national surname chiming

Chapter 62 What qualifications do you have to learn from Qi Shaobao

Half an hour later, under Zuo Zixiong's rectification, the officers and soldiers in Huangqiankou Town cleaned up the battlefield, and let the soldiers eat the court food and breathe a sigh of relief.

The war dead were also hastily pulled aside and cremated, and the wounded were treated briefly.

After a short and bloody battle, although the officers and soldiers had the advantage of terrain and firearms, 31 people were directly killed, 47 were seriously injured, and 68 were slightly injured.

The so-called serious injuries, at least half of them cannot be rescued, and can only be treated briefly to relieve their pain, and half of them will be left with some disabilities.Add up to the permanent battle damage of more than 60 people, accounting for 3% of the total force.

Among the number of casualties in the battle, the elite Shen Jiajia Ding only accounted for more than [-]%, and the remaining [-]% to [-]% were recruits trained by the local regiment.

On the one hand, this is related to the poor combat effectiveness and hasty training of the regiments. On the other hand, it is also because most of the regiments are pikemen, who need to carry the line and bear pressure, which is far less safe than firearms soldiers.

Fortunately, the results of the battle were also very fruitful. Just looking for the corpses and the seriously wounded abandoned by the enemy after the battle, nearly [-] heads were harvested.It is not known how many lightly wounded escaped.

Also seized were 130 sound and slightly wounded horses, [-] donkeys, mules, and other pack animals.

Severely injured and disabled livestock can only be slaughtered immediately and boiled immediately for the soldiers to eat their meat.

The broken knives and rotten guns left by the enemy are worthless, but more than fifty pairs of iron-coated cotton armor were taken from the corpses. After a simple cleaning, they were immediately assigned to the regiment that performed well today.

……

Cleaning the battlefield, of course, will also capture the wounded and prisoners of the enemy.

Zuo Zixiong kept an eye out and asked his subordinates to pay special attention to the bandit officers among the wounded.

Sure enough, his subordinates did not disappoint him, and found a bandit cavalry chief who was unable to retreat because of a broken leg.

It always seemed that there was no other injury, as long as one leg was amputated, and if the wound was cleaned and not suppurated, most of them could survive, so the desire to survive was relatively strong.

Zuo Zixiong likes to deal with such people who have a strong desire to survive, so he avoids suspicion by calling Shen Lian, a hundred households of the supervising army, to interrogate the prisoner together to show his fairness in all decisions.

He didn't talk nonsense, he drew out his saber and put it on the general's neck as soon as he came up: "How many troops have you come this time, who is the chief general? How many reinforcements are there in the future? Make it clear, let the military doctor debride the wound and stop the bleeding immediately. Otherwise, it will be slaughtered, and you can find another wounded person to ask."

As he said that, Zuo Zixiong waved his hand and asked the soldiers to carry another bandit army officer over from the side. The bandit army officer seemed to be seriously injured and unconscious, so he was speechless.

With a backhand knife, Zuo Zixiong chopped off the head of the unconscious bandit officer, and said coldly, "There is no need for the bandit general who can't speak to suffer."

The broken leg was always splashed with blood from Pao Ze's neck, he recovered from the initial shock and stupor, and hurriedly begged for mercy: "It's the soldiers led by the young master Liu Xiong, the king... oh no, Liu Xiyao also let Yidou Gu lead him back .

Liu Xiyao has already kissed the army, starting from Huanggang, and will definitely arrive before this evening.You...You guys are so small, you can't stand up to Liu Xiyao's army! "

Zuo Zixiong's face was calm: "Liu Xiyao led the army himself? How many people are there?"

The head of the Broken Leg Department: "Liu Xiyao's entire army will always have one or two... twenty to thirty thousand. I don't know how many will come."

Zuo Zixiong wasn't too demanding, he knew it was the truth.With a look, he signaled his subordinates to keep their promises, and dragged down the traitor army chief who confessed honestly, sawed his leg and put medicine on it.

As for whether he can survive the debridement after sawing the legs, it depends on luck.

Shen Lian and Pizarro next to him also had different expressions after hearing the confession.

Pizarro is only here to get a high salary as an instructor, not to accompany him to do things that are risky for free.He immediately shouted:
"Left, shouldn't we immediately retreat to Qizhou County? There is only half of the day. If Liu Xiyao really brings 2 people here and surrounds us in this small town with only earthen walls and wooden fences, There is only destruction!"

