The overwhelming sound of horses' hooves followed the black line in the distance of the horizon, and the vanguard of the Ming army had arrived on the banks of the Old Hamulin River.

Lao Hamulin is the name of the Ming Dynasty, in the past from the Qin to the Yuan Dynasty was called Wuhou Qinshui, Laohe, Tuhe, Tuhe or Shenhe, in Xifengkou, Qingshankou north of 200 miles.

The name change indicates who lives on the banks of the river, and the name comes from the Mongolian transliteration of Lao Hamulun, which means iron in the Khitan language.

Crossing this river meant that the Ming army was only one hundred and twenty miles away from Daning City.

Daning City was once the royal city of King Ning in the early Ming Dynasty, and it was also the center of Daning Dusi. The land under his control has a semi-arid climate, which is suitable for agriculture and pasture.

Its west is Qilaotu Mountain, the east is Nuru Huer Mountain, the south source of the West Liao River Laoha River flows from the west and the south, the upper reaches of the Liao River in the north, the Daling River Basin in the east, the Xuanfu in the west, and the Yanshan Great Wall in the south.

Whether the Han people immigrate north or the steppe peoples go south, this is a necessary place.

In the past, the northern part of Daning City was the pasture of Wuliang Ha Sanwei, but now it is ...... This belonged to the Khalkha tribe that occupied Tainingwei.

On the night of 27 April, Qi Jiguang's heavy vehicle battalion of the dusty front army had rushed to the south bank of Lao Hamulin, that is, to cut wood and repair bridges in the mountains and forests, and spent three days rushing to build four bridges on the river that could accommodate two chariots in parallel, and then relied on the large battalion on the river bank to garrison and wait for the rear to transport grain and grass.

Lao Hamulin is a long river, running hundreds of miles from north to south, turning west in the south of Daning City, and Qi Jiguang's troops have just crossed this river at this time.

Theoretically, they could also reach Daning City by walking all the way down the south bank of the river, the place where the soldiers must be right, but in practice they couldn't do it.

The mountains on the south bank of the river blocked the Che camp and allowed the Ming army not to worry about attacks from the flanks.

The nomadic tribes living on this land have been integrated with the Jurchens and Han'er for a long time, forming a unique custom of semi-farming and half-herding, and they have both horse farms for grazing, cottages for living, and fields for farming.

It is often assumed that the closer the two tribes are to the border, the better they are at fighting, but in fact the tribes that live outside the mouth are just as bad as the guards who live inside the mouth.

Because whenever they grow something and raise something, the Ming army sweeps it over, and it is not good for them to live for a long time when they are enemies of the Ming army, they are people who survive in the cracks.

Therefore, after only a few battles, when the many tribes living in the mountains, plains and steppes realized that the scale of the Ming army's expedition was far greater than the hundreds of horsemen, they surrendered one after another and fell to the Ming army.

Qi Jiguang himself and the troops of the two battalions were still behind, and the prime minister of Jizhen sent Wu Weizhong, a staff general, to return to the border pass, firstly, to maintain his sanity for the transfer of ordnance and a little extinguishing his anger by the way, and secondly, to ask the imperial court to transfer the guards out of the customs.

He did not want to waste his elite troops on policing the occupied territories.

Qi Jiajun's vanguard general named Hu Dashou has followed Qi Jiguang in Yiwu for nearly 20 years, from the miner to the Zunhua Left Battalion guerrilla, illiterate, but can recite the "New Book of Discipline and Effectiveness" and "The Actual Record of Military Training" The whole article, is a rough man who gets along with the sword soldiers for half his life.

But now he was a general, and he led a battalion of chariots to garrison the south bank of Old Hamulin, and stayed until the early morning of May 2, when the scouts rushed back from the bridge, and reported the news that a large number of enemy troops had appeared forty miles away from the north bank.

Makes him frown.

The reason for the frown was that the position of their camp was favorable for defense, there were mountains and forests on both flanks, and looking back at the road they came from and the river in front of them, and if the Mongols wanted to fight them, they had to cross the bridge they had erected, which was a good thing.

But they didn't come to border the Mongols with the river.

