The reason why He Jin was willing to temporarily withdraw from the army was because he always felt that he still had a chance.

Every defeat is due to a considerable part of the factors being bad luck, not doing the intelligence work properly, and not knowing that the officers and soldiers still have sharp weapons of mass destruction that are so well hidden.

In this case, the losing side will definitely not be willing to accept it.

It's not more than three, and we have to fight the last game! This time, I have to be 100,000 careful and steady! Completely smash the outer defenses in the dark!

……

That night, in the official and military camps, it was naturally indispensable to laugh again and celebrate the achievements frantically.

Four days ago, Shen Bingbei was in charge in person, and he could fight so beautifully.

Now the military commander is not here for the time being, but he has deployed a strategy, the left guerrilla army is rigorous, the troops are used moderately, and he wins again, what else is there to be afraid of the thieves!

"Brothers! Everyone's got fish tonight! But don't drink alcohol! No wine either! Zuo Guerrilla said, and finally captured 1,600 thieves, according to the reward offered by the soldier before, a total of 16,000 taels of silver!

This credit is divided equally among the whole army! Immediately after returning to the city, the silver will be distributed! Other achievements will be counted separately! ”

At the celebration banquet, the officers separately publicized the reward policy, so that the soldiers all cheered, and many people had already begun to calculate that each person could get at least three taels of silver in this battle, and this was not counting the gains of the various departments.

Although there are hundreds of casualties in each battle, the remaining soldiers have become more and more tenacious nerves and wills, and over time, they can definitely use this as the backbone to expand a steel army that is several times larger.

The celebration banquet tossed for an hour or two, and finally ended, and everything that should be cleaned up was also cleaned up.

Zuo Zixiong and other generals did not dare to rest immediately, and had to discuss the follow-up arrangements overnight, take stock of the war profits and battle losses, so as to adjust the deployment.

In the middle of the night, when these daily tasks were finally completed, Zuo Zixiong was in the big tent of the Chinese army, and suddenly heard the sound of cannonballs, and at the same time, some rogue soldiers approached in the dark, throwing torches and shooting rockets indiscriminately.

"Shoot back now!" Zuo Zixiong also did not include the lake, and immediately asked Zhang Mingzhen to arrange for the musket team to go to the wall, and at the same time asked the Pizarro instructor from Spain to command the fort.

Instructor Pizarro has been supported by a high salary of three hundred taels of silver since he was hired by the Zheng family last year to take refuge in Shen Shuren, and asked him to help train musketeers and artillerymen.

Pizarro will not be loyal to the Ming Dynasty, so he just takes money to do things, and never fights on the dangerous front-line battlefield. However, this time, Shen Shuren gave him another two hundred taels of allowance, allowing him to temporarily command the artillery team, saying that he promised that he could stay away from the enemy's strike range.

Pizarro felt that there was no danger, so he worked overtime in exchange for a salary increase, and the artillery of the official army can shine so brightly during the day today, and it is inseparable from the foreign instructors who are familiar with the original cannons.

At this moment, after the officers and soldiers of the firearms team fought back, it was natural that another 100 scouts from the thief side were wounded and killed, and fled in embarrassment.

However, the lighting set up by the thieves outside the camp was difficult to eliminate for a while, and the fire provided was enough to guide the thieves to bombard the wall in the dark.

At night, it is impossible to see clearly from a brightly lit place to a dark place, and the occasional flash of muzzle fire is not enough to measure the range.

The cannon on Pizarro's side also bombarded for a while, and I don't know if I hit it or not. Considering that ammunition is precious, it is not possible to bomb indiscriminately for a long time.

After a stalemate for a while, Yang Jinjue, the capital of the right battalion, found Zuo Zixiong and took the initiative to ask for battle:

"Guerrilla, it's better for me to take some people out of the camp, or I will send Lu Datou to extinguish all the rocket torches left by the thief sentry, and then search for enemy scouts, so that the thief can't observe the effect of the artillery bombardment, and the wall that I don't know where has collapsed!"

