On August 20, the fifth year of Chongzhen, the Battle of Huangxian officially kicked off.

And the Battle of Huangxian, strictly speaking, began in the early hours of the morning when the sky was not fully bright. With the help of a large group of civilians, the artillery team of the Ming army left the Ming army camp under the cover of a group of Shenji battalion soldiers and a team of cavalry. Artillery should be erected about two miles away from Huang County and about one and a half miles away from the rebels' fortifications outside Huang County.

Unlike modern artillery, the lethality of modern artillery is mainly reflected in the place where the shell explodes near the point of impact. In the Ming Dynasty, the artillery used solid shells. However, the lethality of this kind of artillery mainly relies on the repeated ejection of solid shells on the ground, like a landed ping-pong ball, to cause damage, so the lethality is reflected in a line. Therefore, we understand that in order to exert the power of this artillery, it is necessary to place the artillery as close to the enemy as possible.

Therefore, if an army wants to attack on its own initiative, then its artillery must be erected in the middle and front of its own army, and cannot be erected in the rear of a relatively safe army.

And we already know that the method of erecting artillery in the Ming Dynasty is also very troublesome, and generally well-trained artillery also needs to be used for more than half an hour, so today, the artillery team of the Ming army took advantage of the darkness before dawn to seize the time to build a good artillery position.

In this battle of Huangxian, the artillery that could reach a firing range of more than two miles, according to the standard of Wu Shigong's Runing battalion, that is, more than three pounds of artillery, the Ming army had 34 guns, and the rebels had 29 guns. There was not much difference in the number of artillery pieces between the two sides. However, the Ming army gathered its own artillery together and concentrated its fire, but the rebels had to disperse the artillery. Therefore, in a given area, the artillery power of the Ming army will be far greater than that of the rebels.

But what is somewhat strange is that the commander of the Ming army, Zhu Dadian, and the supervisor Gao Qiqian, did not requisition Wu Shigong's Runing battalion with ten three-pounder guns to strengthen the Ming army's artillery team.

But this reason is that: on the one hand, they may not know that the Runing battalion has such artillery; On the other hand, unless the relationship is particularly good. Or it really came to a life-and-death situation, otherwise the various units of the Ming army would not borrow weapons and soldiers from each other. This is true even for direct superiors and subordinates. This can also be seen that Liu Zeqing and the others made up more than 200 cavalry to be commanded by Wu Shigong's Runing battalion, how rare this matter is!

Therefore, if Zhu Dadian and Gao Qiqian also knew that the Runing Battalion had such artillery, it would also be difficult for them to borrow it, for fear that they would lose their face in the event of refusal. Of course, if he opened his mouth to borrow it, Wu Shigong would definitely not agree. And this question. It is also a major drawback in the Ming army.

The erection of the artillery of the Ming army went quite smoothly, and when the sky turned white, the soldiers of the Ming army left the camp after breakfast, and spread out behind the artillery positions and began to arrange the formation. The artillery of the Ming army had already begun the first salvo.

The salvo came as a complete surprise to the rebels, but they reacted quickly. After a period of confusion. They sent a team of more than 300 cavalrymen to rush to the positions of the Ming artillery to clear these artillery that posed a great threat to the rebels. The main force of the rebel army, more than 31,000 people, also under Kong Youde's order, went out of the camp and began to arrange the battle formation.

Seeing that the rebels had sent cavalry, the Ming army immediately dispatched a cavalry of more than 500 people. The battle between the two sides began with a battle between the two rangers.

In fact, in a large-scale battle between two large armies. This kind of battle between the rangers that took place at the beginning did not have a particularly important impact on the victory or defeat, so in the last battle of the Sand River, this kind of battle between the rangers did not occur at all.

And the battle between the rangers in addition to improving the morale of their respective armies. The main roles are: harassment and anti-harassment; Affect the enemy's smooth formation and protect your own formation. That is, it plays the role of flies and fly swatters.

However, the battles between the rangers have always been quite good-looking. For example, in the romance, what each rushed out of a general to fight against 300 rendezvous clouds, and can be used as a ranger cavalry, is always the cavalry with higher personal combat skills in the armies of both sides, and they are in full view of tens of thousands of people, showing personal bravery, which can very much inspire the personal heroism of those rangers. As a result, this skirmish battle was particularly intense.

One-to-one, several-to-one, several-to-few...... Anyway, both sides gave full play to the small-scale cavalry combat skills. However, such a battle did not affect the overall situation, seeing that it was no longer possible to clear the artillery of the Ming army, in order to preserve their cavalry strength in today's battle, the rebel rangers retreated on their own initiative after dropping more than 100 corpses under the orders of their captain.

And the Ming army also suffered nearly 100 casualties in this short ranger battle. However, because in the end it was the Ming rangers who took control of the battlefield, the soldiers of the Ming army let out deafening cheers for the victory in front of them.

