Chapter 868: What? The Qing Is Gone! X

With these cannons present, the artillery Yue Le relied on most would sooner or later be wiped out, and the Qing army could not fall back and hold their camp either. Once they lost the field battle, they would not even have a chance to catch their breath before they had to start fleeing.

Considering that the whole Northern Metropolitan Area was now in chaos, with forts and ramparts everywhere, trying to run back to Beijing empty-handed would not be so easy.

Therefore Zhandai's bayara troops had to knock out the Ming army's 12-pounder cannon position, and they had to do it as quickly as possible.

Because Yue Le could not hold out for much longer...

But Zhandai found that he could not launch an attack right away, because the bayara "lord soldiers" under his command were all unwilling to take off their cotton armor and mail armor, and even more unwilling to throw away their eight-li bows and two pouches of arrows... Those were all good things bought at great expense — how could they suddenly be useless?

Besides, the battlefield was so dangerous that even two layers of armor did not feel safe enough — how could they go onto the battlefield stripped bare? Was that not just going to their deaths?

Although they were all brave warriors, brave warriors were also afraid of death!

Zhandai had risen from being one of Dorgon's personal guards, and Dodo had put him in command of his own bayara troops only to win over Dorgon's old followers. So he was a "parachuted-in" company officer with no real roots in the unit, and he could not easily use force, so he had no choice but to patiently persuade them.

"This is the Imperial Uncle's order — how could it be wrong?

Besides, how much does one suit of cotton armor plus one suit of mail weigh? At least seventy jin, right? Add two pouches of arrows and an eight-li bow, plus a bit of miscellaneous gear, and it is more than eighty jin... And every one of you is a big fellow, so in the end the weight pressing on the horse's back is at least two hundred-plus jin!

How much do your horses weigh? Carrying that much, can they still charge? Besides, the southern barbarians' infantry do not even use bows and arrows anymore — it is all firearms, and very powerful ones at that. Even shield carts may not withstand them. What use are the cotton armor and mail on our bodies?

Any true Manchu brave — take off your cotton armor and mail for me, all of you carry long spears, and follow me to charge the enemy line!"

As Zhandai spoke, he called over his own booi bondservants to help him take off the two layers of heavy armor that together weighed no less than eighty jin. As for the eight-li bow and two pouches of arrows, he did not mention them again.

What the Manchu mounted armored soldiers prided themselves on was mounted archery and close combat. Now that the armor was gone, they naturally did not dare engage in close combat lightly, and if they threw away their bows too, what would be left? Could they really rely on a single long spear to break through the southern army's infantry formation? Even he himself felt that was unreliable!

Seeing Zhandai take the lead, and knowing that this was Dodo's order, the mounted armored soldiers below could only reluctantly begin removing their armor. However, most of the mounted armored soldiers still kept their mail on... With forty extra jin of wrought iron protecting the body, at least they would feel a bit more secure!

While Zhandai was busy persuading his mounted armored soldiers to remove their armor, near Desheng Marsh, two cavalry forces had already formed up face to face and were preparing to charge each other.

One side of these two cavalry forces was three thousand Manchu mounted armored soldiers jointly commanded by Aisin Gioro Liuyong and Mulima... They had not thrown away their seventy or eighty jin of armor; every man was fully equipped.

The other side was the "Black Lancers" commanded by Li Yuanyin, fewer than four thousand strong. They were much "lighter," with only iron helmets and a breastplate protecting their vital points.

Although both sides intended to charge the enemy line, neither side was proper shock cavalry, so neither could even form a large cavalry square.

Li Yuanyin's men formed thirty-two "cavalry groups" by company — truly group after group — arrayed in two lines, front and rear, with sixteen groups in each line.

Each group had fewer than thirty lancers riding in front to lead, and the cavalry following behind each carried a saber in hand — according to the Ming army's Black Lance Mule Soldiers drill manual, during a massed charge, firing guns and shooting arrows was forbidden! Horse archers and mounted musketeers all had to carry sabers and follow behind the lancers in the charge.

