Chapter 133: A Blind Cat Meets a Dead Mouse (Seeking a Monthly Pass)
Wu Baihu knew about firecrackers. He had some people holding various short handheld firecrackers, but as far as he knew, these firecrackers usually lasted twenty or thirty steps, or even more than ten steps.
It is powerful only if it is launched within a distance.
And most of the time it's not easy to use at all, far inferior to bows and arrows.
However, the fire blunderbuss in the hands of the puppet Tang rebels on the opposite side was actually able to fire from more than sixty steps away. What's more important is that the opponent actually hit one of his men.
Could it be that a blind cat encountered a dead mouse and was blinded?
No wonder Wu Baihu's first reaction was to think that the other party was a blind cat caught up with a dead mouse, because everything that happened now was really beyond his cognitive scope.
He would rather believe that the other party was lucky, so he was able to hit one of his men at such a long distance!
Yes, they are just lucky!
Wu Baihu said this to himself secretly, as if he was hypnotizing himself.
Soon, another burst of gunshots was heard in front of the opponent's formation, and while white smoke was rising, Wu Baihu turned to look at his men's queue. He urgently wanted to know if the opponent's shot just now was blind.
At this sight, a smile appeared at the corner of his mouth, because except for the unlucky guy who was hit before, the other subordinates were still standing well and no one was hit.
They are really blind!
At this time, Wu Baihu felt at ease!
At first, he was afraid that the other party was not fooling him. If that was the case, it would be a bit troublesome.
If that is the case, it will be troublesome, because the opponent shoots from a long distance, even if he only hits one person at a time, but as long as the opponent continues to fight, one round after another, his side will fall down in no time.
More than ten people.
And more importantly, if you don't step forward, you will have to be beaten passively, which will have a huge impact on morale.
Now that it's better, he can be sure that the other party is fooled, and their fire blunderbuss can't hit that far at all.
But the smile on his face didn't last long, the volley of guns on the opposite side rang out again, and this time Wu Baihu heard the damn scream again.
At this moment, he knew that something was wrong, because he knew very clearly that the scream just now was not the subordinate who was hit before, but another person.
Taking a closer look, sure enough, another archer fell down on his side, and the man who fell this time seemed to be seriously injured. He just let out a scream, and then went straight to the bottom, struggling for two seconds.
Moved.
Unfortunately, the opponent is not fierce, but their fire cannons can really hit so far!
Once, he could think that the opponent was lucky, but after twice, he could be sure that the opponent was definitely not powerful, but that the fire cannon could hit such a far distance and hit people.
No, we can't continue to wait like this. Otherwise, if we just get beaten without fighting back, even if we don't actually kill or injure a few people, the blow to morale will be too great, and this one may collapse directly.
He knows very well what kind of soldiers and civilians he has under his command. The soldiers in the guard station under his command are all fine. Although it may affect morale, it will not cause the whole army to collapse if only one or two people die.
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But those civilians are different. When the gunshots were fired from the opposite side, the civilians' queue had already begun to commotion. If this continued, even if no one on the civilians' side actually died, they would still collapse under fear.
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So at this time, he did not hesitate anymore and quickly ordered the whole army to step forward, and the archers to move forward to within fifty steps to shoot arrows.
He wants to fight back!
Seeing the Ming army on the opposite side move, Wang Danxu looked disappointed. He still had too few musketeers, only about twenty people, and the firepower density was seriously insufficient.
Otherwise, the three shots just now were enough to severely damage the opponent!
However, although the Ming army pressed forward, it was not a quick charge and the speed was not very fast, so Wang Danxu still let the musketeers continue to load and fire.
But after a while, the archers on the standing army side will also start shooting arrows.
There are about forty archers on the other side, and seventy archers on our side. If we add more than twenty musketeers, our long-range firepower exceeds the opponent's.
In addition, and more importantly, when the opponent's archers press forward, they also give Butcher Chen and Cai Erhu a chance!
They will rush over from the flanks and kill the opponent's archers while their own archers are shooting at each other. As long as they let these sword and shield soldiers, especially the more than twenty armored sword and shield soldiers, rush to the bow and arrow.
If you put your hands in front of you, then the Ming army archers will face a massacre!
At that time, our own spearmen will also take the opportunity to press forward and finally defeat the opponent with overwhelming momentum!
As the Ming army's archers continued to move forward, Butcher Chen and the others indeed moved. They separated from the left wing, with Butcher Chen and Cai Erhu rushing to the front wearing heavy armor!
Seeing that the bandits in Huangzhu Mountain were moving, the spearmen and sword and shield men from the Ming army also moved. About fifty guardsmen and about a hundred civilians holding poles rushed out to intercept Butcher Chen and Cai Erhu.
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At this time, a large number of Huangzhushan's spearmen were already slowly stepping forward with their spears. They were directly pressing the enemy's central army. If more than a hundred spearmen were allowed to rush over, then the rest of the battle would basically be a disaster.
No need to fight, Huang Zhushan's side will definitely win.
In these short few breaths, the Ming Army and the Tang Dynasty King's Division made many tactical changes one after another, causing many changes on the battlefield.
Li Xuan and others in the rear were watching with even more concentration, even fear, because they all knew that although the two sides had not yet entered the stage of close combat, both sides were still in the stage of looking for each other's loopholes by changing formations.
