Chapter 259 The Destruction of the Expeditionary Army
At the same time as the right wing of the Spanish army collapsed, the sailor musketeers, under the volley of musketry from the 1st Battalion of the 3rd Li Xing Regiment, approached the German mercenary position from an oblique stab. The Swiss spearmen in front of the Germans used their super long spears to Keep the spear flat and initiate the attack.
The two battalions of the 1st Brigade and 2nd Regiment were arranged into two three-row volley arrays. Facing the attack of the Swiss spearmen, they stood still and looked at the gleaming spears as if they were nothing.
"Boom, boom, boom." The 400 soldiers of the first battalion squatted down in the first row, bent down in the second row, and stood upright in the third row. At the same time, they pulled the triggers of their flintlock muskets.
After they fired a shot, they immediately retreated to the rear. The soldiers of the second battalion behind them walked through the gaps in their columns and came to the shooting position. They completely ignored the Swiss spearmen who were already fifty steps away, forming three lines. The platoon fired the whole column. The muzzle of the gun was pulled forward and the trigger was pulled.
"Bah bah bah bah."
After two volleys, almost all 200 Swiss spearmen fell to the ground.
At this time, the sailor musketeers launched an attack on the German mercenaries on the flank.
However, at this time, they felt that they had encountered a tough team.
These German mercenaries are basically over 30 years old. They participated in the Spanish war to suppress the Dutch uprising. They participated in the French Succession War, the Religious War, and various large and small battles between the German states. Everyone has it. With more than ten years of uninterrupted combat experience, the Chinese army's flintlock musket fire seems unable to disrupt the camp of the German mercenaries. They all wear heavy armor. From head to toe, only the gaps in the helmets expose their eyes. This kind of heavy armor The infantry can withstand matchlock bullets fired from 100 steps away. The Chinese army's flintlock muskets can only penetrate the Germanic heavy armor within 50 steps. This kind of heavy armor can only be worn by these Germanic barbarians. .
These tall, blond, blue-eyed men are all strong and strong. Although only half of the troops have firearms, there are some crossbowmen. Almost everyone in the front row of musketeers has an ax or a big sword stuck at their waist. The axe-gunners use The long-handled ax gun is a weapon rarely seen by the Chinese. The lethality in the hands of these big men is extraordinary. Therefore, the sailor musketeers tried to get close to disrupt the German phalanx with hand-to-hand combat. However, they were blocked by the opponent's ax gun. A great defeat.
Yin Feng stood on the wall. He saw the sailor musketeers to the north being repelled. He couldn't help but cursed: "Who is directing the troops on the right to attack? This head-on confrontation will not work..." He turned around and asked Lu Ruohan: "Lu Ruohan Sir, look at this enemy force to the north. Who are they?"
Lu Ruohan took the telescope and looked at it and said: "I saw the coat of arms of Duke Futenberg on the flag above their heads. There was also the eagle pattern of the German Emperor. It seems that these are German mercenaries."
Yin Feng nodded: "So this is the German mercenary group. Okay, messenger. Send orders to all armies. We must achieve the greatest results at the minimum cost. We must never delay the opportunity to attack proactively. We will never stop attacking until the enemy is finished." "
He turned to look at the various landowners, businessmen and some wealthy foreign businessmen who shrank at the battlements of the castle. He looked at the battlefield with trepidation. He sneered silently.
In the initial artillery battle, the Spanish artillerymen fought to the death. They fought with 30 cannons against the Chinese 80 cannons for more than half an hour. This time, the cannons brought by the Spanish regular army were the best cannons in Europe. The product of the division, its range is only slightly worse than the six-pound field artillery of the Chinese Army.
Li Kuiqi spent a lot of effort and finally suppressed all the Spanish artillery. He also lost seven or eight artillery pieces. By this time, both wings of the Chinese army had achieved results, and the seven most elite battalions on the central front were The infantry still stood on the spot. Li Kuiqi looked back. He smiled and ordered his men: "Aim all the cannons at the front of the enemy's square. Prepare to fire a volley."
"Boom, boom, boom". The sound of cannons shook the earth. Under Yin Feng's order, the 30-pound cannon at the top of the North Fortress also fired.
"boom."
The bombardment of the heavy artillery at the top of the city made the entire city wall tremble continuously. The merchants and landowners who were watching the battle never imagined that the cannon was so powerful. They screamed and shrank back under the wall stacks. Some people were so frightened that they peed.
