"How could you lose so badly? Isn't it that the official army has only a few thousand cavalry? There are more than 10,000 of you, fighting in formation, and there are also cavalry on both wings, how can they be overwhelmed so quickly! ”

After Li Dingguo and Bai Wenxuan hastily gathered the remnants of Jiao Guangqi's scattered army, they immediately began to doubt their lives.

In order to learn a lesson as soon as possible and find out the situation, Li Dingguo did not bother to personally intervene in the miscellaneous work of reorganizing the defeated army, but only handed over these daily tasks to the vanguard Pan Shirong.

He himself, together with Bai Wenxuan, had an urgent discussion, and carefully interrogated the retreating generals of the defeated army.

Because Jiao Guangqi had been killed in front of the official army, among the officers who came back alive, the highest rank was only a few brigade commanders. Li Dingguo had no choice but to talk to these middle-level officers in person.

(Note: In the armies of Li Zicheng and Zhang Xianzhong, the general department went up to be in charge of the brigade, and then went up to the captain.) The dead Jiao Guangqi is a captain, equivalent to the guerrilla of the Ming army, the commander brigade is equivalent to the garrison, and the general department is equivalent to the thousand)

In order to shirk their responsibilities, a group of brigade commanders naturally desperately described the sharp equipment of the officers and soldiers: "Second general! It's not that we can't wait for the battle, it's that the officers and soldiers are well-armed, and our firearms and bows and arrows have not killed a few!

The cavalry of the official army has a kind of horse firearm that has never been seen before, and the cavalry can fire while charging, and even fire twice in a row five or six steps before engaging the enemy! Beat our army's gun array to pieces, and then take the opportunity to slash and kill!

Except for some soldiers who were temporarily equipped with big wooden shields, none of us could withstand such a bombardment. Even the brothers in the old battalion in the front row who wore cotton armor, who were originally the backbone of the army, were directly killed! ”

Li Dingguo heard one of the first two big, but he still quickly summed up several key points that the officers and troops could win a big victory.

He felt that the existence of this "musket immediately" was incredible, so he asked for some more details, which confirmed that "in order to cooperate with the use of horses, the officers and soldiers cut off the barrel a lot, and there were two tubes" and other characteristics.

As for the technical feature that "this musket is loaded from behind," Li Dingguo, of course, couldn't ask. His troops did not capture the real thing, and between the bloody battles on the battlefield, who could see these details from a distance.

Li Dingguo secretly thought: "It seems that Shen Shuren has improved the original three-eyed gun of the official army, reducing one tube, but it is at least longer than the three-eyed gun.

But the Three-Eyed Gun should have been fired three times and could not be reloaded on horseback. It seems that the officers and soldiers have other secret methods, at least to ensure that the horses can be reloaded again. ”

However, he was still a little incredulous that the officers and soldiers had achieved such a big victory just by relying on the sharpness of firearms, so he asked more carefully, mainly about the morale of the officers and soldiers, military discipline, and the performance of the follow-up melee fighting hand-to-hand combat.

Several brigades also had one thing to say, and they quickly pieced together a review of the real situation on the battlefield.

Li Dingguo is also a bit of a famous general, he closed his eyes and made up for it, and he was able to imagine that scene, and then sighed: "Hearing you say this, these cavalry don't seem to be able to be trained by the soldiers recruited locally in Huguang.

can not be timid in battle, charge to five steps away from the spear array, and then change the saber to slash, after charging into the formation, it is still forbidden to do it, and it is not too scattered and chaotic, which is afraid that the Guanning Iron Cavalry can do it. ”

Hearing him say this, a Shaanxi commander who had worked in the Ming army more than ten years ago and later became a thief couldn't help but echo and said: "What the second general said is extremely true! The last general didn't expect just now, when you say this, these cavalry are really the shadow of Ning Tieqi!

In the second year of Chongzhen, the last general was still in the official army, and he also went to the capital to fight Huang Taiji, who was cut off from Jimen, that is, when Yuan Chonghuan was chopped. At that time, I had seen the cavalry of the Guan Ning Army hedge against the Tartars, and this was the momentum! ”

was confirmed by this, Li Dingguo's expression became more and more solemn:

"How could there be a Guan Ning army in Huguang? Or is Shen Shuren really a genius in military training? Well, now that this has happened, it is imperative to be on guard.

