Chapter Ninety-One: The Siege of the City "Hasn't the pursuing cavalry returned?" Lin Chengting saw that the cavalry had been chasing out for more than two quarters of an hour, but there was still no news coming back, and he couldn't help but have a bad premonition.

To be honest, he is not too confident in his cavalry, since the defeat of Si'an in the first battle, less than half of the nearly 1,000 cavalry under his command have been brought back, although it is said that a lot of cavalry has been replenished after returning, but the overall Su zhì has dropped a lot.

When he was in southern Anhui, he also tried to strengthen the training of cavalry, trying to imitate the small cavalry of Yu Sheng's army to engage in dense formation, the small-scale cavalry led by Wang Luyun also brought a lot of shock to Lin Chengting, only fifty cavalry can launch repeated charges against his own eight hundred cavalry, killing and injuring nearly 100 of his own cavalry, this kind of victory is definitely not dependent on the cavalry individual bravery can be done.

However, the effect of his imitation of Yu Shengjun's cavalry to train his own cavalry was not great, because all along, the traditional cavalry relied on the bravery of the cavalry, and after rushing up, they basically fought on their own, relying on the cavalry's strong personal combat effectiveness to kill and injure the enemy.

However, modern cavalry does not pay attention to personal bravery, they rely on strict formations, and the most important thing to form a tight formation is strong discipline, but discipline is often the most lacking in feudal armies.

So after trying it with bad results, Lin Chengting also dispelled this thought.

Now that his own cavalry is in pursuit, thinking of the previous battle against Yu Shengjun's cavalry, Lin Chengting is not worried and can't do it.

But he didn't wait long, and soon he saw a large number of cavalry galloping from the west, looking at the banners and the clothing of the cavalrymen, which should be his own cavalry.

However, the number of these cavalry seems to be much smaller than before the battle, and the morale is significantly low, and many of the cavalry are wounded.

Seeing this situation, Lin Chengting couldn't help frowning, and thought to himself: Is it really defeated?

After a while, he just saw Dong Yanghong, only to see Dong Yanghong with a guilty face, and before he could speak, Lin Chengting was the first to speak: "What's the matter, why can't you only come back for eight hundred?" ”

Dong Yanghong's face was not very good at this time, and he lowered his head and said in a deep voice: "Report to the military commander, when the headquarters led the cavalry team to pursue, he was ambushed by the enemy cavalry, and he suffered a lot of damage in a hurry!" ”

"What about those demon cavalry?" Lin Chengting continued to frown and asked.

"The enemy cavalry has already turned around and fled south, and the staff can't catch up with them, so I will come back with my brothers first!"

Hearing Dong Yanghong's words, Lin Chengting was naturally extremely angry in his heart: "Bastard, the enemy cavalry is only two hundred, you can't stop the pursuit with a thousand cavalry, and you also lose two hundred cavalry, what do I want you to do!" ”

Scolding and scolding, Lin Chengting shook the whip in his hand fiercely, although he wanted to pull this Dong Yanghong down and cut it down with a straight word, but he also knew that he was still sensible and knew that the battle situation was tense now, and it was not appropriate to kill the generals before the battle.

Moreover, although he didn't admit it in his heart, he already had a certain premonition of the defeat of the cavalry, and he didn't actually blame Dong Yanghong too much in his heart.

Dong Yanghong can be regarded as a fierce general under his command, last year he led the cavalry to risk death to attack the rear of Yu Shengjun, trying to rescue Lin Chengting's main Chinese army, although in the end Lin Chengting's main Chinese army still collapsed on a large scale, but Lin Chengting also took this opportunity to escape with people, and finally collected more than 2,000 remnants.

He knew very well that if it weren't for Dong Yanghong's death-defying rescue, he would definitely end up with the annihilation of the whole army at that time.

Dong Yanghong is a good general, and he has a lot of cavalry, but Yu Shengjun is too demonic for other domestic armies in this era.

