Chapter six hundred and seventy seventh confrontation
On August 5, Li Xing's 30,000-strong army attacked the Protectorate of Ningbian, Ping'an Road.
The 120,000 troops from Ping'an Road and Hamgyeong Road in northern North Korea have gathered here to prepare to face Li Xing.
Compared with Li Xing who attacked the city all the way to here, North Korea's 120,000-strong army was waiting for work. Although the soldiers and horses of Hamgyong Province came from the northeast, the North Korean soldiers and horses were marching in the country, and the difficulty of movement was not the same as that of Li Xing.
Xing's attitude towards attacking the enemy's country cannot be compared.
But even so, the balance of the war will undoubtedly tip to Li Xing's side.
The Koreans joined the Qing army many times to fight against the Ming army. In the military operations of the Tatars entering and plundering the fortress, Korean soldiers and horses participated many times, and the Koreans also sent soldiers and horses to help in the Jinzhou War. So the Koreans naturally knew the power of the Tiger Army.
The Koreans realized that they were unable to withstand the artillery fire of the Huben Army, so they lined up all their troops on the back of the hills, hoping to use the mountains to avoid the Huben Army's artillery bullets.
In the hilly area to the west of the Yongbyon Protectorate, Korean soldiers and horses were all over the back of the mountains, but not one of them showed his head to fight against the Tiger Army.
Li Xing led his army to stand on the east side of the hills and looked at the hills with a telescope. Not a single North Korean soldier could be seen. If the scouts hadn't kept coming back to report the location of the North Korean army, Li Xing would have thought that there were no enemies on the other side.
Li Xing glanced at Li Laosi and asked: "Laosi, how can we break the formation of the Koreans like this?"
Li Laosi pondered and said: "We cannot attack from the front, otherwise the soldiers will be blocked by the mountain and cannot shoot the Korean soldiers. If we charge forward like this, it will be a hand-to-hand fight. If we cannot take advantage of our weapons, the casualties will be huge."
Li Xing nodded and said: "Sun Tzu says: Although the enemy has high fortresses and deep ditches, those who have no choice but to fight us must attack them and save them."
"We set up a small circle formation to go around from the side and attack the Yongbyon Governor's Palace behind the Koreans. All the Koreans' food and grass are in the city. I don't believe the Koreans will watch Yongbyon being captured by us.
, and continued to hide and seek with us behind the mountain."
Li Laosi thought for a while, nodded, and agreed with Li Xing's tactics.
The 30,000 soldiers of the Tiger Army were divided into fifteen circular formations, with the grain and grass trucks in the middle, and began to circle to the south.
At first, the Koreans followed the Tiger Army and moved southward, always guarding behind the mountains. But further south, the hills and mountains disappeared, and the Koreans encountered a wide mountain pass that was unsafe to defend.
For the safety of the troops, the Koreans could only stop on the north side of the mountain pass.
Li Xing and Li Laosi walked ten miles south, passing through the hills and mountains where the Koreans were arrayed through this wide mountain pass, and then encircling the north from the valley behind the hills. There were many woods and shrubs on the mountains where the Koreans were hiding.
, which was not suitable for the use of firearms by the Tiger Army. The Tiger Army ignored the Korean soldiers on the hills and directly attacked Yongbyon Fu Fortress.
When Huben's army reached the middle of the valley behind the mountain, only ten miles away from Yongbyon Fucheng, the Korean soldiers and horses on the hills could no longer sit still. They abandoned the hills and mountains where they were hiding and attacked Huben's army helplessly.
The Huben army made a large circle and finally forced the Korean army to fight with them on the valley flat.
Li Laosi immediately issued an order to change the formation of fifteen small-scale formations and set up a large-scale formation in the valley. Four hundred cannons were pushed off the artillery carriage and lined up on the four sides of the formation.
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Li Xing raised his telescope and saw clearly the appearance of North Korea's main force. After a month of invading the hinterland of North Korea, Li Xing saw North Korea's regular army for the first time.
