The Mongolian leaders were also shocked. They had left several thousand people in Dongjiakou. How could Qi Jiguang know that their main force had moved here? Could it be that he had opened his eyes?
"Taiji, what should we do? Should we move on?" everyone asked in trembling voices.
"What the hell is this about moving the battle..." Dong Huli snorted calmly, "I understand. This is a trick to confuse the enemy! Qi Jiguang is not here at all, nor is he in Dongjiakou. He just asked his men to pretend to be him to scare us..."
"Oh, so that's it, it's really cunning..." The Mongolian leaders suddenly realized and thought this explanation was very reasonable. They couldn't help but say thankfully: "Fortunately, Taiji was here to see through his tricks!"
In fact, Dong Huli himself did not believe this. How could the flags of the three armies be a joke? The Ming army was not a three-year-old child. What was the point of raising a flag when there was no commander? Moreover, once the flag was seized, the Ming army in Jizhen would immediately lose all their fighting spirit and would only be defeated.
But now he had no choice. As the saying goes, the first push is enough to weaken the second and finally exhaust the third. He was almost out of energy for another push, so he had no choice but to attack.
And it is estimated that even if he moved to Qinglongkou or somewhere else, he would still encounter Qi Jiguang's flag.
But this time the battle was serious and the situation was immediately different.
Chang Tu waved his scimitar, drove away the Mongols all over the mountains, and rushed towards the Shijiayu defense line with strange shouts.
But there was a funnel-shaped structure in front of Shijiayu. Even if only 10,000 men were deployed, they would not be able to deploy their troops under the fortress.
So Dong Huli ordered Subahai and Chaohua to lead 4,000 men each to climb up the two sides of the mountain and attack the Ming army's side walls and enemy towers on the mountain at the same time. Once they captured the fortress, they could shoot arrows at it from a high position, wouldn't that be great?
The battle broke out in the fortress and on both wings. The Ming army in the front fortress had muskets, crossbows, rolling stones and wooden logs, and relied on the two-meter-high city walls and were not afraid of the Mongolian attacks at all.
On the contrary, the fighting situation on both sides of the mountain was very tense. The side wall was only ten feet high, unable to effectively block the Mongolian arrows; and the side wall was only two meters wide, unable to deploy too many troops or place artillery, so the defenders could only adopt the tactic of adding fuel to the fire.
Therefore, every time the Mongols invaded, they broke through the border wall and never really broke through the Ming army's fortress.
They held up simple wooden shields, resisted the arrows from the defenders on the side wall, rushed to the side wall, threw the sandbags on their shoulders between the outer wall and the side wall, then stepped aside, took the bows and arrows from their backs and shot at the top of the wall, covering their fellow tribesmen who were throwing sandbags behind them.
Last year, the Mongols suffered a great loss facing these two walls. After they climbed over the retaining wall, they found that the ground was full of thorns and they could not stand at all. They wanted to retreat but could not, and could only allow the Ming army on the side wall to shoot them.
So this time, Dong Huli asked everyone to prepare cloth bags, fill them with soil and carry them to the bottom of the retaining wall before going into battle. Just like ants moving house, they kept piling up the soil into a mountain.
The Ming troops on the two sides of the wall could not let them succeed, so they hid behind the battlements and shot at the Mongols with bows and guns. There were so many heads under the wall that they didn't need to aim, and could even shoot through two with one shot.
However, the Mongolian bows and arrows were not to be trifled with. At such a close distance, they were extremely accurate. They could even shoot arrows into the crenels and kill the Ming soldiers on the side walls. From time to time, Ming soldiers screamed and fell off the side walls...
The number of Ming troops on the side walls and enemy towers was limited, and despite their brave efforts, they were still unable to stop the Mongols. An hour later, the enemy built a small hill outside the left side wall, which not only completely submerged the protective wall, but also left the top of the hill only a meter away from the side wall.
Dong Huli, who had been closely observing the battlefield situation, was very excited when he saw this. He immediately ordered the horn to be blown again and replaced with active forces to intensify the three-sided attack. He wanted to contain the Ming army in the middle and right wing so that they could not rescue the left wing!
Seeing the Mongols coming in like a tide again, Qi Jiguang, who was under his command, did not move at all. His generals were experienced in many battles, and the soldiers they led were well-trained, so there was no need for him, the commander-in-chief, to overstep his authority and give orders.
The guerrilla who guarded Shijiayu was called Tong Ziji. He was the younger brother of Qi Jiguang's beloved general Tong Ziming who died in battle, and the older brother of Director Tong of the Tamra Garrison. At the beginning, the three brothers all joined the Qi Family Army, killed countless enemies and made outstanding military achievements. The eldest brother Tong Ziming even grew up to be a general who could stand on his own.
In the 43rd year of the Jiajing reign, Tong Ziming, under the order of Qi Jiguang, returned to Yiwu to recruit volunteers to rescue Xianyou. He personally led the vanguard, but was betrayed by a traitor and ambushed by bandits in Xianyou. Tong Ziming fought bravely, braved the rain of arrows and stones, and although he killed the leader of the Japanese pirates, he could not break out of the encirclement. He died in the Tiger Roaring Pond after a long battle. Later, the court posthumously awarded him the title of Jinwu Doctor.
