More than 10,000 officers and soldiers evacuated with their baggage. Several old antique mortars were definitely abandoned, but the two Franco cannons had time to carry them away.
This thing is light and detachable, and five or six people can march with a cannon.
Hearing the charge signal from the anti-bandit camp, Li Maofang immediately ordered: "Give up your baggage, go to the hill in front to form an array, and scatter money and food along the way. Remember, scatter more copper coins and broken silver!"
Although the officers, soldiers and generals were reluctant to part with it, the battlefield had reached a critical moment and they had no choice but to scatter the money they had robbed.
Seeing that the enemy actually ran to the hill to form an formation, Zhao Han also stopped his charge horn, blew the bugle call for troops to form a formation, and slowly advanced towards the enemy on the hillside.
On the top of the slope, Li Ruolian was inexplicably shocked: "These thieves don't even want any money!"
Li Maofang was also frightened. He originally wanted to scatter money to destroy the formation and morale of the rebels, and then rely on his superior strength to kill them.
This trick is very effective against rebels. Li Maofang has succeeded several times before.
Unexpectedly, Zhao Han's soldiers lined up in a neat military formation and walked through the area full of money, but no one bent down to pick it up!
Everyone has selfish motives, and so do Zhao Han's soldiers.
But everything seized must be returned to the public. This is what the missionary officer repeatedly emphasized. If it is in private, some soldiers may hide it and refuse to hand it over, but who can't see the money picked up on the battlefield? The money picked up is not one's own, but will be punished.
When it comes to military justice, any soldier with a right mind knows what choice to make.
Although a few mortars were lost, at this moment, the situation was more conducive to the officers and soldiers fighting.
Previously, when Zhao Han held the camp, the officers and soldiers had to slowly fill in the trenches, and then attack the rebel camp. Moreover, there were trenches in the camp, and the archers could shoot enough arrows for the officers and soldiers to drink a pot.
Now the officers and soldiers occupy the high ground, and Zhao Han leads his troops to attack the hill!
Although Li Maofang was greedy and greedy, he also knew how to fight. After arranging his troops, he suddenly raised his sword and shouted: "Send my military order to kill a rebel thief and be rewarded with five taels of silver. Kill the rebel officer and be rewarded with ten taels of silver."
If you kill the rebel general, you will be rewarded with a hundred taels of silver. Whoever can capture and kill the two thieves Zhao Yan and Zhao Yaonian will be rewarded with a thousand taels of silver!"
Silver has endless uses in Li Maofang's hands.
You can spread it out to harass the rebel army. You can offer rewards to boost your own morale. You can feed your superiors and colleagues, so that everyone can speak for him, and you won't be afraid of a lawsuit before the emperor.
Li Maofang is very smart. He is not a fool who just takes money for himself.
In his opinion, if silver cannot be used, it is no different from stone.
As soon as the bounty was issued, the morale of the officers and soldiers was greatly boosted. In addition, they had more soldiers, more than three times that of Zhao Han, which temporarily diluted the negative emotions of our navy being repulsed.
"Hurry up and assemble the Folan cannon! Archers come forward and shoot the bandits!" Li Maofang shouted.
There are only more than 500 archers among the officers and soldiers. They were originally deployed on warships, but now they were transferred to land to shoot down the rebels.
The thousand archers on Zhao Han's side also dispersed into a sparse formation and stepped forward.
Huang Shun and Li Zheng, each with 500 soldiers, circled the opponent's flanks, waiting for the opportunity to attack.
"Boohoo!"
Archers from both sides shoot at each other, one side occupying a high position, and the other side has more people.
Fei Yinggong is now the captain of a hundred archers. The bows and arrows used by these guys are different. It is the standard one-stone bow used in the martial arts examination.
An arrow shot out and accurately hit an officer. Fei Yinggong looked for the officer to kill him.
However, Xiong Yao used a Qi Dou bow and fired volleys along with the soldiers. He aimed at the enemy's head, but shot an arrow into the target's calf.
"Boss Zheng, go attack the bandits' archers!" Li Maofang shouted.
Commander Zheng, with his five hundred soldiers, took advantage of the gap between the bows and bows and rushed down.
The flag was waved, and Jiang Dashan and Jiang Liang each led 500 people to come forward to respond.
The archers on both sides retreated, and 1,500 melee soldiers were strangled together. Zhao Han's central army only had more than 1,000 people left, and 500 people on each wing moved out.
"The first six outposts, all go out to kill the thieves!"
When Li Maofang saw the opportunity, he immediately launched an attack. He felt that he had the superior force and could kill the rebels by relying on a large number of people.
Li Ruolian also shouted: "Surround and kill the bandits and bandits!"
The two of them had the same idea. They believed that Zhao Han was too mentally retarded and had insufficient troops to begin with, yet he actually divided his troops to attack the two wings.
Zhao Han's Chinese army will soon be surrounded by officers and soldiers several times his own.
