golden scales

The best job of Manchurian hunters is to scout the enemy.This is their job, and the killing habits derived from it can even take a backseat.Abatai and Hong Chengchou waited for good news every day for five long days, but the final result made them extremely disappointed.

Of the fifty sentry horses sent out, only ten came back.Among the ten people, six were seriously injured and died in the end.The remaining four told the story of their escape from the tiger's mouth, which made Aba Taihong and Chengchou feel gloomy for a long time.

The average depth of the entire North China defense line is twenty miles, and all the villages and military forts are distributed in waves, with a gap of at most ten miles between each other, and the closest one is only five or six miles away.Although the military fort is not big, some of them can only be regarded as fire road piers. The scary thing is that there must be artillery in them.

"Master, the Ming army is often mobilized between villages. The team is neat and tidy, making it impossible to know where they are stationed." The sentry horse said anxiously: "There must be Ming army sentry horses in every forest, and the slaves often go deep into it. Then the village sent a large group of troops to encircle and suppress them, forcing the servants to flee into the forest, but they were tricked by secret sentries inside."

As the sentinel horse said, he suddenly remembered the hunting between the white mountains and the black waters.

Only this time, they became prey.

Hong Chengchou didn't speak, but Abate said: "It's nothing more than the old way of guarding the fort." He said it seemed relaxed, but actually his heart was heavy.The Ming army built forts layer by layer in the Liaoxi Corridor, and kept the Manchu and Qing cavalry outside the pass for more than [-] years.

Hong Chengchou was not worried about these village military fortresses: "Our army has red cannons, which can be broken in one attack. I just don't know where the weakest point is. If it happens to hit a nail, it's not worth it." It is not considered loyal, but since the Manchus have surrendered, it must be proved that the Qing Dynasty is indeed the destiny, and rebelling against the Ming Dynasty and returning to the Qing Dynasty is also in line with the general trend.

Boluo listened to him, and couldn't help but said: "Who cares about him, as long as he pushes over, those villages can still stop my Qing cavalry! At that time, we can tear down whoever is in the way, and we can collect some servants." slave."

After all, Abatai is old in battle, said: "The army is camping here, send Xiergen and his troops to test it out first."

Hong Chengchou also said: "Order Zu Zerun to be his deputy."

The two military orders were sent to Hilgen and Zu Zerun respectively.Hilgen was Huang Taiji's guard when he was in Baylor, and he has been learning Huang Taiji's method of using troops personally.Zu Zerun is the eldest son of Zu Dashou, a member of the Zhenghuang Banner Han Army, and a descendant of a family of Liao generals.After the two men took orders, they first joined forces and camped forty miles south of Daying, only 25 miles away from Anping County.

If Baoding, Tianjin, Zhending, and Cangzhou are regarded as four points and connected by a straight line, it becomes a parallelogram.It is really set to the line of Cangzhou, which happens to be where many counties are located, and it has a great advantage in building fortifications.

Both Xiergen and Zu Zerun knew the importance of this kind of probing attack, and they would not go straight to Anping County with all their strength.The two led 1000 soldiers under their command, pulled more than [-] coats to open the way, and started from the villages on the outskirts of Anping County to clear the passage to the county seat.

For the Qing soldiers, they rarely saw this kind of village that would not escape. Usually, it was only when the army arrived, and the villagers either surrendered or fled, and they would never be trapped to death.But now, there was a puff of black smoke rising from the village, and the wind lingered, it was a warning signal.

Seeing the wolf smoke from a distance, Xiergenzu Zerun grinned grinningly in his heart: no one will come to rescue you.

In their cognition, there really shouldn't be a large army coming to save such a village.

According to common sense, the people here should have been evacuated to the county seat long ago.The official army is only responsible for guarding the county seat, but that may not be able to hold it, so how can they care about a village?

However, the Donggong system has never played cards according to common sense.

After the village sent out the beacon signal, the nearby villages took action one after another, building a team of well-equipped civilian husbands.Xiangyong took up his weapon, entered the combat position, and prepared to defend the village.

The [-]th headquarters of the [-]nd Battalion of the [-]st Guards Division stationed outside Anping County has already set off in full gear and headed for Pangjiazhuang [-] miles away in a forced march.Raoyang and Shenze counties, forty miles east and west of Anyang, also mobilized one after another, and the defenders stationed in the two counties moved closer to Anping to prepare for support.