After all, Shen Lian has been the confidant of the Shen family for many years, and he is also an outlaw. His loyalty is more reliable. He is more worried about the overall situation. After thinking about it, he couldn't help but regret:

"If I had known that I would eventually retreat to the city, I shouldn't have given Liu Xiong a chance to breathe just now. I should have taken advantage of his defeat to chase after him. Maybe I could have concealed and killed more than [-] remnant soldiers, and prevented them from regrouping.

Now it is a bit difficult, Liu Xiong and the remnants of Yidou Valley, it is very difficult to break through our guarded Huangjiakou Town.However, if we leave the town and march in the valley plains and open areas on the north bank of the Qishui River, if we are harassed by them, it will not be easy to deal with. "

By sweeping the battlefield and interrogating prisoners, the strength of the enemy and ourselves is now very clear.

Zuo Zixiong lost nearly 900 people's combat power, and 200 people remained in good condition, with enough weapons and ammunition, and [-] people could ride horses (dozens of them were originally brought, officer's horse)

Liu Xiong and Yidougu should have 400 men left, nearly half of them are cavalry, and the rest are at least mounted infantry, which has an advantage in mobility.

Leaving the terrain cover of the town, in the open area, Musketeers and Spearmen have to deal with attacks from multiple directions, which is indeed risky.

Zuo Zixiong's face was as deep as water, and he still maintained a certain degree of politeness towards Shen Lian, the "hundred households in the army", to prove that he was convinced by Shen Tongzhi's deployment.But that didn't mean he would mind if Shen Lian questioned him tactically.

After taking a deep breath, Zuo Zixiong said solemnly:
"Shen Baihu, let's stop this kind of afterthought. Just now at dawn, the sky was dark and the enemy's situation was unclear. It is a safe strategy not to pursue and expand the results of the battle.

What's more, our army is all infantry, and there are still half of the recruits. Even if we chase them out, the enemy has horses, and they will not be able to chase a few people.Let's look forward and think about how to safely withdraw to Qizhou City.

Since even we imagined that infantry would be unsafe against nimble cavalry on the valley plains, the enemy could too.Maybe it can also seduce Liu Xiong to regain his courage and take the initiative to tease us.

It would be a blessing for the people of Huangzhou if they could take advantage of the situation and wait for work to beat them again, and finally successfully retreated to the city, and even forged a deep hatred with Liu Xiyao. Plagiarism and harvesting autumn grain. "

When Shen Lian heard this, it was indeed the truth, and he apologized to Zuo Zixiong: "In this way, the mark is too much to talk about. However, it takes [-] infantry to break through the encirclement of [-] cavalry. , march twenty or thirty miles back to the county seat, are you really sure?"

Zuo Zixiong thought for a while: "Do your best and obey the destiny. There is no certainty of victory in the battlefield. We will slowly walk eastward along the north bank of the Qishui River, so that the south side is close to the river, and it is impossible to be detoured by the enemy cavalry. Just defend the northeast, west and three sides.

There are countless examples of famous ancient generals marching in a moon formation along the river and defending three sides against cavalry harassment.The most famous one is Liu Yu, Emperor Wu of the Song Dynasty, who marched westward with the Queyue formation on the north bank of the Yellow River, and the cavalry of the Northern Wei Dynasty could not break it with several times their strength.

Although we don't have chariots like Liu Yu now, we can't learn from Qi Shaobao to break through the Tatar chariots, but at least we have firearms, and some fleets, with more people and more physical strength than the enemy army, so we should be very hopeful ——Liu Xiong drove all night and didn't sleep much at all. "

After Shen Lian heard this, he immediately asked for orders: "It's better for me to lead the fleet and go upstream along the river, and cooperate with the capital on both land and water. I have been traveling with my master's family since I was a child, and commanding a few ships is more than enough."

Zuo Zixiong nodded: "That's fine too, but you'd better send out a fast boat with more energetic oarsmen and pole-pullers, and rush back to the city at full speed against the current to report to Master Tongzhi.

