In the mountains and forests of Henan, a large army is lurking, and only a few generals are standing in the foothills. There was a faint sound of gunfire from the north, but these generals wearing winter hats and knee-length military uniforms based on the British uniforms were not flustered, and they were surrounded by a middle-aged man with the same color and three dazzling eyes floating on the winter hat.

This person's face was firm, his eyes were resolute, as if the situation was under control, and it was this calm that infected everyone, making them stand like rocks, only the flower feathers and the corners of their clothes swayed with the slight mountain breeze.

"Gentlemen, we are waiting for the embankment that protects the Daqing Sheji, the wind knows the strength of the grass, and the board knows the sincere ministers, and today is the time for us to serve the country loyally!"

Looking back from a high pass not far away, the minister of the Qing Dynasty, the governor of Henan and the governor of Li, glanced at the generals around him, clenched his fists and shouted in a deep voice, and the generals bowed in awe.

On 10 March, Yinghua had just taken over Xuzhou City, and the military and civilian brigade that had gone north by land from Jiangsu had just stepped into the boundary of Shandong, the Grand Canal waterway, and the fleet led by inland river steam gunboats had just entered Weishan Lake, the emperor's dragon boat had just entered Luoma Lake, the warships and troop carriers of the Beiyang Fleet were still at sea, and on the Mobei grassland, the various Mongolian departments had just received the order to gather troops from the Beihai Metropolitan Protectorate, and the main general Chen Tingzhi was still halfway there.

The trend of the torrent rolling north, Gao Qi is not omniscient, and he has no intention of knowing, he only knows that in Henan, the red tide has been overwhelming. In the direction of Hubei, the red clothes have passed through Dengzhou, the direction of Shaanxi, all the way from Fenglingdu north to Shanxi, all the way to the east to connect Ruxiang, Lingbao, Shaanzhou City, please surrender.

Today, just today, the red-clothed vanguard has arrived at Kip Shi Pass, and the defenders of the pass are engaged in a fierce battle, and the sound of guns and cannons is coming from the battlefield ten miles to the north.

If you count the rebellion of the Smelling Fragrance Sect in Chang Duc Province in the north. As well as the Gwangju Mansion, which had been infiltrated for many years, and the government and the people surrendered as soon as the Anglo-North China Expedition came out, if anyone still believed that Henan could stay in the map of the Great Qing Dynasty until May, this person must have burned out his braincase.

You can believe it. Under his leadership, Henan was not only able to hold until May, but even to keep it all the time, and under the washing of the red tide from the south, it stood like a mainstay.

Gao Qi was originally the deputy commander of the Xishan camp in the capital, and the Empress Dowager Cichun urgently appointed him to seal Henan last month and gave him two important tasks, one was to quell the rebellion of the Wenxiang Sect. The first is to hold Henan and contain the red clothes. The Queen Mother explained that she could stay until May, but she said loudly: "The Qing Dynasty is here, the Queen Mother is here." The minions are in. Henan is here! ”

He is not blind to be so loyal to the Qing Dynasty, he is not only a banner man, in the early years when the Holy Dao Puppet Emperor rebelled, the Huguang Governor who died in Shaozhou was his father. He was only seven years old at the time, and when he learned that his father had died at the hands of a traitor, his desire for revenge was rooted in his heart. When the queen mother ordered Henan, no one from the Manchu Dynasty responded to the impassioned situation, and he stepped forward. Voluntarily trapped in the Jedi.

He is not blind in such self-confidence, Gao Qimourning, the recognized commander of the firearms army in the Qing Dynasty, is his uncle, Gao Qimourning is old, the Xishan battalion is actually led by him, and the training, training and drills are all handled by him, and the Xishan battalion can still maintain a certain combat power. It can be said that he created it single-handedly. And before he entered the Xishan camp to command the army, he was still a civilian official who climbed all the way up from the county government. It is best to describe both civil and military.

The eyes of the generals around him were full of admiration, this tall and handsome man came in a hurry last month, and a jun order temporarily suppressed the rebellion of the Smelling Fragrance Sect.

Gao Dashuai said: "As the saying goes, if you go outside, you must first settle inside, but now that the situation is changing drastically, you can only go the other way, and you have to take care of the inside first." "As Gao Dashuai expected, the Wenxiang Sect bandits were not in harmony internally, some responded to the Southern Barbarians, and some took advantage of the chaos.

