Chaos of the Three Kingdoms Summons

Chapter 2273 Marine Corps, Heavy Armored Iron Army

Although there seem to be tens of thousands of soldiers in Jiangxia City, most of them are injured, and only a small number of them are actually intact.

Moreover, after years of fighting, the exhausted soldiers had already become tense and could easily break.

The city walls and gates of Jiangxia have been repaired more than once in the past six months. In order to protect the city gates, Xu Da even arranged several chariots filled with stones to block the city gates directly.

But unexpectedly, the city gate was still knocked open.

Or to be more precise, it was directly taken down.

After half a year of collisions, the junction between the city gate and the city wall had been repaired several times, but this time it still could not withstand the continuous heavy blows, and most of the door was directly removed.

More and more Jin soldiers continued to climb up the ladders, and the battle situation in Jiangxia was developing in the most unfavorable direction.

"Lu Er, Jiao Benzhong, Zhang Xiantu, Yao Zilin, you all go together. You must guard the city gate and drive the enemy out!" Xu Da sent out four god-level generals in one breath.

If the city gate is not recaptured as soon as possible, more and more enemy troops will rush into the city. Once the situation deteriorates to a certain extent, it will be impossible to save the situation. Therefore, no matter how high the price is, we must recapture the city gate. Only by achieving this goal can we survive today.

"Send a message to Zheng Zhilong and Zheng Chenggong, father and son, to have them guard the water gates strictly and lead the Iron Man Army to guard our army's last retreat route!"

Today, the joint navy controls the Yangtze River waterway and has multiple strongholds on both sides of the Yangtze River. Jiangxia is naturally one of the most important strongholds.

Although the main forces of the Allied Navy were on the Yangtze River, looking for an opportunity to have a decisive battle with Qi Jiguang, there were still 8,000 navy soldiers left behind in the Jiangxia Navy Camp. The generals in charge of staying behind were Zheng Zhilong and his son Zheng Chenggong. These two father and son commanded the navy's strongest marine corps, the Iron Man Army!

This troop was a marine corps specially established by the Yangzhou Navy to make up for their weakness in land warfare. It was established with the purpose of vigorously developing and building the strength of the Yangzhou Navy, thereby achieving the goal of making the best use of their strengths and avoiding their weaknesses.

During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, after the Eight Banners crossed the Yangtze River, why was Zheng Chenggong's army, which was originally a pirate, able to repeatedly succeed in the face of the invincible Eight Banners Army? This is because Zheng Chenggong trained an elite force that not only defeated the arrogant Manchurian Eight Banners, but also defeated the Dutch colonists and recovered Taiwan.

This force is the "Iron Man Army".

The soldiers of this unit wore heavy armor, which was rare in that era, and were equipped with rattan shields. They held large and sharp sabers. They were all strong and well-disciplined.

The historical records state: "The soldiers rushed forward on horseback, but the Zheng soldiers stood firm in their battle formations. They all covered themselves with round shields, which looked like a wall. The soldiers retreated three times and advanced three times. The Zheng battle formation was like a mountain. The sword was very sharp, and it could cut the armor and horses in two with one blow. It was probably because when the sword was forged, hundreds of blacksmiths took turns to beat it to make this one sword; so it was very sharp."

He also said: "After charging down for a long time, the Zheng soldiers did not move. They were all wearing iron armor and iron-faced helmets, with only their feet exposed. They used long swords to cut the cavalry, which was unstoppable. If you shot their feet, they would pull out the arrows and fight again; the army was defeated."

The application of heavy infantry has a lot to do with the times. Starting from the Northern and Southern Dynasties, with the emergence of heavy cavalry such as "Armored Cavalry", it was difficult for a simple light infantry phalanx to effectively resist the impact of the enemy.

In order to deal with heavy cavalry, the Tang Dynasty formed the "Mo Dao soldiers" and the Song Dynasty formed the "Infantry Armor" troops. The Mo Dao is a long-handled, wide-bladed saber. The elite soldiers in the Tang army were able to use the Mo Dao. According to historical records, there was a Tang army that used the Mo Dao to chop a horse in half, showing its amazing power.

The Bu Ren Jia was a heavy-armored infantry unit, formed at the time to counter the heavy cavalry of the Jurchens and Mongols. The Bu Ren Jia consisted of 1825 armor plates, weighing 70 kilograms, and had excellent defensive capabilities. However, the Bu Ren Jia unit was too heavy, which slowed down the soldiers' movements and was not conducive to encircling and annihilating the enemy.

China's heavy infantry reached its peak during the Southern Song Dynasty, but with the fall of the Jurchen Jin Dynasty and the rise of the Mongolian cavalry, the heavy infantry gradually became unable to adapt to the development of the times.

The Mongolian cavalry was good at riding and shooting, and was mobile and flexible. The infantry and armored troops were originally inconvenient to move, and could only passively take the beating when facing the erratic Mongolian cavalry.

After the establishment of the Yuan Dynasty, emphasis was placed on the development of cavalry, and heavy armored infantry did not make any further progress.

By the Ming Dynasty, most cavalry units no longer pursued heavy armor, and instead used armor made of lighter but stronger materials such as cotton armor. The cavalry also adopted "medium armor", taking into account both mobility and defense. The Ming Dynasty, Mongolia, and the Qing Dynasty did not form large-scale "armored cavalry" troops like those in the Northern and Southern Dynasties and the Sui and Tang Dynasties.

Under this situation, heavy infantry was gradually abandoned.

However, during his long war with the Qing Dynasty, Zheng Chenggong discovered that the Eight Banners Army was well-armored. To deal with this situation, he had to form an army with better equipment than the Eight Banners Army. This was the background for the birth of the "Iron Man Army".

In fact, Zheng Chenggong's "Iron Man Army" was a "retro-troops" that restored the "Modao Soldiers" of the Tang Dynasty and the "Infantry Armor" of the Song Dynasty.

Due to the natural disadvantages of the south, even if Zhu Yuanzhang tried his best to make up for the disadvantage in cavalry, it would be far from possible for him to catch up with the Jin army in this regard.

Therefore, we can only make up for our weaknesses while making the best use of our strengths. While vigorously developing the navy, we also trained elite battalions represented by heavy armored infantry such as the Iron Man Army, giving the navy a stronger living space and tactical means.

Although the Iron Man Army only has 3,000 people, this force is very suitable as a marine corps. The emergence of this force will allow the Yangzhou navy to respond to various battle situations more flexibly.

In the previous war, the Iron Man Army did not play its due role.

That was because this army was originally fighting on land, and their heavy armor would sink directly into the water. Therefore, their warships were always in the center of the army, under the protection of many warships, and were not arranged in the vanguard.

After all, if the middle ship between the warships collided and sank, they would have no chance of survival.

This time, in order to ensure their retreat, Xu Da decisively thought of this iron army.

"Come here, throw all these down!" At this time, Yao Guangxiao directly ordered dozens of soldiers to carry up more than a dozen large boxes.

Judging from the expressions of those soldiers, it was clear that these large boxes had no clear weight, and no one knew what was inside them!