Wenxuan, you immediately asked the soldiers to step up camping, strengthen the siege fortifications, and send more soldiers to step up the felling and build more giant shields.

According to them, this kind of new-style firearm of the officers and soldiers should not be able to go far, and can only be within twenty or thirty paces or even closer, so that it can have terrifying lethality.

Iron armor is not necessarily defenseless, after all, the proportion of soldiers with cotton armor who come back alive is much higher. Those who wore cotton armor and died, it is estimated that the cotton armor was damaged.

Immediately let the army find a way to use the cloth and silk threads snatched along the way to sew up, re-fix and sew the iron, and tell the soldiers that if they sew up, they may be able to pick up an extra life on the battlefield! ”

The iron armor is missing, and the impact on the defensive effect of the saber saber and axe slash is not large, because the attack surface is very wide and the knife marks are very long, even if some of the armor pieces are missing, the armor pieces next to them can still share the attack kinetic energy.

However, when the gun is shot to prevent the spear from stabbing and the arrow from missing, the bad luck just hits the gap, and the missing steel armor is very fatal.

The thieves had been running long distances before, and they had not been able to rest and replenish, but now all the evil consequences were revealed.

Li Dingguo can only see the move, and try to plug the leak as quickly as his ability allows.

After arranging these tactical deployments, the brigade-level generals also retired one after another and went their own way. Only Li Dingguo and Bai Wenxuan were left in the big tent.

Bai Wenxuan was also worried, and waited for no one to speak before he spoke: "Do you really want to storm Baling?" Reinforcements from the officers and soldiers have arrived, and the news has been passed on to everyone in the city defenders, and the morale of the officers and soldiers is high, and I am afraid that it will be difficult to get it. ”

Li Dingguo's face was pale, but his expression was resolute: "I also know that I can't take it, but I must put on a tough posture and pretend to continue to attack." As long as we besiege the city and the camp is firmly entrenched, it is impossible for the officers and soldiers to attack the camp by relying on the cavalry charging into formation.

Their short-barreled firearms are probably short, fast, and have a short range, so they are useless when attacking and defending cities and fortifications. If they don't fight in the field with the officers and cavalry, they won't be able to play! It can drag on for three or five days or even longer!

Now our army can't retreat, I don't know where my father is now, but counting the days, he should have captured the entire territory of Changde Prefecture, including Wuling County, which should not be difficult for him.

Now it may be out of the Yuan River and crossing Dongting Lake to prepare to attack Changsha. What will happen if our army is now slackened on Baling's side? The official army is coming against the waterway of the Yangtze River, and the main force of the rear army of the people of Shen Shuren must have elite warships! With the wealth of the Shenshu people, maybe there are Hongyi cannons on the battleship!

If my father was intercepted and killed by the official fleet on the lake when he crossed Dongting Lake, and our army was all temporarily collected from Yuezhou and Changde, but the officers and soldiers had warships, wouldn't it be a disaster!

Therefore, we must block the mouth of Dongting Lake for a few days, and we must not let our father's main force be intercepted and killed by the official army on the way to cross Dongting Lake! No matter how heavy our losses are, we can't give up!

Of course, I will report the decline here to my father as soon as possible, and try to get in touch. If my father hasn't crossed more than half of Dongting Lake and is willing to go back, that's the best. If we are already halfway through, it will only be more dangerous to retreat, and we must defend to the death! ”

Li Dingguo's assessment of the progress of Zhang Xianzhong's main force can be regarded as accurate. Don't look at him, he has just touched the edge of Baling City here, and Zhang Xianzhong's side is very likely to have taken the entire territory of Changde.

This is not because Zhang Xianzhong's combat effectiveness is stronger, but because Yuezhou Mansion Zhibaling is east of Dongting Lake, and he can only attack it by crossing the mouth of the lake, while Changde Mansion is in the west of Hu, Zhang Xianzhong does not need to cross the lake, and can attack the city directly along the Yuanshui.

