The vanguard of the left army was led by the commander-in-chief Li Guoying. Pen ~ fun ~ pavilion www.biquge.info he led an army of 50,000 up the river, trying to seize Wuhu and open up the road to Nanjing.

Although Zuo Liangyu died, it did not affect the strategy of the army. Li Zicheng's Shun army was pressing forward step by step in the back, and had already captured Jiujiang, and the left army suffered defeats in the hands of Li Zicheng, and had long lost the courage to fight against the Shun army. I just want to go down the river as soon as possible so as to avoid the edge of the Shun army.

Further downstream from Anqing, it was the territory of Jingnan Hou Huang's merits, and although the left army was afraid of the Shun army, it was not afraid of the other Ming armies at all.

Li Guoying stood on the deck of the command ship, looking at the enemy ship intercepted on the river in the distance, and couldn't help laughing. Looking at the flag, what kind of troops of the Ningbo General Army are blocking in front, just look at the formation arranged by the other side to know that the commander of the other side is a mallet.

How can anyone let the side of the ship be aimed at someone else, isn't it looking for a fight?

You still have such a big warship, do you think this is the sea, this is the Yangtze River? Such a ship has no maneuverability on the river at all, and looking at the opponent's posture, all the sails are lowered, and the ship cannot move at all on the river. What a joke!

"Li Quan, you prepare a hundred fast boats, fill them with firewood, douse them with oil, go straight to their ship formation, and burn their big ship to me!" Li Guoying ordered that the big ships that have lost their ability to maneuver are targets one by one on the river, and Li Guoying is not ready to engage them in a broadside battle, after all, the opponent's ships are tall, and if they attack from the bottom up, they will definitely suffer losses.

"Li Feng, you lead fifty warships, wait for the other party to catch fire, immediately kill the generals, be sure to rush into the opponent's battle formation, and all the other ships will follow to cover up."

"Order, Ma Wu on the south bank to speed up, wait for the opponent's fire, immediately attack from the south bank, kill the infantry on the other side's shore, and seize Tongling County!"

One after another orders came out of Li Guoying's mouth, and more than a dozen heralds immediately boarded the boat and rowed quickly everywhere. Soon Li Guoying's army moved.

Li Guoying's army of 50,000 people, including 30,000 sailors and 20,000 infantry troops, had nearly 1,000 large and small ships, most of which were small river boats, which were civilian boats looted by soldiers of the Left Army along the river.

Among them, there were 100 real warships, which were commanded by his subordinate lieutenant Li Feng and guerrilla general Li Quan.

After receiving Li Guoying's order, the guerrilla general Li Quan led a hundred fireboats converted from fishing boats to row towards the Daishan army downstream.

Ten men were rowed on each fireboat, and two heavily armed soldiers of the Left Army were in charge. The head of the fireship is equipped with sharp wood as a ramming angle, which can be inserted into the side of the enemy ship after impact, and firmly connect the fireship to the enemy ship. A sampan was tied to the back of each fireboat for the evacuation of the soldiers on board.

A hundred fireboats lined up on the river, and the boatmen rowed their oars desperately towards the enemy fleet three miles away.

Going down the river, coupled with the boatman's oars, the speed of the fireboat was very fast, and it approached the enemy ship quickly, and in a short time the distance between the two sides was close to more than a mile.

After the fireboat, the other ships of Li Guoying's department were also approaching rapidly, preparing to launch a full-scale attack on the enemy after the fireboat set fire. Vice Admiral Li Feng led fifty warships and followed closely behind the fireships.

The distance was getting closer and closer, and the fireships that rushed to the front were only a mile away from the Daishan fleet. The guerrilla general Li Quan raised his hand and was about to give the order to prepare for the ignition, when he was stunned to see white smoke suddenly rise above the enemy fleet, followed by bursts of thunder.

"The enemy has fired!" Li Quan reacted immediately, but he didn't expect the other party to have such artillery, looking at the density of white smoke coming out of the opponent's ship array, the other party was afraid that there were hundreds of artillery! Then Li Quan was horrified to see countless projectiles piercing the sky and falling down with a whistling sound.

The Daishan Army had nearly 300 artillery pieces, including nearly 100 red-coated cannons with a range of 10 miles and 200 small cannons of 500 catties. Although it is a small cannon, the firing range is also up to two miles.

When he saw the enemy ship attacking his side, Ren Siqi did not rush to order the cannon. Instead, let the other person get closer.

Standing on the bow of the tall Princess, looking at the dense enemy ships on the western riverway, I am afraid that there are thousands of them!