After the victory against the Japanese invaders, Qi Jiguang was ordered to go north. The remaining two brothers thought that going north would be dangerous and the eldest brother was gone, so they couldn't all go. So the second brother left the younger brother in Yiwu to take care of his mother and followed the commander to Beijing.
However, Tong Zigong had nothing to do after returning home, so he could not help but join the security team of Jiangnan Group... God has mercy on him, at that time he really thought he was just going to be a security guard. This is also the reason why Wang Rulong of Jinke has always arranged for him to be responsible for the training of newcomers and never let him go to the battlefield.
~~
Back to Tong Ziji, he was actually in charge of training new soldiers in Jizhen, but this battle could not afford to fail, so Qi Jiguang replaced the important passes on the front line with his old subordinates. This gave him a chance to show his face.
The Marshal was watching behind him, so of course he couldn't let him down. He calmly waved the command flag in his hand, and the charioteers hiding in the two hollow enemy towers on the right side of the fortress pushed the wheelbarrows onto the enemy towers.
The carts were loaded with wooden boxes. Three charioteers took care of each cart. After parking it, they opened the front guard, revealing dense clusters of arrows. There were as many as 32 arrows in each box!
The Tatars were still excitedly rushing towards the border wall, unaware of the approaching danger.
Fifty steps, twenty steps, ten steps...
"Shoot!" The general flags on the two enemy towers shouted the order at the same time, and the chariot soldiers lit the fuse behind the chariot.
When the frontmost Tatars began to climb the hill piled with sandbags and corpses of both sides, the first long arrow, with a long tail of flame, shot into the enemy camp with a whistling sound!
Immediately, he shot through three Mongolian soldiers like a string of candied haws...
Then there was a series of whizzing sounds, and the second, third... countless long arrows with tail flames were shot down from the wooden cabinets.
Each arrow was four feet and two inches long, with a four-inch gunpowder tube underneath. Under the thrust of gunpowder, it could be shot more than three hundred steps away, with enough force to penetrate leather.
The enemy tower was less than a hundred steps away from the enemy, and they were shooting from a high position. Each arrow could penetrate two or three enemies! They even shot directly through their simple wooden shields, knocking them to the ground with their shields.
Fierce arrows were fired in a crossfire, pouring densely on the heads of the Tartars. Especially the enemy soldiers who rushed up the hill, all of them were shot like hedgehogs!
Suddenly, there was an empty area in front of the border wall. The Tartars' arrogance was stifled. They were frightened by the terrifying rain of arrows and stopped shouting and killing.
Dong Huli watched helplessly as a space in front of the side wall was left empty. He had dealt with the Ming army for a long time and knew that this thing was called "a swarm of bees". The Ming army now relied more and more on firearms, but they all had great flaws. For example, although this thing fired fiercely, it did not last long. Moreover, it was too troublesome to reload, and it was useless after firing once.
"Don't panic!" he shouted quickly. "They can only shoot once, hold on!"
The Tartars felt relieved and rushed forward again, shouting.
As a result, he was hit by a second volley of fire...
Although Qi Jiguang did not understand quantitative management, he was a natural Virgo. He made precise calculations on everything from the amount of powder in the bird gun to the number of "swarms" to be fired.
He found that in the case of crossfire, only four "swarms" on each side were needed to block the enemy's attack, and any more would be a sheer waste.
Each enemy tower can deploy eight vehicles on the front side...
"Don't be afraid, they won't have any more!" Dong Huli, who was slapped in the face, roared angrily: "This must be the leftovers from the previous round!"
"Ahhh..." The bloody battlefield like a Shura field has made the Mongols forget their fear. They have lost the ability to think and all they can do is charge forward.
"Swoosh, swoosh, swoosh..." The third wave of "swarm" shooting arrived as expected.
It turned out that after the first round of shooting, the soldiers immediately pushed the four rocket cars that had been fired to the other side of the enemy platform. The four cars that were waiting there took their place...
If eight vehicles are parked on half of the enemy station, then the entire station will naturally have sixteen vehicles...
"Swish, swish, swish..." The fourth wave of attack was again repelled by the "swarm".
The Tartars then began to feel afraid, and those in front began to hesitate to move forward.
"Attack, keep attacking! Otherwise they will reload! Then all our lives will be in vain!" Looking at the tragic scene of corpses strewn all over the ground under the side wall, Dong Huli's eyes were bloodshot. He knew that if he retreated at this time, all his efforts would be wasted. He roared at the top of his lungs:
"Anyone who dares to retreat will be killed without mercy! I don't believe how many vehicles they have in a swarm!"
His personal soldiers shot arrows at the rear of the team, forcing the Mongolian soldiers to continue their attack.
However, by this time, the Ming army had pushed down the first four rocket carts and replaced them with four new ones.
What is a management genius? It means that others can only shoot once and forget about it, but he can shoot and shoot continuously through clever organization!
As a result, they fired eight rounds in total, destroying all 32 rocket vehicles in the enemy's position before they stopped their swarm shooting.
A total of more than 2,000 four-foot-long arrows were fired, killing and wounding nearly 2,000 Mongolian soldiers...
Such tragic sacrifices would have caused the Mongolians to collapse in previous years. But this year, if they could not rob anything, they would die if they returned. It was only with this mentality that they could continue to fight.
This is also the reason why Qi Jiguang was reluctant to fight this year. As the saying goes, a trapped beast will still fight. The Tartars are the most dangerous at this time. If they wait another year, they will kneel outside the Great Wall and surrender...