After discovering that the Ming army in front of them was not the expected food transport team, but a regular guard army disguised as a food transport team, the Huangzhushan bandits still wanted to fight, whether it was Li Xuan or Liu
Ba Gou and even Butcher Chen all wanted to turn around and leave.
And that’s exactly what they did!
If they were the regular army of a serious dynasty, they might still worry about the court's face. I guess Li Xuan, the emperor's face, was a problem, but what kind of regime was the Tang Dynasty?
Although it bears the name of the Tang Dynasty and has some vague officials, generals and the like, it is still essentially a bandit den. At most, it just has more bandits than ordinary people.
So at this critical moment, no one would think about the issue of losing face, or whether running away from an enemy would be embarrassing or affect the prestige of the dynasty.
They just want to escape and save their lives!
After they made the decision to retreat, the Tang Dynasty King's Division acted very quickly. How quickly?
As soon as the order was issued, it was not even passed to the ears of the soldiers at the lowest level, and there was no arrangement for a quick retreat, but some people already started running backwards!
Who are these bandits in Huangzhushan?
They are all well-informed veterans with rich escape methods. Many bandits in the standing army saw that the situation was not good, and when they saw someone escaping behind them, they simply did not listen to the so-called orderly retreat arranged by the generals above.
, he turned around and joined the fleeing army.
Seeing the originally orderly standing army in the front collapse in an instant, and then scrambling to escape one by one, Li Xuan in the rear couldn't help but want to cover his face.
Damn, it's really embarrassing. The Ming army on the opposite side is still far away, but now all our own personnel have collapsed.
Even when the retreat order was issued, Li Xuan had already anticipated that chaos would occur, but he did not expect that it would collapse so quickly.
The only thing that gave him psychological comfort was that because the Ming army was still far away, the Huangzhushan bandits who escaped finally did not throw down all the weapons such as knives and spears they carried with them before running away, but most of them took them with them.
.
"Your Majesty, it's time for us to leave. If we don't leave, it will be too late!" At this time, Wang Danxu walked up to Li Xuan.
Li Xuan also knew at this time that there was nothing he could do when the matter reached this point, and although the situation was extremely chaotic, at least the Ming army had not caught up yet, and no actual losses had been caused.
It's okay to be embarrassed when you escape, it's just embarrassing at most.
He immediately got on his horse and said, "Let's go too!"
Wang Danxu himself also got on his horse, and then loudly shouted to the nearby Guards soldiers: "Let's go!"
Immediately, Li Xuan quickly left the battlefield under the escort of the Guards!
As for the other senior officials of the Tang Dynasty, Liu Bagou, Wang Wenhua, Qian Mengjiu and other civil servants naturally followed Li Xuan in retreating. Although they were not riding horses, they were also riding donkeys, mules and so on. Otherwise,
Otherwise, they wouldn't be able to keep running for too long given their physical strength.
As for the other military generals of the Tang Dynasty, they were scattered everywhere, leading their men to retreat. Although the standing army today is a bit chaotic, the most basic organization can still be maintained. Chen Tufu, Fang Dongquan and the others still control themselves
His subordinates and his loyal followers are in the army.
In less than five minutes, no one from the Tang Dynasty King's division, who had originally lined up to fight the Ming army, ran away.
The whole process shocked Mr. Wu and Diao Leixun!
Can you please stop being so shameless? You, the Tang Dynasty King Masters, have just arrived, and you haven’t even finished lining up, and you haven’t even tried to attack, so you just ran away?
This situation makes the resourceful Mr. Wu a little depressed!
According to his prediction, under normal circumstances, the puppet Tang thief army would fight him first, even if it was just a small-scale trial battle, and if it didn't work, they would observe it for a while.
But what would you think of it, when these pseudo-Tang thieves discovered that the Ming army was not an ordinary food transport team, but a regular guard army, they did not even hesitate for a moment, turned around and ran away.
And he ran so fast!
"What are you waiting for? Let me catch up!" Diao Leixun was also jumping angrily from the side.
Before, he thought that the puppet Tang rebel army would come for a fight, so he spent all his time organizing his formation and preparing to deal with the puppet Tang rebel army's attack. However, he thought that the puppet Tang rebel army would not even fight.
Just turn around and run.
By the time the Ming army changed from a frontal decisive battle formation to a pursuit marching formation, a moment had passed, and the puppet Tang rebels had already run far away.
There was no time to regret, no time to be shocked, Diao Leixun quickly led his men and horses to catch up!
This pursuit lasted for several hours and was not over until dark!
After it got dark, the Ming army, which was exhausted after chasing them all afternoon, stopped and set up camp.