After waving excitedly to the direction of the Ming army, the Ming army's rangers also cleaned up the corpses of their comrades and the ownerless war horses on the battlefield, and returned to their formation in cheers. In the first battle, the Ming army won a small victory.

In fact, the battle between the rangers is very similar to a strangulation battle between spies. The duration is shorter, and the injury rate on both sides is quite high.

At this time, Zhu Dadian and Gao Qi dived into the haode watchtower that had been built a long time ago, and they were going to observe the form on the watchtower and command the battle. The soldiers of the Ming army out of the camp were basically fully deployed at this time, and the battle formation was arranged.

However, the watchtower in the Ming army is not only the one in the Chinese army. After seeing the craftsmen of the Ming army building a watchtower for their commander yesterday, Wu Shigong, who is the general reserve today, also asked the craftsmen in his battalion to build one. And now, Wu Shigong and Liu Zeqing are also watching the battlefield on the watchtower.

Seeing that Liu Zeqing was still gloomy, he was unhappy that he was excluded and did not grab the starting position. Wu Shigong smiled and comforted: "Brother Hezhou, there is nothing wrong with us not being in the front row." Look at this ranger battle, there are so many casualties. If we were in the front row today and let our cavalry participate in such a battle, we would cry to death. ”

"Actually, I see that the morale of the traitors today is not bad, at least they did not hide behind the trench and earthen wall they dug and dared to come out and confront us head-on, which shows that they must still have a few tricks. You know, after this traitor rebelled, he won one after another until now, and they are not impulsive young men. Since you dare to fight us like this, there are always a few moves in your hands. ”

"So I guess that the battle at the beginning of today may not be easy to fight, and the casualties may be very large. Let's just let the fools we fought with yesterday gnaw on the hard bones. When there is a stalemate on the battlefield, we will strike again, so that we can preserve our strength and take advantage of it. ”

"What if today's battle is devastated? Don't we get nothing? Liu Zeqing still didn't figure it out.

Wu Shigong shook his head and continued: "If that happens, it will only be our end now." Anyway, I can see that our coalition army is just a little girl. We have to fight this tough battle, and we basically can't get this cheap. ”

"I can only think about the haode side! In fact, those of us who are military attachés, military merit is not important, and silver is not important, as long as we have soldiers and strength, what military merit and silver or something, we will not come to the door by ourselves? And our official rank and strength are too small, so now we will inevitably suffer some losses. ”

Then Wu Shigong pointed to Qiu Lei's troops in the Chinese army and the Liaodong army on the right flank and said: "We are not like them, and if there is any loss, the imperial court will make up for them." And as soon as we lose our strength, it is very likely that we will never recover, and we may not even be able to keep our official position. ”

"Let me say something from my heart here. The younger brother is ready, this time after the younger brother's Runing camp returns to Runing, he will try to stay in the local area to recuperate and recuperate, and cultivate his strength, so he can speak louder in the future. ”

Liu Zeqing thought thoughtfully for a while, sighed and said, "What my brother said is indeed a wise saying. This time, when my brother returned to Caozhou, he also did what my brother just said. Whoever will transfer my soldiers, I just don't fucking go out. Speaking of zuihou, Liu Zeqing's expression was already a little gnashing.

Wu Shigong looked at Liu Zeqing's expression and was a little funny. He smiled and continued, "Don't be so pessimistic. In today's battle, we don't have no chances. Not much to say, you see that the traitor's army has also lined up and pressed up. Let's take a good look. Now wait for something unexpected to happen. ”

"To be honest, I'm a little unconvinced, little brother. Just wait for those bastards in front of us to make some mistakes and let our coalition explode their assholes. ”

"Pop the chrysanthemum? What do you mean by that? Liu Zeqing immediately became interested in the modern Internet quote used by Wu Shigong.

When Wu Shigong told Liu Zeqing the true meaning of "popping chrysanthemums", both of them were hahadaxiao.

Liu Zeqing also joked: "I knew that my brother had this taste, and my brother sent you some little boys a few days ago." ”

"Don't disgust me. The little boy is free, and the little girl is as much as possible! ”

……

Seeing the advance of the rebel troops, the artillery team immediately stopped firing and began to hastily fire the artillery to be transported to a safe place.

The Ming army also pressed forward slightly, covering the retreat of the artillery team, and the distance between the two sides soon approached a mile or so. At this time, a horse rushed out of the rebel formation, and he shot an arrow from a distance.

A letter was strapped to the arrow. Of course, it was a letter written by Kong Youde asking for Zhao'an. But at this time, who would believe that Kong Youde would surrender? So after Zhu Dadian and Gao Qiqian roughly scanned the letter and read the contents, Zhu Dadian tore the letter to shreds, and then ordered: "Attack!" (To be continued......)