The next step is even more critical, and the words of the tall handsome echo in the hearts of these banner generals: "The tide is surging, and it seems to be critical, but the red clothes are arrogant, and the troops are spread too wide like five fingers." In the first battle of Taizu Salhu, he said: I will go all the way by relying on a few roads. As long as you find an opportunity to annihilate all the way, even if the situation in the north cannot be reversed, the hearts of the people of the Qing Dynasty will be boosted! ”

People's hearts, now the general trend of the north and the south is the battle of people's hearts, as long as the red clothes are broken, the trend of local collapse will stop. If the bandits of the Wenxiang Sect are deterred, not only will the bandit trouble be greatly reduced, but it will also appease more chaotic people, and the situation in Henan should be changed. A change in Henan is not an opportunity to buck the trend.

The army will chew this deduction over and over again, pushing their hearts to the death, even if they have the ability to rise, they also need to rely on such thoughts to unite around them. And the other impetus came from the Nanban's attempt to uproot the Manchurians, forcing them to fight to the death, who let the Qing Dynasty engage in the "pillar theory" in recent years, but all those who could be in charge of the military and politics entered the banner. As for the Han military flag or the Manchurian flag, is there a difference?

The cronies who came to Henan with Gao Qi were determined, and the generals from Henan Fubiao, Biao and the town standards were generous and worried, and when the guns and cannons in the north gradually became sparse, there was a trace of panic, what if Gao Dashuai expected to be wrong?

At this moment, a thousand always came in a hurry, and called a thousand urgent reports: "Nanban Red has entered the ancient road, look at the banner is two battalions!" ”

The generals suddenly sighed, and some people raised their hands and said, "The handsome god counts!" ”

Some generals who are good at officialdom habitually pat their ass on the side and say: "I still don't understand under the mark, why do the red clothes abandon the north and go to the south?" ”

Gao Qi said reservedly: "What's so hard about this? The Southern Barbarian generals are all from ordinary people who have no inheritance, and Ben Shuai also knows that they are learning all kinds of complicated studies, and they don't know history! The Southern Barbarians have broken off the unification of the Dao and abandoned the program, and the officers and soldiers have become like barbarians, how do you know the thousand-year-old origin of this country, where is this? ”

The horsewhip waved, covering the north and south in his hands, and the words contained a deep sense of vicissitudes: "This is the Cuihan Ancient Road!" ”

Cuihan Ancient Road, the west end is Hangu Pass, the east end is the north and south two roads, divided into Kip Stone and Yanling two passes. The ancient road "the mountain bank is like cutting", "the mountain valley is steep and obstructive", the two passes are sandwiched in the stone wall, and the widest is only forty or fifty zhang.

The famous "Battle of Kun" in the history books took place at Kip Shiguan in North Province. In the Spring and Autumn Period, the army of Meng Mingshi, the marshal of the Qin State, was ambushed by the Jin army at Kipshi Pass, so that "the horses only turned and there was no return". And the Yanling Pass in the South Road, which is the steep pass that Gao looked at just now, is the place where Xia Digao died in battle, and the Red Mei Army returned to the east after defeat in the late Western Han Dynasty. It was here that Liu Xiu's general Feng Yi set up an ambush and annihilated him.

Throughout the ages, this is a place of mourning, even if this world is a firearms war, it can't fill the mountain. The danger has not changed at all.

Nanban was arrogant in red clothes, thinking that wherever the army went, the place was invincible, that is, in the event of resistance, the vanguard would not use enough strength to entangle one place, but would only make a detour and advance rapidly.

Gao Qi ordered his son Gao Cheng to lead a thousand elites to defend Kip Stone Pass, relying on the steep terrain and the heart of fighting to the death. It will definitely make the red clothes feel tricky. And he himself took 2,000 elite camps from the Xishan battalion, as well as 10,000 Henan green battalions to set up an ambush at Yanling Pass.

"When the Nanban first arrived at the ancient road, he would definitely be careful to be careful, and it was easy to see through the ambush at Kip Shi Pass. And set up an ambush at Yanling Pass. It was beyond Nanban's expectations. Most of them thought that they were finding another way, but they didn't expect that the handsome was waiting for them at Yanling Pass! ”

The subordinates were explaining the strategy of the high rise, and the generals nodded their heads again and again.

Gao Qi said lightly: "Between the mountains." In the ancient road, under the Xiongguan, no matter how powerful the Nanban red-clothed guns are, they can't stop us from having many hearts! ”

As soon as the words fell, he saw a red-clothed figure at the crossings in the distance, and raised his hand. As soon as the red-clothed front team arrived at the gate, they waved their arms and attacked with drums and trumpets.

The hand was raised, and it froze......

