Daming Yuanfu

Chapter 1688
The terrain around Lightning Lake is quite interesting, a bit like a basin surrounded by mountains but opening up and down.It was originally centered on Lightning Lake and surrounded by hills, but there was a gap in the northwest and southeast corners.

If Gao Yushi came here in accordance with the Ming army's consistent organizational style and brought a large number of infantry, then this terrain would be very suitable for defensive warfare.

Centered on Lightning Lake, the ring-shaped rolling hill with a radius of about seven miles around is not considered steep, but as long as a line of defense is set up on the mountain, the opponent's Chahar cavalry will never be so stupid as to fight on the slope-the loss of horsepower is too great, and the cavalry has an advantage lost.

Therefore, the main defense only needs to be placed in the openings of the northwest and southeast, and the array of bayonets and muskets should be deployed, so that as many cavalry as they come, they will be sent.

It's a pity that Gao Yushi didn't have infantry under his command this time. Unless he considered using most of the cavalry as mounted infantry and let them abandon their horses and set up formation, otherwise this battle could not be fought like this.

However, abandoning the horse and setting up the formation is actually not feasible, because the opponent has long known that his strategic headquarters along the way is an all-cavalry team. Pragmatically, it is basically certain that Brihatu exists in the opponent's army. Since he is there, it is impossible to fail to understand such a simple reason.

So, how should this battle be fought when the entire formation is full of cavalry?Similar to his previous experience, Gao Yushi first tried to find the experience and lessons summarized by his predecessors—of course, it may also be his descendants—in the few military works he had read and swallowed.

The military classics he has read in the past are actually limited, and there are even fewer that specifically discuss cavalry. Now he is on the grassland, and the only thing he can think of is the "Modern History" that he turned over a few pages in his spare time when he was studying at the party school. "Cavalry in War", the author is Semyon Mikhainovich Budyonny of the Soviet Union - he is generally called Marshal Budyonny in China.

This article entitled "Cavalry in Modern Warfare" is a shorthand for a report given by Budyonny on March 1930, 3 at the War Research Class of the Communist Academy.

Perhaps because it is just a report, this article is not very deep, but Gao Yushi feels that this article still has some reference value for the half-footed cavalry he is currently commanding. of.

The famous commander of the Soviet Army, Marshal Budyonny, has a great reputation. He was one of the first five military leaders to be awarded the Marshal of the Soviet Union in 1935, and was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union three times (1958, 1963, 1968).

He joined the Tsarist Russian Army in 1903, graduated from the Petersburg Cavalry School in 1908, and served as a sergeant in the cavalry for a long time.Demobilized after the October Revolution, he participated in the establishment of the Soviet regime in his hometown and created a cavalry unit. In 1918, he led his troops to join the Red Army, and his troops were successively expanded into cavalry regiments, brigades, and divisions.

国内战争中历任骑兵团长、骑兵旅长、骑兵师长、骑兵军长，1919年成为闻名遐迩的骑兵第1集团军司令员。在1919－1941年20多年间，苏联人民为表达对骑兵第1集团军的敬仰，曾把红军的一种制式军帽称为“布琼尼帽”。

After the end of the civil war, Budyonny successively served as the deputy commander-in-chief of the Red Army in charge of the cavalry, the cavalry supervisor, the commander of the military region, and the first deputy national defense people's commissar.

During the Great Patriotic War, he served as a member of the headquarters of the Supreme Command, and successively served as the commander-in-chief of the direction and the commander of the front army for a short period of time. In January 1943, he served as the commander of the first cavalry.After the war, he served concurrently as the Deputy Minister of Agriculture of the Soviet Union in charge of horse breeding, and later served as the cavalry director. Since 1, he has served as the director of the General Inspection Group of the Ministry of Defense.

总而言之，此公算是一辈子和骑兵结下了不解之缘，因此其著作也多是关于骑兵的，如《骑兵第1集团军1920年1月6日至3月3日行动》(1923年)；《现代战争中的骑兵》(1930年)；《红色骑兵》(1930年)；《骑兵的诸兵种合成兵团战术原则》(1937年)；《骑兵兵团的战术原则》(1938年)；另外就是多部回忆录了。

At least in terms of professional ability, Gao Wushi is sure that Budyonny is definitely much better than himself, there is no doubt about it.

"When people evaluate cavalry as an arm, they usually limit themselves to pointing out its mobility, and regard this mobility as its basic characteristic. This leads to an underestimation of its other characteristics, sometimes It also led to an incomplete use of cavalry.