Zhao Han smiled and said to Fei Ruhe: "I will leave you on your right, and we will form a formation together as bait."
"No problem." Fei Ruhe said.
After the thousand archers withdrew, they fired at the main force of the advancing army.
A round of bows and arrows only killed and wounded dozens of officers and soldiers, but directly caused the collapse of a thousand-man sentry unit of officers and soldiers.
"Anyone who escapes from battle will be killed!"
Li Ruolian personally led the law enforcement team and stood behind to kill the fleeing soldiers.
After more than ten people were hacked to death one after another, the defeated soldiers screamed and turned around to charge towards the rebels.
Huang Shun and Li Zheng on both sides received the military order and immediately charged. Li Maofang quickly sent out four sentries to engage in the battle. This is equivalent to saying that Huang Shun and Li Zheng, each leading 500 men in a flank attack, had to face four times their own strength.
of officers and soldiers.
Zhao Han carefully observed the enemy's situation and said to Zhang Tieniu: "The officers and soldiers rushed out of the Wang Ziqi sentry post a few steps into chaos. You can kill through it and go straight to the enemy's center."
"Slave army, follow me and kill!"
Zhang Tieniu rushed out with hundreds of slave soldiers and two axes.
Zhao Han and Fei Ruhe, with the remaining soldiers, formed their own formations and rushed into the front battlefield to assist Jiang Dashan and Jiang Liang. There were only two of them in total, and they were almost semi-surrounded by officers and soldiers, forming a circular formation to resist six soldiers.
More than a thousand officers and soldiers.
There was no reserve team left, and Zhao Han himself went into the battle himself.
Despite the excitement, the battle was actually not intense.
The wolf sword soldiers were in front, holding bamboo with branches, and iron branches were tied to the bamboo branches. Just using the wolf sword to poke at them randomly made it difficult for enemies three meters away to get close. The few who could rush in still had rattan cards.
Holding up a shield to block it, the spearman behind took the opportunity to poke out.
It's like facing a turtle and not knowing where to turn.
More than six thousand officers and soldiers surrounded and killed two thousand rebels. After half a quarter of an hour of fighting, only three rebels died, but dozens of officers and soldiers were stabbed to death.
The main reason is that the ragtag officers and soldiers cower in the face of the wolves and dare not risk their lives to rush in. Most of the officers and soldiers are like sleepwalking on the battlefield, not knowing what they should do.
Fei Yinggon and a thousand other archers retreated to the back and kept shooting arrows into the crowd of officers and soldiers, causing people behind them to flee.
Li Maofang waved the command flag and sent out a reserve team, intending to go around and attack the archers. However, he saw Zhang Tieniu and Liu Zhu, with Zhao Han's personal slave army, killing the "Wang" flag all the way.
The boss was so frightened that he turned around and ran away.
Zhang Tieniu's left arm was cut and his right leg was scratched by a spear, but the guy charged forward bravely and knocked down the boss with an axe.
This commander-in-chief was recruited by Li Ruolian from Qianhu. He had never fought in a war. His subordinates were all weak military households who had put down their hoes. Even their formations were crooked. How could they withstand Zhang Tieniu's life-threatening attack?
However, Zhang Tieniu is very strange. No matter whether it is a big fight or a small fight, he is bound to be injured in many places. Whenever he is not injured, it is surprising.
Look at Liu Zhu next to him, he is also rushing to the front, and his clothes are not even torn.
"kill!"
Seeing Zhang Tieniu rushing toward the Chinese army, Li Maofang urgently mobilized the reserve team sent to kill the archers to fill the gap in the battlefield. He also added a sentry post to surround Zhang Tieniu.
The two sides were completely mixed up, and the archers could not shoot at all.
"Kill with me!"
Fei Yinggong threw down his bow and arrow, drew his sword, and led the centurion to start a close combat.
Nearly two thousand soldiers with Zhao Han as the center were completely surrounded by more than six thousand officers and soldiers.
But there is a clear boundary in the middle, which is the wolf trap area that is more than three meters long. Most of the officers and soldiers are blocked from the wolf trap and dare not rush.
This formed three concentric circles on the battlefield. The inner circles were the two thousand rebels led by Zhao Han and Fei Ruhe. The middle ring was composed of wolves and spears. The outermost ring was more than six thousand sleepwalking soldiers.
State officers and soldiers.
More than 6,000 officers and soldiers have been encircling and fighting until now, but the casualties of the rebels are still in single digits.
Fei Yinggong rushed in with a hundred-man team. After abandoning their bows, these archers used daggers to fight. But the combined attack from inside and outside directly caused thousands of officers and soldiers to collapse.
Except for a small reserve force, Li Maofang and Li Ruolian have completely lost control of the official army.
They kept asking trumpeters and flag commanders to convey military orders to divide their forces to attack the anti-thief archers. But the six thousand officers and soldiers in the front only knew how to besiege the enemy's central army. If they couldn't attack, they stayed outside. Among the ten officers and soldiers, there were only one or two
Can truly engage the enemy.
