Five miles downstream of the Guimen Pass, the Jing'e naval army was intercepted by Mongolian ships. With a loud sound, the fishing boats moored on both sides of the river left the river bank one after another, and the oars flipped over, gathering towards the vanguard warships of the Song army marching in a queue of geese on the big river, as if countless mayflies were rowing across the river. When they approached the warship of the Jing'e army, the archers at the bow immediately opened their bows and released their arrows. The ability of these Han archers in the north to fight on the water was really a few points stronger than that of the Mongol army elsewhere, and before Zhang Weixiao could order a counterattack, several soldiers of the water sentry horse had already fallen into the water with arrows.

Zhang Weixiao did not immediately give the order to return fire, and after days of drills and battles, he became more and more proficient in the tactics of using the ship's general cannon, until his ship, as the leader of the geese, sailed sixty or seventy paces away from the enemy ships, and then shouted: "Fire!" ”

The lead ship fired the projectile and immediately slowed down and retreated, giving up the firing position to the following ships, and the latecomers opened fire one after another, forming a continuous line of fire. After a round of cannon fire, more than a dozen Mongolian ships crowded in front had lost control, and they could not advance or retreat in the river, and some ships were smashed into the water and slowly sank.

After all the warships fired a round of shells, Zhang Weixiao stood up from his seat, held a red flag in his hand, stepped on the bow of the ship, and shouted: "All our sailors, there are advances and no retreats, and there are ships that dare to be behind our ship, behead the bow, those who die in the bow, behead all the ship's soldiers, advance!" ”

The war drums on each warship began to make a stirring drum, and thirty Song warships spread out in a horizontal line, accelerating into the Mongol fleet.

Peng Man stood on the bow of the eight-chariot warship and took in everything on the battlefield, and the left and right flanks of the Jing-Hubei naval army each sent ships forward to reinforce them, and soon formed a powerful assault force in the front, and the Mongol fleet, which was disrupted by artillery, although it had excellent sailors and well-trained archers, lacked the experience to deal with these oncoming artillery fire, and once they fell into disarray, they could hardly become an obstacle to the well-organized Jing'e naval army.

"Don't get entangled in the battle, quickly clear the river and go to Xiangyang City!" Peng Man shouted and waved the order flag in his hand. The soldiers and sailors under his feet stepped on the crankshaft vigorously, the wheels turned, setting off bursts of waves, the fleet followed the eight-cart ship forward, the Mongolian ships were either directly pushed away by the Song warships, or fled on their own, and soon the first line of defense formed by the warships was ruthlessly crushed at the bottom of the ship by the Jing'e navy.

"It was easy to fight, and it seems that the Mongols' naval army is nothing more than that." Yang Luo patted the boat and said with a smile: "This trip may be an extraordinarily smooth voyage." ”

Zheng Yunming frowned, unable to see his relaxed appearance, and muttered: "It's too early to say, it's not easy, let's wait to see the next battle." ”

The fleet went against the water, and when it reached a gentle place, and was about to row the oars to rush forward, suddenly saw a neat team of archers lined up on both sides of the river, already with bows in hand and arrows on the strings, all of them staring nervously at the river, but not firing, just waiting for the fleet to enter the range of bows and arrows.

"Everyone, be careful! Watch out for arrows! Find your own hide! With the shouting of the second head of the management team, the soldiers on the deck of the chariot and ship ran back and forth, making a mess.

Peng raised his eyebrows and shouted: "What are you flustered about!" Find cover nearby! Those who rush for no reason are killed! He shouted to the bannermen: "Give the two wings a signal that when the opportunity is ripe, they will start an arrow battle on their own and cover the brigade to move on!" ”

The ships on both flanks spread out in a staggered formation of two columns, and the archers fired arrows at the shore under the cover of broadside shields. They shoot arrows on the ship, and their accuracy will inevitably suffer, but they don't really need to cause heavy damage to the archers on the shore, as long as they can let the arrows fall into the queue of the archers on the shore, and be able to disrupt the formation of the dwarf archers a little, it is considered a success, after all, they are not here to fight the dwarf archers. The Mongol army's deployment of archers here also reflected a tactical misstep, without the cooperation of surface warships, allowing them to block the way of the Song army, and the Song warships could fire arrows while slowly advancing upstream, without any need to worry about the archers on the shore to launch a series of fires, although this may indeed cause some damage, but it does not play a decisive role in blocking the actions of the Song Dynasty warships.

"We can tolerate this casualty." Zheng Yunming sat at the stern of the oar-boat, and several back-to-back soldiers were holding iron shields to protect them on the left and right, for fear that the sparse arrows would hurt the main general. Zheng Yunming planned in his heart, if he could return to Xiangyang at the cost of such damage, it would be completely acceptable for him, although it would still make him feel uncomfortable to see the corpse of a soldier whose body was pierced by arrows slowly floating down from the upstream, but after all, fighting will inevitably cause casualties.