Zuo Zixiong cautiously refused: "No! In the dark night, who knows if there are thieves in the vicinity waiting to take advantage of the chaos. If it is stirred together and thrown into a rat trap, then the general trend is gone! ”

Yang Jinjue was right when he thought about it, he was indeed reckless, so he accepted this idea.

So far, there is still a gap of six or seven times between the enemy and us. The overwhelming side can be stung several times, and the weaker side loses once and it's all over.

As the shelling continued, some of the officers and soldiers who had not retreated from their posts on the wall began to be injured by the wooden stakes on the wall that were blown up by shells from the Francophone and the pieces of wood were splashed.

Zhang Mingzhen has been patrolling the wall, and when he saw this, he asked all the musketeers to lie down again, hide on the anticline of the rammed earth pile, and don't show his face if he can't hear the movement of the enemy rushing to kill. At the same time, he also reported the latest situation to Zuo Zixiong in real time.

Zuo Zixiong pondered for a long time, and finally made up his mind, and said in a showdown with the generals: "When the soldiers went to ask for help, they originally asked us to resist step by step, in order to preserve our strength and consume the enemy's army.

Now that the night has been bombarded, the camp will definitely not be saved. Tonight we will abandon this camp and take advantage of the ferry we still have, and cross to the south shore of the water. With the sluggishness of the water, it can be delayed for at least another two or three days.

When the soldiers come back, we will return to Xiaogan County as appropriate. I believe that with the reinforcements found by the soldiers, we may have the strength to fight back at any time!

In addition, you should first prepare to pack up your baggage, send a fast horse scout to the county seat, inform Yan Zhixian to prepare to respond, and transfer the prisoners away first. We held out until the middle of the night before withdrawing. ”

It was not easy for a large army to retreat, and the prisoners, artillery, and heavy grain and grass had to be withdrawn in the first half of the night, and the soldiers in the second half of the night could be withdrawn. Fortunately, Xiaogan County is less than twenty miles away from this camp, and it is too late to divide it into two batches overnight.

The other generals couldn't think of a better way, and Shen Shuren had indeed explained so at the beginning, so they decided to implement this flexible defense.

Let's get off the book

It is believed that the thieves came from afar, and they did not bring too much gunpowder and shells. As long as the officers and soldiers hide it and secretly keep it secret, and don't let the thieves know in advance the news that "there is no need to continue bombing", then it is very likely that the gunpowder of the thieves will be almost consumed!

On the other side, Yan Yingyuan, who was holding on to the county seat, heard that Zuo Zixiong was going to retreat, so he also rushed to meet him in person, and he summed up with Zuo Zixiong, and worked together to help think of some small tricks to confuse the enemy, which was the icing on the cake.

Zuo Zixiong didn't want to listen to laymen like Yan Yingyuan talk about military aircraft at first, after all, he had the impression that Yan Yingyuan was just a civilian official from a classic history - this is like a police officer from a police bureau chief, talking about fighting in front of a legitimate field army officer, and the field officer will definitely disdain to listen.

However, those who specialize in art and are engaged in public security have a better understanding of criminal investigation psychology, and they do have unique features in being clever in doing eucalyptus.

After Zuo Zixiong listened patiently for a while, and led Yan Yingyuan to inspect the camp that was about to be abandoned, Yan Yingyuan really gave him some feasible tricks.

……

The officers and soldiers spent the whole night quietly retreating to the other side of the river.

Early the next morning, after the sky was bright, Erhe went to the front line again to inspect, and saw that the official camp was smashed to at least dozens of walls, and they finally breathed a sigh of relief.

They did their best to reward and boost their morale, and said a lot to the whole army: "The officers and soldiers were able to win because of the location and trickery, but now the location has been destroyed by us overnight", and finally the soldiers were willing to gamble again, so they launched a third attack.

It's a pity that the officers and soldiers once again surprised them.

