NCCnovel Chapter 579 The Tartars Ran Away
Chapter 579 The Tartars Ran Away
The fierce battle line was littered with corpses. The wounded, still alive, howled and struggled. At the position where the Bayara concentrated their forces for the assault, the infantry formation had been breached. Some soldiers on both sides of the gap tried frantically to turn their guns around, but the chaotic battle rendered the combined power of rifles and bayonets ineffective. The Later Jin sent a group of Bayara to press the nearest soldiers, forcing them into a tight huddle before hacking them to pieces. The central formation was on the verge of collapse in the blink of an eye.
Misfortunes never come singly. Just as the center of the formation was about to be breached, the troops sent out by the Later Jin on both flanks also began to make contact with the soldiers. The entire First Regiment's position was in dire straits, and a sense of anxiety gradually spread among the soldiers. Even their stabbing movements became somewhat distorted.
The Later Jin's Bayara and soldiers seemed to see a glimmer of hope for victory, and they swung their weapons with even greater vigor, hacking and slashing at their opponents.
Just when the Later Jin army thought they could win the battle in one fell swoop, a rousing bugle call suddenly rang out from the opposite side. It was the Qionghai Army's charge bugle. Accompanied by deafening battle shouts, countless soldiers appeared from the rear, bypassing the exhausted soldiers of the First Regiment, and charged towards Bayara and the armored soldiers with bayonets raised, howling.
Shi Ying looked at Wei Lianheng with surprise and delight: "Commander Xu, you've come to help your brother?"
Xu Yifan patted him hard on the shoulder and encouraged him, "Brother Shi Ying, you did a great job! Now let's all go together and crush the Tartars!"
"Alright, let the Tartars see the strength of our First and Second Regiments."
The Later Jin army, having already expended considerable resources under artillery and gunfire, still held a certain advantage against the First Regiment. They had caught their opponents off guard by employing close-quarters combat with melee weapons, and with flank attacks, they had gained the upper hand. However, with the arrival of the Second Regiment, their numerical advantage and hard-won gains vanished. What had been a relentless advance now turned into a series of retreats.
Seeing the forces of both sides almost evenly matched, Abatai sighed to the heavens. He had originally bet that the Ming army would not dare to abandon their square formations to reinforce them, hoping to concentrate his forces to swallow the first square formation. However, the enemy was now playing by their own rules, and half of his cavalry, which had been able to intimidate them, had been destroyed in the exchange of fire. The enemy's weakness was no longer a weakness, and there was no hope of winning this battle.
Those around him advised, "Your Highness, let the remaining cavalry mount their horses and send them out to raid their central army!" The flags fluttering at the location where Liu Ye and his men were were easily identifiable as the location of the central army, with a flag bearing the character "Qiong" and another bearing the character "Liu."
Abatai glanced at the thousands of soldiers surrounding the "Liu" banner. These were the bodyguards responsible for protecting Liu Ye and the special forces as reserves, totaling nearly three thousand men. Clearly, these soldiers surrounding their commander were elite troops similar to the Bayara, not a rabble that would crumble at the first charge of cavalry. He then looked into the distance; the third formation seemed to be the same force that had given him so much trouble at the stone fortress outside Dengzhou. Now, this force was also changing formation, seemingly abandoning its square formation to join the battle.
He sighed. He had already exhausted all his strength against just one square of troops, and two squares were already too much for him. Add to that the troops that had once guarded the stone fortress, how could they possibly win this battle? He shook his head helplessly: "The enemy's central army is protected by several thousand elite troops. Our cavalry is exhausted after their fierce fighting. Even if we rush over, we may not be able to take them down. We might even be caught in a pincer attack by the distant troops, leaving us in a dilemma."
"Your Highness, what should we do? The enemy has blocked our route north; we can't get back without fighting!"
Abatai closed his eyes, his mind in turmoil. Seeing this, those around him dared not disturb him.
A moment later, he opened his eyes and said painfully, "Sound the retreat, abandon the supplies and people, detour through Changle County, then take the route through Guangrao County, return from Jinan Prefecture along the original road, and head north to Shunyi."
His attendants were shocked: "Abandon the supplies and the people? Your Highness, please reconsider! Without these, we will not only have entered the pass in vain, but so many of our people will have died for nothing..."
Abatai shouted, "I know you are unwilling, and I am unwilling too! But what can we do? What is the point of continuing this battle? Are we all going to die here for these supplies and soldiers?"
After these words were spoken, no one dared to utter another word.
“There’s a saying among the Han people, ‘A brave man cuts off his own wrist,’ which refers to how, in ancient times, when bitten by a venomous snake, people would immediately cut off their hand to prevent the venom from spreading throughout their body. We are now like people whose wrists have been bitten by a venomous snake. If we hesitate any longer, we’ll be entangled and won’t be able to leave.” Abatai said helplessly, “Go and give the order to sound the retreat.”
As the gong sounded, the Later Jin soldiers and Bayara, who had been locked in fierce fighting, breathed a sigh of relief and withdrew from the battle, retreating like a receding tide.
The First Regiment suffered heavy casualties, and Shi Ying was already in a killing frenzy. He was about to order the bugle to sound the charge and the whole army to pursue when Xu Yifan stopped him.
"Quartz, never pursue a desperate enemy; it is a grave mistake to venture too far into enemy territory alone."
Shi Ying hesitated for a moment, then, thinking that his own troops also needed rest, he could only angrily sheath his command sword, thinking, "These Tartars got off easy."
After withdrawing from the battle, the Later Jin army acted swiftly, untying the horses pulling the supply wagons, throwing down all the crates, and leading out the horses to temporarily serve as mounts, replenishing the warhorses lost in the battle. Then, the Niru Zhangjing, Bayara, armored soldiers, and Yu Ding, among others, all mounted their horses, turned around, bypassed the official road guarded by the Qionghai Army, and galloped southwest. The bondservants who were not qualified to ride horses took off running as fast as they could, chasing after them along the dust trails of hooves.
In less than a quarter of an hour, the Later Jin army had fled completely, leaving behind only baggage scattered all over the ground and civilians tied together in a long string of gourds.
Chinese army.
Liang Xiaoming asked in surprise, "The Tartars...are they trying to escape?"
Liu Ye's face was grim: "It seems they're going to abandon the shortest route to Changyi and take a detour to avoid us. Abatai is quite a character, making a tough decision to abandon so many spoils and people."
Seeing that his expression was not right, Liang Xiaoming quickly comforted him, "We won a great victory, more than 10,000 Tartars! They ran away, so what? We'll just beat them up again when we see them again."
Liu Ye said unwillingly, "Damn it, we clearly won the battle, but they ran away so easily. It feels like we lost. Not having a large-scale cavalry is such a disadvantage. Infantry will never have the initiative on the battlefield against cavalry. We are like a girl. The Tartars can do whatever they want to us, and if they can't, they can just run away. It's really frustrating."
Looking at the dust kicked up by the fleeing Later Jin army in the southwest, he considered for a moment and then blurted out, "Let's keep chasing!"