Shen Lian and Li Yu led six thousand men and horses. After more than a day of marching, day and night, the soldiers on the ship followed the sailors, taking turns to rest and rowing in three shifts. Finally, they arrived at the lake dozens of miles northwest of Xiangyin County.
superior.
There is naturally no place name for the location on the lake, but roughly speaking, this point should be on the lake route from Changde to Xiangyin——
Changde is located directly west of Dongting Lake, and Xiangyin County in Changsha Prefecture is roughly at the southeastern corner of Dongting Lake. Therefore, the route from Changde to Xiangyin is approximately from the middle of the west bank of the lake to a slightly southerly angle, eastward
Driving.
When the officers and soldiers estimated in advance that Zhang Xianzhong's target was Changsha, it was not difficult to reverse the route to be intercepted. Just connect a line on the map and it would be basically indistinguishable.
"Captain, look at the starboard side! There is really a fleet! And there are many small boats!" On the mast of a light warship made of 200 materials, Li Yue, a hundred households, looked around with a telescope for a long time, and finally found the enemy ship. He immediately used the Korean
He shouted loudly to remind his master Li Yu.
Li Yu, who had been resting in the cabin with his eyes closed, immediately got out, took out his telescope and looked in the same direction to confirm, and then immediately ordered: "Quick! Raise the flag! Notify Shen Shouwei!"
Li Yue, who was already on the mast, immediately took out a gun filled with fireworks and fired a shot into the air, then took out a signal flag and waved it a few times.
Soon, Shen Lian's navy battalion, who was originally searching to the left, ten miles away, also immediately noticed this side and began to turn around and move closer.
Not long after, a feast unfolded on the Dongting Lake.
Each battalion of the officers and soldiers only had forty warships with eighty men per ship, while Zhang Xianzhong's troops on the opposite side had at least hundreds of ships! And they were not piled together like the officers and soldiers, but were dragged into
A long, long snake stretched from east to west for at least dozens of miles.
This cannot be blamed on Zhang Xianzhong's logistics troops for not maintaining their formation, but rather that they were not in a state of war to begin with, but were just constantly transporting troops back and forth, transporting the rear troops stranded in Changde to the front lines in Xiangyin and Changsha.
The skills of the sailors who operate the boats are always good or bad, and the oarsmen are always strong or small. After a trip, the speed of each boat will naturally be different. When everyone is rushing to grab time, the formation will be stretched out for dozens of miles.
It couldn't be more normal.
They never expected that the navy of the government army would arrive so quickly, and they were not even prepared for the elite warships that would appear on the south side of Dongting Lake.
…
"Run quickly, the warships of the army! Row south quickly! It's too late, let the ships form a formation!"
At the same time, panic had just begun to spread in Zhang Xianzhong's fleet on the south side of the battlefield.
The person responsible for transporting the rear army soldiers was Liu Wenxiu, another adopted son of Zhang Xianzhong. However, Liu Wenxiu was also considered a high-ranking official, so it was impossible for him to appear on this battlefield by chance.
Liu Wenxiu also had several captains under his command, who were responsible for each section. The one who was bumped into by Shen Lian and Li Yu at this moment was a captain named Liu Tingju.
Liu Tingju can be regarded as Liu Wenxiu's confidant who has followed Liu Wenxiu for many years. Historically, until the 17th year of Chongzhen, when the Southern Ming army regained Chongqing, he was ordered by Liu Wenxiu to garrison in Chongqing. However, he was defeated by the counterattack of Zeng Ying, the Ming army's veteran general in Shu.
Chongqing was subsequently defeated.
Of course, history has changed beyond recognition now, and of course none of that will have a chance to happen.
At this moment, Liu Tingju originally planned to break up and run to the shore to escape, but he didn't care about his moral integrity.
But seeing that there was still at least twenty or thirty miles away from the lake, and the officers and soldiers were chasing so fast, it was definitely too late to escape, so they had to change their minds temporarily and form a formation to turn back to resist.
However, not all his subordinates were able to follow his orders.
Some ships in the fleet were close to the shore and seemed to have hope of escape.
Especially once friendly forces turn around and fight to the death, holding back the officers and soldiers for time, their chances of escaping will be even greater.
Therefore, on the vast Dongting Lake, some small boats were still rushing towards the south bank, while others formed formations to attack them. They were in a mess, and their combat effectiveness became increasingly pitiful.