Maybe in the future, other armies will follow Yu Shengjun or find out Yu Shengjun's weaknesses, but now, whether it is the Taiping army or the Qing army, in fact, the fate of Yu Shengjun is almost the same.

This is no longer just a gap between two weapons or formations, a tactical gap, but a gap in an entire era.

Remembering that at the beginning, Yu Shengjun's cavalry only had fifty cavalry and beat his own 800 cavalry, and now they have 200 cavalry to ambush their own thousand cavalry, and it is not surprising that they were defeated.

And at this time, Lin Chengting didn't know that Dong Yanghong's cavalry did not encounter an ambush at all, but suffered a crushing defeat in the charge directly opposite!

At the beginning, when Wang Luyun led 200 cavalry to form a dense formation, brandishing a saber and launching a counter-charge, relying on the advantage of terrain, the first round of charging alone completely destroyed more than 100 cavalry in the front row of the Taiping army.

It was not a simple defeat, but a complete crush, and no more than a third of the more than 100 Taiping cavalry survived.

After crushing the first row of Taiping cavalry, Wang Luyun continued to charge with the second cavalry company, once again defeating more than 100 cavalry in the second row of the Taiping army.

Facing the cavalry in the front two rows turned into nothingness under the cavalry charge of Yu Shengjun, the Taiping cavalry behind still had the courage to rush up to fight, so the Taiping cavalry in the third and fourth rows faced the menacing Yu Shengjun cavalry, quickly pulled out the dock, and ran directly backwards.

The Taiping cavalry in front of him turned around and fled, which naturally affected the Taiping cavalry in the back rows, and then the cavalry formation of the Taiping army fell into complete chaos.

If it weren't for the fact that Wang Lüyun's Second Cavalry Company had been charged twice in a row, not only did they have certain casualties, but also the bodies of the soldiers and horses had fallen strictly, and it would have been difficult to continue to launch a third charge towards the enemy hundreds of meters away, it was estimated that these Taiping cavalry who had fallen into chaos would have suffered even greater casualties.

In the face of his own cavalry, which had been completely chaotic, Dong Yanghong also knew that there was nothing to do, and immediately ordered him to retreat, so the remaining eight hundred cavalry all ran away, much faster than when they were pursuing, after all, they still cared about horsepower when they were pursuing, but when they escaped, they were all running with their lives, for fear of being one step behind their comrades.

The battle between the cavalry ended with the Taiping retreating on their own initiative, but the task of Wang Lüyun's second cavalry company was not yet completed.

Now that they are free from the pursuit of the enemy cavalry, they can then calmly detour and go directly to the back of the enemy array to sneak up on the artillery position.

However, in order to avoid being discovered by the Taiping army too early, they detoured a little far, and at the same time, after a fierce battle in the morning, people said that they could be relieved after a short rest, but the war horses were a little difficult, in order to let the war horses recover, Wang Luyun ordered the soldiers to feed the war horses with essence during the rest time.

The horses in Yu Shengjun's army are generally rarely fed directly with ordinary grass, basically they are fed with specially blended feed, and as for riding war horses, they are fed every day to ensure the body of the horses.

After feeding the horses, the cavalry led the horses and began to march, after all, now in the war zone, they can encounter the enemy army at any time, and they must ensure the body of the war horse at any time, otherwise the cavalry itself is comfortable on horseback, but when the horse is tired and half dead, it encounters the enemy, isn't this looking for death?

Because it was necessary to make a big circle to avoid the Taiping army from discovering and intercepting it halfway, so as not to be discovered by them, so as to tightly wrap the artillery position, Wang Luyun's second cavalry company had a somewhat large detour range.

According to the itinerary estimate, it will be evening at the earliest to arrive at the reserved position, and it is naturally inappropriate to fight at night, Wang Luyun plans to rest for one night and attack at dawn tomorrow.