Twenty minutes ago, on the ancient road, the red-clothed officers and soldiers who were marching rapidly were crushed by the stone walls on both sides. A staff officer looked at the faint ruts on the stone pavement and swallowed. To his commander, Jiang Dedao, commander of the 60th Division of the Army, muttered: "This is the place of death, not to mention the north, the ancient road of Yanlingguan in the south has also buried many generals and soldiers......"

Jiang Dedao sighed absently, and only Yanling Pass in front of him was in his eyes.

Jiang Dedao, who was a boatman in his early years, had little education, and his scores in literature and history were at the bottom of all the studies at the Army Academy, but this Kuohan Ancient Road is still very clear.

As the pioneer of Henan under Xie Dingbei, Jiang Dedao led his division all the way east, passing through Yue County, Zhou, and aiming at Luoyang. There was no fierce resistance from Ruxiang and Lingbao all the way to the capital city of Shaanzhou, and there was not even a Qing army of more than 100 people to block it. Wherever the battle flag went, the Manchu civil and military officials either fled or surrendered, and the old Hangu Pass, which was originally very vigilant, also came over smoothly.

Now rushing to the Cuihan Ancient Road, which is separated between Shaanzhou and Mianchi, Jiang Dedao's vigilance is no longer so heavy, and when the pioneer battalion encounters fierce resistance from the Qing army at Kip Shi Pass, he also quickly made a decision.

Jiang Dedao believed that the Qing army that resisted at Kipshiguan was either scattered troops or the elite of the Qing army in Henan. If it's the former, there's no need to get entangled with those die-hard elements who don't know whether to live or die. If it is the latter, Kip Stone Pass is a good place to set up an ambush, it is easy to capsize in the gutter, and there is also the South Kip Mountain Pass after Kip Shi Pass, and it becomes two Kip Xiong Pass, not to mention that there is no need to die with the Qing army here.

In short, his decision was to feint with the vanguard battalion to attack Kip Shi Pass, and he personally led the main force of the two battalions to detour through Yanling Pass and go straight to Luoyang City.

Walking on the ancient road at this time, although Jiang Dedao went through all kinds of possibilities as the canon taught, the possibility of being ambushed by the Qing army did not leave a trace in his mind, and he was busy estimating how long the Qing army in Yanling Pass would delay him.

The front team was approaching Yanling Pass, and the battalion commander came to ask if there was no need to attack step by step according to the drill code, but to advance in a hurry, Jiang Dedao hesitated.

It is necessary to follow the drill code, the front reconnaissance is on alert, the rear artillery is deployed, and the full set is done, how can it take more than half an hour, which is enough time for two battalions and 3,000 people to cross the pass.

Even the staff officer who was beating the drum in his heart just now said that now is an extraordinary time, and he can no longer rigidly move the dogma, and besides, the drill code itself has regulations, and at a special moment, it is necessary to throw away the drill code and engage in it.

Jiang Dedao's eyebrows twisted for half a minute, shrugged his shoulders and said: "No way, Xie Shuai strictly ordered, if he does not abide by the code of conduct, he will be punished with defeat." ”

Xie Shuai...... Xie Shen will be a bastard!

When these words came out, Jiang Dedao could almost hear all the subordinates around him scolding wildly, because he himself was also scolding.

"I'd rather stop for three points than grab a second. Why is there a drill code? That is, everyone will follow the rules, and there will be no big mistakes. If the fighter plane is lost, it will be lost, we will not be heartbroken, but the senseless sacrifice, even if it is just one person, is unbearable. ”

Xie Dingbei's speech at the military conference was still circling in Jiang Dedao's mind, and Xie Dingbei at that time was really like a buzzing fly.

"Don't think that the Northern Expedition must be overwhelming, the Northern Expedition is deep into the enemy's territory! Your Majesty can treat the northerners as compatriots, and the commoners can treat the northerners as compatriots, but for us, the northerners are all enemies! It's the effort of negligence in the blink of an eye. The enemy who will be able to kill you! ”

Xie Dingbei was very alarmist: "Why did Tong Guan defeat the Northern Expedition back then?" Didn't you just think that the northerners would eat pot pulp to welcome the king? The result? Hundreds of thousands of armies were wiped out! So, don't have any thoughts about the king going north, that's something that the literati smeared. Be responsible for the safety of your subordinates. Be responsible for Your Majesty's Northern Expedition! ”

Then Xie Dingbei turned his face, and his warm color suddenly disappeared, and he changed to a black face that was as cold as Yama: "Marching and fighting, everything will be done according to the discipline!" You, the commanders of divisions and battalions, can decide whether to fight or not, and where to fight, but you have no right to play tricks on how to fight! ”

In this way, Xie Dingbei sang a mantra to his Western Route Army that everyone scolded him. How much land is occupied and how fast the march is made, this is secondary, who wants to disobey the rules and act recklessly. He's going to take whomever he wants.