The smoke rising from the artillery positions shrouded the front of the central front. With the endless firing of the artillery, the smoke became thicker and thicker, spreading to the entire battlefield.
"Boom, boom, boom." The artillery regiment was still firing. Countless solid bullets penetrated the Spanish square, plowing out channels of blood; a quarter of the explosive shells fired by the howitzers failed to explode. But the ones that only exploded Some of the artillery shells had already riddled the Spanish phalanx with holes.
The left wing of the Chinese army is chasing the American troops and surrounding the right side of the Spanish phalanx; the right wing of the Chinese army is arranged in an arc-shaped array. It is approaching the German mercenaries step by step while firing guns.
The Chinese artillery on the central front was completely in a subconscious mechanical state. They kept loading ammunition and firing. 3,500 infantrymen waited impatiently behind the artillery position. Zhao Tie jumped to his feet and cursed: "Fucking Li Kuiqi. Shoot the artillery. Don’t you need money? We’ll blow up all the related people. What else can we do?”
Almost all the businessmen and landowners watching the battle were trembling. The cannon fired endlessly. Can anyone on the other side survive? This kind of battle in the modern firearms era is completely beyond the imagination of these people.
The bombardment lasted for a full hour. Until the gunfire observers on the tenth high mast - the battleship lookouts could not stand the smoke. Moreover, because thousands of explosive shells fell into the Spanish phalanx, they could see completely in the smoke. The enemy's situation is unclear.
"Boom boom boom."
The artillery observer's mast was supported on the flat ground by more than a dozen pieces of wood. The observer who was a temporary guest during the battle almost fell due to the vibration of the cannon firing.
This lookout is usually on the battleship. When the weather is fine and the sea visibility is good, he can spot sailboats thirty miles away on the sea. But at this moment, he has never seen such a smoke-filled scene. And he has never seen it. At this moment, he was choked by the smoke rising from the artillery position below. In desperation, the observer slipped down the mast and found Li Kuiqi, who was dancing happily: "Captain Li, stop fighting. You can't see anything clearly."
At this time, Yin Feng also ordered the buglers to blow the conch horn. However, the gunners who were concentrating on firing had cotton balls stuffed in their ears and heard nothing. Li Kuiqi had to send his own messengers to the position to deliver the order. After using all the pinching methods, the artillery position finally stopped firing. At this moment, there was not much ammunition left for the artillery fire.
The sea breeze blowing from Manila Bay brought the thick smoke to the head of the North Fort. All the spectators, including Yin Feng, choked to tears.
As the conch sounded, Zhao Tie waved his Japanese sword and shouted: "Advance." The 3,500 fusiliers of the Chinese Army's central front finally began to attack.
After the sea breeze blew, the smoke dissipated slightly. The musketeers passed through the artillery position and automatically formed a team in front of the cannon. The supervisor of each team, sentry, and battalion stood on the right hand of the team to direct. The drummer beat out a monotonous rhythm.
The fusiliers walked through the smoke and suddenly saw the current situation of the Spanish square. They were all stunned and unintentionally slowed down.
Yin Feng held the telescope and observed it for a while. He was also shocked by the masterpiece of his troops. He handed the telescope to Lu Ruohan and said, "Let everyone take a look."
The Spanish Grand Phalanx was originally twenty columns deep, with nearly 150 Spanish regular soldiers standing side by side in each row. But now, the phalanx starts from the first row directly in front. Half of the entire phalanx has been bombarded, forming a terrifying A large gap with bloody flesh was everywhere. Mutilated corpses and broken weapons were everywhere. The remaining half of the phalanx was also riddled with holes and fragmented by cannonballs. With amazing courage and strict discipline, the Spanish regular army was still able to survive. The basic formation was maintained in the remaining half of the square. It did not collapse immediately.
Yang Dacheng's left wing of the Chinese army had dispersed the Spanish American troops. He left a sentinel of sailor musketeers to occupy the empty Spanish expeditionary camp. The Spaniards transferred all available troops to the north. The front line of the fortress is completely desperate.
General Alonso Fonseca was injured and fell unconscious during the Chinese artillery attack. His adjutant desperately carried him to the back of the phalanx.
Fonseca had just woken up. A messenger came to report: "General, Colonel Custer, the commander of the American forces, died in the battle. The Chinese have surrounded our army from the river bank."
Fonseca sighed: "What's going on in the north? What's going on with our German mercenaries."
The adjutant reported: "...the Germans are still supporting. But their front, rear, and left flanks are surrounded by Chinese troops. They cannot support it for long."