If you're unreliable, you'd better deliver the letter yourself.The messengers on land will definitely be intercepted and killed by the enemy cavalry, and only the light sentinel boat can avoid it.Only when adults know about my latest plan can they cooperate with us. "

Shen Lian thought about it carefully, but he really didn't find any other captains under him who could do this job safely, so he had to undertake the job of delivering the letter himself, and entrusted the command of the fleet to others.

He found thirty strong-bodied sailors, had a full meal of meat, and brought fifteen turtledove guns and fifteen Lumi guns to ensure that each man had a shot, and also equipped some self-defense bows and arrows. Try to stick to the south bank of Qishui and go upstream.

The ship was also equipped with more than a dozen long pennies, and seven or eight sailors were always struggling to support the poles. The sentinel boat was galloping in shallow water, and the enemy cavalry could not find it in time, and there was no way to chase after it.

On the other hand, Huangjiakou Township had actually been evacuated before the war, and there was no property left in the town.

In order to prevent the enemy from accumulating, Liu Xiyao was given a place to rest during the war.Zuo Zixiong had to fortify the wall and clear the field, and when he withdrew, he burned all the dilapidated buildings left in the town with a torch.

All the weapons and armor seized in the morning were put on the dozen or so sand boats of the Shen family that could be taken away.The hundreds of livestock carcasses seized were also simply cut up, and the clean meat was selected as much as possible for shipment.

There was no time to pick out the skeletons of "horse scorpions", "donkey scorpions", and "mule scorpions" that could not fit.Together with the offal of animals that are susceptible to germs and should not be hoarded, they were all thrown in the town.

After the fire dissipated, the aroma from the bones and internal organs of hundreds of donkeys and horses attracted all kinds of wild dogs, dogs, and various animals in a radius of more than ten miles, gnawing their bones and sucking their marrow. of weirdness.

……

Zuo Zixiong took [-] soldiers and [-] horses, loaded all the baggage on board, and went upstream by water and land.

Of the 900 people, some of them had to stay on the boat, so there were only about [-] people walking on the shore—it was not that he had never thought about taking a boat, but he really couldn't fit in.The Shen family's fleet was originally here for acting, and there were only a dozen ships.

And if they are all by boat, it is not easy to rule out if the enemy temporarily manipulates the shoals of the channel, so it is the most stable to advance by land and water.

Zuo Zixiong's latest move was immediately noticed by Liu Xiong and Yidougu who had escaped more than ten miles upstream.The scouts of the bandit cavalry immediately reported to the young master when they saw that the town downstream was in flames and the officers and soldiers were going upstream.

"These thieves want to stop us for a while, and after we've been discouraged, they immediately hide back in the county and join the main force? It's a good plan. If these 2000 people join forces with the city defenders, it will be even more difficult if they want to attack the city in the future." Difficult."

Liu Xiong also had some military common sense, and immediately realized that Zuo Zixiong and Shen Shuren could not join forces.

You want to leave after offending this young master?
However, just now he was defeated for a while, so he had no confidence, so he asked Yidougu who was temporarily on crutches next to him, "Are you still sure about intercepting?"

Yidougu didn't answer immediately, but asked the scouts for some details, mainly about the marching deployment of Zuo Zixiong's troops.

After listening, he said solemnly: "The enemy's military discipline seems to be really strict, but they thought that they would retreat slowly after the moon array, land and water advance together. The main force of the king will arrive at least in the evening, but now it's just the beginning of the day." .

It is only ten miles from Huangjiakou Town to our place, and another fifteen miles is Qizhou County.If there is no delay, they will definitely be able to walk the 25 miles back to the city within three hours.

Although our army was newly defeated, there were many cavalry, Zuo Zixiong's Queyue Formation seemed quite lawful, but he didn't have a cart stick.In ancient times, the key to backing up against the water was to have a car as a cover—isn’t it the same for Qi Shaobao to deal with the Tatars in this dynasty?
In my opinion, as long as our army is dispersed enough, brave enough to realize our shame, and then take advantage of the enemy's reluctance and complacency after a new victory, we can still fight.

In the morning, it was just that the terrain was too narrow, so many of our cavalry could not form a formation, and we had to charge intensively, so we were hit so badly by shotguns.The battlefield is very wide this time, we must loosen our formation and roam around to harass them, so that their shotguns are useless! "

The old thief Yidougu said a few pieces of military common sense, all of which Liu Xiong agreed with, and finally regained his confidence in intercepting.

(End of this chapter)