Diao Leixun said to Mr. Wu with a look of regret: "Those bandits ran too fast, otherwise we would have been able to keep them all this time!"
Mr. Wu said: "It's good to be able to behead more than ten people and capture dozens more. After today's battle, the other side will definitely not dare to cut off food easily. Our army will have no worries about food supply!"
When Diao Leixun heard this, he smiled bitterly, because only he himself knew that although they caught up with part of the bandit army in pursuit this time, killed more than ten of them and captured dozens of them, they were interrogated.
The prisoners later discovered that the people they were chasing were civilian husbands who had just been captured by the puppet Tang rebels a few days ago.
In other words, in this pursuit, Diao Leixun could not even catch up with a real Huangzhushan bandit, let alone kill or capture him.
But even so, he still agreed with what Mr. Wu said later, that is, after this battle, the puppet Tang rebels may not have the courage to attack the grain transport team again.
He didn't know that the Huangzhushan bandits, who had failed in their ambush and fled in embarrassment, were not frightened as they imagined, but were planning something big.
"Today was really dangerous. If Master Liu hadn't told you later that you wanted the newly captured civilians to confuse the Ming army, I'm afraid we would have been overtaken by them!" Bai Yunqi looked frightened!
Huang Xueren said: "Yes, these Ming troops can really run, and they almost caught up with them!"
However, Fang Dongquan shook his head and said: "What are you afraid of? Even if we don't release the civilians as bait, they won't be able to catch up with us. We are very familiar with this mountain. Let's lead them into more ravines to ensure that they get dizzy."
Can’t even get out!”
Fang Dongquan had the confidence to say this. He had led the Ming army in circles in the mountains several times.
If you ask him to lead the Huangzhushan bandits to fight the Ming army head-on, that is impossible, and he cannot do it. But if you ask him to lead the people to escape, that is absolutely first-class.
If he didn't have the ability to escape, Fang Dongquan would have died in the hands of the Ming army long ago.
After everyone sighed again, the generals began to report today's various losses.
I was in a hurry to escape today and lost a lot of baggage, especially a lot of food. But it didn't matter. The King of Tang Dynasty had brought a lot of food with the army, and later he robbed the Ming army's food transport team twice.
There was so much food that they couldn't find enough people to carry it. Although they lost almost half of the food this time, the food they carried was still very sufficient.
As for the casualties, the biggest loss was the dozens of civilians who were abandoned by the original abandonment. However, those civilians were just captured a few days ago. They were originally civilians of the Ming army. Now they are thrown back to the Ming army.
The army is nothing, it can’t be considered a loss...
As for the personal losses suffered by the Huangzhushan bandits themselves, since the two sides never fought from beginning to end, and the closest distance between the two sides was only a mile or two, the casualties were negligible.
However, there were twenty or thirty people who disappeared after running. I don't know if they got lost or if they saw the opportunity, they abandoned the large group and fled for their lives.
Li Xuan thinks the latter is more likely!
With the missing or escaped people, plus the dozens of abandoned civilians, the Tang Dynasty suffered heavy losses on this day. The team of more than 800 people once again dropped to more than 700 people.
But what makes Li Xuan feel fortunate is that no one in the Guards escaped privately, and there were no casualties.
As long as the Guards are still there, the actual combat effectiveness of the Tang Dynasty King's Division will not be weakened much!
After the inventory was completed, the emperors and ministers of the Tang Dynasty gathered together again to discuss the follow-up actions!
Butcher Chen said: "Today we were tricked by them. We have to avenge this. We must find a few more of their lone men to eat later!"
Butcher Chen continued: "And that's not all. We have to completely block the Ming army's food route. There are so many Ming troops guarding us in this mountain. It's hard for us to do anything. We might as well go to the edge of the mountain to guard it."
, let’s do a surprise..."
Hearing Butcher Chen's words, he paused in mid-sentence. Liu Bagou on the side consciously helped him finish his words: "Surprise him and attack him unprepared!"
Butcher Chen said: "Yes, it's just a surprise. Their troops have come into the mountains to look for us. There are at most a few sentinel checkpoints on the outside of this mountain. We can take them down and hold them, waiting for the grain transport teams."
If you come to the door yourself, you won’t believe that they can guess that we went to the edge of the mountain to attack their checkpoint!"
After Butcher Chen finished speaking, Fang Dongquan on the side fell into deep thought. Then he suddenly stood up: "What do you think if we attack Longhua Town directly?"
"Where does the food and grass needed by the Ming army come from? Longhua Town, since we can't cut off their food routes, then we might as well go and knock down Longhua Town and burn all their food and grass with a fire!"