Li Xin reacted quickly, ordered the people to rest in place, and said to Sun Jie: "This Tartar has arrived so quickly, and the people outside the city must be withdrawn into the city first." ”

"What Li Jiaoxi said is reasonable, let's go our separate ways!"

The people who repaired the city wall in Gaoyang were basically distributed in the north city and the east city, and the two agreed that Li Xin would go to the north gate and Sun Ji would go to the east gate. The county treasury was in the north gate, so Li Xin climbed the north gate tower in Gaoyang for only a moment, and he was surprised to find that there were clouds of smoke and dust in the distance, although they were far away, they could still be sure that it must be the cavalry shrouded in smoke. My heart suddenly tightened, could it really be that the Tartars are coming?

The construction site outside the city gate has become a pot of porridge, and the swarm of bees is blocked at the city gate, which is no more than two feet wide, and the direct consequence of the disorderly congestion is that the progress of the people retreating into the city is slow. Li Xin regretted that he was only thinking about how to transform the city defense, but why didn't he make a drill to prevent enemy attacks? This thought was also instantaneous, after all, the enemy attack was imminent, and the wolf smoke column ignited by Minzhuang, who was responsible for the early warning in the distance, was almost dispersed, and it should have been destroyed.

The Tartars could be reached overnight, and the enemy situation was unknown, and the city gate was blocked by the people. Once they are killed by the Tartars, don't say whether these people are still alive or not, I'm afraid that even Gaoyang City will have to be lost.

A few miles away, there were no more than a few dozen horses under the clouds of smoke and dust rising high, and the clothes of the people on the horses were very tattered, and there was no doubt that they were ordinary people, but their scalps were all scraped with iron blue, and the back of their heads was only the size of copper coins, and they were braided into a braid the thickness of a mouse's tail. Almost everyone had bloody heads hanging from either side of their saddles, and some had a few cloth sacs, and the ropes were taut and tight, and the weight was not light.

The knight, who was one horse behind the head horse, was a short and fat man, and his mouth was fluent in Chinese.

"Lord Zuoling, let's take the county seat in front of us in one go, it is said that Sun Chengzong of the Southern Dynasty lives there."

The man who was called Zuo Ling had a full beard, his slender eyes spewing greedy light, and his mouth opened and closed and spat out a babbling language. Immediately, he seemed to think of something, and shouted in stiff Chinese: "Kill into Gaoyang, capture Sun Chengzong, and I, Akzia, ask Lord Ao Bai for merit." ”

The short and fat man looked excited, and his legs clamped the horse's belly hard, urging the mount under his crotch to take a few steps to narrow the distance between him and Lord Salead.

"Lord Zuo Ling, you can't let that Ertai guy take the lead this time, let's go into Gaoyang to rest and quench our thirst!"

Na Zuo Ling puffed out his cheeks and kept silent, urging the war horse under his crotch, and someone behind the short and fat man answered: "Ortai is still dreaming of holding the girl in Anzhou County, how can you have the kung fu to rob us!" ”

Immediately, the horse team galloping south burst into laughter, and they seemed to have no regard for the Ming Dynasty at all, as if they were thousands of elites, not at all like light horsemen with only dozens of people.

The county seat of Anzhou is forty miles north of Gaoyang, and it was an important town in Hebei before the Tang Dynasty, but after the Yuan Dynasty, it gradually lost its original status and became a small city. The general of the Left Route Army, Dolgon, sent a large number of scattered cavalry to harass the south while besieging Zhuozhou, disrupting the deployment of the Ming army and paving the way for the future army to search and plunder in the south. Ortai and Akzia were among the members of these stragglers, who were cautious at first, but later found that many county towns were almost undefended, and there were no officers and soldiers to guard them, and the local officials were afraid to organize a battle.

The scattered horsemen advanced by leaps and bounds all the way, such as entering a no-man's land, bypassing Xincheng and Rongcheng after crossing the Tang River, only Ortai and Akzia were left in the forefront, but the Anzhou County on the south bank of the Tang River Ling Wan did not expect the Tartars to come so quickly, and they lost their ground, and even sent dozens of soaps to meet the enemy, but they were beaten in an uproar, and when they fled back to the city, they were attacked by Ortai and entered the county seat, becoming the first county in the history of the Ming Dynasty to be captured by dozens of people.

Originally, those dozens of soaps were killed by Akji Abe, and later let Ortai snatch the fruits of victory, how could he be willing, but the fact is that people entered the city first, there is no doubt about this. He didn't enter the city in a fit of rage, and came straight to Gaoyang with dozens of light horses.

"Wei Baosan is that you want to sleep with a woman......"

The short and fat man was obviously also good at riding, and he turned his head and glared at the person who was teasing him and said viciously: "Call me full of fame, from now on there will only be Duobi, no Wei Baosan!" ”

"Don't make a fuss, Ortai is a shit luck, go to the nearby village to sweep first!"

Akzia, who took the lead, stopped his subordinates from ridiculing each other, although he was greedy, he knew very well that dozens of people to take down a city with a city wall was actually a fool's dream, just said that was just to boost the morale of his subordinates, even if the county order of the Southern Dynasty was frightened, as long as the city gate was closed, only dozens of them did not have half a chance to break the city. On the contrary, it is to rob people's heads, and to rob property is to be beneficial. No, there were a large number of Southern Dynasty people flocking to the villages west of the city.

