As soon as He Guoyuan's military order was issued, on the outermost sentinel boats, bluffing boats, and some bird boats and thunder boats, a large number of soldiers of the Fubo battalion jumped into the lake and engaged in hand-to-hand combat with the water thieves who lurked at the bottom of the boats and tried to scuttle the boats. Pen "Fun" Pavilion www.biquge.info

At the same time, as the pirates had already climbed aboard the ship like ants, the soldiers of the Fubo battalion, the foremost on the deck, abandoned their flintlock pistols and bird guns, and stabbed forward with their spears and sickles. Others were armed with swords and shields, taking cover on the sides or between the ranks, constantly killing the fish that slipped through the net under the spears.

The daily drills of the Fubo battalion for docking and broadside warfare also adhered to the principles of trapping and gangster, that is, focusing on the formation of the queue, paying attention to mutual cooperation, and matching the length and shortness. However, due to the limited space on the deck, which is not as convenient as on land, the engagement formation of the Fubo battalion is more streamlined and flexible than that of the other battalions. Generally, it is measured in units, among which there are both spears, knives and shields, and the proportion is moderate. However, the spirit of "the brave do not trespass, and the cowardly do not retreat alone" is in the same vein.

On the deck, the shouts shook the sky, the muffled sound of sharp weapons stabbing into the flesh, and the screams of the seriously injured before they died.

Although most of the water pirates dared to fight and were not afraid of the dead, they also seemed to have achieved a temporary advantage by relying on the flexibility and speed of the boat and their own good water quality, but as the battle progressed, it became more and more difficult. The thieves who climbed onto the boat were constantly divided and surrounded by the well-coordinated soldiers of the Fubo battalion, and the fierce and daring men among them were helpless in the face of the spears stabbed around them and the knives and axes from all sides, and resisted for a while, or were stabbed to death by random guns, or fell into the lake.

It didn't take long for a while. The bird boats and thunder boats behind the Fubo battalion rushed up to support, occupied a favorable angle, and fired cannons, guns, and rockets at the pirate boats that continued to gallop. The sand boat in the center also adjusts the angle. Intensified artillery bombardment of the main ships in the pirate formation.

With a three-pronged approach, the ferocious crossfire hit the incoming pirate boats with sawdust flying sideways, and the minions on the boat screamed in the sky, only to see blood and rain splashing in mid-air, and the lake was bright red and dazzling, and the dead bodies were floating and floating.

This is almost the first time that the black mountain pirates have encountered such a strong firepower, not to mention the cannons on the Fubo battalion ship for the time being, even the rows of dense fire guns and rockets, I am afraid that most water pirates have never seen in their lives. Even if there are people who know the goods, they have never seen any official army use them so perfectly and powerfully.

As more and more ships came to reinforce from the flank. The firepower of the Fubo battalion was becoming more and more ferocious. Under the successive defeats, the pirate boats that were still fierce and invincible before turned around and walked back, and many of the pirates were so frightened that they couldn't wait, and they jumped into the lake to dive and escape for their lives. The main gunboats of the pirates, who had already lost the upper hand and had no power to fight back, were attacked by the superior artillery of the Ming army. Even more retreated. Avoid it. The already unruly formation became more and more messy.

On the outermost bluffing boats, sentinel ships and other warships of the Fubo battalion battle array, the fierce and bloody battle between the two sides gradually came to an end. With the last of the pirates on the ship hacked to death with a knife, and the last potential pirate who was digging the bottom of the boat was strangled to death by the soldiers of the Fubo Battalion, who also dived underwater, the attack on the Fubo Battalion organized by Song Heihu ended in complete failure.

On the deck and on the lake, the corpses were stacked on top of each other, and the earth-shattering fighting and screams of Fang Cai still seemed to be endless. Looking at the entire battlefield, the Fubo battalion has the upper hand.

"What should I do?" A water pirate leader came to Song Heihu's side. Surprised and anxious, he asked.

Song Heihu squinted his eyes and looked ahead, snorting coldly. The tone was indifferent: "Sure enough, it is not what Lao Tzu expected!" This army is really fucking a little difficult! It's such a shit, you're a fucking scared bird! The order goes down and lets the brothers move to the island, and Lao Tzu will have a good fight with this group of officers and soldiers! ”

With Song Heihu's order, the pirate fleet quickly broke away from contact with the Fubo camp and turned around and retreated to the waters of Black Mountain Island. Come like the wind, go like the wind, this gang of water thieves can crisscross the cave for many years, and naturally they also have their skills to rely on.

He Guoyuan was not in a hurry, and ordered the whole battalion to follow behind the water thieves to continue the pursuit.

......

On the morning of the third day of November, on the west bank of Dongting Lake, the county seat of Longyang

This small county town that was not well known in the past is now surrounded by a large army, densely packed camp tents stretching for dozens of miles, the camp inside and outside the camp are heavily guarded, from time to time there are groups of cavalry to and from the major camps to communicate and transmit messages, causing smoke and dust to roll up, adding to the solemn atmosphere.

This is the Huguang Town and Zhongzhen Battalion that are preparing to go north to Hubei, a total of 60,000 horses, have just arrived here today, and they will be stationed after a short pause.

A few days ago, Emperor Longwu's edict arrived in Chenzhou, officially approving Pang Yue's plan to send troops, and ordered Pang Yue to be the main and Li Guo as the deputy, and the two of them led their troops and horses north to support the Xiangyang Wang Guangtai Department anyway. This time, Emperor Longwu unexpectedly did not specifically send the Chinese courtiers to supervise the division, and only vaguely asked Pang Yue to negotiate and contact with He Tengjiao of Changsha and Changde's Block, and said that he had also sent an order to Changsha and Changde, and He and Blocker would definitely send troops north to support Huguang Town and the loyal camp Yunyun at a critical time.

