With the combat strength and morale of Zuo Liangyu's army, he simply did not have the courage to fight to the death. Pen & Fun & Pavilion www.biquge.info If it's okay to fight with the wind, most of the soldiers will be very interested, and it is better to satisfy the psychology of burning, killing and plundering than rushing to move forward. If it is a battle against the wind, the situation is not good, and before the troops who are engaged in the battle are concerned, the army in the rear will already be in a thousand miles.

This is the status quo of Zuo Liangyu's army or most of the Ming army at this time, otherwise why did it have more than 200,000 troops and Wuchang Jiancheng to defend, but they did not dare to fight the Shun army that was chased by the Qing army? Otherwise, why did the Southern Ming Dynasty, with a total of five or six hundred thousand troops, surrender one after another in the face of more than 100,000 Manchu Qing soldiers, and they didn't even fight a decent battle.

For officers, the soldiers under them are their wealth, and if the soldiers are badly damaged, they have no status at all. And for ordinary soldiers, being a soldier is just for the sake of stuttering, and fools will fight to the death. What is the righteousness of the family and the country, what is that? What do you have to do with us ordinary soldiers?

This is a kind of sadness, a sadness of the times, and the sorrow of the Ming Dynasty. For more than 200 years since the founding of the Ming Dynasty, when it comes to life and death, from courtiers and doctors to ordinary soldiers, there are not many people who are willing to be loyal to the country for the court, and all they want to do is save their lives.

Of course, there are also people who are loyal to the country, such as Yuan Jixian, the governor of Jiang who was imprisoned in the boat by Zuo Liangyu, when more than 200,000 left troops surrendered to the Qing Dynasty in history, he was unwilling to surrender and was killed by the Manchus. Like Shi Kefa, the current cabinet scholar in Yangzhou, no matter what his ability is, but there is nothing to say about the national integrity.

It's a little far, and I look back at the battlefield.

In the face of the fierce artillery bombardment of the Daishan Army, watching the warships around them being sunk one by one, most of the sailors of the Left Army were already frightened, and before Li Guoying could order a retreat, they had already turned their bows and fled to the rear.

However, on the river three or four miles wide, there were nearly 1,000 ships of the Left Army, and it was so easy to turn around when they fled in a hurry.

During the scramble, a number of boats collided with each other, and countless soldiers of the Left Army fell into the river.

Every ship wanted to take the road and flee in order to avoid the terrible artillery fire of the Daishan army on the opposite side, but the navy was not as good as the army, although the river was only three or four miles wide, if it was organized, it would take some time for so many ships to turn around and retreat, not to mention this disorderly escape.

In a short period of time, the left army and navy were in chaos, hundreds of ships were competing for the current, thousands of sails were racing, and the chaos not only made the commander Li Guoying at a loss, but even Ren Siqi, who was more than a mile away on the Princess, was dumbfounded.

Is this the army of the Ming Dynasty in this era? It's really a long time to see, a moment ago it was still violent, but in the blink of an eye, it was like a note, this change is so fast!

"Order, all the troops attack, be sure to wipe out the left army!" Shocked, Ren Siqi hurriedly ordered. The Daishan Army warships behind the ship formation sailed out one by one, killed from the reserved passage between the big ships, and under the leadership of Mao 18 and others, they killed the left ships in front.

The big ships, which were used as batteries, also pulled up their big guns, raised their sails and turned their rudders, and prepared to continue bombarding close to the battlefield in order to put pressure on the other side.

There were more than 800 ships of the Daishan Army, of which 300 were brought from Daishan, and 500 were various river boats requisitioned from Zhenjiang. Naturally, so many ships would not be able to send all of them into battle, because many of them were only suitable for carrying cargo.

The attackers were all river boats suitable for combat, about 300 of them, and they were all elite Yuandai mountain water troops. The newly recruited sailors from Zhenjiang were not yet trained and could not fight at all.

At a distance of more than a mile, three hundred warships quickly rowed by, and went straight into the chaotic fleet of Zuo Liangyu's army. All the soldiers of the Left Army only knew how to flee at this time, and no one thought of stopping the enemy's attack at all, not even the most elite soldiers under Li Guoguang.

Mao 18 stood on the bow of a warship, swinging his knife and slashing a stray arrow that flew from nowhere. Originally, he was the commander of the pursuing fleet, but the left army had been completely defeated, and there was no effective resistance at all. In this case, there was no need to command at all, and every Daishan army warship independently launched an attack on the nearest left ship.

Each warship of the Daishan Army was equipped with more than a dozen musketeers, as well as a large number of fire oil bombs and fire oil cans. After approaching the warships of the left army, the soldiers of the Daishan army did not jump to fight and seize the ships at all, but shot with muskets from afar, and threw fire canisters to burn the ships when they were close.

In the sound of "bang, bang, bang" musket shots, the soldiers on the ships of the left army screamed and fell into the river, and the fire oil canisters that were thrown over ignited caused the whole ship to fall into flames.

Of course, the desperate soldiers of the Left Army will also launch a counterattack, but their means of counterattack are nothing more than shooting with bows and arrows or jumping gangs. The Daishan Army, which had experienced the Battle of Shandong, attached great importance to the protection of the troops, each soldier wore a mandarin duck jacket with a certain protective force, and the officers were wearing iron armor, and there were more than a dozen sword and shield soldiers on each boat holding high the shield, not afraid of the shooting of arrows at all. As for the gang jumping, with the morale of the left army, they simply did not have that courage.

Under the attack of the Daishan army, many soldiers of the left army surrendered one after another, knelt on the bow of the boat, and threw their weapons into the river.

When he saw the rout of his subordinates' ships, Li Guoying, the commander-in-chief of the left army, already knew that the general trend was gone. His panicked boats blocked the entire river and made it difficult to pass.

In the distance, the three hundred Daishan Army warships of the Daishan Army have been killed. It is impossible to escape safely by boat, worthy of being a veteran of the battlefield, Li Guoying's decision at this moment is very fast. He immediately ordered the ships to move closer to the riverbank, and after disembarking, fled by land along the riverbank.

There were still thirty of the fifty warships left, and there were more than 600 soldiers left. Thirty warships docked on the south bank of the Yangtze River, and Li Guoying, under the protection of more than 600 personal soldiers, fled in the direction of Anqing, trying to join the infantry marching along the riverbank.

As mentioned earlier, Li Guoying's vanguard army totaled 50,000 people, including 30,000 naval troops and 20,000 infantry, attacking together from both land and water.

Now the navy in the Yangtze River has been defeated, under the pursuit of the Daishan army, I don't know how many escapes can ascend to heaven, but there are still infantry troops on the river bank, because of the speed of the boat, the infantry army is more than 20 miles behind the navy.

At this moment, Li Guoying wanted to escape back into the infantry as soon as possible, so that he could escape and ascend to heaven.

Li Guoying is smart, and the sailors under him are not stupid, watching the enemy ships pursue, and the river in front of them is full of their own ships, and they can't escape quickly, many soldiers of the left army have learned from Li Guoying, and drove the warships to the river banks on both sides, so as to escape to the shore. (To be continued.) )