The soldiers fought in fear, but they were not met by any muskets and crossbows, and after a while, they found that the camp had been empty.

The scouts under He Jin's command hurriedly reported again: "Two kings! Our army has been tricked again! Officer Shen Dog abandoned this camp last night! Already crossed the river and ran! ”

"Ran away?" He Jin was furious, he had been tricked three times, and his forehead was already bruised, and he personally rode on his horse and galloped forward to enter the camp to witness it with his own eyes.

He Yilong's situation is similar to him, and he has an anger that his IQ is insulted.

The gunpowder shells of the special Franc machine are also very precious to the thieves! I knew that the officers and soldiers had abandoned the camp, so we shouldn't have lost more than half of our ammunition reserves last night!

This was originally the great goal of annihilating the official army, so he invested so much. If you just take an empty camp, it will be a bloody loss!

After the anger, Erhe had no choice but to immediately personally take the Chinese army into the camp to inspect. It's time to boost morale and announce that you've won a big victory.

But half an hour later, He Jin and the others came to the big tent of the official army and the central army that was abandoned by Zuo Zixiong last night.

When the officers and soldiers left, in order not to startle the snakes, some buildings in the camp were not demolished, and the other buildings only ripped away the cloth of the tents, and the heavy wooden shelves were not moved, which made it seem that the Chinese army's tent with curtains was still very conspicuous.

What is even more conspicuous is that the officers and soldiers piled up a lot of thieves' corpses collected during the battlefield cleaning yesterday in front of the Chinese army's big tent, and also selected the elite soldiers and officers of the old camp of thieves who had been stripped of their iron and cotton armor.

Although he didn't do anything to kill people's heads and pile up Jingguan, the humiliation was also very obvious. He Jin was full of anger for a while, but he heard a personal soldier next to him report that he had seized several letters scattered by the officers and soldiers in a conspicuous place in front of the corpse pile, and the content was the same, which should have been left for the "King of Zuojin".

He Jin took a look at it, and it actually said some heart-wrenching arguments, describing in detail the deaths and injuries of the high-ranking officers of the thieves in yesterday's battle, and also said that He Jin's nephew He Tianming, who was trampled to death yesterday when he led the team to rush through the gap.

Obviously, these little tricks were carried out by Yan Yingyuan, who rushed to meet the retreat last night.

Zuo Zixiong, a military general who is only dedicated to military affairs, will not play this kind of dirty psychological warfare work, and at first glance it is only played by people with criminal investigation and criminal psychology background.

In the letter, Yan Yingyuan also tried all kinds of things to defeat morale and humiliate him, emphasizing that He Jin's clansmen were all cowardly and wasteful, with so many elite soldiers, but instead of bravely killing the enemy in the charge, they were cowardly and wanted to hide, and finally were trampled to death by their own people.

In the end, He Jin followed the instructions of the letter, and at a glance saw several wooden stakes at the front of the pile of corpses, on which were the bodies of several dead people, and there were also strips of cloth with many large characters written on them, which were used to humiliate and demoralize at a glance.

It's a pity that many of the soldiers before the thieves couldn't read a word, so they all entered the camp for half an hour, and no one thought of dismantling these things until the king himself saw them—perhaps, some people were afraid that moving the body of the king's nephew would make the king unhappy.

"This rubbish! It was trampled to death, and it had to be made public! It's a shame for our Lao He family! You guys, don't you cut down the stake that pierced the corpse for me! Burn all these corpses! Buried! ”

He Jin was so angry that his temples jumped, he personally ordered, and waved his big knife hatefully, slashed a few times on the stake, and his own soldiers also stepped forward to help.

However, at this moment, as the wooden stake was cut down and other parts of the Jingguan were destroyed, a loud bang suddenly came from near the big tent of the Chinese army.

"Ahh

The troops in the distance and He Yilong were also shocked, and they were stunned for a while before they reacted: "The officers and soldiers actually retreated and buried so many mines!" ”