Although the winter in the Western Regions is not as difficult as in Mobei, it is by no means a good time for war, the water is cold and the grass is dry, and the horses and livestock travel thousands of miles, and they can hardly supply on the spot, so they can only eat the grain and grass scavenged from every tent in the rear. In addition to 70,000 people, there are nearly 200,000 horses, cattle and sheep in this army, and it is still unknown how many people can survive this battle, but no less than one-third of the livestock can survive.

Galdan Tse had no choice, Luntai City was already impregnable, and the Han people also pulled up the fortress line in the direction of Altay, and in the summer and autumn, the red-clothed army drove straight into this fortress line with its back, and the end of Dzungaria was coming.

All the tribal leaders who brought their clansmen and followed Gardan Tseling here knew this, and they also came with the same courage as Gardan Tseling, and this battle was a victory or defeat for Dzungaria.

But on 5 March, when the two armies were separated by more than ten miles, obscuring the horizon at the east and west ends, the Khan's banner was not violently unfurled, the horns did not blow a low but high-spirited battle trumpet, and the strange silence enveloped the Dzungar army, and the heavy and invisible restraint of the city kept them from moving a single step forward.

The Russian Dzungar Army was deployed in the northwest direction of the battlefield, looking at the wide front of the two armies lined up for more than ten miles, and the commander of the army, Yevtyuxin, frowned and said: "The Dzungar people seem to have lost their souls, and they don't even have the courage to attack. ”

Cherrech sighed: "That's true, the experience of Mobei Mongolia has spread to Central Asia, and the big and small wars in the past two years have also proved again and again that the Mongols ...... Whether it is Mobei Mongolia or Dzungaria, using cavalry to storm the red-clothed infantry is tantamount to suicide. ”

"Even in the Battle of Yinding Temple, which the Dzungars boasted of incomparably, the red clothes were divided into three isolated parts, and they still did not break up in the slightest under the impact of the Dzungar cavalry, but killed and wounded three times their own Dzungar cavalry. If Galdan Tserzero had not brought his artillery with him, he would have been the one who had failed. ”

Yefu Qiuxin snorted: "So...... The Dzungars are waiting for the Seris to attack? ”

While Rumyantsev shook his head, as if in disbelief: "Any officer with a basic military education will think that what he sees is extremely ridiculous. Extremely contrary to military common sense, 70,000 cavalry waiting for more than 40,000 infantry to attack!? ”

Rumyantsev was not mistaken, but this situation contrary to military common sense does not violate the common sense of survival of the Dzungar people.

Gardanze was not confused. The Dzungars did not lose their minds, "waiting for the Han people to take the initiative to attack, and then looking for a gap and defeating them in one fell swoop", this is the strategy of Gardan Tseling, and it is also the reason why all Dzungars are happy to press the idea of riding their horses and galloping wildly, and wait for the other party to attack.

Under this reason. As the last inheritor of the Mongol cavalry that conquered almost the whole world hundreds of years ago, the Dzungar cavalry did not take the initiative to attack for the first time, and sat back and watched the enemy fight for the first time.

The Dzungars quickly accepted this realization, but their opponents still seemed to be a little uncomfortable, so from about ten o'clock in the morning, the silent confrontation between the two armies continued until eleven o'clock on the vast battlefield southwest of Luntai City.

Until it was confirmed that the Dzungars really had no desire to take the initiative to attack. The red clothes moved, and this move made all the Dzungars, and even all the Russians, exclaim in a low voice. The slight commotion of each person, each mount, soon converged into a large ripple, which spread rapidly in an army more than ten miles wide and more than ten miles deep.

The huge ball slowly rose behind the red-clothed front, and there was more than one, and there seemed to be a slight flame flickering under the ball, and there was something like a basket hanging from it, until it rose to a height of dozens of zhang in the air, and the cold sun in winter seemed to be covered by these balls, within a radius of dozens of miles. All Dzungars and Russians no longer feel like each other with a piece of sky on their heads, and always subconsciously look into the air, feeling that they are ants overlooking each other. …,

"That's a hot air balloon! Damn it, don't bother to tie up your men! ”

Yevtyukhin angrily rebuked the commanders of the various cavalry regiments, and there were already quite a few Cossacks with straight eyes and whispering devils. He came from Europe. It's no stranger to this novelty, which has been tried decades ago.

"Cherrekh, go and explain it to the Dzungars!"

The Dzungars were even more unbearable, and many knelt on the ground, bowed and prayed, and regarded the ball as a sacred object from the heavens.

I don't know how Cherrech explained to Gardance, and how Galdan Celing appeased those ignorant people, in short, the commotion of the Dzungar people gradually subsided, but on the lampstand of Luntai City, Wei Zhenhua patted his new partner on the shoulder excitedly: "Wang Louguan is on it!" ”

Hot air ballooning, a half-dead project originally in charge of the Dongguan Machinery Bureau, has not been achieved for many years. Later, it was widely spread because of the funny nature of the eldest princess Li Kexi, and then it was taken over by the Heavenly Dao Academy, and it received a large amount of capital investment due to the war in the Western Regions, and finally blossomed last year.

