The Flower Collector will sigh for his plight and despise the bandits, but in the face of the great enemy, he is by no means a reckless person who does not know the seriousness.

The bandits are now entrenched in the county seat of Mao County, this is an opportunity, as long as the local army of King Jing is united, it is not a problem to break through such a small county town as Mao County. Anyone who is a soldier has a kind of conceit, he thinks that he is the one who commands the battle in Xuzhou, Xuzhou has already been conquered, and Mao County is his chance to prove himself.

He had already learned the details of the bandits, and the bandits' firearms were too powerful, and Hua Ji'an couldn't think of a way to deal with them, so he had to first send a letter to King Jing as the commander of the Huaijun North Route Army, hoping to get help from the defenders under King Jing in the Jiangjiang region. The original county garrison in the city was also the object of his contact, although the channel was almost blocked, but the best way to thwart this gang of robbers was to be able to cooperate with the outside.

Everything was going on in an orderly manner, Hua Ji'an never expected that the bandits did not huddle in the city and wait for death, so they went out of the city to attack the camp that night and begged for "quick death".

When he learned that the bandits came out to attack the camp, Hua Ji'an, who was still too worried, swept away the gloom on his face and said with a smile: "A bandit is a bandit, and you can't change the gangster spirit of stealing chickens and touching dogs." They don't know the power of the cavalry in the field? ”

Because there is enough attention to this bandits, the night defense of the camp is arranged by Hua Ji'an himself, which can be said to be leaky, as long as the bandits dare to go out of the city, they will not return. With Hua Ji'an's perennial experience in fighting with the Nanban aliens in Lingnan, he was confident that he had this, but when he encountered this gang of bandits and the powerful firearms in their hands, the originally seamless counterattack battalion was full of difficulties.

The first round of cavalry rushed up, only to hear a crackling sound outside the camp, and more than 400 cavalry seemed to sink into the sea. None of them came back. The flower set is cool in peace. Doesn't it mean that there are only three or four hundred bandits in the city? It seems that the information is wrong. At least quantitatively biased.

Then he was even more annoyed, saying that it was the bandits who attacked the camp, but he didn't see the shadow of a bandit, just seeing the gradual chaos in the camp, and several counterattacks were suppressed by powerful firearms. This time, the Huai army was a light cavalry that quickly crossed the river to the south, and there were no long-distance weapons such as heavy crossbows, and the arrows could not reach the bandits at all, so they fought back. It's like a bird fluttering into a net, and the Huai soldiers go up to find death by themselves.

"Stop the counterattack and intercept with a shield!"

Since the current counterattack is ineffective, it is better to lure the enemy deeper, as long as the bandits enter the range of the archers, then the Huai army can win the initiative in this battle.

Hua Ji'an's idea was good, but the bandits were not fooled, no matter how loose the formation was made to lure the enemy deeper, the bandits just shot cold outside the camp. The fighting continued into the second half of the night, and the gunfire gradually thinned out. Hua Ji'an was also afraid that it was a counter-lure tactic by the bandits, so he did not order an attack. Wait until dawn. Only to realize that the sound outside the city was nothing more than sporadic firecrackers with a longer lead, and the bandits had all withdrawn to the city.

Originally, Hua Ji'an wanted to let those bandits steal chickens and lose a handful of rice, but now he didn't know how many handfuls of rice he had lost, which made him extremely annoyed. However, compared with King Jing's grain transportation team and local defenders, Huaji'an's losses this night were relatively light.

The Huai soldiers had a tiring journey, and after a night of tossing, they all languished. Hua Ji'an arranged the camp defense, and by the way, he also went to see the wounded soldiers, and the anger in his heart was already strong.

"When the siege baggage arrives, see how arrogant you will be!"

Now Hua Ji'an's focus on Mao County's defense is to prevent this bandit team from taking the opportunity to escape, originally after the end of last night's battle, it was the best time for the bandits to withdraw, but the next day Hua Ji'an sent a sentry to the outside of the city to investigate, the bandits are still entrenched in the city, and it seems that they are not afraid of the Huai army coming to the city.

By the next night, the bandits attacked the camp again, and this time Hua Ji'an was well prepared, letting the soldiers hide in the soil in advance, and suddenly came out, killing the bandits by surprise. The bandits attacked the camp and were attacked by a sneak attack, and they were a little panicked all of a sudden, and then Hua Ji'an personally led the cavalry to quickly rush up and prepare to exterminate the gang of bandits in one fell swoop.

The two sides entered hand-to-hand combat, and Hua Ji'an thought that the Huai army could easily win, after all, he had a regular army under his command, and these were just gang bandits. But the fact is that this gang of bandits not only has powerful firearms, but also has great strength in hand-to-hand combat, especially the sabers in the hands of each bandit, as if specially prepared for such encounters, plus they also have firearms, and they can also put cold guns at any time, and what is even more hateful, their muskets have slots on them, which can be equipped with bayonets, and firearms are combined with knives.

The robbers left twenty or thirty corpses and fled back to the city, Hua Ji'an was more cautious this time, and ordered no more pursuit when the bandits approached the city seat, and the most lucrative later also proved that the bandits were still ambushed in the city wall, and they were almost taken advantage of by the bandits.

An ambush battle, more than 3,000 cavalry against more than 300, forming a three-sided attack, according to the general situation development, how can the bandits be wiped out, but the other party came to attack the camp of three or four hundred, and only twenty or thirty people died in the last one, on the other hand, on the side of the Huai army, two or three hundred dead and wounded, after learning of this result, Hua Ji'an's face could not see the joy after the victory at all, he already felt that this was by no means a mountain bandit with powerful weapons, or that they had a conspiracy behind it.

Hua Ji'an sat in the big tent of the Chinese army, holding a pen in his hand, but he didn't know how to write the battle report that Lu Dao gave to Meng Chuliang. Can such a victory still be called a victory? Thinking of this, Hua Ji'an smiled bitterly.

Seeing the wry smile on Hua Ji'an's face, his subordinates asked, "General, what's wrong with you?" ”

"General Ben is crying out for King Jing, when he encounters such a group of robbers, he has been beaten and dizzy, and he has to be misunderstood by others that he has ulterior motives, do you say that he is wronged?"

His subordinate Zhi Dao Hua Ji'an is definitely not to the point of giving others a grievance now, and he listened respectfully and did not answer.

"I still won't write this battle report, and when I take Mao County, I'll write a beautiful one."

Seeing that his general had regained his confidence, his subordinates were also in a hurry.

Mao County is only 300 miles away from Yingzhou, the capital of King Jing, and soon King Jing sent an envoy to contact Hua Ji'an and mobilize the surrounding defenders to gather troops to attack Mao County. While the whole county was besieged, the bandits in the city seemed to be aware of the tense atmosphere, so much so that after the attack camp was accidentally attacked, they kept cowering in the city.

On the eighth day of the lunar month, a siege battle was brewing. The 4,000 cavalry of the Huai Army, plus the more than 10,000 local troops mobilized by King Jing, Mao County seemed to be trembling.

But the truth is still unexpected.

Hua Ji'an was about to launch an attack on the night of the eighth day of the lunar month, and just as he was about to go, the spies came to report that the reinforcements of the bandits had arrived.

"Reinforcements? How much? ”

"Uncountable! But no one who came near the sentry of the support army returned. ”

Hua Ji'an's heart was cold when he heard this, originally hundreds of bandits in Mao County already had super terrifying combat effectiveness, but now a support army suddenly appeared, how big is the mountain of this bandit? (To be continued......)