Akzia gave an order and plundered the village on the west side of Gaoyang County, where could the two-legged man outrun the four-hooved flying war horse, and the fleeing team was torn apart by the impact of the Tartar light horse in an instant, and the saber was cut like a sickle in the autumn harvest, reaping bloody life. The Tartar war horses were scattered in groups of three or five, rushing left and right, Akzia was killed, and a bad breath in his chest was vented, and seeing that there were only a few southerners left who could still stand, he whistled and led people to the village west of the city.

But a distant scene made Akzia change his mind. I saw a group of men holding firearms pouring out from the West Gate, wearing people's clothes, and it was clear at a glance that they were the local people, and the corners of Akzia's mouth hooked up a sneer, as if those people were like those stumps and broken arms lying on the ground, they were already a group of dead people.

And Li Xin stood at the forefront of this group of "dead people". The 600 people were lined up in three columns according to the way they had been training for several days, and each of the people in the first row had a bundle of fire ropes hanging from their left shoulders.

Zhang Shi stood less than three meters behind Li Xin, he felt that his legs were a little trembling, and he couldn't tell whether he was a little more afraid or a little more excited in his heart. Li Xin walked from one side of the line to the other, constantly adjusting the positions of the three horizontal teams.

"Chen Twelve, your fire rope is extinguished, re-ignite according to the procedure...... Zhou Dahu took two steps back......"

The training time is only a few days for the first time, the nervousness and apprehension account for most of the time, and the march and change of the queue are far from being formed, and it is very rare to be able to barely keep the fixed queue intact. And there is another thing that Li Xin knew very well that before the invention of the bayonet, the fire hand was almost powerless in the face of cavalry charges, but he soon found that there were only a few dozen people in the Tartars. Judging by this, the first salvo of fire should be able to offset the disadvantage in a battle with cavalry.

"Li Jiaoxi, how do you know that the Tartars will definitely give up entering the village to attack us?"

Zhang Shi looked at the Tartar cavalry who were getting closer and closer, and asked Li Xin, who was approaching him, with a trembling voice. In fact, Li Xin was not 100% sure that the Tartars would attack him, but he couldn't watch the people being slaughtered and do nothing. What's more, there are only a few dozen people on the other side, which gives Li Xin the confidence to decide to pull the Minzhuang out to fight once, even if the Tartars don't attack him, it will boost the morale of the Minzhuang.

"Everyone obeys the command, no retreat without an order, no shooting!"

Li Xin did not answer Zhang Shi, but repeatedly told everyone not to open fire without permission, and the people sang one after another. The sound of the horse's hooves hitting the ground was getting closer and closer, and Li Xin could even feel the soles of his feet trembling faintly. His throat was dry and tight, and he habitually made a swallowing motion, only to find that there was not even a trace of saliva in his mouth. On the contrary, the hands that clenched Huo Qiang were already drenched in cold sweat.

Li Xin, like the people, after all, was new to the battlefield, and nervousness was inevitable, but he still had to try to pretend to be a bamboo in his chest, quietly waiting for the Tartar cavalry to approach step by step.

Akzia was surprised to find that the people of the Southern Dynasty who came out of the city gate did not collapse without a fight as he imagined, nor did they rush up without a head like those fools in Anzhou County, but stood in line and stood in place. The fire in the hands of the people has long fallen in his eyes, and the use of firearms by the Ming army has long been nothing new, but it has never posed a real threat to them, and those iron guns are not as good as burning sticks as long as they are fired once.

"Accelerate! Hasten! Enter Gaoyang City in one go! ”

As long as these Southern Dynasty people are scattered, maybe they can take advantage of the chaos to enter the city like Anzhou County!

Li Xinmo counted the distance of the Tartar cavalry, two hundred steps, one hundred and fifty steps, one hundred steps, and eighty steps...... Even though there were only a few dozen horsemen, the Tartars' previous military might had accumulated over time, and tension and uneasiness buzzed in the Minzhuang team. The huge advantage of 600 against dozens of people gave the people the courage to overcome this fear, and despite their apprehensions, they were able to stand firmly in place. Although the fire qiang trembled, they all pointed in unison in the direction where the tartar was running.

"Let's ...... fire"

Someone couldn't resist the strong psychological pressure and began to urge Li Xin to give the order to open fire.

"Don't worry! It's not too late to take thirty steps, only the closer you get, the more you can kill the tartars! ”

The Tartar war horse accelerated, thirty steps in an instant, Li Xin buckled the moot, and the arquebus clamp pressed against the burning arquebus into the cauldron filled with gunpowder. Then he yelled: "Fire!" ”

In an instant, two hundred fires exploded at the same time, and the white smoke suddenly enveloped the three columns of six hundred people. Then, the second column of the horizontal team handed over the loaded fire qiang to the first horizontal team, and at the same time took the fire qiang that had been launched and reloaded. The first column re-clamped the arquebuses to the arquebuses and prepared to shoot again.

Note: In the Ming Dynasty, one foot was a step, and two feet were steps, so one step was equivalent to two modern steps, about 1.5 meters