At the sound of the trumpet, Saburo Okamoto, a samurai, rode a Mongolian war horse through the rice fields after the autumn harvest. He was already familiar with this rice field, and not long ago, when the rice was ripe, Saburo Okamoto and others, who were besieging the city, were ordered by the head of the family, Shimazu, to bring their own men and other soldiers to harvest all the rice planted by these Annam barbarians.

Now, Okamoto rode through the harvested rice paddies and rushed towards the Thang Long City Wall.

He was the Imperial Horse Guard of the Satsuma Shimazu Domain, that is, the glorious cavalry guard. As a samurai of the feudal lord, he received more than 100 koku of Ishitaka Caieup, and in turn, he needed to equip his own horses to serve the lord of the family, as well as four foot samurai, six ashigaru spearmen, two ashigaru standard-bearers, and two reservists.

In the past, Okamoto and his subordinate Ashigaru lived in Satsuma, but now they live in Hokkaido. His family settled in their new home there, and then he followed the head of the family with his men Ashigaru to Annam.

As a high-ranking samurai, Okamoto's squad is very elite. After entering Annan to fight, they had already participated in more than a dozen battles, and Annan was very wealthy, and they received a lot of booty. Okamoto exchanged the loot for silver dollar coupons and sent them back to Hokkaido, Japan, to his wife and children.

However, the battle was not always easy, and although he still had fourteen men under his command, seven were killed and disabled, and seven were later added from the rest of the domain. Some of the samurai were killed, and their ashigaru was assigned to the command of other samurai.

The Satsuma Shimazu family is a town of its own, with 30,000 soldiers and horses. Only some of them were samurai, and the rest were mostly recruited by peasants. Men between the ages of seventeen and seventy were to be drafted into the army. Samurai had to bring their own horses and armor, and Ashigaru had to bring their own spears.

If you dare to hide and not listen to the signs, then you will be killed once it is verified.

The 30,000 men of the Shimazu family also include many non-combat logistics personnel, and the number is still very large, reaching 40%, that is, 12,000 people, and the actual combat personnel are only 18,000.

Of the 18,000 combat troops, there were about 2,000 samurai, and the remaining 16,000 or so were Ashigaru. There were cavalry, infantry, and some musketeers and gunners.

The samurai had sharp swords, armor, and handcuffs, while the ashigaru mostly had simple armor, but when it came to combat, the Japanese soldiers were fierce.

The heavy sound of drums passed through the open fields, overwhelmed the rushing waves of the river, and was heard throughout Thang Long City.

"The Wokou are coming!"

At the head of Thang Long City, Zheng Jun shouted. They were extremely disgusted with these short but extremely fierce Japanese people, who were even more hateful than the Han army, and had plundered everywhere since the invasion of Vietnam.

"Damn Han lackeys!"

Saburo Okamoto rode a horse and led a small group of his own men. They stopped two hundred paces away from Thang Long Castle, and more Japanese samurai and ashigaru came up behind them, and they also escorted a large group of Annan civilians.

These Annan people are cannon fodder, and after a short attack, they will be responsible for carrying earth to fill the trenches under the city.

Many of the people of Annam were also moving towards the city with their artillery wagons under the threat of shining katanas. On the way of the gun wagon, a smooth passage had already been paved with wooden planks.

"Can't let them push the cannon over!"

The Zheng lord at the head of the city frowned, next to him, was the puppet Emperor Hou Li who was driven to the shelves, although the Hou Li Emperor was the emperor, in fact, the Hou Li returned to the country, first the Ruan clan and then the Zheng clan, and the Li Emperor never really held the power. He was just a tool used by the Zheng clan to blackmail the Son of Heaven to order the princes.

At this time, the Zheng clan pulled Emperor Li to the head of the city, just so that he could boost his morale.

Emperor Li looked at the several gun carriage passages laid out in the field with wooden planks, as well as the huge cannons, his face was already shocked, and he trembled.

Zheng Jie, the Zheng lord who was named the king of Qingjun, is sixty-five years old this year, and he has coerced Emperor Li to attack Ruan several times, but he did not expect that the Han army is now overwhelmed, and the more he will be destroyed, the sooner he will be.

Zheng Jie also sent an envoy to ask the Han Emperor for peace, willing to pay tribute, but unfortunately the Han people did not pay attention to it this time.

He turned his head to look at Li Huang Li Weiqi, Li Weiqi is the eighteenth emperor of the Later Li Dynasty, twenty-three years ago, when Zheng Jie's father Zheng Song, the king of Ping'an, was in charge of the government, he coerced Li Weiqi's father Li Jingzong to hang himself, and then supported Li Weiqi, the eldest son of Jingzong, as the emperor.

Li Weiqi is completely a marionette in the hands of Zheng's father and son.

Now when the country is dying, Li Weiqi is sitting at the head of the city, only trembling, and he can't even say a word of encouragement, Zheng Jie is greatly disappointed.

He withdrew his disdainful gaze and looked out of the city again.

"The elephant army is out of battle!"

The Elephant Army, this is also the most powerful branch of the Zheng Army.

The gates creaked open, the drawbridge was lowered, and three thousand war elephants, holding all the hopes of Thang Long City, rushed out.

Thousands of horses galloped, like a mountain and a sea, and the current charge of three thousand war elephants was like the sky falling apart, and its momentum was indeed extremely powerful.

A short widow, a tall war elephant.

The rice fields outside the city are smooth roads for elephants, and they don't affect their charge at all.

The three-element-headed war elephants rushed up, as if the sky was falling apart, and their heavy bodies trampled on the rice fields, splashing countless mud and making the earth tremble.

