ps: (Thank you for the reward from the book friends of "Jinyi Wei Tian Tongzhi"!) ）

However, at this moment, an accident suddenly happened. Pen % fun % Pavilion www.biquge.info

As the handsome banner of "Chen" and the hundreds of rebels behind the handsome banner entered the urn city, the first gate creaked again, but it was not to open it further, but to close it quickly.

"The handsome man has an order! Close the gates! Fast! Faster! In the gate tower of the Great East Gate, a Qing officer in helmet and armor is commanding a group of strong soldiers to turn the winch that opens and closes the city gate with all their might, and keeps urging the soldiers to speed up.

With the combined efforts of all the Qing soldiers, the city gate closed faster than usual, and the heavy gate wrapped in iron sheets carried a strong momentum to bounce some of the unprepared rebel officers and soldiers backwards.

"Tartars deceive!" "We've been tricked!" …… At this time, the righteous officers and soldiers under the city wall also reacted and let out bursts of exclamations. The officers and men of the 4,000 vanguard who had not yet had time to enter the city rushed forward with all their might, hoping to prevent the city gate from closing. However, the Qing soldiers who had been in ambush at the head of the city for a long time also began to move, and rolling logs and stones rained down on the city. In the blink of an eye, the rebel officers and soldiers near the city gate were almost swept away, and a bloody and bloody scene appeared. Removing this resistance, the gates closed more smoothly, and in a few moments they closed with a loud bang. Immediately afterwards, the second gate, which had been gradually opened, was also closed, and nearly 3,000 officers and soldiers in the vanguard of the rebel army were completely locked in the urn city.

Outside the city, Chen Zizhuang, who had hidden his banner, and a kind of staff and generals around him looked at the scene ahead. Immediately shocked.

"I can't imagine that the Tartars are so treacherous!" Chen Zizhuang was full of chagrin and anger, and almost stared at his side, and shouted to his side, "Wave the handsome flag." Besiege! Rescue the soldiers who entered the city first! ”

After receiving the order, the rebel officers and soldiers shouted and launched a strong attack on the Great East Gate.

In the urn city, after Guo Quanzhong found out about the scheme, he also regretted it, and scolded the treacherous Tartars, but at this time, the two city gates were closed, and there was no way to move forward or retreat. The situation is very dangerous.

"Rush to the city and fight with the Tartars!" Guo Quanzhong yelled and ordered his soldiers to charge along the horse road to the first and second city heads, hoping to open a bloody road.

But the Qing army also expected this a long time ago. A large number of thistles were sprinkled on the horse path, and a large number of archers and bird guns were placed at the top. The rebel officers and soldiers, who were inferior in equipment and training, rushed several times without success, and instead left corpses on the road.

At the head of the second city, Li Chengdong looked at the panicked righteous officers and soldiers in the urn city and the handsome flag in the middle that was particularly conspicuous under the firelight. Let out a sneer. Then he commanded the surrounding soldiers: "Gather all the best marksmen, and use iron arrows!" Aim at that handsome flag and shoot it fiercely! Be sure to kill the thief leader Chen Zizhuang on the spot! ”

"Yes!"

The top marksman in Li Chengdong's personal army received the order, carrying an iron tire bow and wolf tooth iron arrows, and quickly ran around, forming a semi-encirclement of the handsome flag in the urn city at the head of the city, and then opened his bow and arrows, aiming at the people under the handsome banner.

"Whoosh!" "Whoosh!" …… With one sharp howl after another, there were twenty or thirty iron arrows with extremely high quasi-heads rushing straight at Guo Quanzhong and the guards around him.

"General be careful...... Yes! As soon as a sharp-eyed guard called out, he was shot through the cheek and fell off his horse. The rest of the iron arrows followed. After a burst of muffled noises and screams, almost no one under the Shuai banner was spared. All of them fell to the ground, leaving only the empty war horses on their backs screaming and scurrying.

"Hahaha...... God help me! Seeing this scene, Li Chengdong looked up to the sky and laughed, and then ordered to the left and right, "Pass the order, don't let go of any of the thieves in the urn city!" ”

In the sound of fried beans and the continuous whistling sound, dense arrows and lead bullets were scattered towards the urn city like a raging storm, sweeping the righteous officers and soldiers to the ground one by one.

Since Guo Quanzhong and others were shot off their horses and their lives and deaths were unknown, the officers and soldiers of the rebels lost their backbone and unified command, and had no ability to counterattack at all, becoming more and more chaotic, and completely falling into a one-sided massacre situation.

At the same time, the cannon roared at the first head of the Great East Gate, and the long-dormant Qing gunners manipulated the cannons to fire at the rebels outside the city who came to attack the Great East Gate. Although the light was unclear in the night, the formation of the rebels outside the city was so dense that they would suffer heavy casualties after each shot.

At this moment, Chen Zizhuang was already remorseful in his heart, it seemed that the suspicions raised by his younger brother Chen Zisheng before were right, the plan to seize Guangzhou had already been cracked by the Qing army in the city, and they had set up an ambush and waited for their arrival. If Guo Quanzhong hadn't insisted on going to the city to investigate, maybe he would be the one trapped in the city.

"My lord, the Tartar shelling is very fierce!" A member of the family came to Chen Zizhuang's side and said, "Originally, there were not so many cannons on the Great East Gate, it seems that the Tartars have been prepared for a long time!" Let's let the soldiers withdraw first, the loss is too great! ”

Before Chen Zizhuang could speak, a series of loud noises were heard in the south of the city. Obviously, the Qing gunners at the head of the southern city also fired at the rebel sailors, and a loud bang kept knocking on people's hearts.

