Daming Yuanfu

Chapter 1676 Cutting Yuan (Thirty) Invitation
Brihatu naturally considered the three-way encirclement that Gao Yushi was thinking at the moment, but he and Gao Yushi had different positions and faced different situations, so his worries also had different emphases.

Rather than saying that Brihatu is now worried that Chahar's army may face a three-sided siege in a few days, it is better to say that he is more worried about the movements of the nearly 40 people in Chahar.

No matter in the eyes of Brihatu or Tumen, as long as the 60 elites of Chahar Khanting are determined to run, they will be able to escape after all, and at worst they will lose a group of troops.So what if the Ming army mobilized [-] troops?Even if it hurts because of this, at least the main force can still go if it wants to go.

Compared with the current combat effectiveness of the Ming army 20 years ago, it can indeed be said that earth-shaking changes have taken place.Both Tumen and Brihatu had to admit this point. After all, they had tried several times before, and the cold record was there. It was meaningless to deny it desperately.

However, no matter how much the fighting power of the Ming army improves, it cannot change the fact that the main force of the Ming army is always its infantry corps.The cavalry units of the Ming army have indeed been greatly improved. For example, the proportion of horses equipped has more than doubled in general, and even the total size of the cavalry units has nearly doubled.

But so what?Does that mean that the Ming army is now enough to fight the annihilation battle against the Mongolian cavalry?Of course not, even if the Ming army cavalry now has firepower and range advantages, it only means that they have the strength to face the enemy Mongolian cavalry head-on, and the mobility of the Mongolian cavalry is still unmatched.

Why?Not only the obvious hard indicators such as the proportion of war horses and the number of draft horses that Gao Pragmatic has already thought of, but also the impact caused by other aspects.

What is more interesting is that as Jinghua’s steel and iron production capacity has been increasing year by year, and since the high-level pragmatic minister of the Jinhu Ministry has increased its financial investment in the army, the military expenditures received by the Ming army have also increased in recent years.

This is of course a good thing, but it needs to be analyzed on a case-by-case basis.For example, after the Nine Borders Ming army had a surplus of finances, they considered that they might have to fight the Mongols on the grasslands. Therefore, in addition to buying horses, they also improved the equipment level for the Ming army cavalry.

They don’t need to control the weapons. According to the high and pragmatic expectations, the Ministry of War has uniformly replaced them with Jinghua cavalry guns. Later, considering that it is not reliable to fight bayonets immediately, they replaced the previous sabers. Combination of hot and cold weapons.

At the same time, the Ministry of War took into account that the Mongols were worried about the loss of manpower, while the Ming army was more worried about the loss of high pensions (first implemented by Gao Yu in Liaodong, and later extended to the Nine Sides), so It also equipped the cavalry of the Ming army with new armor and horse gear.

Let's talk about the former first, that is, the sabers that were replenished to the cavalry.On this point, Gao Yushi had taken a detour before, but later found that the saber was still ineffective, so he gave it back.The returned saber was redesigned, and even Gao Yushi himself participated in the finalization.

These sabers have been modified based on the Yanling Saber that Jinghua cavaliers used most conveniently. They are made into short handles, narrow blades, and slightly curved shapes. In fact, they are very similar to the famous Cossack "Chasik" in history. saber".

Due to the high quality of Jinghua's steel, this saber is three feet six inches (1.2 meters) long and has parallel blood grooves. It is slightly longer than the Chasik saber known as the "Blade of Heaven", but it still maintains sufficient strength.As for the weight, it is light enough like Chasik, with a total weight of three catties and one tael.

The saber is a weapon, and the weight gain of three catties is not too much, which is acceptable, but the armor is different.

First of all, the armor of the Ming cavalry itself has changed.When Gao Yushi played games in his early years, he liked heavy cavalry, after all, the values ​​​​are exaggerated.However, with some understanding later, a new idea began to emerge, that is, within the scope of East Asia, heavy cavalry is not very useful, and even if it is equipped, it does not need much.

Since he is in charge of the money bag and the military department is also within his sphere of influence, the proportion of heavy cavalry in the Ming army is indeed very low. Around eight hundred.

The cavalry of the Ming army focused on the development of "half-armored cavalry".In fact, this point itself is also in line with the Ming Dynasty's thinking on cavalry building an army, that is, the four treasures of cavalry: soft bows, long arrows, fast horses, and light knives.Of course, the soft bow and long arrow have now been replaced by the Wanli Type [-] cavalry spear, while the fast horse has always been attached great importance to, and the light knife has also been added.

Here is the idea of ​​​​building the army, that is, the cavalry equipment should not be too heavy, so the overly heavy Song-style full armor is only a small amount of equipment, and the key protective half armor is mainly developed.