Ren Siqi did not rush to order a cannon attack, but let the enemy's fireship rush to a mile away from him, and at this time, the enemy's main fleet was also two miles away, within the best range of the red-coated cannon.

Unable to let the other party get close anymore, Ren Siqi immediately ordered all artillery to fire.

One hundred red-coated cannons bombarded the enemy's main fleet two miles away, while two hundred five-hundred-pound cannons launched an attack on the enemy's ships.

The artillery hits of these years were very low, and they were equipped with solid shells instead of explosive shells like those of later generations. The hit rate is lower on turbulent waters than on land.

However, the salvo of 200 guns, a distance of less than a mile, caused a very large amount of damage. In one artillery salvo, nearly twenty out of a hundred fireships of the left army were hit by shells.

The momentum carried by the high-speed firing of more than two pounds of artillery shells is amazing, and if a soldier is hit, he will definitely be smashed in two and die. When it hits the ship, the sawdust flies around, and the slightly thinner plank will be smashed into a big hole.

In this round of firing, five of the nearly 20 fireships that were hit were hit by shells, and under the impact, the fireboats immediately capsized, and the soldiers on it were detained upside down in the river. Five or six other boats were smashed into a large hole, and the river poured into the cabin at a speed visible to the naked eye, and the hull of the boat sank into the river.

"Light the fire and abandon the ship!" Seeing that a cannonball fell on the ship he was on, just hitting the heads of the soldiers next to him, the sound of "clicking" like a watermelon breaking sounded, and the red and white liquid splashed in all directions. Touching the red and white things on his face, the guerrilla general Li Quan was so frightened that he hurriedly shouted and ordered the fire to be lit.

The soldiers and boatmen of the fireboat immediately ignited the firewood piled up on the ship with their torches, jumped onto the sampan, untied the rope between the sampan and the fireboat, rowed the oars and fled.

Although there was no one to paddle, the fireboat still rushed towards the Daishan army half a mile ahead, driven by the original inertia and the flowing river. But if no one controls it, it will not be easy to accurately collide with the Daishan Army's ships.

A hundred red-coated cannons attacked Li Guoying's main fleet. But for nearly a thousand ships, this bit of firepower is not enough.

In one round of shelling, only more than 20 shells hit the target, and the other shells fell into the river, splashing a large and high splash. But all the ships of the Left Army that were hit by shells suffered serious losses.

The red-coated cannon weighing 3,000 to 5,000 catties is a sharp weapon installed on the city wall to defend the city, and the cannonballs are full of 30 catties. The momentum carried by such heavy shells was amazing, and the ships of the Left Army were all very small river boats, and even Li Guoying's command ship was only a warship of a thousand materials, and it could not withstand the bombardment of the red-coated cannons at all.

Any river boat hit by a cannon shell, a small boat carrying twenty or thirty people will be directly hit into two sections, and if a slightly larger ship is hit by a cannonball, the plank will also burst, revealing a large hole, and then the river will pour in through the hole, and soon the boat will sink.

However, for the Left Army's naval army, which had a total of nearly 1,000 ships, this loss was minimal.

What made Li Guoying angry was that Li Quan, who was sent to command the fireboat, abandoned the ship and fled back before the fireboat hit the other party's hull.

In this way, the power of the fire attack will be greatly reduced, and you can only rely on the advantage of many people on the ship to fight hard with the opponent.

Under Zuo Liangyu, Li Guoying was a rare general who could fight, followed Zuo Liangyu for many years and experienced countless wars, so he was appointed as a pioneer and was in charge of most of the warships of the Zuo Army.

Seeing that the fireship had already lit a flame and attacked the opponent, although it was ignited a little early, it could also cause a certain impact on the opponent. Li Guoying immediately ordered that Vice Admiral Li Feng with fifty warships immediately attack the enemy ships.

These fifty warships were the main ships of the Left Army, and this ship was divided into two tiers, with twenty oarsmen on the lower deck and soldiers in charge of operations on the upper deck.

The sides of the ship were equipped with bulwarks, covered with cowhides, and they were not afraid of the fire of bows and crossbows. There were fifty men in each boat, of whom twenty were fire-bearers, fifteen archers, and fifteen sword-and-shield men. Each soldier is dressed in iron armor, he is a battle-hardened soldier, and he is a truly elite soldier in the 50,000 army.

As mentioned above, the army was already very corrupt at the end of the Ming Dynasty, and the officers ate empty salaries and drank the blood of the soldiers, which caused the soldiers to be extremely poor, and often did not even have enough to eat, let alone combat effectiveness.

