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When he saw the officers and soldiers appear in sight, Xiao Tianjian ordered the generals who were resting in place to get up and prepare for battle, and after the officers and soldiers stopped, Xiao Tianjian and his subordinates also looked at the officers and troops in front of them.

The composition of this official army is basically similar to the opponents they encountered in the two battles of Tianlong Village and Shifo Temple in the past, they are all composed of part of the official army and part of the township bravery, the township warrior as an auxiliary army, in fact, the application is very common in this era, and the township warriors out of the idea of protecting the family, the performance in individual battlefields is even stronger than the official army of the guard, especially in the battle of defending the village, it is very strong.

But after all, Xiang Yong is a Xiang Yong, your family is a hundred and my family is fifty put together, and it is impossible to concentrate on training on weekdays, once it is applied to a large-scale battlefield, they will not be able to give full play to their original combat effectiveness, and it is easy to become a plate of loose sand, so the main combat force of the battlefield still depends on the officers and soldiers to fill the role.

The strength of the official army is basically the same as the intelligence, the number is about 4,000 people, including a battalion of about 300 cavalry, indicating that this official army is not the official army used on the edge of the town, although the Ming army is also short of horses, but the limited horses are still closely supplied to the border army, as long as it is the border army, the proportion of cavalry will be relatively much higher than the proportion of the guard army in the interior, and the current officer army obviously does not belong to the category of the border army, at best it is the guard system, belongs to the category of the local army.

Although the distance between the two armies is still about two miles, it is a little difficult to visualize the situation of the enemy army, but it is a pity that the telescope of the crystal lens made by Xiao Tianjian has not yet been made, after all, the crystal with high transparency is not easy to find, and the second is that it is not easy to polish the crystal lens, and the jade craftsmen who found it are not very good at polishing crystals, and the lenses that were polished in the early stage cannot meet the requirements, so at present, Xiao Tianjian can only rely on his eyesight to observe the enemy's situation.

Fortunately, Xiao Tianjian's eyes were protected quite well when he went to school, there was no myopia, his eyesight was quite good, and he could basically see the general equipment of the other party, from the perspective of armor, the core of this enemy army was still two thousand officers, and the armor of these two thousand officers and soldiers was only about thirty percent, and it was obvious that the number of soldiers was limited, and the rest of the people were generally only wearing red mandarin duck jackets, and they were only auxiliary soldiers in the guards. Needless to say, the number of armor equipment is even more limited, and only a very small number of leaders of the villagers will wear armor, and most of them are leather armor or cotton armor, and the number of iron armor equipment is very small.

The enemy army facing each other on the weapon side is even more mixed, and there are basically everything in the cold weapons, such as spears, long knives, boring palladium, rattan cards, and foot bows, and on the firearms, the officers and soldiers brought twenty chariots this time, each chariot is equipped with small bronze furlong cannons or iron cannons and other firearms, and the number of bird guns is not much, and it is more of the kind of three-eyed gun that the Ming army likes to use.

And Xiao Tianjian attaches the most importance to the opponent's firearms, after all, the long-range lethality of firearms is the biggest threat to him, but after looking at it again, he is still relieved, although the officers and soldiers who came this time brought more than 20 chariots, and the chariots are loaded with one or two Furlong machines or bowls, real large-caliber Furlong cannons, the other party is not many, maybe there are, but within his sight, the officers and soldiers have obviously not invited heavy firearms to the front of the battle, and they have just arrived, Obviously, the troops have not yet been arranged and ready for engagement.

In this way, Xiao Tianjian is much more relieved, after all, in terms of firearms, his advantage is only concentrated in the number of bird guns, and in terms of artillery, he only has a batch of tiger squat guns and three medium-sized bronze furlong machine guns, and the newly cast field guns on the Gaosu side have not been delivered so far, if the number of enemy artillery is too large, his side will definitely suffer a loss in a head-to-head battle.

And the enemy army is currently pulling to the front of the battle only a few chariots, and these chariots are obviously not equipped with heavy firearms such as heavy furlong cannons or general cannons, so in terms of firepower on both sides, the Xingtian army has a big advantage.

What made him even more ridiculous was that the officers and soldiers didn't know why, after arriving here, they didn't immediately discharge the battle queue, but were still in the marching array, huddled together and grinding and didn't know what they were doing.

But after thinking about it carefully, Xiao Tianjian still figured out the reason why the other party did this, first, the other party may have been frightened by his Xingtian Army, and he was hesitating what to do at this time, and secondly, the enemy army did not consider the possibility that the Xingtian Army would take the initiative to attack, after all, the Xingtian Army arrived here first, and it was also in a phalanx formation, which looked a little like it was going to be defensive, and the enemy generals might be considering whether to take the initiative to attack.

So he immediately ordered the trumpeters who followed him: "Blow the marching trumpet, and the whole army will press the enemy!" Let's not wait for them! ”

Hearing the order, the trumpeters immediately raised a copper trumpet, but now the trumpeters of the Xingtian Army no longer use suona instead of the trumpet as before, but after arriving here, they specially re-made a new military horn with copper, and formulated a new order.

With a fast-paced trumpet, the command flag in the center was also waved immediately, and the order to move forward was issued to the whole army, so the drummer in the main formation of the Xingtian Army immediately struck twice on the drum on his chest, and all the generals were ready to march after hearing these two drums.

As the marching drums sounded in the phalanx, the soldiers and generals of the entire phalanx took steps at the same time and walked towards the front collectively to the beat of the drums.