In Tang Shunzhi's "Wu Bian", there is a clear record about the half-armored cavalry of the Ming Dynasty:

"The body of a Zhou horse is the most dangerous, but the head and face are swollen. Although the old system of horse face is ingenious, in the battle of Fuli Chen Cai recently, many horses were injured, and the longevity star died. The minister now makes it a paste forehead, made of cotton cloth. One piece is pasted between the forehead and brain of the horse's face, and the iron face can be penetrated by taking off the arrow stone, and the iron forehead can separate the horse's face, so it is suitable for pasting the forehead.

The whole package has big chicken necks and small autumn money, or when the summer months are sweltering, snow and rain freeze, and the autumn money is gone, there are still chicken necks to cover the fat.This vest is suitable for use. Small full-fitting our army vests, the armor hangs down more than a foot for example. "

It can be seen from this that the main equipment of the cavalry horses of the Ming army is divided into the following types: horse face, chicken neck, horse body armor, breast armor and so on.

"Horse face" is a long and narrow metal mask with holes on it, which mainly protects the face of the horse. The armor on the neck of the auxiliary horse is made of armor pieces, and there are buckles in the front that can be buckled; the "horse body armor" is the main armor on the horse, and it is about the same length as the horse.

This is a typical change of thinking.The heavy cavalry of the Five Dynasties and the Song Dynasty, in addition to having a certain defensive advantage in charging and fighting, sacrificed the characteristics of the cavalry, while the half-armored cavalry of the Ming Dynasty restored the original mobility of the cavalry. It also retains a good defensive ability.

Compared with the heavy cavalry in the Song Dynasty, the coverage area of ​​the Ming army's horse armor has dropped significantly. After taking up a large piece of armor, it was discarded, and more attention was paid to mobile combat. Better at small-scale engagements.

However, the above are theoretical figures. In fact, for a long time after Tang Shunzhi improved his half armor, the cavalry of the Ming army could really be equipped with this standard, and almost only the servants of the generals.This caused the Ming cavalry's armor rate to be quite worrying in the early decades. Even except for the cavalry who wore armor, they were no longer used to armoring their horses.

However, as Gao Pragmatism gradually came to power, the Ming army restored the configuration of these half-armored cavalry, and even optimized some of the armored parts.

These things are too detailed, so it’s boring to say, so it’s better to just report a standard: the original half-equipped cavalry, the full set of equipment weighed about 24 catties, and the cavalry weapons in the early years were different from the current ones, and the cavalry’s full load is about 32 pounds. It is about [-] jin to [-] jin (not counting the body weight which is difficult to determine).

After the joint efforts of Jinghua Iron Works and Wang's Armory Factory, now half a cavalry weighs 21 catties, and a saber is about 34 catties, which is [-] catties lower than that of Wang Shunzhi decades ago.However, due to the change of weapons, now it is about seven catties to ride a gun, three catties to carry ammunition, and a total of about [-] catties for the whole body. Compared with the past, it is two to four catties heavier. A compromise is three catties.

Although it is only three catties heavier than Tang Shunzhi's period, this comparison is actually just the feeling of the family cavalry.For the cavalry who were not used to wearing armor for a long time, they actually weighed more than ten catties at once when they put on the armor again, which could already obviously affect the speed of the cavalry—whether marching or fighting.

And what about the Mongolian cavalry?There is no need to compare the weight of the few heavy cavalry. After all, the Mongols are now limited in resources, and there are fewer and fewer heavy cavalry, especially when the Mongolian heavy cavalry was defeated head-on when they were in Liaodong last time. The abolition of the heavy cavalry has only a symbolic meaning, so don't mention it.

What is the weight of the light cavalry of its core main force?Fifteen to sixteen catties.As for the reason for this number, in fact, it has a lot to do with high pragmatism.

With the improvement of the quality and stability of the Ming army's firearms and the increase in the range of the muskets, Burhatu found that the significance of the Mongolian cavalry wearing armor in front of the Ming army has become less and less—unless the Ming army can't fight, all It can almost break the armor, so what's the use of this armor?
This is like the history of armor development all over the world. Armor has become heavier and heavier until it gradually disappears. The biggest factor causing the change is the development of firearms.

In the era of cold weapons, weapons developed, and the weight of armor increased accordingly, and the two sides were barely equal; in the era of hot weapons, the power of weapons developed exponentially, but the weight of armor could not be the same-after all, it is good for people or horses , the load-bearing capacity is limited, and it is impossible to thicken without limit.

So what to do?I also develop weapons!As for the armor, it can be thrown away, and it is useless anyway.

But the Mongols can't develop weapons now, so as a response, they had to pick up the old tradition, can't beat me and can't run!So the Chahar Mongolian army simply threw away their armor, focused on weight loss, and continued to strengthen their already strong mobility.

