Chapter 266 All personnel are in place!

Tianheng Island, Dragon King Temple.

There are many buildings on Tianheng Island, and the only one that is the most complete is this Dragon King Temple. Because the Dragon King Temple is right by the sea and has no military value. Neither the Tatars defending Tianheng Island nor the officers and soldiers attacking Tianheng Island need to take action against the Dragon King Temple. After the guards came to the island, the Dragon King Temple became the temporary command center of the guards.

Zhang Zhun stood at the door of the Dragon King Temple, holding up a thousand-mile mirror and looking at the entire Tianheng Island.

Tianheng Island is flat, small in the middle and large at both ends. The west side is much larger than the east side. The Dragon King Temple is just in the middle, dividing the entire Tianheng Island into two. The west side of the Dragon King Temple is relatively flat. Walking along the way, it is where the Tianheng Stele Forest is located. On the east side of the Dragon King Temple is a dense forest called the Magpie Forest. The south side of the Magpie Forest is the highest point of the entire Tianheng Island: Laoxian Cave and the Divine Turtle Stone.

The battle between the officers and soldiers and the Tartars should look quite tragic. Through the Qianli Mile Mile, Zhang Zhun could clearly see that the Tian Heng Stele Forest was basically destroyed by the war. It might be that the officers and soldiers used cannons here. In such a flat area, they actually wanted to use cannons. I really don’t know what the officers and soldiers thought. The west side of the magpie forest was also in a mess. A large number of trees were blown off by artillery fire, and the trunks, branches and leaves were crisscrossed together, seriously blocking the way forward.

The ground was even more in a mess. Although the bodies of the officers and soldiers who died in the battle had been carried away, the ground was still covered with blood. Many grasslands were covered with solidified blood. When they stepped on it, it seemed like they were stepping on a swamp. Broken weapons could be seen everywhere, including waist knives, spears, muskets, and more were felt hats of officers and soldiers. Of course, the most were the arrowheads shot by the Tartars. Most of the arrowheads were stained with dark red blood, which was obviously pulled out of the human body.

From time to time, there were also fragments of incomplete corpses that were accidentally turned out. When the officers and soldiers retreated, they took away large corpses, and as for the fragments of these limbs, they naturally didn't want them. The soldiers of the guards searched slowly and moved forward from time to time, and from time to time, they always had unexpected discoveries. The air was filled with a strong smell of blood, and even if the sea breeze was constantly blowing outside, they could not blow away these smells of blood.

In fact, in some traps, there were also the bodies of the dead soldiers, and there was no time to clean them. The most common traps set up by the Tatars were wooden thorns. Below the traps, there were sharpened wood. As long as someone accidentally fell off the above, they would be pierced by the wooden thorns below and died on the spot. Because the bodies of these soldiers were firmly stabbed by wooden thorns, the companions behind them were lazy and simply ignored them. Some kind-hearted people would use soil to land the trap, which would be considered as burying the deceased on the spot.

Some unlucky officers and soldiers were accidentally pulled upside down into the air by ropes from the tree, and were shot to death by arrows that followed. The bodies of such officers and soldiers were not taken away. Because it was really difficult to put them down. To rescue them, they had to climb up the trees to cut off the ropes. This was a very dangerous action. Because no one knew whether the arrows of the Tartars would suddenly fly over and send themselves to hell.

Of course, Zhang Zhun did not want to see such a situation. No matter what position these officers and soldiers stand, whether they are active in fighting, or whether they have qualified combat skills, they should be treated by martyrs if they sacrificed their lives in the battle with the Tartars. What Song Degang and his personal soldiers did was to carry the corpses specifically. Zhang Zhun asked them to clean up the bodies of their companions as much as possible, concentrate on burial, and leave marks.

“There are no idle people on Tianheng Island.”

"Either go ahead and kill the Tartars; or clean up the battlefield!"

Zhang Zhun gave Song Degang two choices.

Of course, Song Degang chose the latter.

He really didn't have the courage to face the Tartars. In the previous battle, his subordinates had suffered too much losses and could no longer withstand the tossing. Therefore, he could only arrange his own personal soldiers to be responsible for cleaning up the bodies. As a result, intermittently, Song Degang's personal soldiers actually cleaned up more than 30 remaining bodies. It can be seen how big the losses of the officers and soldiers were. In the rough statistics, in the two days of battle, the officers and soldiers left at least five or six hundred corpses on Tianheng Island. In addition, the injuries were injured, and the losses may be thousands.

