Dragon Sea Empire

That day and night, within tens of miles from Hetuala City to Qiyun Mountain and Zaotu Mountain to the east, everything fell into huge chaos. Even an ordinary soldier can only remember things within a dozen steps around him in this dark night.

The Chinese Army's black uniforms, flintlock guns, and long-term training on combat regulations have caused the Chinese Army troops to fall into chaos, but they can still rely on officers, non-commissioned officers, and veterans at all levels to control the troops. The flames fired by muskets and artillery often frightened the horses of the Eight Banners soldiers to run away, and the Eight Banners soldiers who had never seen a night battle with firearms were also frightened and at a loss.

Compared with the Chinese Army's clear, simple, clear and disciplined troop system, the Eight Banners soldiers rely on the relationship between master and servant to maintain the order of the grassroots troops. On this dark and chaotic night, the Eight Banners military system collapsed from top to bottom, and some Eight Banners The grassroots troops resolutely resisted to the end, but after the main general and leader were killed in battle, the big guys dispersed.

The last order Yan Siqi issued before nightfall was an army assault. He sent 6 infantry regiments on the central and southern lines, and only controlled one regiment and heavy cavalry as a reserve.

It took a little time for the infantry of the Eastern Route Army to expand from a phalanx to a horizontal formation, and then when the whole army started to attack, everyone rushed forward as if in a game, and soon, the chaos began. The degree of resistance varied, with the result that the infantry lost its complete front not long after the battle began.

Not to mention the soldiers of the Eight Banners. It is said that the old Han King has withdrawn to Jiefan City. The soldiers have been suffering for two days under the cannon fire and bullets. At this time, the morale has fallen to the bottom, and soon the main forces of all the banners retreated. .

Nurhachi didn't expect that the Chinese army would dare to fight him at night. In this era, night battles between East and West are rarely carried out.

Not long after the Chinese army counterattacked across the board, the messenger he sent reported that he had completely lost contact with the northern troops such as the two red flags and the two white flags. The main force that still held the two yellow flags, Mangurtai's Zhenglan flag, and his own Ba Yale soldiers immediately retreated to Jiefan City.

Huang Taiji led the remnants of the Zhengbai Banner to rush out of the encirclement by the Suzi River, joined the remaining Eight Banners troops on the northern front and retreated towards Qiyun Mountain in the west. He did not expect that when he reached the foot of the mountain, he had not been dispatched for the past two days The special battalion of the Chinese Army used rafts down the Suzi River to attack Qiyun Mountain and seized the top of the mountain in one fell swoop.

The dense and accurate bullets knocked down Huang Taiji immediately. Huang Taiji didn't expect that the bullets from the mountain 500 steps away could hurt people, and he didn't expect that the mountain was already occupied by the enemy, so he was surrounded by a group of torch-holding torches. Surrounded by the guards who came down to the foot of the mountain, Luo Daquan, the colonel and commander of the special battalion and the number one sharpshooter of the Chinese Army, used the latest rifled gun to hit Huang Taiji with a soft lead bullet wrapped in buckskin. One shot only hit Huang Taiji's shoulder. However, given the lethality of lead bullets and the primitive medical conditions of the Eight Banners soldiers, Huang Taiji's life can already be calculated in days.

Huang Taiji ran away under the protection of his own soldiers, and the troops that Huang Taiji worked so hard to gather also lost their command and fled in all directions. The marines under Yang Qi's chasing team easily captured a large number of prisoners. , the Eight Banners soldiers are no longer fearless fighters, they have become masterless servants, Nurhaci's main generals are his nephews, the upper and lower relations of the Eight Banners soldiers are based on the hierarchical relationship between the master and servant and the father and son's family , Relying on these to maintain military discipline.

The Chinese Army relies on military discipline to maintain its military rank and troop command system, so the Houjin Eight Banners is a typical medieval army whose soldiers follow the generals and the generals are like feudal lords. Completely disintegrated.

The northern line completely collapsed, making the two regiments of the first division progress smoothly. Although the troops were in chaos, all the officers of the Chinese Army knew that the enemy general was in the direction of Zaotu Mountain. After breaking through the front of the Eight Banners, all the troops agreed The ground rushed towards the direction of Zaotu Mountain.

In the fields, shrubs, bushes, woods, and villages with a radius of tens of miles, flames of firearms flashed everywhere, and all the soldiers of the Eight Banners were fleeing to the west. A few Niu Lu troops were left in the back of the banner. These thousands of troops lit torches in the dark night, and were soon swallowed up by the muzzles and muzzle flames that erupted in all directions.