Although the phalanx of the Xingtian Army is more conducive to defense, after all, it has absorbed some tactics of the Western army, this rectangular phalanx is not only conducive to defense, but also has a certain ability to maneuver, the whole army can move as a whole in the drummer's drum beat, and can ensure that the formation is not chaotic during the march, and can be switched to local defense at any time.

And to do this, for the vast majority of the current Chinese army, it is basically difficult to complete, after all, including the most elite officers and soldiers, at most it will be drilled once every ten days and half a month, and at most the soldiers are allowed to carry out some individual skills drills, and it is very difficult to maintain collective neat action in the war, and before the Xingtian Army became an army, Xiao Tianjian paid great attention to the development of the overall combat effectiveness, and the most time spent in the training was the collective queue drill, which is also such a drill, At the beginning, Li Zicheng disagreed, thinking that the Xingtian Army's training was a showmanship, and it was through such strict queue training that the Xingtian Army could now achieve collective and unified action and keep the array from scattering.

Therefore, when the Xingtian military array moved forward, it was panning forward as a whole, but the formation always maintained the neatness of tofu blocks, and this formation alone was enough to make people feel a huge sense of pressure.

And the more than 200 Orion teams that were originally arranged on the left flank of the Xingtian Army were ordered to fall behind, follow the actions of the Xingtian Army, looking at the large array of the Xingtian Army moving forward like a mountain, these Orions were really suppressed, they had never seen so many people acting in unison like a person, and the large array of nearly 2,000 people actually marched forward without any chaos, so that those of them who had never been on the battlefield suddenly had a sense of relief, and followed their generals one by one. and go ahead.

Wang Chengping took more than fifty cavalry men, who were also at the end of the phalanx, and smiled bitterly as he watched the phalanx of the Xingtian Army marching in front of him.

He himself is also from the official army, and he has led soldiers, been a horse thief, and has not experienced many battles, but for the combat method of the Xingtian Army, he has also seen it for the first time, although he has also seen the Xingtian Army drill in Lotus Village before, but after all, it was not a battle at that time, and it did not produce much shock, but Wang Chengping always had a feeling that Xiao Tianjian controlled the soldiers and horses so much, and there were many fancy components, but it was not too practical.

In this regard, he had secretly laughed at Xiao Tianjian's training method before, and there was such an empty queue of non-stop drills, so it was better to let the soldiers catch and practice some fighting skills!

And what really made him feel the terrible thing about Xingtianjun's training method was a drill half a month ago, Wang Chengping once again ridiculed Xingtianjun's combat method, but it angered Yan Chongxi, and Yan Chongxi immediately wanted to compete with Wang Chengping.

Wang Chengping was not a stubble, he immediately agreed, and the two of them each led their troops to open a posture in an open space outside the Lotus Village, Yan Chongxi brought out half of the soldiers from his own outpost, and set up a small infantry phalanx in the open space, and Wang Chengping led more than 50 cavalry under his command as opponents.

After Wang Chengping followed Xiao Tianjian, it turned out that he only brought about 30 subordinates, and during this time, some of his other subordinates who stayed in the north also followed Fan Xi's caravan and gradually came here to join him, so that the number of elite cavalry under his command reached more than 50 people, and 50 cavalry ignored the infantry to 100, which was very fair in Wang Chengping's opinion, and in his opinion, he also took a lot of advantage, so he thought that his more than 50 cavalry would deal with Yan Chongxi's 150 infantry troops, which was not a problem at all.

But what he didn't expect was that as soon as he fought, he discovered the terrible spear phalanx used by the Xingtian Army, after the entire Yan Chongxi's spear array was arranged, the dense gun forest made it impossible for his cavalry to rush into their ranks, if he had to rush hard, it was not impossible, but even if he broke up Yan Chongxi's infantry phalanx, at least he would have to pay nearly half of the casualties, and the fifty musketeers on Yan Chongxi's hand also brought him a great threat, After a few temptations, more than a dozen of his subordinates were basically consumed, but the final result was that Wang Chengping ended in complete defeat.

Although it was only a small-scale exercise, but that time the impression of Wang Chengping was too deep, and now when he saw such a battle formation of the Xingtian Army, Wang Chengping couldn't help but have a sense of powerlessness, in the face of such a spear-based phalanx, Wang Chengping didn't know if he could eat them if he brought the same cavalry.

So after that lesson, he no longer dared to laugh at Xiao Tianjian's way of arranging and training troops, and honestly trained his subordinates, and now in addition to his original fifty subordinates, Xiao Tianjian also selected fifty old subordinates of the Xingtian Army from the army to him, let him take them to train, and Xiao Tianjian is likely to establish a special sentry cavalry team in the next step, and he will of course be a sentry general at that time.

And this time out, Wang Chengping did not bring the fifty cavalry recruits, but left them under Liu Bao, as emergency personnel left behind, and he only brought the original old brothers, after all, this battle is not a small battle, those novices before they are trained, he does not dare to bring them out to use them, if they are not good, not only can they not play the combat effectiveness they should have, but also become a stumbling block, which will ruin his business.

However, what makes Wang Chengping happy is that Xiao Tianjian is a very generous person, adhering to the principle of employing people without suspicion, and does not interfere too much in his affairs at all, which makes Wang Chengping quite sighing, as a palm, it is really not possible for anyone to do Xiao Tianjian.

Wang Chengping thought as he led his subordinates to move slowly with the large group of men and horses in front of him, and they also dismounted and walked to save horsepower and prepare for the next move.

Suddenly, there were a few cannon shots at the front, and after a while, the drummers in the Xingtian military array struck three accents again, and the whole phalanx immediately stopped advancing with a bang, Wang Chengping turned over his horse, looked forward, and took off the spear on the saddle as soon as he raised his hand, it seems that the two armies in front should have received fire.