Scolding to scolding. Everyone still has to be obedient, on the one hand, the military law is strict, and on the other hand, General Xie is very good. It's better not to follow him. And Jiang Dedao is Xie Dingbei's old subordinate, in the early years, he followed Xie Dingbei to lead the local people in Hunan, participated in the Hunan War, and did not dare to take a step beyond Lei Chi.

Although there were a thousand rats scratching in his heart, wanting to let the troops rush to Yanling Pass in one go, Jiang Dedao still suppressed his impulse. Reluctantly, he ordered the troops to act in accordance with the instructions of the drill code on attacking the fortified natural dangers.

Front-line reconnaissance, battlefield survey, setting up artillery positions, infantry assembly areas, and organizing attack waves, a whole set of procedures operated. There were staff officers and sergeants from all departments who were old enough to give orders, and the troops of 3,000 men were still turning as one.

Outside of regular procedures. One of the procedures that annoyed Jiang Dedao the most had to be carried out, that is, hot air balloon reconnaissance. He took two battalions, this is a division-level unit, and the Yanling Pass to be attacked is a natural danger of Xiongguan, and the two together, without using a hot air balloon to master the entire battlefield, is to violate the latest version of the drill code.

Jiang Dedao really didn't have any luck, and it was clear that he would rather use four carriages to drag a hot air balloon watchman over than replace it with four artillery pieces. Preparing the balloon crew when they went to the ancient road proved how effective Xie Dingbei's tightening spell was.

In just ten minutes, the hot air balloon slowly rose into the air, and when this small hot air balloon that was used exclusively by division-level units and could only carry one person rose to a height of about ten zhang, Gao Qi, who was hidden in the foothills in the distance, just waved his arms.

Looking at a huge round thing rising from the mountain road, I was suddenly startled when I had vaguely heard about the rise of this thing, and my arm froze. And the observation post on the hot air balloon was so startled that the telescope in his hand almost fell, ambush! Thousands of ambushes! It is hidden behind the mountain wall on both sides of the stone road, and now it is the trend of catching turtles in the urn, just waiting for the front team to rush to the pass, it can be cut into several sections, divided and eaten.

The horn sounded, coming from a hot air balloon in mid-air, and when Jiang Dedao was so shocked that his sweat and hair exploded, Gao Qi was also trembling with anger: "Blow the trumpet!" Trumpet! Sortie! ”

At this time, the horn of the Qing army sounded, and then there was an overwhelming shout of killing.

The Qing soldiers who were ambushed in the chaotic mountains poured out like a tide, plugging the head and sealing the tail, and a large number of Qing soldiers climbed the stone walls on both sides, and the three thousand red clothes fell into the heavy encirclement of 12,000 Qing soldiers, and there was no trace of depth, and the front and rear were surrounded by enemies on all sides.

"Since it can't be divided into several sections, let's eat it all at once!"

Gao Qi quickly adjusted his mentality, although he was seen through the ambush by the hot air balloon in red and failed to push him into the Jedi of ten deaths, but for the red clothes, it is now nine deaths.

The sound of gunfire rang out like raindrops, initially a scattered drizzle, but gradually converged into a torrential rain, and the smoke of gunpowder rose from all directions, gradually obscuring the old battlefield.

At the moment when the gunfire first started, Jiang Dedao's heart almost shattered into ice slag, and then he eased up, and shouted in his heart: General Xie, General Xie, you are really lucky, you can take the lead! If it weren't for your tight spell, after a while, the troops would have been stopped by the Qing soldiers, cut off their waists, scattered in a few sections, and drowned by the enemy.

Now, although they are blocked on the ancient road and the troops are pulled into a long snake formation, as long as they are not divided, they still have the strength to fight.

Looking at his troops, Jiang Dedao's heart became more stable.

Turmoil was inevitable, and only a few of the troops of the 60th Division had been withdrawn from the Western Regions, and only a few had actual combat experience, and most of them had only defended military forts, and were accustomed to the vast desert Gobi, so they were particularly unaccustomed to the environment between these mountains. When the enemy troops swarmed from the towering rock walls on both sides, and the gunfire was incessant in front and behind, most of them looked around with their guns in hand, and they didn't know what to do. Some people have weakened their legs, and they want to turn around and run wildly.