"The rabble, the rabble!"
Li Maofang was so angry that he stamped his feet. If he had been given another year to train thousands of real elite soldiers, he would not have become what he is now.
Seeing that Fei Yinggon's surprise attack was effective, other archers also threw away their bows and arrows, pulled out their daggers and ran to fight.
On the left wing, Li Zheng led 500 soldiers and suddenly killed four times his own number of officers and soldiers. Moreover, these officers and soldiers collapsed without warning, and Li Maofang had no time to send a reserve team to rescue them.
Just because most of these two thousand officers and soldiers were rural warriors recruited by the Linjiang prefecture, and a small number were young men selected from the common people, their fighting power was enough to bully the peasants.
First, they besieged Li Zheng's 500 soldiers with an absolute advantage. The fight for a long time had no effect. Instead, Li Zheng stabbed dozens of them to death. After nearly a hundred casualties, the two thousand miscellaneous fish instantly collapsed, and they were afraid of being served by military judges.
Not daring to escape back to the direction of the coach, they collapsed directly towards the Gan River.
Li Zheng immediately led his troops and rushed towards the enemy's commander. Zhang Tieniu also killed the rebels who rushed past. There were less than a thousand rebels and went straight to the superior formation of the central army of the rebels.
When Li Maofang saw this, he mounted his horse and ran away. How could he care about his own army?
Li Ruolian was stunned for a moment, and the sixty-nine-year-old Jiangxi commander also quickly rode away.
Although the horses of the officers and soldiers were scarce, the two generals definitely had horses.
As soon as they escaped, the Chinese army's formation of officers and soldiers immediately collapsed. Because reserves were constantly sent out, there were very few officers and soldiers left in the Chinese army.
"kill!"
Zhang Tieniu had been injured in five places at this time, and he led his army of slaves in pursuit.
However, Li Zheng did not continue to pursue, but led his troops back to meet Huang Shun on the right. Huang Shun faced a tough opponent and was still fighting in a stalemate.
As for Zhao Han and Fei Ruhe who were surrounded, they didn't need Li Zheng to rescue them at all.
The six thousand officers and soldiers could not attack, and they were attacked from behind by a thousand archers, which was equivalent to being surrounded. Before Li Maofang and Li Ruolian could escape, the six thousand officers and soldiers began to disperse, and at this time the entire line collapsed.
The entire battle, starting from the time when the archers fired at each other, lasted approximately twenty-five minutes.
The next step is to chase the enemy and receive prisoners.
Statistics after the war showed that 41 people on Zhao Han's side were killed, 18 were seriously injured, and more than 100 were slightly injured.
Moreover, the most casualties were not the Chinese army who were surrounded and killed by 6,000 officers and soldiers, nor the casualties caused by archers shooting at each other, but the slave army led by Zhang Tieniu in the charge.
This guy completely gave up on defense and just kept fighting forward, so much so that even the reserve team sent by Li Maofang didn't dare to step forward to fight.
As for the officers and soldiers, including the civilians, there were more than 16,000 people on the battlefield. However, the number of officers and soldiers who were shot to death or killed from the front was actually less than 700.
Very outrageous statistics. A total of more than 20,000 people fought on both sides, and the number of those who actually died in the battle was less than 1,000. The winner was quickly determined.
It was not even clear whether the two generals, Li Maofang and Li Ruolian, fled first, or whether the main force of officers and soldiers on the frontal battlefield collapsed first.
On the contrary, during the pursuit, hundreds of officers and soldiers were stabbed to death, and thousands of people drowned after jumping into the river to escape. The casualties were more than twice those in a head-on battle.
Zhao Han and Fei Ruhe did not have the opportunity to use force. They were directing the defensive battle throughout the process.
After a long time, Zhang Tieniu came back with a war horse and a head in his hand. The guy was covered in blood and said with a smile: "Beheaded Qian Zong. It's bad luck for him. He broke his leg while riding."
Zhao Han was speechless and said: "How many injuries were caused this time?"
"I don't know," Zhang Tieniu was still laughing, "Brother, don't worry, I'm not stupid, can I still hurt someone's vitals?"
Zhao Han looked at the prisoners being escorted back one after another, thousands of them, and he had already made a decision in his heart.
Some of these prisoners who had done little evil were selected to join the army, and the rest were thrown into mining. The newly occupied iron mines were in urgent need of miners.
Li Maofang, the governor of Jiangxi, and Li Ruolian, the commander-in-chief of Jiangxi, were only accompanied by two or three soldiers. Because there were too many rivers in Jiangxi, it was impossible to run on horseback. They often had to run, walk, and circle around the rivers.
After a journey of more than two hundred miles, the two rode for nearly ten days before finally returning to the other side of the river in Nanchang City.
After crossing the river and asking questions, I found out that Wang Siren's navy was defeated!