Both sides were fighting for time. One side had to set up defenses, and the other was to disrupt the other side. On the battlefield, they could be scrambled against time to describe the degree of both sides. The Qing cavalry rushed straight to the right wing of the Arctic Brigade. They came too fast. When they reached a hundred steps away, the Arctic Brigade's front had just completed, while many soldiers with guns in front had not even loaded gunpowder.

"Stay steady, keep calm!"

Li Guoan raised his spear and shouted loudly. Officers at all levels were also roaring, and the sound of suona kept ringing. In the night, they could not use banners to convey orders, and they could only rely on the sound of suona used for daily training. However, the dispatch of the town level must be based on the sound of drums. In the Taiping Army, there were brawlers at the battalion level and above were specifically responsible for the identification and transmission of orders. However, the orders of the battalion level and below were subject to execution by suona and officers.

The Qing cavalry suddenly divided into two groups more than a hundred steps away. One group continued to speed up and rushed towards the Ming army's front, while the other group strangled the pedestal and dismounted, and then took out the big bow from the horse to start shooting arrows at the Ming army. The Qing army's arrows were very large and very heavy. The range of these arrows was not far, at most they were only a hundred steps. However, although the range was not far, the arrows had excellent armor-breaking effect. If a person was shot by such a large arrow, the wound would generally be very large, causing the blood to flow and lose combat effectiveness in an instant.

Li Guoan knew that the Manzhou soldiers were good at riding and shooting, but this was the first time he had seen these Han army's eight banners on the opposite side.

It is very difficult to shoot arrows accurately and fiercely on the horse, because when the horse is rushing forward, the horse's knights will be bumped violently, and the arrows shot out on the horse will not have any accuracy at this time. Therefore, when the Eight Banners of Manzhou and the Mongolian soldiers encounter the Ming army with arrays, most of them choose to dismount and shoot in the field. If there is a gap in the enemy's riots, they will immediately start to rush the formation. This method is extremely useful for dealing with infantry formations. After all, the infantry formation is closely combined with the formation, and the cavalry is often difficult to shake directly. Even if the rushing successfully, the casualties will be very large. This is a tactic that must be avoided for the Qing army, which has few children in Manzhou.

Since the establishment of the Han army flag, everything was imitated by the Manchu Eight Banners, and the tactics were learned by the Manchu Eight Banners. The Qing court hoped that these Han troops would supervise the green camps for them, and that these Han troops could work hard for the Qing Dynasty instead of the Manchu children. Naturally, they trained more and taught them the riding and shooting skills of the Manchu children.

Geng Juxian changed his mind halfway and divided all the subordinates who had already rushed into two groups, half rushing and half shooting. The reason was that although the Ming army opposite him was in chaos, it formed the prototype of the defense line. The outermost rows of Ming troops had been arranged to prepare for battle. In order to reduce losses and to kill the Ming army to the greatest extent, Geng Juxian was slightly conservative and attacked the Ming army in a combination of "cavalry" and "shooting". Anyway, his purpose was to defeat the Ming army, and it was better not to defeat it. If the infantry brigade came up, he could also bombard the Ming army with only cannon bombardment.

The battle came too suddenly and too fast. The defense line adjustment and personnel deployment of the A Brigade were not in place. The soldiers only rely on normal training. The instinctive reactions developed under the supervision of sticks and whips and military discipline to stand in line, and put the spears in their hands flat or point obliquely. Even so, the formation was still a little confused. The soldiers who had not yet filled the medicine because of nervousness were whipped back by the officers mercilessly, so as not to take the medicine-free fire sticks to the front.

Li Guoan's personal brigade guard followed him and firmly guarded the brigade school. The fifth town actually had not many muskets compared to the old four towns. The whole town was only more than a thousand poles, and half of them belonged to Shizhong's Brigade C, because Brigade C was trained according to the tactical tactics of the Qi family army, and there was a great demand for muskets. Brigade C took half, and the remaining five hundred brigade A and half of them were left. Therefore, Brigade A actually had more than two hundred muskets, and those who did not have time to load the medicine were removed, and now there were only more than one hundred muskets that could be fired in time.

Hundreds of Qing troops rushed over roaring, and hundreds of other Qing troops were placing arrows on the bow. Following the officer's order, a rain of arrows shot in front of the cavalry before they rushed to the Ming army.