"Charge up! Just hit them and sink them!" Among the Ming army, Shen Lian, a veteran seaman, was very brave. He took the lead in his boat. He himself was also waving a sword on the deck and shouting commands, holding a knife in the other hand.
Armed with a breech-loaded double-barreled musket, it looks very majestic.
Following his young master, he gradually moved from being a servant to being a guard. He already felt that it was worth it, so he dared to gamble. If he won, he would continue to be promoted and make a fortune. After death, he would have never had the pleasure of being an official.
Anyway, he was born as a servant. He was bought and trained as a sailor when he was young. He didn't know his parents and had no family concerns. In these years, he only had a few maids given to him by the head of the family and his newly married wife after becoming a military attache. This kind of person
Without the thought of continuing the family lineage, one is particularly not afraid of death.
The Ming army's warships rammed fiercely, knocking over several small boats of thieves who had originally planned to come up to join the fight.
Groups of Liu Tingju's gangsters fell into the water in disorientation. One of them, a veteran from Shaanxi and Henan, was not good at water and sank directly into the lake and drowned.
"God's Coming"
After Zhang Xianzhong arrived in Huguang, the strong men he recruited were better than the northerners, but their fighting spirit was obviously worse. After seeing the momentum of the Ming army, they immediately became timid.
The few who jumped onto the Ming army's ships were quickly defeated by crossbows and muskets. The few who could stand firm were outnumbered. One person had to face three or five spears and sabers, and was quickly stabbed to death.
A hornet's nest.
There is no doubt that this was a one-sided massacre.
All the ships mobilized by Zhang Xianzhong's army can theoretically transport more than 20,000 people at a time, but the total number of troops on the opposite side is actually only 6,000.
However, these 20,000 people were scattered over a long battlefield, and they could not gather at one point to form a force when attacked. Therefore, on local battlefields, the government troops could always ensure that they were not at a disadvantage in terms of numbers.
The number of people is equal, the equipment, warships and water warfare tactics are all superior, so crushing them is easy.
On the other side of the battlefield, Li Yu, who was a former commander of the North Korean Gun Battalion, did not behave as bravely as Shen Lian.
These Korean soldiers were mainly gunners. In the late Ming Dynasty, Korean soldiers were notorious for their timidity in hand-to-hand combat and their poor martial arts skills, but they were relatively disciplined.
Therefore, it is absolutely impossible to expect North Korean gunmen to rush forward and even ram and sink enemy ships. However, they still have the courage to hide aside and fire cold shots, and they are very bold.
Li Yu also used the Folang machine, a light-weight musket deployed by Shen Shuren, to its full potential. Originally, in the naval battles of the Ming Dynasty, the Folang machine was rarely used to sink enemy ships, and they had to rely on Hong Kong.
Yi cannon.
That's because the Folan aircraft has serious air leakage, its range is too short, and its penetrating kinetic energy is insufficient. The Folan aircraft is more often used in boarding battles to kill enemy deck personnel with grape bullets.
But today on the battlefield of Dongting Lake, Li Yu was self-taught and naturally came up with a new tactic - anyway, most of the warships of Zhang Xianzhong's army were just awning ships, and at most they were medium-sized eagle-billed ships, so
Horizontal protection is very poor.
The Eagle-billed Ship is a medium-sized warship commonly used in the Ming Dynasty. It is famous for its shuttle-shaped streamlined shape and the same shape at the head and tail. Therefore, it can be used both head and tail when sailing. It is very convenient and light to row forward and backward. It can carry dozens of people and is specialized in
When used to transport troops, nearly a hundred people can be stationed densely.
There is no solid roof on the ship, but densely packed bamboos nailed to both sides of the ship serve as shelters, and sometimes holes as wide as a few bamboos are left as shooting holes.
Whether it is an eagle-beaked boat or the smallest awning boat or a shuttle boat, the common feature is that there is no "deck" or "multi-layer cabin". There is only one bottom layer in the horizontal direction, and the soldiers stand directly on the bottom of the boat.
.
With such a weak structure, as long as the Folan machine approaches and shoots diagonally downward at a low angle, a direct hit will make a big hole in the bottom of the ship, and the ship will sink immediately, making it impossible to save it.