A captain with his head wrapped in a thick blood-stained bandage stumbled over. He shouted with a cry: "General, this is not a battle. This is a massacre. This is the Chinese massacring us."
Even the most stupid person can see at this moment that after experiencing the stormy bombardment just now, this was a one-sided massacre: the Spanish army's artillery was completely unable to resist after being suppressed by Li Kuiqi's artillery.
A messenger covered the wound on his waist. He came to Fonseca and stood at attention: "General, the enemy's infantry is coming up."
The infantrymen on the center line of the Chinese army have entered the front line of the Spanish phalanx. They stepped on the broken limbs and blood stains on the ground. Many recruits vomited on the spot. The non-commissioned officers and veterans beat the recruits with their rifle butts: "Stand at attention. Prepare to shoot."
The Spanish regular army in front of them only fired sparsely and had lost unified command and dispatch. Most of the officers were either dead or injured. There was no one to direct the firing of guns. Every Spanish soldier who was still alive was completely in danger. If you shoot under the conditioned reflex developed through long-term training, God knows what target you can hit.
…
"Cavalry. Enemy cavalry." The German mercenaries exclaimed: "Heavy cavalry."
The German mercenaries withstood the continuous fire of thousands of Chinese fusilier musketeers and stood firm. Li Kuiqi moved the artillery to the north and prepared to bombard the German mercenaries. Yin Feng sent out the cavalry regiment as a reserve force.
.
One hundred light cavalry and eighty heavy cavalry. These are all the remaining members of the cavalry regiment after the encounter with the German mercenaries yesterday. The leader of the regiment, the Dutch mercenary Andrew, and all the cavalry soldiers roared and rushed towards the Germans.
phalanx.
Clouds of gunpowder smoke rose up from the phalanx. The barrage of matchlocks knocked over more than a dozen war horses. The knight on the horse, like his own mount, fell to the ground unwillingly.
One hundred light cavalry each held two flintlock pistols. They suddenly separated to the left and right just a dozen steps away from the German frontline soldiers. Two arcs were drawn in front of the Germans. At the same time, each cavalryman raised his hand.
Shoot. Fire 200 rounds at the Germans on the impact surface.
The armor of the German mercenaries could not stop bullets at such a distance. The soldiers in front of the German phalanx fell one after another. A gap was finally broken in the phalanx.
Andre raised his three-meter-long lance horizontally, roared, and rushed in through the gap opened by the light cavalry with 80 heavy cavalry.
The light cavalry completed a circle and followed the heavy cavalry into the German phalanx.
The German position was finally defeated.
At this moment, the central phalanx of the Spanish Expeditionary Force also completely collapsed. Zhao Tie's main force on the center line only fired a single salvo, which knocked out the last morale of the remaining Spanish soldiers. At this time, the right wing of the phalanx had also been destroyed.
Yang Dacheng's troops were defeated.
One long and one short conch horn was blown on the battlefield. All the front-line troops of the Chinese army launched a bayonet charge. The Spanish troops fled in all directions. They were slaughtered by the Chinese as if they were chopping melons and vegetables. The last part of the Spanish regular troops who maintained their formation were surrounded.
In a sugar cane field, under Zhao Tie's order, Chinese soldiers opened fire all around and killed all the Spanish soldiers in the encirclement. Among the Spanish soldiers who died in the sugar cane field, Commander Fonseca was included.
Infantry commander Marillo fled to the Tondo Swamp with his guards. However, three days later, he was beaten to death in the mud of the swamp by a team of soldiers who entered the swamp to search.
Countless Spaniards were killed in the ten-mile radius between the northern fort and the beach. Of the 6,000 Spanish expeditionary troops who landed, less than 1,000 were lucky enough to survive and become prisoners.
The grassroots non-commissioned officers, officers and most of the middle and high-level officers of the Chinese Army are survivors of the Spanish slaughter, or are the descendants, relatives and friends of the survivors. Therefore, they are merciless to the Spaniards and basically leave no one alive. The left-wing army
Yang Dacheng's troops captured more than 200 prisoners of the American troops. They also captured some blacks and Indians in the Spanish beach camp.
The German mercenaries' spirit of fighting to the end was truly admired by the Chinese army. When more than a hundred Germans were surrounded on a small hill, Yin Feng sent Portuguese missionary Lu Ruohan to persuade them to surrender. The Germans were mercenaries.
He had done enough for his honor. He immediately agreed to surrender.