Daming Yuanfu

Chapter 1859 Sword Pointing at Japan ([-]) The Tactics of Keeping Up with the Times

On the battlefields of the Middle Ages, the most terrifying armies in Europe were nothing more than heavily armored cavalry, whose elite training and super defense were basically the nightmare of other arms on the battlefield.

On the eastern battlefield, the most difficult thing to deal with is the Mongolian archers and cavalry who come and go like the wind. They can shoot arrows from a distance and swing knives from a distance. , can be called an all-round warrior, who can achieve small defeats in defeat and big victories in victories.

And when such an army faced temporary recruits from peasants, or the guard soldiers of the Ming Dynasty who had degenerated into serfs, the battlefield situation became even more one-sided.Facing the impact of the cavalry, these people who have just picked up weapons and have no combat experience can only feel fear.

Driven by fear, these armies often scattered and fled.In this way, there is no need to think too much, the failure of the rout side is obviously inevitable.

In order to solve this problem, military strategists from all over the world have tried various methods for thousands of years, the most effective of which are spear phalanx and horse refusal.However, the spear phalanx and horse refusal also have disadvantages.

The training of the spear phalanx takes a long time, and there must be a sufficiently sophisticated organizational system, pension plan and other supporting measures to ensure that the soldiers actively fight; the laying of the refusal horse also takes a long time, and the disadvantage of the refusal horse lies in Position mobility is too poor.

All in all, everyone found that even with the spear formation and horse refusal, there is still an urgent need for a new way to resist the attack of the enemy's elite troops on the battlefield.

Coincidentally, at roughly the same time, both the Czech Republic and the Ming Dynasty had a combat unit that could fight against cavalry—chariot soldiers.The tactics used by the chariot soldiers are the well-known chariot formation (che camp, chariot fort).

Let me talk about the situation in Europe first.In the early [-]th century, Czech handicrafts and mining developed rapidly. As part of the land of Shenluo and the direct jurisdiction of the Habsburg family, the Habsburg royal family has always adopted a high-pressure policy against the Czech Republic—especially after the rise of the Reformation. Religious oppression.

As a result, it finally aroused the dissatisfaction of the Czech people and the small and middle-class nobles. Facing the oppression of the Germans, the Czech people, whose ethnic attributes were originally West Slavs, decided to rise up and resist.

But resistance is resistance. Although the Czechs are high-spirited and spirited, when this temporary army of farmers and handicraftsmen really faced the menacing imperial cavalry, most of them immediately showed due fear, and then Scattered and fled.

In response to this problem, the Czech nobles created a method of warfare, that is, using a moving four-wheeled carriage as a barrier to protect the lives of peasant soldiers.This is the embryonic form of the European car camp - Husche Fort.

The advantage of Husche Fort is that it can not only provide protection for soldiers on the chariot with its tall baffle, but also has strong mobility and can move freely on the battlefield.

The basic unit of the Husche Fort is the team, and each team generally has 10-20 people and corresponding ordnance.Above the group, a larger tactical unit is composed of 10 car forts, and above that is a company unit composed of dozens or hundreds of car forts.

每个小组一辆战车，战车的人员配置是2名射手(装备有火绳枪和炮)、4—8名弩手、2—4名链枷手(用农民的链枷作战)、4名长矛手、2名盾牌手(战斗时用大盾牌掩护人和马)和2名驭手。驭手负责驾驭马匹和到宿营地后联结战车，战车由车长指挥。

The battle of the car fort is not an independent battle of a single arm, but a combination of infantry, cavalry, and chariots.The equipped infantry of Husche Fort is organized into a team of 50 people, with a length of 50 people.The Centurion commanded several 50-man squadrons, and the Infantry Hetman commanded all infantry.Because of the light equipment and strong mobility of the cavalry, the missions of the cavalry are reconnaissance, marching security, counter-attack and chasing the fleeing enemy.

In addition to mixing personnel, Chebao also used artillery as fire support.The artillery units of Husche Fort were divided into field artillery and siege artillery.Field guns include short-barrel howitzers that fire stone bullets and long barrels that are fixed on wooden gun mounts and fire stone and iron bullets.

一般而言，5辆战车配1门野炮。主要攻城火炮是口径850毫米、射程200—500米的臼炮, 每个战车队配1门。

It can be said that Fort Husche is the dawn of modern army tactics, because it ended the myth of the invincibility of noble knights, and also broke the characteristics of medieval warfare that focused on individual bravery, and emphasized the close cooperation between various arms.

Of course, Husche Fort is not a purely European patent. In the distant East Asia, the Chinese in the Ming Dynasty also independently created the Cheying tactics.

In fact, the Chinese used this kind of modern chariot very early. Probably at the end of the Hongwu era, such things as firearms chariots had already appeared in the Ming army.In the middle of the fifteenth century, although the chariot did not yet have mature tactics, it had already begun to take on the task of fighting against the Mongolian cavalry.

During the Jiajing period, the Mongols repeatedly invaded the Hetao area. At that time, Emperor Jiajing appointed Yu Dayou as the commander-in-chief of Datong. Since then, the history of China's car camp has begun.

But in fact, long before Yu Dayou, the governor of the three sides of the Ming Dynasty, Zeng Mian, proposed the plan to build a car camp, but because the imperial court was too fierce at that time, the central government refused to delegate power, so in the end it was nothing.From this perspective, Yu Dayou's Datong Automobile Camp was also established on the shoulders of Zeng Mian.

However, although Yu Dayou actually created the chariot camp for the first time and improved Ming's chariots, in essence, the Ming army's chariots at this time were still human-powered wheelbarrows, so in terms of mobility and firepower delivery , or not as good as Husche Fort in the Czech Republic.