All Huludun sent out Tanma and Tangma one after another, and for a while, the whole North China seemed to come alive.

As for Pangjiazhuang, which was picked by Xiergen at random, fifty villagers from the whole village bravely went up to the wall at this moment, among them twenty archers were on standby, and an instructor wearing a fat red jacket and leather armor became the military commander of the village. Arrange defense with two township guards.He lost an army in the Battle of Gaocheng, and was honorably transferred to the Xiangyong establishment and became the instructor of Pangjiazhuang.

"The artillery goes up to the east wall! They're going to come over there." The instructor stood on the wall less than two feet high, squinting his eyes to check the movement of the Qing army.

Although the distance is not close, when there are more than a hundred people, the dust kicked up by trampling horses is the best sign, and it can't be hidden even if you want to hide it.

A [-]-type artillery was quickly pushed and pulled by six strong men to the east wall. At the same time, [-] township braves also carried the tiger squatting cannon, artillery powder, and projectiles to the wall for defense.The archers gave way to the artillery one after another, holding their bows and waiting for the battle to come.

Because gunners belong to high-tech arms, it is impossible to deploy them in villages, and even the county does not have full-time gunners, so artillery is still used in the most traditional way: fixed basic gun positions, marking the landing point within the range.The gunner only needs to wait for the target to reach the landing point, then adjust the elevation angle according to the landing point, and then ignite and fire the cannon.

"Cannon, fire!" The instructor saw hundreds of people rushing into the effective range of the artillery, and ordered immediately.

With a bang, the shell flew out of the barrel and landed ten steps away from the rear left of the preset landing point. Only three or four Donglu soldiers fell to the ground, obviously missing.

The Donglu soldiers who rushed up did not expect that there were artillery in the village, and they were terrified.Many of the coats that have just been replenished from Gyeonggi have never been on the battlefield, and they are already scared to pee when they hear the sound of guns.Some even turned their heads and ran away, not wanting to die under the artillery.The Donglu armored soldiers who followed drew out their swords along the way, followed the fleeing and pretending to be dead with a single knife, killing seven or eight people in an instant, and then stabilized the front line.

"Look at them! They have captured more than you." The instructor couldn't help but cursed at the frantic gunner.

Xiangyong didn't dare to say anything, and cleaned the barrel according to the daily training, preparing for the next launch.

After stabilizing the formation, Niu Lue, who led the team, did not dare to order an attack again. Instead, he sent a message to Hilgen and Zu Zerun on a flying horse, whether the village was defended by artillery, and whether they would continue to attack.

Hilgen Zuzerun and the two were also very surprised. I don't know why this ordinary small village still has artillery.

Generally speaking, the tighter the defense, the higher the status.Whether it was the face of the Manchurian soldiers or the curiosity that the two were seduced by, they forced them to order the village to be taken down.

Soon, thousands of Donglu appeared on the outskirts of Pangjiazhuang, which was already a quarter of the troops in the hands of Xiergen and Zu Zerun, and they were determined to blast the village away.

"Cannon, hit!"

The artillery in the village fired again, and this time miraculously blasted into the enemy group, tearing open a bloody hole, which made Xiangyong, who was using the cannon, regain some face.

Driven by the armored soldiers, Baoyi bit the bullet and continued to charge forward, but did not find that the color of the soil on the ground had changed.

This is the identification of the range of the tiger squat gun.

"Tiger squatting! Hit!" The instructor happily slammed his fist on the wall with the only remaining hand.

The tiger crouching gun is different from the direct fire of the [-]th style. It is a curved fire gun, so the range is relatively short, and it looks similar to the mortar of later generations in appearance.

Each tiger squatting cannon can shoot a hundred small lead or stones weighing five coins, and a projectile weighing 30 taels can be pressed on it.Within thirty steps, the tiger squatting cannon was extremely lethal, and the shot from the muzzle was like crazy hornets, pounced on the rushing Donglu.

With just one volley, the five tiger squatting cannons knocked all the prisoners to the ground, and the result was even better than the one-seventh style that was served like a master on weekdays.

The instructor saw it, and thought in his heart: Our Daming's own tiger squat is better to serve, this red cannon is not enough to eat!When it's time to write the report, I have to ask the superiors to deploy more tiger squat guns.

The archers also stepped forward one after another, and while the gunners were cleaning the barrels, they set up their bows and shot arrows, shooting and killing those coats who were still rushing forward and refused to retreat one by one. (To be continued.)