"Raising the shield!"

More than 500 shield hands were overheaded by the cards, protecting themselves and those companions who were holding guns and spears.

With the "swoosh" sound, hundreds of sharp arrows drilled into the Ming army formation and fell on the cards and made a dull "swoosh" sound. The sound seemed to suddenly hail. The Qing army's arrow branches caused dozens of casualties, and many Ming army were shot and killed by big arrows falling from the gaps between cards and cards.

A round of arrows shot over, but the Ming army's array was not very messy, which made the Qing army officers responsible for "shooting" very dissatisfied and were shouting something. The two sides were more than a hundred steps away, so the Ming army naturally couldn't hear what the other party was saying, but even on the opposite side of both sides, the officers and soldiers of the fifth town, who were mostly Guangdong, could not understand what these northerners were saying.

The fifth town formed two square formations, Brigade A was on the right and Brigade B was on the left, and the town command post was in the middle. The guards directly under the town protected the town command post and also played the role of a supervising team. If soldiers retreated, the town guards would step forward and kill immediately, which was exactly the same as the Qing army's practice. In essence, the fifth town, including Brigade C, still belonged to the army of this era, rather than the new type of army that their commander Zhou Shixiang expected. This is mainly due to the old division in the Taiping Army, as well as the gap in weapons, equipment, money, and food resources, and officer training.

So far, the snowball exhibition has given the Taiping Army more than 100,000 troops, but because of its weak foundation, all military and political construction is on the rise and the foundation is too weak, the Taiping Army cannot achieve what Zhou Shixiang expected, or in other words, they have no time and no resources to conduct new army equipment training and rotation. Zhou Shixiang can only tilt limited resources to the four old towns of the direct line, which leads to insufficient training for non-direct line towns and extremely insufficient training for officers, which makes these non-direct line towns similar to the Qing army, and even many are inferior. For example, the eighth town of Zhu Tong, the ninth town of Guo Dengdi, the tenth town of Gao Jinku, and the eleventh town of Wang Xing. If these towns really want to fight against the Qing army, they may lose more than they win.

As the rain of arrows fell, the Qing cavalry rushed to the range of the Ming army's muskets. With a command, more than a hundred muskets were fired out at one time, and the smoke filled the guns. Twenty or thirty Qing soldiers who were rushing in front were shot down and fell horses. The soldiers who had fired the muskets consciously retreated backwards, and their positions were filled with spear-holding soldiers. The shouts of people and the neighing of horses began to sound noisy, and the Qing cavalry smashed into the Ming army. The Qing army who were shooting arrows more than a hundred stairs also advanced forward, shooting arrows at the Ming army one after another.

The personal soldier in front of Li Guoan was hit by an arrow and didn't even scream. He fell to the ground directly. Some soldiers were caught on their shoulders and immediately fell to the ground with their shoulders covering their shoulders. Although the ratio of soldiers wearing armor in the Armored Brigade was quite high, leather armor and cotton armor could not completely prevent the big arrows shot by the Qing army. Moreover, the large arrows of the Qing cavalry were quite powerful in breaking armor.

Under the attack of the Qing army, Brigade A suffered a lot of casualties. There were no archers in the fifth town, and the number of musket soldiers was small, and the most capable Brigade C was not there, so there was no way for Brigade A and Brigade B to resist the attack method of Qing army. Musket soldiers could no longer organize round shooting, so they could only load the medicine, and then bombard the Qing army ahead. The shooting of a single branch or a dozen muskets was naturally less than that of more than two hundred muskets at one volley. In addition, it was night and the sight was limited, so the gun soldiers were loading very slowly. Not only should they beware of the Qing army's arrow branches, but they also had to be careful of the excessive loading of the muskets, which caused the muskets to explode and hurt themselves.

Zhao Ziqiang was observing the battle situation at any time. While Brigade A supported it, Brigade B had completed the queue adjustment. Lu Guangzu suggested that Brigade B be transferred to encircle the Qing cavalry and use the advantage of military strength to kill the Qing cavalry, but Zhao Ziqiang did not dare to do this, because the Qing army's large infantry had already driven from Yumengshan. If Brigade B was also transferred to besiege the Qing cavalry, then once the Qing infantry came up, the fifth town would not even have a basic defense line.

"Go and tell Li Guoan that no matter how many people die, he will have to hold back!"
Chapter completed!