And the real battle has not yet begun. Before marching into the army, the reconnaissance team and reconnaissance ship sent by Zheng Yunming made a general survey of the enemy's troop deployment near the Guimen Pass. If the battle is won, there will be no obstacles to return to Xiangyang, if the attack is unfavorable, they can only return along the original road of the Han River, and then find another way to detour to Xiangyang, and the increased risk and time consumed may not be able to bear by the Song Dynasty.

The success or failure of everything finally fell on Peng Man and his Jing'e army.

When Zhang Weixiao saw the towering water discharge barricade by the river from a distance, his first reaction in his heart was that this behemoth was much more difficult to deal with than the Mongol boats. Before they could get close enough to see the Qingshui barricade, a row of huge iron crossbow arrows suddenly shot out from the roof of the wooden building, and although the first wave of guns and arrows failed to hit any of the warships, the news that the enemy had bed crossbows still caused confusion among the Jing'e naval army. The array of geese marching was disrupted, and the formation from the two wings to the center began to disperse, and interfered with the actions of those who followed.

"This is the decisive moment!" Zheng Yunming said to Yang Yu: "Peng Man is not qualified to become a qualified general in water warfare, as long as it depends on the success or failure of this blow!" Before he could finish speaking, Peng Man had already started his action.

Thirty small boats, laden with wooden barrels covered with felt cloth, were paddled by sailors, and suddenly left the array and charged swiftly towards the water platoon forts.

Although the Mongolian army was not very familiar with water warfare, there were not a few soldiers of the Fan and Han who understood water warfare, so in the exclamation of "Sinan Si people are going to attack", dozens of fast oars of the Mongolian army also flew over to intercept them.

Peng Man had been prepared for this. With his own boat as the lead, he led the chariots and oars to spread out on the river, forming a strong defensive line separating the enemy ships from the attacking ships.

"All free fire, don't let an enemy ship approach our fire attack fleet!" With the command of the commander, under the wave of the command flag, the formation of ships lined up began to fire fiercely. In addition to the dense feathered arrows, the musketeers on the paddle boats also fired, and the indiscriminate shots of lead bullets with flying arrows were more effective in water battles than in land battles, and there were still various shelters on land that could not be penetrated by lead bullets. However, on the surface of the river, buckshot is rampant, and there is only a question of the probability of hitting and missing, and there is no shelter to block the blow of buckshot.

More spectacular than the combined firing of the musket and the horn bow was the salvo of the general cannon on the broadside of the vehicle and ship. There were gun muzzles on the side of the eight-car battleship, and a bamboo general was on standby in each gun window, and in the bow there was a large bronze general on a wooden frame. Once the fire was set off in turn, the cannon rumbled, the white smoke rose into the air, and the cannonballs set off a thick column of water in the river, and once a Mongol warship was hit, it was almost impossible to avoid the sinking end.

Even though the artillery is still very primitive and has almost no aiming function, its natural advantages in water warfare have been fully revealed. The Mongol warships scattered and fled under the artillery salvo of eight and two boats, and they could no longer care about the small boats of the Song army, which were getting closer and closer to the water row. But the crossbows on the wooden towers and the archers on the water rows continued to fire at the approaching ships, and there were many successes, with several ships either pierced through the bottom of the ships with iron spears or out of control by the rain of arrows, but most of the ships were close enough to attack.

With a long whistle, the Song warship and the water platoon collided with each other, and the iron grappling hook at the bow of the warship suddenly firmly grasped the wooden platoon, holding the boat and the huge floating platoon close together, making it difficult to separate.

As soon as the captain lit the fire, the fire-attacking ships soaked in fire oil immediately burst into flames, and each fire-attacking ship turned into an inaccessible fireball. Before that, the sailors jumped into the water and swam to their own fleet at a high speed, knowing that the Mongols could not bother to shoot themselves from behind at this time, because they were already too busy to take care of themselves.

Although the generals of the army kept scolding, forcing the soldiers to hurry up to put out the fire, but the fire could not be stopped, and explosions were heard one after another in the fierce red lotus Yan, obviously under the dry firewood and infiltrated fire oil, the Jing'e Navy also buried some explosives, and the explosives threw the fire oil everywhere, and the air waves splashed all over the floating row with burning dead branches, and the fire was out of control in a very short time.

"How's that?" Yang Yu smiled at Zheng Yunming and said, "Has Peng Manke ever passed the big exam of the deputy capital commander?" ”

"It's finally a good fight." Zheng Yunming looked at the nine burning torch-like floating wooden buildings on the riverbank, the flames almost reflected the entire riverbank, and the Mongolian soldiers on the bank were scurrying around, and they couldn't care about intercepting the Song ships in the Han River: "Ordered Peng Man, there is no need to chase and kill the remnants of the enemy, drive quickly and go straight to Xiangyang!" ”