At this time, it began to rain lightly.

The Type II flintlock guns of the Chinese infantry are all designed with fire door covers, which can prevent wind and rain, so they can still shoot in light rain.

However, the effectiveness of the bows and arrows of the Eight Banners soldiers was greatly reduced in rainy days, so the collapse speed of the Eight Banners soldiers accelerated in the rain.

After ten miles away from Zaotu Mountain, Nurhachi found that the Chinese army was still following him closely, so he had to order Mangurtai's Zhenglan Banner to stay behind.

There are still more than 4500 people in the remaining Zhenglan Banner, riding on horses, shivering in the dark night rain. They lined up in three rows and rushed towards the east where the dark shadows flickered. Suddenly, countless huge flames erupted in front of them. , This is the field artillery unit of the Chinese Army pushing 50 light field cannons onto the battlefield, and at the same time firing cannonballs at the Mangurtai troops. Sie Zie, together with more than a hundred soldiers around him.

The remnants of the Zhenglan Banner didn't know that their general had died in battle, so they charged forward anyway, and most of them were killed by the following Chinese infantry volley.

Zhenglan Qi's desperate blow bought Nurhachi half an hour.

At this moment, Colonel Yan Siqi, the deputy chief of the Liaodong March of the Chinese Army and the leader of the East Route Army, has personally brought the heavy cavalry to kill him. At this time, he only left one regiment as a reserve team. All personnel were sent to the battlefield by him.

After passing through the chaotic front of his own army, he found that the troops had been dispersed into sentry teams, and each army rushed forward chasing each other. Shouts of "Wan Sheng!" came from everywhere, and everyone was fighting Head work: capture Nuqiu alive, or kill Nuqiu.

Yan Siqi breathed a sigh of relief at this moment, patted the horse under his crotch and said to the left and right: "The order goes on, the troops should not exceed [-] miles in pursuit, and gather at the west of Qiyun Mountain early tomorrow morning."

……

Zheng Zhihu chased too far with the cavalry unit, because Yan Siqi had not received the order in the dark, and he followed the cavalry team to attack the Eight Banners Army Middle Camp north of Zaotu Mountain, and then the troops advanced in the dark, chasing all the way, towards the enemy ahead He fired guns and slashed knives at his back, playing with great enjoyment, and did not stop until the horses and people were exhausted.

Only then did he realize that he was standing by the Suzi River, with no more than 300 cavalrymen around him. In the center of the dark river, there was a floating raft. Come on, sign up quickly, our cannons are facing you,"

"My own person, cavalry liaison officer of the West Route Army, combat staff officer Zheng Zhihu is here,"

"Yo, it's Tiger Cub. I'm Liu Xiang from Anhai, Quanzhou, from the Marine Corps of the Taiwan Fleet. I'm a brother of the same period in the military academy as your elder brother Zheng Zhilong."

Zheng Zhihu waved the torch towards the center of the river a few times, and suddenly had an idea, and shouted loudly: "Brother Liu, there can still be three hundred riders standing on the raft."

……

Nurhachi fled westward overnight with a large group of troops. The battle under the city of Hetuala was a very rare defeat for him, and it was a defeat that hurt the foundation of the Eight Banners.

Full of remorse and remorse, he rode on a horse and marched along the Suzi River under the guard of Bala's personal soldiers holding torches.

Ba Yale's personal soldiers were still dedicated to their duties, and sent out sentry horses to the front, back, left, and right. The forward sentry sent out one mile away. They were the only Eight Banners troops that still maintained a complete organizational system and basic backbone forces.

However, the hasty march in the dark, and the march after the defeat of the great war, caused Bayal's personal soldiers to ignore the forest on the south bank of the Suzi River fifty paces away. As soon as the cavalry forward left, a group of Chinese cavalry sneaked into the woods.

With great difficulty, Li Xiao followed Nurhachi's footsteps to the Suzi River, and encountered several Eight Banners sentries, and there seemed to be a large group of soldiers behind them.

Under the cover of the night, Li Xiao led his 600 brothers from the Vanguard Battalion of the Cavalry Regiment to avoid the Eight Banners sentries in the dense forest in the south. As soon as the sentries left, he took his brothers back to the river, and just found Nurhachi The army brigade passed by.

He didn't know who the Eight Banners general in front of him surrounded by thousands of people was.

He ordered all his brothers to aim their lances at the closely guarded Eight Banners general. In the dark night, this general had the most torches around him.

