The Rise of Ming Dynasty 1646

Chapter 294 The Destruction of the Hongyi Mercenaries

Fausto suddenly realized that if the enemy had not forcibly crossed the Pearl River, then could the team behind him be...

He hurriedly shouted to the officers beside him: "Let our people be careful, there may be traps!"

Before he finished speaking, he heard the sound of horseshoes on the north side. Although he couldn't see how many cavalry there were, hundreds of shiny steel swords were lined up in a straight line, like death's scythe, towards the Guangdong Army's position. Slashed from the flanks.

In fact, Chen Xiongfei only brought four six-pound guns, which were mainly used to suppress enemy cannons.Therefore, the few rounds of shelling just now didn't kill many enemy soldiers, but even so, Tong Yizhen's people were already frightened by the shells whistling behind them.

When more than a hundred hussars rushed to them, no one dared to stop them.The cavalry of the Dragon Guards also had no intention of entanglement with the infantry of the Cantonese Army. They cut down those who were close along the way, but did not shoot with spring wheel guns at the enemy soldiers who were farther away.

The neatly lined hussars fought as if they were in no one's land, until they reached the heavy artillery position behind the earthen ramparts, and then aimed at the gunners and fired their guns in turn.

After two volleys of spring-loaded muskets, only two or three of the Portuguese artillery on the left wing of the earthen barrier were left behind the corpses, and the rest were killed.

Seeing the enemy cavalry, those Cantonese soldiers obviously wanted to make trouble with the cannons. Not only did no one come forward to rescue them, but they avoided the heavy cannons as if they were avoiding the plague.

Then a cavalryman dismounted from his horse, stuffed a few zhang long fuses into the gunpowder next to the cannon, lit the other end, quickly turned over and got on the saddle, and nodded to the company commander commanding the hussars.

Seeing that the task had been completed, the latter didn't want to fight. Before the Cantonese army came back to their senses, they chose a place where the enemy was sparsest, and led their troops to kill them again.

It took less than 10 minutes to enter and exit the room. With a loud noise behind him, the Portuguese cannons were completely extinguished.

The gunpowder explosion made the still slightly dim morning red, and the frightening movement exacerbated the chaos of the Cantonese army.

Thousands of terrified soldiers fled in all directions, even though Fausto tried his best to yell at them to stabilize their position, no one paid any attention to him.

In a hurry, Fausto grabbed a Cantonese soldier who looked like an officer head-on, shouting and gesticulating for him to restrain his subordinates.

The officer let Monk Zhang Er be puzzled by his Portuguese. He wanted to escape, but was held back by Fausto. In desperation, he pulled out his saber and slammed it on the neck of the short-sighted Hongyi. .

The interpreter surnamed Song was rushing to help Fausto translate, when he saw him being cut down, he was so surprised that he pointed at the officer, "You, you..."

The man who killed Fausto did not stop doing two things, and simply cut down the interpreter with his backhand, and then he lowered his head and burrowed into the chaotic army.

On the other side, Nunes, who was leading the team to stop the Ming army behind him, finally saw the enemy from a distance. There were about [-] people in total, arranged in a dense and narrow formation, which made him feel a little relieved.

With his nearly 300 Portuguese mercenaries and more than [-] Cantonese swordsmen covering them, he has full confidence to quickly defeat the Easterners who are close in number.

"Why don't these damned artillerymen carry out support shooting?" He was complaining to himself when he heard a loud noise behind him, and when he turned around, he saw the flames soaring into the sky. It was obvious that his position had been attacked.

"Steady!" He shouted to the mercenaries, "Keep in formation, don't mess up!"

He tried his best to keep calm, looked up at the enemy's position, and estimated that there were still 180 steps away...

150 steps...

110 steps...

Nunes yelled, "Keep your fingers off the trigger! There's still a long way to go, don't rush to shoot!"

As soon as he finished speaking, he saw a large piece of fire suddenly flashing in front of him.

The enemy fired?He was overjoyed, these orientals were indeed lacking in fighting skills, they fired in a hurry at such a long distance, and with the shooting accuracy of arquebus, it was impossible to hit anyone from seventy paces away.

Shoot as much as you want!He sneered secretly, when you started loading ammunition, my troops were just able to reach the optimal firing distance, and it only took two or three rounds to let you know how powerful it is...

But the next moment, Nunes was instantly drowned out by the dying screams around him.He turned his head to look at the mercenary phalanx in horror, and was so frightened that he almost fell to the ground—that round of shooting that was "impossible to hit anyone" just now killed nearly [-]% of the soldiers in his phalanx !
Could it be that there was something wrong with his judgment of the distance, he was busy looking at the enemy in the distance, that's right, there are at least 110 steps, how is this possible? !
Nunes was almost suspicious of life—not to mention the distance, even if the distance was sixty or seventy steps, there were at most four hundred musketeers among the seven hundred people on the opposite side. How could he kill himself with a single volley? 200 people? !
Of course he didn't know that what he was facing was more than 600 Dragon Guard infantry, all equipped with Type II Jaeger guns.

The straight and stable ballistics of rifled guns ensured a very high hit rate. In fact, Minie bullets can effectively kill at around [-] paces.

Zhang Jiayu also considered that this was the first time that the Longwei Army had used the hunting guns to fire in a long-distance line salvo, so in order to be on the safe side, he waited until the enemy was about 110 steps away before giving the order to shoot.

It was also because the light was dim at this time, which affected the soldiers' aiming. Otherwise, Nunes would have suffered nearly a hundred more casualties under the salvo this time.

The entire battle formation formed by the Portuguese and the Cantonese army froze for a moment, and the casualties far exceeding their expectations brought a great sense of unreality, but they froze there instead of collapsing immediately.

But they were awakened by the sound of gunfire from the Ming army on the opposite side, and the dense bullets flew by, taking the lives of more than 100 people.

"Run!"

"They must have used witchcraft!"

"Those people are devils..."

These Portuguese mercenaries who were used to seeing life and death all the year round were yelled in fright, threw away the heavy Spanish muskets in their hands, and fled in all directions.

On the contrary, the Cantonese army, who used to run away in the past, stood dumbly in the pool of blood and minced meat, with weak legs and a blank mind.It wasn't until the Portuguese ran dozens of steps away that they realized this and hurriedly chased after them.

Nunes didn't even stop the mercenaries from fleeing. Although he didn't know what the enemy in the distance used, the casualties were right in front of him.

According to this casualty ratio, all his men would be slaughtered before they got within the effective range.

However, before the defeated army could run far, the hussars who had just finished filling their spring wheel guns had already formed a group and surrounded them, shouting loudly, "Kneel down to avoid death!"

The Cantonese soldiers didn't hesitate at all, and immediately knelt on the ground as if they had received an order.

It's a pity that the Portuguese can't understand Chinese, and they still keep running with their heads depressed.The hussars sighed helplessly, and chased after them, firing guns or swinging swords, killing them one by one.

　Thank you Luo Renzhong (Xingxing Steel) for your generous reward. Your support is the motivation for my code, thank you very much!
　　
　
(End of this chapter)