Fan Yubin was shocked: "You can see clearly, who is here?" ”

The bodyguard replied: "Back to the master, the distance is too far, and the subordinates didn't see it clearly." The pen "Fun" Pavilion www.biquge.info Their horses were very fast, and their subordinates disappeared before they brought people in front of them! However, looking at their outfits, they don't seem to be from the grassland, but like the rumored Rakshasas! ”

"Rakshasas?" Fan Yubin's face turned pale all of a sudden, "Why did the Rakshasa people come here?" How many of them are there? Where are their main forces? ”

"The subordinates don't know, they ran very fast, and they disappeared after a while!" The bodyguard replied.

Fan Yubin turned his head and ordered: "The whole team stops advancing!" Set up camp! Beware of the Rakshasas! ”

The Jin merchant caravan was ordered to stop its advance immediately, and the people surrounded the baggage wagons transporting goods as a fortification, and all the men and horses were concentrated in the middle of the cart array. There were also several Franc machine guns in the Jin merchants' transport team, which were also set up by the Qing soldiers. The Qing army gathered in the middle of the convoy, inspected the bows and arrows, and reloaded the birds.

After about half an hour, a cavalry of about 300 men appeared in front of the caravan, but the cavalry did not attack, but reined in the horse from a distance, and someone took out a cylindrical object and looked this way, after which the 300 cavalry retreated. After that, no one showed up again.

These cavalry were the scouts sent by Xiao Gongchen to take the lead, and they found the Qing army forming a chariot formation from a distance, so they stopped their horses and observed with binoculars.

The scout cavalry returned and reported: "The Jin merchants have formed a chariot formation, and there are real tartars inside!" There are about more than 1,000 real Tartars, and there are 300 Han guards, and there are eight 500-pound Buddha machines in the car array. ”

When Xiao Gongchen heard the report, he thought for a moment: "The Tartars are in formation, if we want to attack, I'm afraid there will be insufficient troops." Let's wait, and the brothers who sent the horses back will be back soon! The prince will send another batch of sleds! When the rest of our brothers arrived, we would move together. ”

The caravan of the Jin merchants was still waiting in formation, not daring to move a single step. But a whole day passed, but there was no movement on the opposite snowfield, and no one attacked.

"Lord Fan, we are always guarding here, it's not a solution, we send rangers to spy on the situation, maybe the Rakshasa people are gone? If the Rakshasas don't leave, we'll send someone to ask for reinforcements! Wang Sheng, the treasurer of Wang Dengku, stepped forward and made a suggestion to Fan Yubin.

Early the next morning, Fan Yubin sent more than 100 cavalry, including the skilled Manchurian and Mongolian Eight Banners cavalry, which sprinkled around like beans to spy on the military situation.

About ten miles away from the Jin merchant caravan, Xiao Gongchen's men and horses camped on the snow field, and the Ming army arranged a sleigh array, all the sleds were in a circle, and the Ming army was stationed in it.

"General, the Tartars have sent out rangers in all directions!" A scout came to report.

Xiao Gongchen said: "Let our sharpshooters ride horses to hunt them!" ”

The Ming army sent 100 sharpshooters and 100 hand-to-hand combatants, mounted the Don hippopotamus, and began to hunt the scout cavalry sent by the Qing army everywhere. Each of the sharpshooters sent out carried a rifled gun and a Thunderbolt, and the melee fighters carried a saber and two double-barreled guns.

In the snow, a skirmish between scouts began.

Cao Lei, with nine rifled gunners and ten hand-to-hand soldiers, encountered twelve Qing cavalry.

Since they were photographed as scouts, they are all the elite of the Eight Banners. However, the Eight Banners of the capital in this era have been in the customs for more than 20 years, and most of these Eight Banners are the second generation of the Eight Banners born after entering the customs, and they have almost never seen blood, and their combat effectiveness has decreased a lot compared to when they were outside the customs.

The twenty Ming soldiers on Cao Lei's side were all wearing cotton armor, and their faces were also covered with masks, revealing only two eyes. The twelve Qing soldiers on the opposite side couldn't see their faces clearly, and they only looked at their outfits and horses they were riding, and they all thought they were Rakshasas.

The Eight Banners looked at the cavalry opposite, and sighed in their mouths: "These Rakshasa ghosts! What a tall horse they ride! ”

"What a horse! Kill the Rakshasa ghosts and rob their horses! A soldier of the Eight Banners said.

Another Eight Banners soldier said helplessly: "I don't know who killed whom!" ”

"Sons!" The man who looked like a small leader in the Eight Banners pulled out his sword and pointed at it, "Let's go!" Kill all the rakshasas! ”

Twelve Eight Banners charged the twenty Ming soldiers two hundred paces away.

Cao Lei looked coldly at the cavalry of the Eight Banners who rushed up, picked up the rifled gun in his hand, and he aimed at the leader of the Qing army. When the other party rushed to about one hundred and twenty steps, Cao Lei pulled the trigger.

"Bang" A gunshot rang out, and the leader of the Qing army fell off his horse.

The other nine rifled gunners also pulled the trigger one after another, and the accuracy of the rifled guns was very high, and after a round of gunfire, only eight of the twelve Eight Banners soldiers on the opposite side remained, and four of them were shot and fell off their horses.

The Qing cavalry continued to rush over, and they had already shown their cavalry bows.