However, the Tatars on Tianheng Island had combat effectiveness at most only two or three hundred. It was indeed a bit unimaginable that the officers and soldiers of 6,000 people lost so many people in the face of the Tartars of two or three hundred. Tianheng Island was not Liaodong, the Tartars had no reinforcements, and they did not have any war horses. The Tatars' best cavalry and shooting had no chance to perform at all. Even so, they successfully damaged the Ming army. When they thought of this problem, Zhang Zhun could only sigh that it was not that the Tartars were too strong, but that the Ming army itself was too bad. They were so bad that they didn't know what words to describe it.

Of course, Song Degang has enough reason to complain.

In fact, in this battle, the officers and soldiers did dispatch elite troops. Whether it was Song Degang, Du Shengyuan, or Liu Zeqing, they all brought the most elite troops under their command. Each general's private soldiers, that is, their servants, all went into battle. However, their elite troops could not defeat the Tartars, but instead paid a heavy price.

For example, Song Degang originally had 300 personal soldiers, also known as servants, all of them armed private troops with the money he deducted from other officers and soldiers. He, a guerrilla general, was born by these 300 servants. Without these servants, he was nothing. As a result, in the battle of Tian Hengdao, his personal soldiers lost half of them, which made the Dengzhou guerrilla general heartbroken.

"Sir, all the staff of the Second Association have been in place!"

Hao Linyong came up to report.

"Sir, all the staff of the Third Association have been in place!"

Yang Zixuan came up to report.

"Sir, all the personnel of the First Sailors' Operations Detachment have been in place!"

Fang He came to report.

"Sir, all the personnel of the Second Sailor Operations Detachment have been in place!"

Liu Dong came up to report.

"You all come here, I have something to say."

Zhang Zhun nodded.

All four of them listened quietly.

Song Degang also stood beside him and raised his ears.

Zhang Zhun did not signal him to leave, indicating that the next thing to be arranged was not a military secret. He was indeed interested in listening to what Zhang Zhun would say before the battle started, and whether he would make any tempting reward promises. Song Degang has always been very curious about why Zhang Zhun had the ability to chase the Tartars into a scattered head. This was simply unimaginable. On the contrary, he was used to it. As long as dozens of Tartars could chase hundreds of Ming troops into a scattered head.

On the surface, the soldiers of the escort team are nothing special, they are more disciplined, faster in movements, and higher morale. As for equipment, Song Degang didn't see anything. The officers of the escort team were nothing special, without any majesty. When they walked with the soldiers, they could basically not tell. The escort team had muskets, and officers and soldiers also had muskets. There was only one kind of muskets of the escort team, but there were several types of muskets of the officers and soldiers. The most used ones were three-eyed guns, thunder guns, flying bird guns, etc.

Compared with the officers and soldiers, Zhang Zhun's guards did not even have the simplest armor. Everyone was wearing only a gray military uniform with some signs that outsiders could not understand, which was inappropriate. Each soldier's equipment, except for a musket, an ammunition bag, a gourd for drinking water, and a bayonet, had nothing else. Well, every officer, or a capable soldier, had a dagger. They defeated the Tartars with such equipment? Song Degang really couldn't believe it.

Zhang Zhun really didn't mind Song Degang standing beside him. He said slowly: "You have already known the previous information of the enemy. The strongholds that the Tartars rely on are Laoxian Cave, and they also control the area of ​​the Divine Turtle Stone. These two places are the last strongholds of the Tartars, especially Laoxian Cave. Their archers went forward to the Magpie Forest and hid in the woods, and killed us as much as possible. For the time being, there are so many Tartar archers hidden in the Magpie Forest, but we must clear them all to move forward smoothly."

"The Tartars' strategy is very clear, which is to restrain our troops in the Magpie Forest, cause casualties as much as possible, and then force us to retreat. Because, according to the experience of the Tatars, as long as the Ming army suffers more than 10% of the casualties, their morale will fall to the bottom and have to retreat. We must see that the Tartars' archers lurking in the woods, and they do have great advantages. Most of the Tartars are excellent hunters, and the forest is their home. The current Magpie Forest is the hometown of the Tartars."
Chapter completed!