……

In less than half an hour, the rebel officers and soldiers in the urn city were almost completely killed, and the only few remaining people completely lost their fighting spirit, put down their weapons and knelt on the ground to surrender.

At this time, Li Chengdong also led his son Li Yuanyin, generals Du Yonghe, and Li Hangui to lead more than 1,000 elite cavalry and more than 500 infantry soldiers through the corpse-strewn urn city and launched a counterattack against the rebels outside the city. Just now, Li Chengdong had learned that Chen Zizhuang was actually still outside the city, and the handsome flag that entered the city was just a cover, so he ordered Li Yuanyin in anger to take Chen Zizhuang's handsome flag directly after leaving the city, and he could not be allowed to escape.

After the first city gate was opened, more than 1,000 elite cavalry of the Qing army stabbed into the array of the righteous army like a steel knife, followed by Li Chengdong's 500 infantry soldiers and some Qing soldiers who came down from the city.

Hearing the sound of the majestic iron hooves rolling, the righteous officers and soldiers who had just woken up from the shelling were even more panicked. They were surprised to see that the Qing cavalry that was rushing towards them was not a ragtag wearing only a trumpet coat, but a helmet and armor, and the thick copper nails on the armor were shining in the light of the fire.

"Array up to meet the enemy!" Chen Zizhuang and the rest of the generals of the rebel army shouted loudly to the soldiers under their command.

However, the rush of the Qing cavalry was too fast, and the equipment and training level of the righteous officers and soldiers were not comparable to the elite regular army, and they were rushed into the formation by the Qing cavalry after a while.

More than 1,000 elite horsemen of the Qing army rampaged through the righteous army like chopping waves, and everywhere they went, blood and rain splashed, and human heads and stumps flew wildly. The ill-prepared rebel officers and soldiers could not stop this fierce charge in the slightest, and could only delay the momentum of the Qing cavalry charge by virtue of their numerical superiority and at the cost of human lives. However, the Qing cavalry's approach was also extremely tricky, although it had the advantage of combat power, it did not blindly rush into the depths of the rebel army's formation, but rushed a certain part of the rebel army's formation and caused casualties to it, and then chose the weak point to rush out of the formation, and then made a slight adjustment, and then turned the horse's head for another round of charge.

After several rounds of charges by the elite cavalry of the Qing army, the formation of the rebel army became more and more chaotic. Although Chen Zizhuang kept ordering archers and pikemen to block the attack, and tried to mobilize superior forces to encircle the Qing army that rushed into the formation, the situation deteriorated further and further due to the disparity in equipment and training between the two sides. At the same time, hundreds of Qing soldiers also rushed up, forming a circle not far away, constantly killing and wounding the rebels on the periphery with bows and arrows, and the rebels repeatedly charged them without success.

As the battle progressed, the forces around Chen Zizhuang became thinner and thinner. Seeing the opportunity appear, Li Yuanyin, who had been waiting for a long time, waved the spear in his hand and shouted left and right: "Come forward with me and capture the thief Chen Zizhuang!" ”

After the Qing cavalry, who had already killed the red-eyed cavalry, received the order, they immediately rushed towards Chen Zizhuang and the others under the banner of Shuai, and the rolling iron hooves shook the ground for a while.

******

On the morning of May 24

Pang Yue and Chen Youlong had already led their troops and horses to a place about thirty miles north of Guangzhou. When the army stopped for a while, the scouts who returned from the vicinity of Guangzhou City reported to Pang Yue: Last night, Chen Zizhuang led 20,000 righteous divisions to arrive outside the city of Guangzhou, preparing to cooperate with the inner and outer parts of the city according to the proposed plan, and the inside and outside should join forces to seize the city of Guangzhou. However, due to the leaking of the news, the Qing army had already prepared and set up an ambush in advance, resulting in the defeat of Chen Zizhuang's righteous division, the loss of thousands of people, and many generals were killed or captured. Seeing that the general trend had gone, Chen Zizhuang had no choice but to lead the army to retreat. This morning, Tong Yangjia and Li Chengdong ordered Yang Keguan, Yang Jingye, Yu Jinhu, and other righteous generals of the captured rebel army, as well as Guo Quanzhong, who was wounded and captured last night, to the head of the city, and Ling Chi executed and sawed his torso, so as to deter the righteous officers and soldiers outside the city.

Hearing this news, Pang Yue couldn't help but sigh secretly: It's still a step too late!

Originally, Pang Yue had a premonition that Chen Zizhuang might not give up his plan to capture Guangzhou because of Chen Bangyan's letter, so soon after Yang Tinglin and his follow-up men arrived in Qingyuan, he and Chen Youlong each led their headquarters to replenish grain and grass and rush to Guangzhou first, in case the situation changed. First, Pang Yue did not want to see the righteous officers and soldiers sacrifice in vain, and second, he did not want to see the interior of the city exposed in advance, which would increase the difficulty of capturing Guangzhou in the future. Unexpectedly, this kind of thing that worried him still happened. Not only did Chen Zizhuang's righteous division return in vain and suffered heavy casualties, but the inner response in the city was also wiped out by the Qing army, and in addition, the Qing army, which had already become a frightened bird, was also very likely to rebuild enough morale after this victory.

The situation was urgent, Pang Yue decided not to delay any longer, and after a short rest, he immediately led his army south and marched in the direction of Guangzhou. (To be continued.) )