Sometimes this question is vulgarized, and some people even say that cavalry can only make "concussions" and kill with sabers.However, history has proven, and I emphasize 'historical proof', that assessment and that attitude towards the cavalry is completely wrong and unprofessional.Even in the distant historical period, the cavalry never refused to deal with shooting and technical equipment 'in principle'.We have never seen that in the history of cavalry.For example, the skiff cavalry is known for using mainly bows and arrows. "

Skifs is the Russian name for the Sogdians in ancient Chinese books, but Gao Shishi didn't know much about the Sogdians, so he didn't go into it when he saw it.

"If you go back to the time before the Thirty Years War, then we see cavalry shooting more with pistols than hacking with sabers. North American cavalry used pistols and explosives extensively.

We can thus see that in this or that epoch, under one condition or another, the cavalry themselves refused neither technical equipment nor shooting.In the history of cavalry, none of this has happened before.

There was an era when the cavalry was promoted to the sky for a while, and then laid down to the ground for a while.The "advancement" of cavalry in various eras cannot be measured by whether it refuses technical equipment.

The cavalry will use the technology that is sent to it, the cavalry will use the technology that other arms also have, and the cavalry will use modern technology at all times.

Thus, the topic is concerned only with the extent to which technical equipment is adopted and used, how it is combined with maneuver and mounted assault, and how this method is adapted to contemporary styles of fighting.Therefore, it is wrong to only describe the combat effectiveness of the cavalry as "saber chopping killing capability".

Cavalry is characterized by its ability to combine tremendous rapid maneuverability with a devastating cavalry assault involving extensive use of firepower and supporting technology weapons. "

These paragraphs appeared earlier in the article, and are also the part that impressed Gao Pragmatically the most.Since he was frustrated in the Yebushou encounter, especially in the past two or three days since he garrisoned at Lightning Lake, Gao Wushi has been thinking about Budyonny's remarks and explanations about the cavalry, and he really found out a few that he never cared about before, or At least not enough attention to the key points.

According to Budyonny's point of view, firearms did not hinder the development of cavalry at least until the early days of the Soviet Union. Even though machine guns were already available at that time, cavalry still had their uses. Budyonny criticized some people for not understanding Use cavalry - Judging from his record in the early Soviet Union, he is qualified to say such a thing.

As for the middle and late period of the Soviet Union, the cavalry of course lost its former prestige, but it can be seen from Budyonny that the cavalry was not necessarily completely defeated by machine guns, but more seemed to be defeated by armored forces.

why?From the point of view mentioned here by Budyonny, what he considers the "characteristic of cavalry" is its ability to combine great rapid maneuverability with a devastating cavalry assault involving extensive use of firepower and auxiliary technical weapons- Obviously, armored troops have all the characteristics he mentioned, and they can do better than cavalry.

Being perfectly replaced by armored forces and completely surpassed, this is probably the real reason for the disappearance of cavalry.

Of course, at this time, Gao Yushi does not need to worry about the disappearance of the cavalry, which will happen at least a few hundred years later. What he cares about is how to make use of what Budyonny called "the characteristics of the cavalry."

In the most profound words of Gao Pragmatic's memory, Budyonny mentioned that "in the era before the Thirty Years' War, cavalry used pistols to shoot more than sabers, and North American cavalry widely used pistols and blasting tools", which is a great reminder. Gao Pragmatism, he still has a secret weapon in his hand-oh, it's not a secret, because he has actually used it before.

what?Explosive weapon: palm mine - of course, Gao Pragmatic is more accustomed to calling it a grenade.

According to Budyonny's description of the characteristics of cavalry, "huge mobility" must be organically combined with "firepower and auxiliary weapons" and "destructive cavalry assault" in order to perfectly exert the power of cavalry in the age of firearms.

The firepower and auxiliary weapons here, the firepower should refer to the projectile delivery volume of the gun, which is highly pragmatic and cannot be further improved for the time being.After all, based on Jinghua's current technology, the only way to increase projectile delivery is to evolve to metal shell bullets, but copper shell bullets are still technically difficult to produce.

This thing is too professional, and I am afraid that it needs professional processing tools. Gao Yushi himself does not understand the processing principle, so he can only provide the ideas of bullet patterns for the craftsmen to explore slowly, and they may not get any results for decades.The development of productivity has only reached this stage, so naturally there is no way to force it, just like he also wants to create an internal combustion engine, but in an era when he can't even handle a steam engine, what about a woolen internal combustion engine?

However, because of the "auxiliary weapons" part, Budyonny himself mentioned "explosive weapons" as a reminder, so Gao Yushi quickly thought of Zhangxinlei.

The palm thunder itself was the first in China, probably in the Northern Song Dynasty, because it had basically taken shape in the Southern Song Dynasty.However, due to the problem of the gunpowder ratio at that time, the purification technology still needs to be perfected, and the predecessors like to add some inexplicable things to the gunpowder as mentioned many times in the previous book-such as various poisons, Poisonous smoke, so the power of the explosion is really limited.