The crackling sound of leather whips sounded, and the sergeants at the sentry began to wield their might, whips up. The instinctive reaction suddenly dominated the mind, and the soldiers suddenly stabilized their legs, straightened their waists, and saw clearly.

"Have you forgotten where you are, you wretched!"

"What to look at to the left!? That's another whistle thing! They are your backs! You are also their backs! ”

"It's just that the Dzungar cavalry rushed up, and we are now in a hollow phalanx, but the hollow has been squeezed out......"

The shouts of the junior officers stabilized the ranks, and the long snake formation in the mountain road quickly turned into a horizontal formation facing the left and right. The head and tail contracted rapidly, and from mid-air, in less than a few minutes, the red-clothed long line gathered into a dumbbell-shaped military formation.

The mountain road is narrow. But the mountain wall is not a place for a large army. Only scattered bullets entered the queue, and although there were cannon sounds in front and behind, the mountains on both sides of the dangerous pass obviously could not accommodate the advance and retreat of heavy artillery, but some small tiger squatting.

"the Tartars! Dare to ambush our red-clothed. Let the Tartars understand why we are called Redcoats! ”

"It's not because we're wearing red, it's because we're enemies, or we're soaked in blood and wailing!"

"The Sixty Division is also going to be called a Praetorian Guard!"

When the formation was in order, the morale was also condensed, although the Qing soldiers were getting closer and closer, and the bullets were getting denser and denser. People kept falling, but this situation was far from comparable to the galloping of thousands of horses of the Dzungar cavalry, or the tragic situation of shooting in formation, and a third of the guns in a row, but the blood was heated by the sound of this gunshot.

Disheveled...... Disheveled...... Disheveled......

Thunder suddenly exploded in the pouring rain, and my heart jumped. This is not thunder, nor is it the sound of artillery. It was the sound of gunfire, so neat and rhythmic, that it overshadowed the gunfire of one's own side at once.

The thunderous gunshots followed one after another, and soon became a continuous wave of rage, and the heavy rain seemed so weak and messy under this angry wave that it was gradually suppressed into the background. Then there was an even thicker roar of thunder, and this was the sound of cannons. Although it was only a four-pound cannon, it was an irresistible sound of death for the Qing soldiers who only had muskets, carrying guns, and old-style small cannons.

The platoon of rifled guns swept up the mountain wall less than 10 zhang away, and the scattered Qing soldiers who fired condescendingly fell like rolling stones, and the artillery even directly bombarded the Qing artillery group on the mountain wall with artillery into the air, and the debris flying in the sky was like raindrops. Some of the small cannons were positioned too high, which provoked the red-coated artillerymen to directly mount the cannons diagonally on the overturned carts.

In less than a quarter of an hour, the mountain road was filled with gunsmoke, and the line of sight could reach a few zhang at most, and the Qing soldiers could not shake the front and rear lines of the red-clothed team, and the suppression of the high mountain walls was completely dispersed, so they could only rush out of the ridges on the left and right of the mountain road along the narrow ridge, trying to cut off the long snake formation in the red clothes.

There were not only the left and right bullets that intercepted them, but also the sharp shells, a bullet pierced many people, but the middle one did not know that he was the fourth or fifth victim, on the ancient road, under the Yanling Pass, in the middle of the mountain, it was already a fog-shrouded Shura field.

"How's it going!? Is it broken!? ”

Two quarters of an hour, three quarters of an hour......

Half an hour passed, and I looked at it for a long time with high-powered binoculars smuggled from the south, but it was still difficult to see the situation clearly. In the rear he could only see his soldiers pouring into the mist, like a whirlpool of leaky water.

He could no longer bear this wait, and resolutely went to the battlefield in person, running towards the ridge where the guns were most dense, and even his subordinates could not stop him from crying and begging.

The more you walk, the thicker the smoke becomes, when the sound of gunfire is less than a hundred paces away, and the cold sound of swishing is whispering left and right, the scalp is numb, what about his soldiers? Why are they all bullets fired from the mountain road to the left and right?

One more step out, a high stumbling high, subordinates hurriedly helped, but unexpectedly, many people slipped under their feet, and a group of people all threw themselves on the ground.

This flutter, the foot feel is different, look down carefully, even the high belt subordinates, all of them have numb scalps, blood, like a stream, but also viscous, there is no place to stand.

Looking towards the place where this stream of blood and water came from, his eyes penetrated the fog of gunpowder, and Gao Qi and the others were frozen as if they were in an ice cellar.

Just ahead, corpses fell to the ground in dense clusters, layer upon layer, all the way forward......