Of course, the traditional Folan machine does not have the ability to "shoot at a depressed angle" because the traditional Folan machine uses divided ammunition, and the shell is an iron ball. If the barrel mouth is pointed downward at a certain angle after loading, the
The ignited iron ball cannonball rolled out directly.
This is also an important reason why at the same time, neither the East nor the West developed the tactic of "shooting from a downward angle to blast through the bottom of enemy boats".
But the situation of Shen Shuren's army is obviously different.
Although Shen Shuren also knew that the Folangji was an old-fashioned cannon that was behind the times and had been around for more than a hundred years.
He may not build the Folan cannon itself, but that does not prevent him from spending a little more thought on optimizing the existing Folan cannon to improve its efficiency.
Therefore, during the preparations for the war in the previous few months, during a mutual inspiration process between Shen Shu, Song Yingxing, and Fang Yizhi, they came up with the idea of using the ammunition of the Zifu Lang machine with the "rear-loading spray wax case bullets".
"Similarly, make an iron ball and seal it with gunpowder to make a cylindrical shape.
In this way, the emptied gun can be reloaded much faster. Another unexpected benefit of this is that when the ammunition becomes a frictional cylindrical tube, the projectile will no longer follow the spherical shape.
That way, lower the depression angle and it will roll out.
After testing, it has been found that the Folang machine with cylindrical ammunition will not fall out even if the depression angle is pressed to minus 30 degrees, and the gun will fire soon after being inserted, and the time affected by gravity will not be long.
long.
This performance is completely useless in normal times, because during field battles or sieges, who would fire the muzzle downward?
But at that time, some navy generals discovered the magical effect of this, because when fighting on the water, when using a large ship to hit a small boat, if you can get close and shoot directly from a low angle to make a hole in the bottom of the opponent's boat, then the small boat without multiple decks will be instantly destroyed.
sunk.
Now, this trick was finally used by chance. Zhang Xianzhong's ships were temporarily recruited from Changde Prefecture, and there were no multi-deck professional warships at all.
When being shot at from close range, even if the rows of bamboo bunkers on both sides of the eagle-billed boat could originally block bird cannon shot and bows and arrows, as long as it encounters a downward attack from a Folang machine, it will definitely die.
Moreover, in water battles in the late Ming Dynasty, small boats had no means of sinking large ships other than setting fire to them. The two sides would often engage in boarding battles, even if they came within twenty steps, or even directly leaned against each other, they would not
Too close.
At such a face-to-face distance, there is no need to consider the issue of aiming at all. It is equivalent to sticking the barrel of the gun into the opponent's mouth and blasting it.
If there is a later version of "Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnought" or "Big Sea Battle", the players of "World of Warships" will definitely shout when they see this scene: If I can't wear your main outfit, how can I not wear your level!
In a short time, thousands of Liu Tingju's men and hundreds of warships were killed by the officers and soldiers. All the troops gathered in groups were annihilated, and they were all sunk by one cannon.
Only those who had firm belief from the beginning betrayed their teammates to escape, reluctantly took advantage of the time gained by their teammates being killed, hid in the reeds on the south bank, abandoned the ship and boarded the shore to escape.
When Liu Wenxiu's rear army saw that the transport fleet in front was completely wiped out, they tried to turn around hastily. They didn't care whether they could transport the people to the Eight Kings, and went straight back to Changde to huddle up.
As for those fleets that were already in a dilemma and were located east of where Liu Tingju was intercepted, it was of course impossible for them to return to Changde. They could only bite the bullet and continue rushing to Xiangyin County.
Unfortunately, Shen Lian and Li Yu's boat was faster than them, and the sailors who operated the boat were more professional. They both chose to pursue eastward, chasing them all the way to the mouth of the Xiangjiang River.
The scattered small boats of Zhang Xianzhong's team that were too late to reach the shore along the way were bombarded one after another, or were named in turn by cannons, killing all the soldiers on board. Seeing that the situation was not good, the remaining ones desperately tried to turn south and dock in advance. If they were still killed,
If you catch up, abandon ship and jump into the lake.
The bloody massacre on Dongting Lake lasted for most of the day. In the afternoon of that day, a bandit officer who had a chance to escape and landed ashore took the horse and returned to Changsha to report the news.
In the evening, Zhang Xianzhong, who had just been immersed in the joy of capturing Changsha yesterday and was counting the belongings of Prince Ji's palace, received this devastating news.