It turned out that Wall came to China relatively late, and he usually heard more stories about how the British army easily defeated the Qing army, and there was a serious misjudgment of the military strength of Li Xian's side, thinking that the other side was only able to occupy the rabble of the big city of Guangzhou by taking advantage of the regular army and the British army to fight head-on and attack from behind when they suffered heavy losses.

There were only more than 1,000 foreign spear teams under Wall, but he consciously relied on these more than 1,000 to deal with more than 10,000 Qing troops (assessed by the strength of Yang Fang's army), and felt that the rebel army only had 15,000 people, and it should be more than enough to deal with his own foreign gun team alone.

Yang Fang was very disappreciative when she heard this, and felt that her son-in-law was very light on the enemy, but it was not good to suppress all the generals when they were afraid of war, so she just gave a few words of encouragement and praised his bravery.

The military meeting of this day ended hastily, and did not come up with any specific strategy, but it was not without results, at least most of the generals understood that this battle had to be fought, and it could not be fought as a defensive battle, and they had to go out of the city to fight, otherwise they would not be able to escape if they wanted to.

So, how to arrange the troops in this field battle, and who will come forward and who will be behind, will have to think hard.

A few days later, Li Xian really entered the territory of Bao'an with a heavy army, and approached Yang Fang's army.

Originally, Li Xian felt that the Qing army was extremely timid, and he must have retreated to the city to try to resist, but he didn't expect the other party to be very good, so he actually pulled out the soldiers and opened up a formation in the field, which was actually a field battle posture.

If he could fight in the field and reduce the accidental injury to the people in the city and the damage to the materials, Li Xian couldn't ask for it, and he was overjoyed to open the formation and try to fight a head-on battle with the Qing army.

Li Xian prefers to use trench warfare and other methods to win by relying on the advantages of defensive facilities, but if he really wants to fight a field battle, Li Xian is not afraid.

When the two sides set up their positions, Yang Fang's side was in the front line of the foreign gun team, guarded by four Western artillery, and behind it was the traditional Qing army phalanx.

This phalanx of Qing soldiers is the artillery in the front, the spear-carrying team in the rear, and the cold weapon troops in the rear.

Li Xian has always been unable to figure out what the basis for such an arrangement of troops is, and what are the benefits, but this is the standard formation of the Qing soldiers, which is written in the textbooks, and the military attache enters Beijing to take the exam to become a martial artist or a martial artist, and if he wants to take the art of war, he must answer the questions according to this rule, otherwise he will be deducted points.

Li Xian looked at it for a while and understood that as long as the foreign spear team of more than 1,000 people in front of him was defeated, the Qing military team behind him would be in chaos.

Confident in the foreign guns he had trained, Wall placed four guns on a slightly higher slope, and then used the artillery positions as the base point to line up the 1,500 foreign guns in five phalanxes and advance little by little.

As for the Huaxia Army, a regiment of 1,500 soldiers stepped forward, divided into five phalanxes, and guarded the artillery positions in the rear, while the large army remained in the rear.

This is also one of the standard field combat methods of this era, a large army is left as a reserve, and a small number of elite soldiers come forward to fight, so that even if there is any emergency, it will not be difficult to deal with it.

At this time, judging from the scene, the number of troops on both sides was similar, the formation was also similar, and they looked almost identical, and they were really all troops trained by watching British military textbooks.

Wall is also a very experienced grassroots officer, seeing that the rebels on the opposite side are wearing a green military uniform, and they seem to be using foreign guns, and they are meticulous from the line of ranks to the march, showing a completely different military quality and discipline from ordinary Qing troops, and they know that this matter is out of play today.

From a distance alone, the level of equipment and training of the rebels on the opposite side is not at all below the foreign guns, and there is a kind of self-confidence that only European strong armies can have, and they are not what they think they are.

What's more important is that Wall himself knows his own affairs, and the Qing army is also worthy of a battle with its own foreign gun team, and the nearly 20,000 soldiers behind are all like goods, and the opposite side is densely packed with more than 15,000 people, all of whom are well-disciplined musket teams, how can this be fought.

However, as a soldier, Hua Er still has the basic qualities, and he does not have the idea of turning around and running away as soon as he sees that the situation is wrong, and only thinks about defeating the 1,500 enemy troops who come forward, and then taking advantage of the situation to retreat, as for the battle behind, he can only improvise.

According to the standard tactics of this era, the artillery of each side should be about three kilometers apart, and then each of them sends infantry forward, advances to within 100 meters of each other and shoots, that is, lines up to shoot, and then depends on which side can not hold on, and first collapses and flees.

However, the Chinese rebels fought in a very strange way: after the infantry had advanced about 500 meters, they stopped, built some kind of defense on the ground, waited for about 10 minutes and then continued to advance, and then advanced another 500 meters, and then stopped to do earthwork on the ground.

Wall looked closely and found that every time the Chinese rebels stopped and advanced, they left behind dozens of soldiers and four or five long metal pipes.

Seeing the location and orientation of these metal pipes, Wall suddenly understood that this should be some kind of long-range artillery thing, that is, every time the Chinese stopped, they were building artillery positions.

However, the tubes were obviously light, and the artillery position could be built too quickly in ten minutes, so Wall could only secretly pray that the power of this artillery was small, after all, the heavier the artillery, the more powerful, didn't it.

However, the commander of the rebel army was obviously very cautious, and after advancing for a thousand meters or so, he did not continue to advance, but put up a defensive position around that strange artillery position.

At this moment, Wall couldn't help but secretly curse the other party's bastard, now the distance between the infantry on both sides is about 1,500 meters, and his own artillery batteries are also two kilometers away from the other side.

That is to say, the artillery of the foreign gun team cannot hit the opponent, but if the foreign gun team continues to advance, it will enter the range of the opponent's artillery, and then advance under the cover of the opponent's artillery, and the losses and damage to morale caused by this cannot be underestimated.

If it is an undertrained army, it is possible to collapse directly under the cover of artillery fire, and Wall knows that his foreign gun team is actually very poorly trained and experienced, and it is still possible to shoot under rifle fire, and it is almost impossible to advance under artillery strike.

In this case, Wall could only order the infantry to stop their advance and stand still, while praying that the opposing army would be braver and obey the rules of the army's battle, so that they could continue to advance.

In fact, the so-called queue shooting tactic has great limitations, and many times it requires a tacit understanding between the commanders and officers of both sides, otherwise many times it will be out of shape and it will not be able to fight.

Like the Chinese rebels, stopping in the middle of the march, trying to wait for work, allowing the enemy to advance under artillery attack, and then easily winning, is the most typical way to smash the game.

In this case, the other side will naturally not be fooled, and will stop and move, and then the two sides may not advance for a whole day, carefully wandering on the edge of the effective range of artillery, and in the end the battle will not be fought, and can only be broken up unhappily.