On Liuyong and Mulima's side, they formed twelve cavalry groups by niru, also group after group, making up a single line in total.

The Qing cavalry also had lancers leading, but behind the lancers were all horse archers, every man with bow and arrows in hand.

Liuyong and Mulima's plan was to use the lancers to scatter the Ming cavalry groups, then have the horse archers close in and shoot at short range.

The attack horns on both sides sounded almost at the same time. The Qing army's twelve horse groups and the Ming army's sixteen front-line horse groups began advancing almost simultaneously.

The warhorses on both sides were much the same, and both had been conserving their strength for a while. Now whether they could charge depended on how heavy the riders they carried were. The Ming cavalry carried lighter loads, so their charge was faster and their impact force greater.

The Qing side was not entirely without advantages. Their advantage was larger groups — roughly two hundred fifty riders per group, twice the size of the Ming cavalry groups. But in the course of launching the charge, the Qing cavalry groups split apart: lancers in one group, horse archers in another. The lancers charged hard in front, while the horse archers reined in their horses and followed behind. These horse archers probably intended to close in and shoot at short range after the lancers in front scattered the enemy.

The most formidable thing about Manchu mounted archery was shooting at close range. The mounted armored soldiers would often charge to within ten paces of the enemy and loose their arrows. At that distance, you did not need Manchu braves — even the Ming army's beggar soldiers could hit one hundred percent of the time.

But once these bow-carrying cavalry fell behind, the remaining lancers were few in number — only forty or fifty riders per group. Facing over a hundred Ming cavalry, they could not form any numerical advantage at all.

With fewer numbers and slower speed, what charge was there left to make? After the collision, nearly all the Qing lancer groups were "swallowed up" by the opposing Ming cavalry groups. The Manchu braves were either knocked down by the enemy's long spears or cut by sabers, and some simply suffered "horse-against-horse" traffic accidents, falling from their horses together with their opponents.

There were also some luckier ones who charged through intact, but they should not have celebrated too early — the Ming cavalry's rear line came charging right after... This time it was over a hundred riders bullying at most ten or twenty, and those ten or twenty had also lost their original speed!

Seeing their charging mounted armored soldiers broken, the bow-carrying mounted armored soldiers behind spread out their formation, wanting to close in and shoot. But the Ming cavalry, having completed one round of charging, did not stop to fight hand-to-hand with the Qing mounted armored soldiers they had scattered. Instead they kept spurring their horses forward and passed through the scattered Qing horse archers. Before these Qing horse archers could react, the Ming rear-line cavalry groups came charging hard at them...

"Manchu braves, follow me and charge!"

Zhandai shouted loudly, brandished his cavalry lance, pointed toward the place ahead where the gunsmoke was thickest, and then galloped out in front, charging straight ahead.

He had already found the Ming army's Hongyi cannon position on this chaotic, smoke-filled battlefield! These Hongyi cannons were still firing without pause, bombarding Yue Le's artillery position to support the counterattacks of Gao Jie's and Qin Mingtao's forces.

Yue Le truly had it hard. Relying on the more than ten thousand infantry he had, already exhausted from fighting, he stubbornly withstood the repeated assaults of Gao Jie and Qin Mingtao, beating back the enemy three times in succession — his method was to concentrate artillery fire to blast apart the Ming square formations, then send out saber-and-shield troops to advance through the battlefield smoke and fight hand-to-hand!

Because the Ming infantry had eliminated the saber-and-shield soldier as a close-combat troop type, they were at a clear disadvantage in close-range melee. Moreover, they had no shock cavalry that could settle the battle in one blow on the battlefield, which was why they were dragged into hand-to-hand combat time and again by the scattered Qing saber-and-shield troops.

But the Ming army's nine 12-pounder cannons kept "calling the roll" on Yue Le's artillery position, and had already knocked out more than a dozen 3-pounder cannons in succession.

As Yue Le's firepower grew weaker and weaker, the collapse of the Qing infantry was imminent.

And it was at this moment that Zhandai, using the cover of the smoke, suddenly charged to the front edge of the Ming army's 12-pounder cannon position!