The bad thing is that this place is not conducive to attacking, he doesn't even need to look at the battlefield map, just climb the camp and raise his hand to talk to himself: "If the captives confront me on the north bank, we can't pass the back building, we must cross the river first, get down the car city on the grassland on the opposite bank, and fight with the enemy in the field." ”

After that, he rubbed his face, put his hands on the belt of his belly and muttered: "The court gave us this hard-working general, and that's what he did." ”

His fist hammered the wooden railing of the watchtower, stepped down the watchtower, and said to the heralds who followed him: "Beat the drum to gather the troops, blow the swan sound, stay behind in one rush, and cross the river in three rushes." ”

The establishment of the chariot battalion is five levels, each battalion has four punches, each punch has two balances, each balance has four rides, and each ride has four vehicles, a total of 128 chariots, the chariots are divided into light and heavy, the light vehicles are 10 soldiers' partial box vehicles, and the heavy vehicles are 20 soldiers using chariots equipped with two Franco.

The troops led by Hu Dashou were equipped with 3,119 chariots in three heavy vehicles and one light vehicle, in addition to an infantry battalion.

Qi Jiguang's infantry battalion consisted of a team of 12 people, divided into a firearms team and a killer team, with a firearms captain captain, ten bird gunners, and a fireman; The killer team also has a captain and a fireman, and two medals, two wolf stalks, two spears, boring handles, and two sticks.

Among them, the bird hand and long knife, the boring handle and rocket, the spear and stick and bow and arrow, and only the fireman with the copper pot used the iron tip to defend himself.

The three teams of the infantry battalion are one flag, the three flags are one bureau, and the bureau has a hundred total; The four bureaus are a division and the division is set up as a general; Two divisions and one department, with a thousand generals; There are three divisions and one middle battalion, and the battalion has one general and one Chinese soldier, with a total of 2,699 posts.

However, in fact, Hu Dashou's troops exceeded 6,000, because there were northern generals in the infantry battalion, and they all brought their families.

In addition, this time, under the ambition of the emperor, the imperial court did not hesitate to carry heavy burdens, and all the infantry were mounted infantry.

The normal establishment should also have a cavalry battalion and a baggage battalion of the same establishment, and the four battalions of chariot, cavalry, infantry, and baggage should work together to be the real chariot battalion, which is both offensive and defensive.

However, at present, the battle line is very long, and the horse battalion is too late to transfer the dependent tribes, and the baggage battalion is too late to transfer grain and grass in the rear.

The enemy had already hit the door, and Hu Dashou did not want the army to be blocked on the bank of the Old Hamulin River for his own reasons, so he immediately assigned two heavy vehicles, one light vehicles and infantry battalions to cross the river.

He also ordered the scouts to tell the staff general Lou Da, who was rushing to the rear, the news that the forward had encountered the enemy.

After issuing orders to subordinate officers at all levels, after a short period of leading horses and pulling out the battalion, the infantry saddled their horses and the chariots led the horses. The armies counted the number of people and prepared properly, the artillery exploded at the bridgehead, and the battalion flag was erected on eight sides, which meant that the four bridges on the eight roads were divided.

The car was getting on the car, the infantry was on the horse, the drums were beating, and the soldiers and horses in front of the bridge crossed the bridge in two teams.

The first to cross the bridge was the northern general Sun Shoulian led all the family members, each of whom was bright and brightly armed with long soldiers and slowly stepped through, opening up the formation in the wilderness on the other side of the river.

Only then did the army begin to pass.

Although the bridge allows two vehicles to run in parallel, the Qi family army has strict regulations on the march, the left side of the four bridges is a pair of chariots, and the right road is followed by a banner of mounted infantry; After that, the left lane of mounted infantry passed by a flag, and the right lane changed chariots to a pair, and so on alternately on the bridge.

To the opposite bank, the war horse is in the center, the chariot and soldiers are connected to start the car city, and the iron hook cable is connected to prevent conflicts, and the north side of the four bridges is surrounded by water, and the big wolf machine on the car is all outside, so two openings are opened for the infantry to go out and set up the horses and thistles carried on the car, and lay mines to arrange the tiger squat artillery position.

After the gate was set up, the Qi pioneer Daxu stood high in the middle of the camp, and the scattered Mongolian rangers in the distance gradually approached.