The equipment of North Korean regular army soldiers is very average. Most soldiers wear cotton armor. Those cotton armors are not like the heavy cotton armor of the Qing army, but a thin layer of cotton worthy of the name. Li Xing looked carefully through the telescope and felt that
Cotton armor is not so much armor as it is a layer of thick cotton-padded jacket.
Such a thick cotton-padded jacket may reduce the lethality of bows, arrows and swords, but it cannot stop bullets and cannonballs at all.
Of course, there are soldiers with better equipment. Li Xing saw some cavalry wearing cotton armor with copper nails. Some of the cotton armor had more dense copper nails, some sparser. These copper nails can reduce the damage of the sword. Of course.
, copper nails are meaningless to bullets and cannonballs.
There are also some school officers and a handful of elites wearing full-body fish-scale iron armor. There seems to be a layer of cotton armor underneath the fish-scale armor, which looks very thick. These elites uniformly wear iron helmets with long red tassels, and they are very energetic. But they are equipped like this.
There are only a thousand elites, which is not enough to change the shape of war.
The North Korean infantrymen all carry three-pronged forks. This three-pronged fork is similar to the Ming army's tiger gun, but it has three spear heads. Li Xing doesn't understand why the Koreans like this weapon so much. He has never heard of anyone using it before.
The three-pronged fork serves as the main battle weapon.
The Korean army was listed in the middle of the 120,000-strong army, and it quickly pressed forward with the pace of the army. Li Xing was observing carefully with a telescope, but he heard a secret guard next to him say: "Second General, that big flag is the Korean flag."
Show the flag of Crown Prince Li."
The so-called crown prince is the heir to the throne of North Korea. Since the crown prince's banner appears in the Chinese army, it is obvious that the North Korean army opposite is commanded by the crown prince of North Korea.
But it's useless for the Crown Prince. Even if the King of Korea comes, he can't defeat the Tiger Army.
In order to protect their Yongbyonbu base camp, the Koreans hurriedly rushed into the firing range of the Tiger Army.
The Koreans also have artillery, and the technology seems to have been learned from the Ming Dynasty. Most of the equipment are old-fashioned general cannons, and some French cannons. However, unlike the Ming Dynasty's light French cannons, the Koreans who lack heavy artillery use the French cannons.
The Lang machine is very heavy, it seems to weigh several thousand kilograms.
There were probably more than a hundred artillery pieces of various types in the 120,000-strong North Korean army. As soon as these artillery pieces entered five miles away from the Huben Army, they were hit head-on by the 18-pounder cannons.
Both the general cannon and the French cannon have short ranges, and are no match for the Huben army's long cannon. The ground between the valleys is not completely flat, and solid bullets cannot ricochet. The Huben army chose to use explosive shells to attack the opposite artillery.
The sizzling shells shot straight into the Korean artillery formation and exploded one after another.
For a while, the only sounds in the valley were the roar of artillery fire and exploding shells. One hundred rounds of explosive shells exploded, killing an unknown number of artillerymen and surrounding infantry.
The North Korean artillery camp turned into a hell on earth, with nothing but explosions, broken limbs, broken flesh and blood flying everywhere.
Several square formations next to the artillery were also unlucky, being bombarded by missed shells from time to time. As soon as the explosive shells landed, the North Korean soldiers fled in all directions as if they had seen a ghost. The originally neat queue was not in a circle, and the soldiers seemed like
A group of worms are running for cover in the valley.
The smell of blood emerged from the corpses and minced meat, permeating the battlefield bit by bit. The screams of the wounded soldiers became the only sound besides the roar, dominating the battlefield.
The distance was too far for the North Korean artillery to fight back, and the artillery fire here was too fierce. After only three rounds, the North Korean artillery collapsed. There were still artillerymen who dared to move forward. The artillerymen who were still alive seemed crazy.
He screamed and fled to both sides and back in a panic.
Li Xing smiled and was about to order the artillery to change its target when he saw that an infantry square next to the artillery also collapsed.
The morale of the thousands of North Korean infantrymen was also shattered by probably a dozen or so missed shells. The collapse of the artillery triggered a panic among these infantrymen. They no longer obeyed orders and became a rout.