Li Xiao took a deep breath, raised the gun in his left hand, pulled the trigger to fire first, and then the 600-gun flintlock cavalry gun fired again and again. It seemed that a rain of lead bullets fell around Nurhachi, and his tall horse fell to the ground with a roar. Suddenly, Nurhachi himself emitted many sparks and gunpowder smoke from his body, and fell to the ground without saying a word.

Nurhachi was the spiritual pillar of the Jianzhou Jurchen, the Eight Banners troops, and even the Houjin Kingdom. He was suddenly knocked down by a bullet, which almost immediately caused the Bayale soldiers to collapse collectively.

Most of the Eight Banners rushed towards Nurhachi's direction, causing great chaos in the dark night. The other part of the Ba Yale soldiers turned over in despair and rushed to the Chinese army that was chasing after them. The commander of the army, Abatai, was also injured. He led his men to carry Nurhachi, whose life and death were unknown, on his horse, and ran westward.

After the second round of pistol salvo, Li Xiao's troops immediately retreated to the depths of the dense forest, dodging some Eight Banners soldiers who were eager for revenge. The Eight Banners soldiers in the chaos fired two rounds of volley: the first round with cavalry guns, the second round with cavalry-specific flintlock pistols, and then left the battlefield in chaos again.

Throughout the night, Li Xiao led his subordinates to insist on this kind of shooting game over and over again, so that the Eight Banners defeated soldiers on the south bank of the Suzi River had to risk their lives to cross the Suzi River north in the dark night, and continued to retreat westward on the north bank of the river. As a result, the sailors and marines' raft collided with these Eight Banners soldiers in the midstream. Zheng Zhihu jumped directly into the river with his men and horses on the raft.

The sailors and marines set up rapid-fire guns on the raft, and in the middle of the river, they fired dense bullets at the crowd of Eight Banners soldiers on both sides of the river. Almost all the bullets were fired, causing a massacre.

In the dark night, the troops of the Chinese Army also misfired, but the Eight Banners soldiers who had completely lost their command had completely collapsed, and no Eight Banners troops could take advantage of the chaos of the Chinese Army.

……

Zhao Tie, the general manager of the Liaodong March, led his directly subordinate cavalry battalion and personal guard battalion to rush day and night, and finally arrived at the battlefield in the morning after the Battle of Hetuala. This place has become a hell on earth, with tens of thousands of corpses lying around Within a range of ten miles, the number of dead horses and human corpses is equal. Every creek and ditch here is bright red. Some sections of the Suzi River are filled with corpses of Eight Banners soldiers and horses on both sides, which can almost intercept the Suzi River and build a corpse The dam, the smell of blood is the only smell within a radius of more than ten miles of Hetuala City.

The wounded of the Chinese Army were sitting or lying on horse-drawn carts or human-powered unicycles, and they were being sent to the Hetuala camp. Immediate death, [-]% of them will die miserably in the pain of the whole body and mind due to various infections and complications, while the death rate of the wounded in the Chinese Army is much lower.

The exhausted Chinese army was gathering by the Suzi River. Yan Siqi's cavalry found Zhao Tie and rushed to report.

Zhao Tie looked at the corpses scattered over a radius of more than ten miles, and was speechless: "Mazu is on the top, I have never seen such a situation, and I am afraid that there is no such thing as gathering the dead from all the wars I have fought before." There are many here,"

He saw Yan Siqi galloping towards with a small group of people from a distance, and said to Zeng Rui who was also shocked and speechless: "We are late, and now we can only do the work of the corpse collection team."

Zeng Rui smiled lightly, and pointed at Yan Siqi with the whip: "After this battle, Yan Zhenquan will be the No. 1 general of our Chinese army. The captain of the ship once said: This person will have a bright future in the future, as expected..."

At the end of the Battle of Hetuala, there were only 4000 Bayale soldiers left in the original mighty [-] and eight banners. They could gather in groups and run towards Jiefan City. They encountered several soldiers on the north bank of the Suzi River. Qianzhengbai Banner was defeated, and Huang Taiji, who was seriously injured and unconscious, was also among them. Nurhachi was dying at this moment. With the support of Abatai, he took a last look at Huang Taiji, who was seriously injured and unconscious, and sighed: "The sea bandits are no match for the Eight Banners. It is heaven that will kill me, "

Nurhachi, the hero of the Jurchen tribe and the great warlord of the Liaodong border of the Ming Dynasty, was seriously injured during the defeat and fled, and died on the bank of the Suzi River two miles south of Gule Village.

Abatai tried his best to keep the news of Nurhachi's death secret. He collected the defeated soldiers of the Eight Banners along the road, took a rest in Gule Village, and gathered more than 10000 retreating troops from all banners.