What is the butterfly effect, this is probably a manifestation of the butterfly effect.Everyone is not a piece of wood. If you have changed, I can't beat you. If I remain the same, am I waiting to die?
It is precisely because of these changes on both sides that Brihatu, who is in a weak position, is more sensitive than Gao Yushi.Therefore, when Gao Yushi was still thinking "I can beat him now", Brihatu had already discovered his own advantage - he is not afraid of running away now.

This battle has developed to the present, Gao Wushi has always been thinking about how to surround the Chahar people and fight the war of annihilation, but Brihatu knew from the very beginning that there was no way to fight recklessly, and persuaded Tumen Dahan that he didn't even want Chahanhot, and directly Played a golden cicada to escape the shell, jumped out of the encirclement to the west, and left the battlefield.

Gao Yushi wanted to continue to encircle in reverse, Brihatu could naturally guess, but that was nothing more than continuing to run.As for the attack on Guihua City, this is only part of Burhatu's grand plan, and its importance is roughly at the level of "it's best if it can be defeated, and it's not a big problem if it can't be defeated".

Burhatu's biggest worry is how the nearly 40 Chahar tribesmen will escape the suppression.Although Gao Yushi obviously hasn't taken this matter to heart now, he is still focusing on the annihilation of the 40 troops of Chahar, but although the Ming army can't catch up with the Chahar Mongolian army, it is still faster than the [-] civilians. Go fast—although the tribesmen have horses, they also have a lot of cattle and sheep, which cannot run as fast as horses.

Brihatu had arrived at Guihua City with the Tumen army at this moment, and the city had obviously received the news, and the city gate had already been closed.The gate tower was full of Tumed Mongolian troops holding bows and arrows and staring at them covetously.

Brihatu got an old-fashioned monocular that was obviously produced by Jinghua from somewhere, picked up the telescope and looked at it for a while, then shook his head and said: "The city is quite heavily guarded, it seems that the news of our army's arrival has at least come from Guihua. The day is over, and the idea of ​​a sneak attack and a strong attack is no longer advisable."

Tumen snorted coldly, and said, "It must be Shacheng that leaked the news—oh, if you hadn't insisted on leaking the news there, Ben Khan thinks that the sneak attack on naturalization might really come true."

Although it is a heavy accusation to say this as a great Khan, Brihatu has a special status and said calmly: "This is also due to helplessness. Great Khan, if our army's whereabouts have not been traced by the Ming army for a long time The main force learned, who knows if the Ming army will spread out hundreds of thousands of troops to search wantonly?
Big Khan, if they find out the whereabouts of the tribesmen's migration, thinking that they will not be able to catch the main force of our army anyway, so they simply take the tribesmen, then my Chahar tribe will really be doomed. "

In fact, the Tumen naturally understood this truth, otherwise they would not have agreed to only accept that little supplies in Shacheng and let them go.The reason why Brihatu asked him to do this was to let the Ming army know that they had naturalized in the court and force the Ming army to return to aid.

This style of play is somewhat similar to the battle in the heyday of the Mongol Empire two or three hundred years ago. The key is to lead the enemy to run and make the enemy exhausted. In the endurance race, the Mongols are very confident.

"What should we do now?" Buyan Taiji couldn't help asking, "Will Guihua City be fought or not?"

Tumen didn't speak, but turned to look at Brihatu, but was choked by the wind and sand for a moment, and couldn't help coughing.

Both Buyantaiji and Burihatu yelled "Khan!" Fortunately, Tumen waved their hands immediately, cleared their throats, shook their heads and said, "It's okay, it's just wind and sand, it's not a problem. Burihatu, you Come on."

Brihatu took a look at Da Khan, and saw that he seemed to have just choked on the sand, so he said: "Naturalization naturally requires fighting, not only fighting, but also making sure to win. But in comparison These are just illusions, our army has a more important matter at present...

We must concentrate our elite troops to harass that Grand Master Gao's economic and strategy headquarters, and try to scare the other Ming troops a little, and rush to rescue the Ming army's spiritual sustenance, so as to create conditions for the migration of the tribe. "

Buyantaiji took a deep breath, turned to Tumen and said, "Khan, please leave this matter to me."

Tumen knew what he meant: inheriting the Great Khan was not only based on blood, but also prestige in order to secure a position, especially in the current critical situation.

However, the danger of leading a so-called elite army far smaller than the number of the Ming army to harass the first military commander of the Ming Dynasty is self-evident, if something unexpected happens...

"Khan, please go with Huang Taiji." At the critical moment, Brihatu suddenly volunteered.

Tumen breathed a sigh of relief sweating profusely, swallowed quietly, tried his best to keep his voice as calm as possible, and nodded, "Okay, you guys go... pick out whoever you want to bring."
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(End of this chapter)