As for the salary, it was as Pang Yue expected, and there was not a single grain. According to the usual practice, the soldiers and horses go first before the grain and grass are moved, and whenever a large army goes out to fight, the imperial court should allocate additional military food in addition to the daily food and salary to supplement it during the battle. But this time, there was nothing. From this, the current financial dilemma faced by the imperial court can be seen.

In addition, Pang Yue also learned from the eunuchs who came to announce the edict that Zhu Dadian, who was the secretary of the Ministry of War, had been in poor health recently and had been recuperating at home, and had been absent from the court many times in a row. The daily affairs of the Ministry of War are now presided over by Lu Daqi, the left attendant of the Ministry of War.

After thinking about it for a while in combination with the above information, Pang Yue had already vaguely guessed the reason why Emperor Longwu did not send Wenchen to supervise the teacher. On the one hand, the imperial court was financially embarrassed and could not allocate military rations during the war, so Emperor Longwu had to use this method to show trust and encouragement, and make a little compensation. On the other hand, Zhu Dadian was seriously ill, and the rest of the courtiers either had their own important duties and could not get rid of themselves, or they knew that their prestige was insufficient, especially in the current situation when the imperial court could not allocate a single meter and a mile, it was even more difficult to control the generals in the army, so they resigned from each other and it was difficult to determine the candidates.

In any case, this is not a bad thing for Pang Yue. Without a Wenchen who doesn't know soldiers to point fingers at him, there is undoubtedly more room for him to play. As for the fact that the imperial court did not allocate military rations, he didn't care at all, because the large amount of grain harvested by the guards in Hunan and brought back from Guangdong was already more than enough.

On the day of the arrival of the edict, Li Guo had already led the main force of the loyal battalion to Chenzhou to meet Pang Yue. This time, the scale of the loyal battalion is also not small, with a total of nearly 60,000 troops out of 40,000. In addition to Tian Jianxiu, Li You and other people who stayed behind in Jiuxi to guard their families, almost all the main generals of the loyal battalion were present.

The situation was urgent and could not be delayed, Pang Yue did not delay, according to the predetermined plan, in addition to leaving the Huben battalion to stay in Chenzhou, the whole town set out and embarked on the journey with the loyal battalion army.

Along the way, the army's grain and grass baggage were transported by ships and traveled to the water. All the officers and men traveled lightly by land, marched quite quickly, and made many stops along the way, until they reached the county seat of Longyang.

According to the agreement between Pang Yue and Li Guo and Gao Yigong, this time he sent troops to Hubei, and Huguang Town first went up from Yuanshui with the loyal battalion, crossed Dongting Lake and reached the city of Yuezhou. The Yuezhou Qing army Ma Jiaolin and Xu Yong's troops suffered heavy losses in the battle of Hunan at the beginning of the year, especially Xu Yong, who had almost become a total army of light poles after the battle of Wanshou Bridge, and the two divisions together were only five or six thousand remnants. The 60,000 troops of Huguang Town and the Loyal Battalion are ten times larger than the enemy, and Yuezhou is not a high-rise city, so it should be able to go down in one go.

After that, the whole army was divided into two routes. Among them, the main force of Huguang Town and the headquarters of Gao Yigong, with a total of 30,000 horses, were the Western Route Army, led by Pang Yue, along the Yangtze River to the west, attacking the left near Jingzhou. Li Guo led the main force of the loyal battalion and the Fubo battalion of Huguang Town as the eastern route army, advancing by land and water, marching in the direction of Wuchang, sweeping the prefectures and counties along the way, destroying the war potential of the Qing side as much as possible, and making a posture of coercing Wuchang to respond to the direction of Jingzhou.

In this way, the two major towns of Wuchang and Jingzhou will be in an emergency at the same time, and the Qing army in Hubei, which is not already full of troops, will definitely be overwhelmed. Furthermore, the siege of Xiangyang can be solved.

The agreement also stipulates that the grain and grass of the 40,000 loyal battalion troops will be provided by Huguang Town. All the military funds and property seized by the Eastern Route Army belonged to the loyal battalion. The two families captured by the Western Route Army were distributed according to the proportion of troops, Huguang Town got six, and the loyal battalion got four.

This agreement was indeed a bit unfair to Huguang Town, and the opposition of the generals in the military town also rose one after another. But Pang Yue still insisted on his opinion, because he knew very well that whether it was for the future situation of Huguang or for the development of Huguang Town itself, these efforts were really insignificant.

The army suspended in Longyang County, firstly, to wait for the return of the collection of ships. The 60,000 troops needed to cross the lake were not a small number, although Pang Yue and Li Guo had collected most of them before, but there were still some shortages. Therefore, before arriving in Longyang County, Pang Yue had already sent several capable men and horses to collect from the villages along the Dongting Lake. When the boats are ready, it's time to go. Second, the Fubo battalion had not returned from the previous expedition to suppress the water pirates in Dongting Lake, and it was necessary to wait for the good news to return and ensure that the future grain and grass supply lines were worry-free, so that the army could go on the road with peace of mind. Otherwise, even if the army can successfully cross the Dongting and go to the front, they must always worry about whether their main logistics supply line will be disrupted by water bandits. In this way, how can the morale of the army be stable?

During the stop, the generals of the loyal battalion and many generals in Huguang Town paid special attention to the battle in Dongting Lake. None of them were sure if the Fubo Battalion, which had been formed for more than half a year, would be able to defeat the most vicious water bandits. Will the army be able to set off on time? Those who are as anxious as a stone have a bright light, and they are even more eager to swim into the lake to support.

On the other hand, Pang Yue has always been calm and relaxed, as if he has a bamboo in his chest.

In the evening, the military report finally came. (To be continued.) )