army, and even many inferior. For example, Zhu Tong's eighth town, Weiyuan Hou Guo Dengdi's ninth town, Gaojinku's tenth town, and Wang Xing's eleventh town. These towns really want to pull out and fight against the Qing army, I am afraid that there will be more defeats and fewer victories.

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As the rain of arrows fell, the Qing cavalry that rushed into battle also rushed into the range of the Ming army's firearms. At the sound of an order, more than 100 firecrackers were fired at one time, the smoke of gunpowder was filled, and the guns flew into the shots, and twenty or thirty Qing troops who rushed to the front were shot down and fell from their horses. The soldiers who had finished firing their guns consciously retreated back from the formation, and their positions were filled with spear-wielding soldiers. The shouts of the people and the neighing of the horses began to sound noisily, and the Qing cavalry smashed into the Ming army columns. More than 100 steps away, the Qing army that was shooting arrows also advanced forward, shooting big arrows towards the Ming army round after round.

The soldier in front of Li Guoan was hit by an arrow in front of the door, and he didn't even scream, but fell directly to the ground. Although the proportion of armored soldiers in the first brigade is quite high, the leather armor and cotton armor cannot completely prevent the big arrows shot by the Qing army, and the big arrows of the Qing cavalry have a very strong effect of armor piercing.

Under the blows of the Qing army's rushing and shooting, the A Brigade suffered heavy casualties. There were no archers in the fifth town, the number of firecrackers was small, and the most capable Brigade C was not there, so Brigade A and Brigade B had nothing to resist the Qing army's attack. The firecrackers could no longer organize the round fire, so they could only reload the medicine and blast out at the Qing army in front. The shooting of a single branch or a dozen firecrackers is naturally not as powerful as a single salvo of more than 200 firearms. In addition, it was night again, the line of sight was limited, and the speed of loading was very slow, and not only to guard against the arrows of the Qing army, but also to prevent the fire gun from blowing up and injuring himself because of the nervousness that he could not see clearly and the charge was too much.

Zhao Ziqiang observed the battle situation at any time, while the A Brigade was supporting, the B Brigade had completed the queue adjustment, Lu Guangzu suggested that the B Brigade be transferred to encircle the Qing cavalry, and kill those Qing cavalry with the advantage of strength, but Zhao Ziqiang did not dare to do so, because the Qing army's infantry had already driven over from Yumeng Mountain. At this time, if the B Brigade was also transferred to besiege the Qing cavalry, then once the Qing infantry came up, the fifth town would not even have the most basic line of defense.

"Go, tell Li Guoan, no matter how many people die, he has to withstand me!"

The only way to do this is Zhao Ziqiang, and there is no good way to do it, so he can only carry it. (To be continued.) )