Ke Yongsheng watched with satisfaction as his subordinates quickly assembled the phalanx, and he sat on his horse with a commanding expression.

In fact, he didn't show it so easily in his heart.

He originally thought that the Ming army would panic when it suddenly encountered an ambush from the rear, and even if he did not flee immediately, at least the situation would be chaotic for a while.

However, the performance of the Ming army was greatly beyond his expectations, and the battle formation was turned in an instant, and there was almost no panic, which shows the high level of training and strong discipline of this army.

This made him no longer dare to despise the Ming army in front of him.

Soon, his subordinate Li Shiyuan galloped over and said loudly: "Report to the general, the infantry has been arranged!" ”

Ke Yongsheng was relieved when he heard this, and his big formation was drilled according to the latest soldier drill code of the Helan people. This drill belongs to the senior military secrets of the Helan people, and he also spent a thousand taels of silver to bribe a Helan officer from Dongfan to get it.

However, this method of battle is definitely worth the money, as long as the phalanx is formed, it is difficult to shake it without tens of thousands of enemy troops. In particular, he also replaced the long-pole big gun in the Helan Caodian with Qi Jiguang's wolf sword, which had a better effect on defending against the enemy. Dozens of wolves pointed diagonally forward, and it was extremely difficult for either infantry or cavalry to remove the dense branches on the barrels of their guns and approach their guns.

At this time, the phalanx has been formed, so just wait for the artillery to be prepared, no matter how elite the Ming army in front of you is, it will definitely collapse after a few rows of artillery.

However, the smile on his face did not fade, and a terrifying roar of artillery was heard in his ears.

In an instant, the neat and dense horizontal formation of the Qing army seemed to have been detained by someone, and the screams resounded throughout the entire position. Fragments of dozens of corpses were thrown out of the queue by the tremendous force of the impact, flying seven or eight feet away, and falling everywhere.

There were even a few iron balls that flew past the soldiers who were hoisting the guns behind the phalanx, so frightened that they were stunned, and the rope that dragged the barrel in their hands was almost lost.

Ke Yongsheng's eyelids jumped sharply, and the shelling just now was obviously from the direction of the Ming army. He was pretty sure that the Ming army was still on the march before, how could their artillery start firing so quickly?!

He turned his head to look at the Qing artillery position in the distance, and saw that many of the guns had just been hoisted to the highest point, and someone below was directing the guns to move towards the wooden frame placed aside.

After that, the gun body must be pushed directly above the gun carriage, and then slowly lowered to fix, adjust the muzzle angle to aim before the gun can be fired.

This process will take at least half an hour or so.

Could it be that the Ming army discovered its ambush at the beginning, so it had already prepared its cannons? Ke Yongsheng tried to find a reasonable explanation, but he had personally inspected the riverbed of Luxi countless times, and with dense reed poles and crooked river channels, it was impossible to see the army ambushed inside from any angle.

Why is that?

Without allowing him to think about it too much, the artillery of the Ming army rang out again, and the Morris phalanx suddenly cried and howled.

Although the two shellings caused only about 200 casualties, every Qing soldier was shocked by the astonishing sound of the artillery on the opposite side, and his heart inevitably felt cowardice. Besides, no matter how brave a person was, how could he still maintain high morale when he saw the row of large living people beside him being smashed to pieces by the roaring iron balls, and their flesh and blood were flying.

Ke Yongsheng gritted his teeth, knowing that if this kind of shelling came a few more times, his infantry would most likely collapse, and there would be no need to fight.

The only chance at the moment was to get the infantry phalanx to quickly approach the Ming army, one to try to reduce the distance to within the minimum range of the artillery, and the other to prevent the artillery from firing again in order to avoid accidental damage when the infantry on both sides were so close to each other.

Just buy half an hour, wait for my cannon to be ready, and use the numerical advantage to save the day! Thinking of this, Ke Yongsheng immediately ordered Li Shiyuan, "Advance in line with the foot soldiers, and quickly engage the enemy!" ”

Then he said to Zhao Ju: "Lead the cavalry to attack the Ming artillery, and even fight for your life to delay their shelling!" ”

"Obey!"

However, before the phalanx of the Qing army was activated, Ke Yongsheng saw the infantry line of the Ming army rushing towards his side.

He was extremely puzzled by the dense but very thin formation of the Ming army, which lacked the cover of melee troops. He himself had personally tried that the distance between the hands in the phalanx must not be less than three feet, otherwise accidents would easily occur.

With this formation of the Ming army, how to release the guns when the fight starts later?

In addition, it is reasonable for the Ming army, which was the first to start firing artillery, to adopt a solid defense at this time, so that they can fire a few more shots as the Qing army approaches.

However, the Ming army gave up the advantage of waiting for work and took the initiative to engage in the battle, which ...... It's too incomprehensible to Ke Yongsheng.

Soon the cavalry units of the Qing army circled from both sides to the vicinity of the artillery position of the Longwei Army, Ke Yongsheng has always liked firearms, and he rode only 300 cavalry. But if it was only to interfere with artillery fire, these people would barely be enough.

Chen Xiongfei soon spotted these rapidly approaching Qing cavalry.

At this time, the infantry on both sides was already very close to each other, and it was easy to accidentally get injured by direct cannon fire.

He then ordered that only the mortar should be left to support the infantry, and that all the six-pounder guns should be reloaded with shotshots, and that the three-pounder guns should attack the incoming cavalry at the highest rate of fire.

At the same time, the hussars, who were responsible for covering the artillery, also moved, and the artillery was a valuable asset of the Dragon Guard, and there was no room for any loss.

Zhao Ju led the cavalry to run in a scattered formation and rushed towards the artillery positions on both flanks of the Ming army, and was still far away when he was fired by a three-pounder cannon.

In the case of cavalry charging forward at high speed, the relative velocity between them and the shells was extremely high, and even a three-pounder cannon could easily penetrate three or four people.

By the time they had approached about 200 paces from the cannon, they had lost two men and horses.

The Dragon Guard's six-pounder cannon roared at this moment, and suddenly the muzzle of each cannon erupted sixty small iron balls weighing one or two. Several artillery pieces cooperated, forming a huge iron ball storm.

Zhao Ju's men and horses immediately seemed to hit an invisible iron wall, and nearly a hundred cavalrymen in the front row strangely rushed forward from high speed to an abrupt end. Some flipped several times in the same place with their horses. Some fell to the ground and rubbed out several feet before stopping. Some of them had their upper bodies shattered, and their lower bodies were still riding on horses and rushing forward aimlessly.

Zhao Ju received a death order, he didn't care about the loss, stared at the blood-red eyes and led the remnants of the cavalry to continue to break into the Ming artillery position. There is only less than fifty paces left, and the Ming army has no time to open fire again, and he must kill these artillery soldiers to be able to recover the decline!

But a strange scene appeared, the artillery of the Ming army jumped on the horses that had been prepared for a long time and retreated neatly to the rear. The artillery of the Dragon Guard is now all mounted artillery, and all of them are equipped with mounts.

Zhao Ju killed more than 100 cavalry to the artillery position, saw hundreds of artillery soldiers disappearing, and looked at the pile of cannons in front of him that could not be cut and moved, and suddenly looked confused.

Behind them, the dragon guard hussars had already formed their formation, and the short guns were loaded with ammunition and tightened their clockwork, just waiting for the order to charge.