Different from the "flying sky" that most people think, although the hot air balloon at this time can be put into practice, it has very big limitations, such as long preparation time, insufficient elevation, and only a pitiful number of hours of empty time, but this is the limit of technology at this time. The Metropolitan Protectorate of the Western Regions is also inspired by the artillery calibration function of the light tower, and wants a tool that can carry out artillery calibration in the field while taking into account the battlefield command and observation, and in this regard, the current hot air balloon is enough. 【1】

Six hot air balloons rose into the air, replacing the display of military flags, and the solid array of red-clad clothes turned into a torrent almost instantly, pouring down towards the west.

The red-clothed leather boots stepped on the faint smoke and dust, echoing the dense fine drumbeats, converging into a slow but unstoppable flow momentum, although far less shocking than the dust waves pulled up by the charge of thousands of cavalry, but the calm rhythm of ten thousand people like a step, so that the people in front of them have a suffocating feeling that every inch of air in front of them is gradually being sucked away, this is the real torrent.

The eight-man line, sixty men in length, and the wide frontal line were broken down into such marching columns, marching steadily at seventy-five paces per minute. If you look closely, you can see that there is a division between each marching column, which is actually a small queue of four people with a length of thirty people.

Each marching column was a flank of soldiers, one hundred and sixty standard paces (240 m) to the left and right, and marched in parallel with the rest of the ranks. In the front row, the sabers of the wing commanders and aile-wing commanders are pointed diagonally to the left and right, becoming a reference for the sabers of each eye commander, marking the left and right boundaries of the queue, the flag bearer holds the battle flag high to guide the direction, and the sergeant major holds a scepter engraved with a ranging angle, and keeps an eye on the distance from the adjacent queue at the back of the queue.

At 11 o'clock on 5 March, the red-coated infantry of the two divisions poured down into 32 marching columns, more than 20 of which were spread out in front of the battlefield more than 10 miles wide, and less than 10 were followed closely behind the front queue and marched together as auxiliary arrays.

It was not only the red-clad infantry who moved, but also the stragglers, who acted as stragglers, followed by horse-drawn artillery carts, marched forward in small steps merrily. Ten miles away is 80,000 quasi-Russian coalition troops, like a dense variegated carpet with a radius of 100 miles, which is spreading out in front of it in a huge and scattered manner.

The d'Zungar people were already pale, and when the pace of the torrent and the drizzle of drums like a drizzle gradually became clear, the young men and strong women were already whimpering with fear, and the faces of the veterans who had fought with the red clothes also showed despair.

If you can't win, you can't win a few times more, and the Dzungars are going to finish .........,

"Immortal Heaven is watching us-! If we don't fight to the death, the Immortal Heaven will not accept us! Dzungars - have you, like me, already offered yourselves as a sacrifice to the Immortal Heavens!? This is the altar of our Dzungar people! Die, Dzungars! Die a glorious battle with me! ”

The shouts of Galdan Tseling suddenly echoed, the same despair, but even more with deep pathos, but it was this cry that the Dzungar people who had been suppressed to the extreme broke out.

The Great Khan is right, it is death anyway, and if you die in battle with honor, you can still throw yourself into the arms of immortality......

"Die in battle!"

The Dzungar people shouted, and between the sounds, the hearts of the people who had been pressed by the wind suddenly rose up, and the ensuing boiling heat also warmed the cold air of winter and the cold blood that had been silent for more than an hour.

"Angi is out of battle!"

"Bao Qin fights!"

Galdan's order received an impassioned response from the Guards Angi and the artillery troops of the Bao Qin, and as the elite cavalry and artillery carriages rolled forward, Da Celing threw a smile of admiration and relief at Galdan.

"The Han people are too arrogant, and there are still army columns for ten miles, and we still have a chance to win!"

Da Celing's words are also the words of Galdan Tseling, the formation of the red clothes is quite strange, didn't they always put up a flat queue in the past, pushing forward steadily, how did it become such a fragmented scene now?

Kindness...... Sure enough, it was the benefit of defensive counterattacks, and the Han people had long been accustomed to defending and waiting for attack. When the main attack came, they didn't know how to arrange, how could they press over with a neat horizontal formation on the ten-mile battlefield? After walking less than two or three miles, they were gone, and they had to do that.

It was when Galdan understood this that his heart suddenly became high.

"Shhh...... There are oddities, and we'd better not touch the infantry queue of Seris. ”

The Cossacks in the north-west had a different feeling, and when Rumyantsev said this, Yevtyukhin glanced at the little hairy head with disdain, although the Cossacks were strong, but they were not arrogant enough to fight hard with the infantry with artillery cover, not to mention......

Yefu Tyuxin looked at the red-clothed marching army in front of him again, and said in his heart, Could it be that the Seris have also mastered the tactics of the column? But the column tactics have only just entered the sight of military strategists in Europe, and everyone is talking about it, but it rarely appears in actual combat.

However, Rumyantsev's words are also Yevtyukhin's heart, his Cossack regiment is not here to fight hard with the Seris infantry battle line, looking at the northeast of the battlefield, covering the cavalry on the right flank of the red clothes, Yevtyukhin secretly said, that is the enemy of the Cossacks, and the flanks and rear are the battlefields of the Cossacks. (To be continued)