After Gao Yushi started his own private military industry, he naturally abandoned this kind of path that has been proved to be purely deviant by history, and focused on improving the explosive capability. In fact, the explosive power was not enough, so the craftsmen were only allowed to consider increasing the lethality of the explosive fragments. Therefore, A new type of Jinghua grenade was produced.

The Jinghua grenade was first equipped to Gao Yushi's own armed servants, including the only two garrison troops of Thang Long and Jingang at that time. However, since the two garrison armies had ended large-scale warfare at that time, the grenade did not have much chance to perform. .

One of the more famous applications was actually in the Battle of Yunnan and Burma, and the troops using grenades were under Liu Ting's command.In the first ambush battle in which the Jinlou White Elephant Wang Mangyingli was defeated head-on in the entire Yunnan-Burma War, the most brilliant application of firearms was land mines, followed by palm mines.

However, the land mine played a huge role at the beginning of the battle, while the palm mine played a role in the battle after Liu Ting defeated the Burmese king Shu Mangzhuo with a hand-to-hand single-handed challenge.Relatively speaking, more attention was paid to the role of landmines in that ambush battle. Although the palm mine performed well, it was overshadowed by the landmines.

Later, Gao Wushi also played a role in quelling the Northwest Rebellion with Landmine and Palm Thunder, but it was also Landmine's record that was more brilliant and more eye-catching.

It's just that Brihatu is a person who has the ability to learn and is quite cautious. He hoped that he would also lead troops to minefields with a trick that is popular all over the world. I'm afraid the chance of success is too slim.In view of these reasons, Gao Yushi decided to change his thinking this time, mainly considering making grenades work.

Considering the use of grenades, in addition to Budyonny's exposition reminding Gao Pragmatism, there are also some aspects that he thought of when he recently reflected on the reform of the Ming army's cavalry.

At this time, the Ming army's cavalry was half-armored, and their speed and endurance must have lagged behind the Chahar light-armored or even unarmored cavalry.But as one goes up and down, the defense ability must be greatly improved.

This means that if the Chahar cavalry wants to cause more effective damage to the Ming cavalry, it must be closer to the Ming army than before. Otherwise, long-distance shooting and projectiles are just scratching the surface. How much damage the Ming cavalry brought.

If the Chahar people have plenty of time and are not in a hurry at all, then they can indeed grind slowly.Just like their ancestors, the armored cavalry and half-armed cavalry lost their temper little by little, and the morale of the troops was constantly weakened, and sooner or later there would be a moment of collapse.

However, Gao Yushi had previously speculated that the Chahar Mongolian army did not have such conditions, and they were actually more urgent than their own time. In the final analysis, the diversionary feint is limited by the important factor of time, which cannot be delayed, and the results of the battle must be seen earlier.

Of course, the best result of this battle is to directly defeat the Economic Strategy Headquarters, but I am afraid that Brihatu himself does not dare to expect too much; the next best result is to defeat the Economic Strategy Headquarters through this battle—no matter what the fear is, as long as Those who can delay the momentum of the Economic Strategy Headquarters to take the lead in heading towards Guihua City are considered qualified.

That being the case, after two or three days of dragging on, Brihatu would definitely not be able to drag it out any longer. He had to actually repel the Economic Strategy Headquarters and attract some other Ming troops to go for reinforcements as a last resort.In other words, Brihatu had to take the initiative to attack, and this was the opportunity to use the grenade.

Brihatu is a smart man. Gao Yushi felt that if he simply gave up the terrain advantage to fight him on the ground, he might suspect fraud instead, so Gao Yushi deliberately sent 5000 people to lie in ambush on the back of the crater on the west side of Lightning Lake. , I led the main force out of the valley mouth in the northwest, and stood in line.

Buyan Huangtaiji and Burihatu learned in the army that Gao Yushi's main formation was dispatched, and they went out of the valley entrance in the northwest to form formation outside the valley.Buyantaiji was overjoyed when he heard the words, and said: "Gao Rixin was worried about being caught by us in the valley, so he came out on his own initiative. God helped me, and this victory can be expected!"

Brihatu really felt that it was unreasonable, so he gave an order after a little thought: "Here, send three white-tasseled personal guards to the west of the lake to have a look, and pay special attention to whether there are elite Ming soldiers ambushing in the shade of the mountain."

Although Buyantaiji didn't think of this at first, but when Brihatu said this, he also reacted, and asked immediately after the orderer left: "The ruler is an elite soldier who is worried about being ambushed by the Ming army after the battle. Into the flank of our army?"

Brihatu replied simply: "I just don't believe that Gao Rixin will confront us honestly without other tricks."
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(End of this chapter)