Even the archers on both sides haven't fired yet, only the musketeers on Huangzhushan's side have been firing continuously.
But this situation cannot last long. After all, their strength is only a few hundred people, and the battlefield is only so large, so they cannot continue to deal with it like this.
Soon, the archers of the Ming army had already entered the intended shooting range of the archers on both sides against the musket fire of the Tang Dynasty king's division. Along the way, six of them fell, and these six people were against
For an army of archers with only more than 40 people, its casualty rate has already reached 10%.
Strictly speaking, this casualty rate has reached the limit that the army in the cold weapon era can bear. If this number were larger, they would completely collapse.
Seeing that his own archers finally rushed forward, Wu Baihu breathed a sigh of relief. His own archers were all regular archers. After several waves of arrows were fired in succession, I am afraid that the refugees from the Puppet Tang thief army on the opposite side would be attacked.
You won’t be able to hold on!
But before he could give the order to shoot arrows, he saw that the archers of the puppet Tang rebel army on the opposite side were the first to bend their bows and shoot arrows.
Although the archers in the Pseudo-Tang rebel army opposite seemed to be of varying quality and bow power, even this could not change the fact that more than seventy arrows flew over.
When watching more than seventy arrows flying from the sky, even though Wu Baihu had seen that his archers had also shot the first wave of arrows, he still had a very bad premonition.
Because at this time, he remembered one thing, that is, six of his archers had been killed and wounded before, and their morale had plummeted. It was not easy to rush up and shoot arrows to fight back, but when they just fought back, the opponent's archers
Also shoot arrows at the same distance.
With this wave of arrows coming, I am afraid that many of my own archers will be killed or injured.
As a result, the casualty rate of archers has exceeded 20%, and this data is already extremely dangerous, and a major collapse is very likely.
The next scene confirmed Wu Baihu's own suspicion. In the first round of fighting between the archers from both sides, seven or eight people from the puppet Tang rebel army fell on the spot, while only four from their own side fell.
The battle loss ratio between the two sides was almost two to one, which shows that our archers are far stronger than those bandits.
But does this work?
It’s useless!
Because even though only four people fell this time, ten people fell before and after this. This is a great psychological pressure for the archers with only more than forty people, because this represents more than four people.
Inside, someone has already fallen.
After the two sides shot each other, each other was a little shaken.
However, at this moment, the musketeers of the Guards fired again, and this time it was not a round of fire, but a volley!
A salvo fired from a distance of fifty meters, and the bullets fired by more than twenty guns overturned five or six Ming army archers almost instantly!
As soon as the gunshots fell, Wu Baihu heard a bandit leader on horseback shouting from the opposite side: "Charge the whole army!"
Immediately afterwards, a group of spearmen with spears in their hands rushed out of the white smoke with firm steps, and then the musketeers also stuffed their bayonets into the barrels, carrying muskets and spears with bayonets attached.
The spearmen rushed forward.
Seeing this scene, Wu Baihu quickly shouted: "The archers are all back!"
"Spearmen, sword and shield soldiers all rush forward to stop them!"
At this time, the remaining 20 or so archers of the Ming army had not completely collapsed. After hearing Wu Baihu's order, they turned around and ran to the back of the array, preparing to hide behind the friendly troops and continue firing arrows.
On the contrary, the archers on the side of the Huangzhushan bandits performed very poorly. There were seventy of them, but they only hit four of them in the previous wave of arrows. This accuracy made Li Xuan behind him even look at it.
I want to cover my face.
More importantly, our own archers clearly had a numerical advantage, almost twice as many as their opponents, but the result was the other way around. Eight of them were shot.
This result almost caused the Huangzhushan bandits to collapse.
Fortunately, Wang Danxu made a prompt decision and directly ordered the musketeers to fire a volley, and then asked the spearmen to launch a full-scale charge, making the situation on the battlefield better again.
In this way, the archers of the standing army did not continue to escape, but turned around and continued to bend their bows and set arrows, preparing for another wave of arrow rain for the Ming army!
In the previous long-range firefight, archers versus archers, the Royal Army of the Tang Dynasty was completely defeated, which made Li Xuan himself unable to stand it. In contrast, the musketeers of the Royal Army of the Tang Dynasty performed quite well.
Excellent, to be blunt, I relied on more than 20 musketeers to turn the battlefield situation around in the long-range firepower competition just now!
The more than 40 archers of the Ming army were defeated by the more than 20 musketeers of the Guards. As for the 70 archers of the standing army, let’s not mention them!
When the Imperial Army of the Tang Dynasty launched a full-scale charge, it meant that it would enter the stage of hand-to-hand combat. In this kind of hand-to-hand combat, spearmen would become the backbone of the battlefield.
However, the first to enter the melee stage was not the fierce spearmen of the Guards, but the more than twenty heavy armored sword and shield soldiers led by Butcher Chen!
Butcher Chen rushed to the front, holding his butcher knife high and saying, "Brothers, follow me and kill him!"
These tough bandits, armed with waist knives and shields, and wearing cotton armor, and some even wearing chainmail, were not afraid of the scattered bows and arrows or firecrackers fired by the Ming army, just like more than twenty wild wolves