After taking the entire territory of Changde, he entered Dongting Lake from Yuanshui, and then sailed to the entrance of the Xiangjiang River along the south shore of the lake, and Zhang Xianzhong was able to attack Changsha.

Everyone knows that whether it is Yuezhou or Changde, these are small chips that do not have to fight for the gains and losses of one city and one place. In the south of Huguang, the real heartland is Changsha.

If Changsha is taken, it will be able to shake the entire southern half of Huguang, and the defenders of the rest of the prefectures and counties of the Ming army may be frightened and shaken directly.

……

Li Dingguo still has a lot of brains, and there is no lake in strategic decision-making. And in order to deceive the officers and soldiers, he also improvised and used some small tricks in the future.

For example, he asked the troops to display their flags and set up stoves in the battalion. Even if it's a fake stove, it doesn't matter if you dig a pit and pile the excavated soil on the edge of the pit, you can't actually cook rice.

When it was time for dinner, Li Dingguo asked the soldiers who cut wood to make shields, divided some wood, and went to those earthen pits to set fire to them, and tried to choose wet firewood and wet wood, and even directly burned branches with green leaves, which made the black smoke more and thicker, and it was more obvious to observe from a distance.

This bunch of tricks of bluffing and pretending to increase the stove really made Liu Sunchen, Zhu Wenzhen and Zuo Zixiong, who arrived later that afternoon, all be deceived into it.

Looking at this stretching camp and hundreds of large stove smoke columns that have been cooking for a long time, at first glance I really thought that there were 100,000 male soldiers.

In the end, Li Dingguo even did not hesitate to play the banner of Zhang Xianzhong himself, and went to the city of Baling to show off his might and attack again, and shouted again, false and real, and dealt a slight blow to the morale of the defenders who had just been boosted.

Because the information obtained by the officers and soldiers was also very hasty, they did not know where Zhang Xianzhong's main force was. Wherever Li Dingguo and Zhang Xianzhong went, they pretended to be the main force, so that they could frighten more defenders.

It's just that Li Dingguo didn't go so far, and let people directly pretend to be Zhang Xianzhong himself in front of the battle to inspect, at most he only played the banner of Zhang Xianzhong.

Bai Wenxuan was also a little afraid of this kind of arrogance, and privately persuaded Li Dingguo: "Second general, other suspicious tactics are easy to say, this is directly pretending to be the king...... I'm afraid that if you are instigated by someone with a heart in front of the king in the future, it will be very unfavorable to you! ”

Li Dingguo also knows this, but he can't help it:

"I'm also here to protect my father and obey the power in a hurry, so that he can cross Dongting Lake safely with the whole army and buy time! If the officers and soldiers knew that their father was not here, and had not misjudged that the main target of our army was Baling, then they would definitely have stepped up their attack and would not have to worry about us! ”

Bai Wenxuan sighed: "Second General, your loyalty and filial piety to the king, we naturally know, but I'm afraid that outsiders don't think so." Well, since you've done it, let's fight hard. ”

……

The first day of fighting between the officers and the thieves ended in an eerie silence. The first batch of men and horses who arrived before noon was only Zhu Wenzhen's 2,000 cavalry, and in the afternoon, they arrived one after another to 12,000 people led by Zuo Zixiong, accounting for about half of the men and horses of the Wuchang battalion.

Zuo Zixiong is not known for his IQ, and he can't see through these tricks. He saw that Baling City had temporarily relieved the crisis of being destroyed, and he also needed to let the troops who had rushed 500 miles by water rest for the night, and it was impossible to launch an attack in the evening.

After Zhu Wenzhen reported the results of the battle to him, he asked when Shen Futai himself would arrive, but was told by Zuo Zixiong that it would take about two days, and it might be three days if it was slow.

"The order given to us by Lord Futai is to use the vanguard to ensure that Baling is not lost, to ensure that the mouth of Dongting Lake is not lost, and to maintain the waterway for the rear army.