After all, after night, if the moon is hanging high, it is okay, and you can barely engage in a night attack, but although it will not rain again and again these days, the sky is also gloomy, and now it is the end of the moon, and the moon only has a crescent moon left.

It is a question of whether or not the enemy artillery positions can be found in such a dark night when they can't see their fingers, let alone attack them.

However, it is more likely to crash headlong into someone's Chinese military camp.

Wang Luyun took the cavalry to make a detour, although Lin Chengting did not know the intentions of Yu Shengjun's cavalry, but he also knew that the generals of Yu Shengjun in the city would not send a cavalry for no reason, although Dong Yanghong said that they were going south, but no one knew if they would suddenly choose the way to return north.

Well, don't say it, Wang Luyun really did this, first go south, disengage from the enemy, then move west, turn a corner, go north to the predetermined position, and then attack from the predetermined position.

Lin Chengting was very guarded, and immediately ordered 500 of the 3,000 infantry stationed at the West City Gate, and then he himself transferred another 1,000 people from the Central Army at the North Gate and deployed them in the southwest to guard against this cavalry from suddenly appearing.

At the same time, Dong Yanghong was also strictly ordered to send reconnaissance cavalry to search for the location of the enemy cavalry, and in the face of Lin Chengting's order, Dong Yanghong had to select dozens of cavalry with good riding skills from the group of dejected cavalry under his hands, and at the same time had not been frightened, and scattered to the periphery in a group of several people for reconnaissance.

At the same time as letting people go to find Yu Shengjun's cavalry, Lin Chengting got a spies report at noon, they found a large number of Yu Shengjun in Songjiang three days ago, according to the Taiping Army's spy reconnaissance news, the person who came should be Yu Shengjun stationed in Shanghai and a Yu Shengjun originally stationed in Songjiang, the two converged The Qing Demon actually had 3,000 people, and was personally commanded by the Qing Demon Lin Zhe.

Calculating their distance, it is estimated that they will now be almost in Jiaxing, less than 100 kilometers away from Huzhou, and they will be able to arrive in six days at most.

Time is running out for yourself!

Lin Chengting knew very well that if he couldn't take Huzhou before Lin Zhe led the army reinforcements arrived, then the follow-up war would not be easy to fight, although his troops were 13,000 people, but Lin Zhe's Yu Shengjun was not only more than 1,000 people last year, but more than 5,000 troops.

When these 5,000 troops converge together, Lin Chengting has no confidence to win them in the field!

The only way now is to take down this Huzhou City before Lin Zhe arrives with the army, kill the more than 1,000 victorious troops in it first, and then rely on Huzhou Jiancheng to fight against the reinforcements of the Yu Shengjun army, so that there is any hope of victory.

Although there were not many siege equipment built in the past few days, and the artillery failed to completely destroy the city wall of Huzhou, considering that there was not much time left for him, Lin Chengting also decided not to continue to drag it out.

At dawn the next day, the Taiping army was burying the pot early, the sky was not yet bright, their artillery began to shell, and more Taiping soldiers began to line up, a huge phalanx of soldiers gradually appeared outside the city of Huzhou, in front of these phalanxes there are more than 20 siege equipment of different styles, in addition to more than 20 ladders.

Lin Chengting once again sat on his horse in armor, looking at the Huzhou city wall from afar, and said lightly: "Let's start!" ”

As Lin Chengting's words fell, under the drums of several doors in the Taiping Army, one by one the sturdy drummers with their upper bodies waved the drums and pestles in their hands.

In the rumbling drums, the phalanx of the Taiping army soon rushed out of many soldiers in tattered clothes without any weapons in their hands, and they ran towards the city wall one by one with wheelbarrows, or directly on their shoulders, or shoulder-to-shoulder, carrying mud, sand and gravel.

"They're going to fill the moat!" Shi Langyi looked at these unarmed cannon fodder soldiers of the Taiping Army, but there was no relaxed expression on his face: "Order, all of them, shoot freely!" ”