However, the imperial court always has to fight when raising an army, and in order to cope with the war, the main generals will take out part of the embezzled silver taels to support some personal soldiers, and the war will be fought by the personal soldiers, and other ordinary soldiers will follow to play soy sauce. Therefore, for a general, the personal soldiers are the most important combat force in his hands, because as long as there is food, ordinary soldiers can recruit as much as they want. Take Zuo Liangyu's army of more than 200,000 as an example, among which there are less than 20,000 truly elite soldiers, all of whom are composed of personal soldiers. And Li Guoying has an army of 50,000, among which the most capable of fighting is the 2,000 personal soldiers in his hands.

And 2,000 soldiers were sent out 1,000 at once, which shows that Li Guoying has also calculated his blood capital.

Fifty warships, following behind the fireboats, rushed towards the Daishan army fleet in the rain of bullets. Governor Li Guoying led the other ships to follow behind the warship, and at this moment he used all his strength to annihilate the enemy in front of him in one fell swoop.

On both sides of the Yangtze River, Li Guoying's 20,000 infantry were also advancing along the riverbank. But Li Guoying knew that if he wanted to defeat the enemy in front of him, he had to rely on sailors, because the number of infantry was too small.

On the Daishan Army warship, the gunners were busy cleaning the gun chambers, installing gunpowder, tamping, loading shells, aiming, and ignition. After more than half a year of rigorous training, the gunners have become very proficient in operation, and the average rate of fire has reached one shot every two minutes. And the fireships of the left army at a mile away would take a quarter of an hour to arrive, which was enough time for another six or seven rounds of bombardment.

The artillery of the Daishan Army has a simple aiming device when casting, and there is a bracket on the front side of the gun body to adjust the angle of the artillery, and the closer the distance, the higher the accuracy of the artillery. I saw that the ships of the left army that were coming were hit by cannonballs one after another, and the burning pyres were splashed with sparks all over the sky under the impact of the cannonballs, and they fell into the river one after another to make a "poof" sound. Then I saw the fireboat sink into the river at a speed visible to the naked eye.

Of the 100 fireships, less than 20 of them could break through the rain of bullets and reach the Daishan military ship array. And these twenty fireships failed to hit the Daishan Army's big ship, but were all intercepted by the Daishan Army's small boat. As mentioned earlier, there are several small boats in front of each big ship, and there are more than a dozen Daishan army sailors on each small boat. When the fireboat came to a stop, they hooked the side of the fireboat with their flying claws, and then rowed the boat to drag the fireboat to the side. The fire attack strategy of Li Guoying's army did not cause any trouble to the Daishan army at all.

After clearing the fireboats, all the guns on the Daishan military ship began to concentrate their fire on the attacking Li Guoying's fleet. Countless shells flew out of the Daishan Army warship and covered Li Guoying's fleet. The shells fell into the river, splashing countless water. The cannonballs hit the warship, sending sawdust flying. The shells smashed into the soldiers of the left army, breaking bones and tendons, and screaming again and again.

Although Zuo Liangyu's army also had artillery, there were no warships that could install artillery, or in other words, the left army did not pay attention to firearms at all. Now in the face of such a violent rain of bullets, the soldiers of the left army were suddenly blinded.

The first to bear the brunt were the fifty warships. Although the ships were large and sturdy, they could not withstand the bombardment of artillery, and the 500-pound small cannon shells were less powerful, and if they hit the bulwark covered with cowhide, they would be catapulted into the river. But the power of the 5,000-pound red-coated cannon is not a bulwark. As long as it is hit by a shell, the bulwark will be beaten to pieces. If a cannonball hits the side of the boat near the river, it will be hit through a large hole, and then the river will pour through the hole, and the soldiers of the left army will try their best to block it, but they can't stop it.

Under the bombardment of the Daishan army's artillery, 20 warships were sunk in a very short period of time, which made Li Guoying's heart bleed. He never imagined that he would be bombarded with such heavy artillery in a water battle.

If you continue to attack, you may be able to win, but you will inevitably suffer heavy losses. At the very least, none of the fifty warships will survive, but there are a thousand of their own soldiers in them! And if you lose this thousand soldiers, your position in the left army will inevitably decline!

Even if you can defeat the enemy in front of you, what can you do, there is still Huang Degong's army behind the Daishan army!

At this moment, Li Guoying's mood is extremely gloomy and he can't fight anymore. After pondering for a long time, Li Guoying was about to order the troops to retreat, but when he raised his eyes, he saw that his own warship had turned around and fled backwards.

PS: Just to clarify, the basic update per day is 4,000 words. Or one or two more, anyway, the basic update amount is 4,000 words. In addition, according to the mood, there will be updates from time to time, such as picking up money, birthdays, festivals, and readers will add more when they reward the leader of the helmsman. (To be continued.) )