Lord Futai has a lot of opportunities, and the heart of Wuchang can't take away all the soldiers and horses at once, so he asked Zhang Futai (Zhang Huangyan) in Huangzhou on the other side of the river to immediately bring a part of the Huangzhou soldiers to Wuchang to take over, and the internal affairs of the war were also temporarily represented by Zhang Futai, and then Shen Futai personally supervised the rest of the Wuchang battalion and the rear army to help. ”

It is impossible for all 30,000 troops in one place to be transferred at once, otherwise there will be chaos in the nest of their base areas.

Shen Shuren was able to gradually move and dispatch 30,000 troops to the front line in batches in two or three days, and they had already reacted very quickly. It took eight days for Sima Yi to go from Wancheng to Shangyong (Nanyang to Yunyang).

As a result, in the next two days, Zuo Zixiong and Li Dingguo also had some small-scale friction battles, and the thieves took a defensive position, and the two sides fought fiercely.

But because the thieves could rely on the fortifications of the camp, the short-barreled cavalry of the official army did not find any good opportunities to play with firearms.

In addition, Li Dingguo's combat effectiveness and command ability are far from being comparable to Jiao Guangqi as a mere captain. Jiao Guangqi's fiasco that day was also related to the fact that his troops marched and camped for a long time, were unable to rest and eat after hard work, and had no energy.

Li Dingguo can now wait for work, or the defensive side, and temporarily adjusted and upgraded the equipment.

Zuo Zixiong didn't want to have too many casualties among his corporaries, and at the same time, his number of troops was inferior to Li Dingguo after all, and he was deceived by the other party's deception tactics, thinking that the other party was actually the main force, so he chose to bring in Hongyi cannons, directly bombarded the camp of the thieves, and then pressed the formation with a musket team.

Li Dingguo gritted his teeth and was unilaterally bombarded for a day and a half, during which he only tried to counterattack with a few single-digit Franc machines, and the morale of the soldiers in the battalion plummeted, although only a few hundred people were directly killed every day, and more were seriously injured and killed, but this kind of combat form of being beaten alive and not having to fight back was really demoralizing-

In fact, this is also the same period, Li Zicheng's encounter on the battlefield in Henan, under the city of Kaifeng. Kaifeng as the seat of Henan, the city is strong, the defenders of the Hongyi artillery is also a lot, Li Zicheng's army is because of the long-term bombardment with the defenders, the siege army was killed too much, morale is low.

A day and a half later, early in the morning of June 13, Shen Shuren himself finally arrived at Chenglingji with a force of 15,000 people.

At this point, the total number of the Shen family army on the front line of Chenglingji has approached 30,000, and with the addition of Liu Sunchen sent by Fang Kongzhi, the total number has approached 35,000.

Li Dingguo on the opposite side, after Jiao Guangqi's fiasco, lost thousands of men and horses, suffered extremely heavy casualties, and the total size of the army was reduced to 25,000.

Moreover, in the two days that Zuo Zixiong bombarded and tried to attack the camp with him, Li Dingguo killed at least one or two thousand people in the battle, and there were many more disabled people. Most of the ordinary soldiers were also shocked by the repeated roar of the heavy artillery, and they were stunned and stunned.

After the Shen Shuren arrived at the front line, they immediately gathered the generals and learned about the battle situation.

When he learned that Zuo Zixiong reported that it might be Zhang Xianzhong's main force on the other side, and that Zhang Wei's whole army was preparing to attack Yuezhou Mansion, Shen Shuren immediately showed a look of disbelief.

This is not only because he has a higher IQ than Zuo Zixiong and is well-informed. It is also because as a later generation, his geographical cognition of the southern region of Huguang and the importance of each place are obviously different from those of the Ming Dynasty.

In later generations, Hunan was established as a separate province, and even kindergarten children knew that the most important thing in Hunan was Changsha, what is Yueyang in comparison?

Zhang Xianzhong spent so much effort to kill through Shi Zhouwei and Yongshun Xuanwei Division, and entered the Hunan Plain in order to capture Yueyang? Isn't that!

"There must be a deception, let people probe the current situation of the enemy camp again! All the generals went to the big tent of the Chinese army and participated in the military meeting! Also, have you ever tried to break through the bandit blockade and make contact with the state capital further south? Do you only focus on the main forces of the enemy when you fight? ”