Saburo Okamoto stepped off his horse and made a disturbing sound, one of his front hooves swaying on the ground.

"Withdraw!" Seeing that the situation was not good, Saburo Okamoto immediately shouted, and ran away with his team.

Some of the people of Annam, who were running slower, were immediately trampled into mud by the elephants that caught up.

At the head of the city, Zheng Jie couldn't help but stroke his beard and laugh, "Hahaha, as soon as the elephant army comes out, no one will fight!" The Han people are nothing more than that, and the Han lackeys and pirates are even more vulnerable, blowing horns and letting them step on the artillery of the Han army! ”

Outside the city not far away, on a high wooden tower, Fu Shan and other generals also watched the battle here.

"Zheng Jun's courage is commendable!" One of the staff officers laughed.

"Indeed, so many elephants, if they are caught, I don't know if they can be pulled to the Central Plains to sell for money." A Japanese general stares at the running elephants.

"It's too troublesome, the elephants eat too much, and they don't tolerate the climate of the Central Plains, I don't think it's worth it. It's better to kill and take the tooth directly, and sell it for some money. ”

"It's a pity to only take one pair of tusks, but this elephant can also be transported."

"There are rivers everywhere, so it's easy and cheap to transport. Transported with elephants, only there in the jungle is OK, in short, I don't think elephants are worth much, or take the bombardment. ”

The generals of the Zhennan Army did not take the 3,000 elephants seriously at all.

The elephants seem to be huge, especially with 3,000 elephants. But elephants are timid and afraid of fire.

In the first battle of Hue, the Nguyen family also attacked the Han army with an elephant army, but as a result, they turned around and ran away with a cannon shot, and stepped on their own formation. In Burma, the Taungoo army also used the elephant army against the Han army, but it was also vulnerable to the guns of the Han army.

If the most powerful thing about this elephant is that when they are bombarded by the guns of the Han army, they will immediately turn around and counterattack their own military formation, which can cause great lethality.

Therefore, the generals couldn't help but laugh when they saw that Thang Long City actually used the elephant army to try to attack the artillery of the Han army.

"The news in Thang Long City is too backward, and the elephant is really useless. However, historically, the natives of the Indochina Peninsula still like to domesticate war elephants, remembering that the once powerful Zhulin country had 60,000 war elephants, and now the Khmer Empire, which was strong in the history of Chenla, has 100,000 war elephants. When the Yuan army conquered Burma, the Burmese army used an elephant array to fight the enemy, but unfortunately the ghost did not use it. ”

Fu Shan smiled slightly, "I'm thinking, these three thousand elephants have been slaughtered, which is enough for our 100,000 army to eat for several days." ”

The elephants are still running wildly.

The Japanese soldiers who took the lead were fleeing in all directions, and the elephant soldiers on the elephants were triumphant, but they didn't know that in the eyes of the Han generals, they were just a group of walking corpses.

There was no need to even arrange an artillery array, and the generals in the rear directly blew trumpets and waved flags, and transferred several teams of marines to go up.

The Marines stood in rows, forming a phalanx, and countless muskets had been raised.

Facing the rushing elephant herd, these marines were nervous, but they still stood there steadily.

When the elephant herd came within sixty paces, the platoon commanders of each company blew their whistles.

Rows of guns shot out, and puffs of smoke rose.

The lethality of the buckshot at sixty paces is enough to penetrate the cotton and kill the soldiers, but for the rough-skinned elephant, it is only a little scratching of the skin, and the pain only stimulates the ferocity of the war elephant, and it rushes more and more.

"Hahaha!"

Above the city, Zheng Jun laughed. There was a thunderous voice, all applauding the courage of their elephants. They had even expected that a moment later, the elephants would rush into the Han army and trample the Han soldiers with muskets into the mud.

However, those Han soldiers did not panic, nor did they flee, and still stood there.

The mountain grenades supported by fire from a gate had been reloaded at this time, and all of them were loaded with explosive bombs. The elephants are still running, and the artillery is already roaring.

Mountain grenades are known as platoon-level support firepower, and they are subordinate to the platoon level, and the lightest mountain grenades are relatively weak in artillery if they are loaded with explosive shells.

But no matter how weak the cannon is, he is more powerful than the bullet.

The artillery roared, and the explosive bombs whistled and flew over the elephant herd, and then they fell, exploded, and shot out in all directions like a goddess scattering fire, sparks, and shells

The elephant army sitting on the elephant belt was the first to be hit, falling from the sky, and the explosive bombs that were sputtered were unguardable.

No matter how thick the elephant's skin is, this time it is not enough, some elephants were directly hit by cannonballs and fell to the ground, and some of them did not hit the vital point, but they also ate many cannonballs, and their skin was open and fleshy, and blood was dripping.

Such a huge lethality has exceeded the ability of elephants, and even tamed war elephants are scurrying at this time. More war elephants began to turn around, and the elephants ran into each other.

The front army of the elephant array turned back and rammed the rear army, and the elephant array was in disarray.

The musketeers took the opportunity to continue to shoot non-stop, and at this time, the Japanese soldiers, who were still running in all directions, saw the opportunity at this time, and also came from all sides and began to beat the water dogs, shooting with muskets and bows and arrows from a distance, and stabbing the lone war elephant with bamboo guns.

The three thousand war elephants, which had become a mess and no longer ran or charged, had completely become the prey of being surrounded and slaughtered.

On Thang Long City, Zheng Jie couldn't laugh anymore. (To be continued.) )