Cao Lei and the others put the rifled gun on their backs, and pulled out the firing needle-type rifled Thunderbolt from their waists, which can fire in six bursts.

The Qing army's riding bow range was about 30 to 40 paces, and only a very small number of archers could pull a strong bow of more than one stone on horseback, and could reach the level of 100 steps through Yang. However, after the Qing army entered the customs, such archers were almost invisible in the Eight Banners Army, and even if they did, they held important positions in the capital, and it was impossible for them to come to the caravans of the Jin merchants as escorts.

The Eight Banners needed to rush within thirty to forty paces before they could shoot arrows. And at a distance of fifty paces, the Ming army's thunderbolt short guns could already fire.

"Bang bang bang" A row of gunfire sounded in the Ming army's formation, and ten thunderbolts spewed out orange-yellow fire one after another, and the white smoke rose up, and the Qing soldiers who rushed over here did not have time to shoot arrows, so they fell off their horses one after another.

Twelve Qing soldiers, before they rushed to the front, there were only two left. The two Qing soldiers saw their companions fall one by one, and finally completely collapsed, turned their horses and ran.

Cao Lei led people to catch up from behind and killed the two Qing soldiers.

After a whole day of hunting, few of the more than 100 Qing scout cavalry made it back alive.

Due to the lack of reliable information, the scout cavalry sent out were blocked by the Ming army, and the next day, Fan Yubin did not dare to rashly let the caravan set off again, so he had to send an envoy back to Beijing to ask for reinforcements.

In addition, the Zasak tribe of the central banner of the left wing of Horqin, where Heta is located, occasionally had Ming army activities outside their camp, and the Mongolians who were frightened did not dare to leave the camp casually to find trouble with the Ming army. He Tower's idea is actually the same as Fan Yubin, waiting for the imperial court to send reinforcements.

There are more than 7,000 Mongolian cavalry, and there are more than 1,000 sled soldiers, and the Horqin Department is also humiliating enough. However, in the early years, there were rumors that the Rakshasa people were very powerful, and a few days ago they suffered a big loss in the fight with the "Rakshasa people", and the tower felt that his 7,000 people could only protect themselves and were unable to attack.

"Unexpectedly, our Mongolian warriors have degraded to this point!" Looking at the demoralized Mongols, and the tower could only sigh.

In fact, there were not many Ming troops left outside the Horqin tribe to contain the Mongols, only 50 people. On the one hand, they were responsible for containing the Mongols, and on the other hand, they were responsible for receiving reinforcements from the newly arrived Ming army. Because after the more than 100 Ming troops sent back the captured horses and supplies, Zheng Xi would also reinforce the second batch of sled soldiers to the Horqin grassland, about 900 people, who arrived in 300 sleds.

Among the nine hundred new sledders, there were a hundred musketeers and a hundred double-barreled gunslingers.

The double-barreled long gun is also a flintlock pistol engraved with rifling, because of the large use of lathes now, engraving rifling is no longer a difficult task for gun factories, especially the kind of musket with a not very long barrel. The length of the barrel is much shorter than that of a rifled gun, only half the length of a rifled gun. But because the barrel is shorter, it is easier to engrave rifling and reload bullets. However, the barrel is much longer than the Thunderbolt, so the range of the double-barreled Thunderbolt is much longer than that of the Thunderbolt, and it can easily shoot targets a hundred steps away.

This medium-length, lightweight, and powerful flintlock pistol has gradually replaced the ordinary smoothbore flintlock pistol and gradually become the standard equipment of the dragoons.

In addition to the musketeers, fifty twelve-pounder mortars were among the nine hundred sled men reinforced.

Because the mortar has a strong recoil on the sled chassis when fired, the gunners must lift the cannon to the ground and place it on a thick wooden board to fire before firing the mortar. However, the weight of the mortar cannon is very light, the bronze cast twelve-pounder mortar cannon weighs only seventy catties, and it is very convenient for two soldiers to carry it, and the mortar cannon can also fire flowering cannonballs, which has a strong attack power.

"Reinforcements have arrived! It's time to attack the Jin merchant caravan! Xiao Gongchen stroked his beard and said with a smile.

In Fan Yubin's Jin merchant camp, although the scout cavalry sent out by the Qing army suffered heavy losses, some people still risked their lives to detect the situation. A Qing army scout hurriedly came in and reported: "Lord Fan, the Rakshasas are coming to attack!" ”

"Get ready! We can't let the Rakshasas break through our formation! Fan Yubin stood up.

In the formation of Jin merchants, the cannon of the Buddha Lang machine was mounted, and behind the carts, there were Qing soldiers armed with bird guns and bows and arrows, and they were ready to resist the attack of the "Rakshasa people".

After about half an hour, a team appeared on the ice field in the distance, facing the convoy of Jin merchants.

Fan Yubin stood on the top of a carriage and looked at the past from a distance, because the distance was too far to see who was coming, but he could see that it was a white convoy, with white vests on horseback, and the people who drove the carriage and the people in the carriage were wearing white armor and white cloaks.

"The Rakshasa people are coming!" Fan Yubin was already extremely nervous. It was very cold, but beads of sweat were on his head.

All the Qing soldiers and civilians wondered why the carriages of the "Rakshasa people" could fly on the snow. And your own convoy is so difficult to walk in the snow? (To be continued.) )