It wasn't until Qi Jiguang served as the general soldier of Jizhou that the tactical level of the Ming army was qualitatively improved.After coming to Jizhou from Zhejiang, the enemy Qi Jiguang faced also changed from the light infantry in the southeast to the Mongolian cavalry in the north.Facing the Mongolian cavalry, the mandarin duck formation that killed the Quartet in the south is not so easy to use-it's not that they can't fight it head-on, but the Mongols will never fight him like this.

Therefore, Qi Jiguang needed a new tactic to fight against the powerful enemies in the grassland, and his choice was chariots, or chariot formations.

After learning from Yu Dayou's Datong chariot, Qi Jiguang discovered a bug in the Datong chariot formation-it required too much labor to push the cart, resulting in fewer combat personnel in each team.In order to maintain combat effectiveness, the number of people equipped with each chariot must increase. The end result is that the total number of chariots decreases, or the number of troops increases and the cost of wages is huge.

It is true that Yu Dayou's setup at the time was 50 people per chariot, and 16 of them were in charge of pushing the chariot.

In order to solve this problem, Qi Jiguang invented a new type of chariot - the side car.This is even more coincidental. Like the chariots of Huscheburg, the vans use the side of the chariot to meet the enemy, because this can not only increase the defensive area, but also use horses to pull the chariot, which greatly saves manpower. .

It can be said that Qi Jiguang's Jizhou car camp at that time contained all the advantages of Huss car camp, and there were even more excellent places.

The first is the firepower output on the chariot. In addition to the light firepower output of the crossbowmen and bird gunners, each van has two small Franco cannons, each equipped with 30 catties of gunpowder and 100 rounds of lead bullets.

The second is the issue of personnel equipment. The armor of the Ming army was provided by the imperial court, so the equipment was relatively good (compared to the Hussite armed forces). High-quality cloth armor could resist most damage from knives, guns and arrows.

In addition, in terms of personnel distribution, there is also a big difference between Jizhou Cheying and Husche Fort.The soldiers of the Jizhou Chariot Camp are divided into regular soldiers and surprise soldiers. The regular soldiers are also chariot soldiers. There are ten people in a team. Six of them are responsible for the use of Fran's machine guns. One helmsman in the car direction, and then a captain;
The Raiders team consisted of ten men, four bird gunners, and two-handed long swords.There are two rattan players and two boring palladium players.When fighting, the Raiders are located between the chariots. When most of the enemy troops are fifty steps away from the chariots, the artillery fires, and the Raiders fire a volley of muskets; The legs, and the long spear boring palladium hands behind are responsible for killing the enemy troops that land.

At the same time, the muskets and artillery in the back kept running, acting as long-range protection.In addition, the Raiders are not allowed to go five steps further than the chariot... etc. In short, it is like a mandarin duck formation, with consideration for all aspects.

In addition, the car battalion also has an infantry system that specializes in coordinated operations-the killer team and the bird gun team.The killer team created by Qi Jiguang was improved from the original mandarin duck formation against the Japanese, but it was better at fighting against the Mongolian cavalry; the bird gun team was the result of the early line tactics.

A killer team consists of 12 people, two players, two wolves, two boring palladium, two spears, two big sticks, and a captain.A fire soldier, whose formation is similar to that of a mandarin duck formation, moves with chariots as the backing.

The ratio of the bird gun team is relatively simple, one captain, one fire soldier, and ten bird gunners.During the battle, the vehicles were lined up in three rows, using the three-stage attack that the Ming army had already mastered to provide continuous firepower.

In addition, the car formation is also supported by the cavalry battalion.The cavalry battalion of Jizhou Cheying consists of 12 people. The whole battalion has a total of 3000 people. The captain and a support fireman.

In the first game of the central part (Qi Jiguang used the word "jue"), a team leader had eight birds, guns and three knives, and in the second and third rounds, a team leader had four bows, four hooks, sickle guns and two knives.The time for cavalry to fight is when the enemy is in a panic.At its peak, there were more than [-] soldiers in Jizhou, and later the imperial court sent troops from all over the country to take turns to train in Jizhou.

Like Husche Fort, Jizhou Cheying also had the cooperation of field artillery, but at that time the Ming Army's General Cannon was slightly less powerful than the European long-barreled cannon.However, among the field artillery, there are also former enemy-style carts such as firebox carts with Chinese characteristics. Facing the lightly armored Mongolian cavalry, these chariots can indeed exert great power.

Compared with the Husche Fort in Europe, Qi Jiguang's Jizhou car camp can be said to be more hybrid of the times.Because in addition to the use of chariot tactics, the Jizhou chariot camp also included early line tactics.At that time in Europe, line tactics were not yet popular.It is also true that Qi Jiguang will be considered the father of the modern army in the East in later generations.

However, even though the car camp has many advantages, it also has a disadvantage that cannot be ignored-it relies too much on flat terrain.Once the terrain is rough, it is difficult for the car formation tactic to exert its power.Therefore, with the passage of time, especially the rapid development of firearms themselves, the vehicle formation was eventually replaced by the new infantry phalanx.

In the original history, this battle mode that replaced the car battalion was the starting point of the famous modern army - the Spanish phalanx.

Hey, did you find any strange problems?Yes, the problem lies in high pragmatism.

The emergence of Gao Yushi brought the development of firearms to Ming Dynasty, and brought infantry line tactics that were more advanced than the Spanish phalanx.He is more willing to use a high degree of organization and high pensions and rewards to obtain the most necessary strict military discipline in a modern army, and then implement his "queue shooting" and bayonet and musket phalanx tactics on this basis.

As for why this is the case, as I have just said, vans have high requirements on the terrain, while platoons and bayonets have more advantages in terms of versatility, and can be used almost anywhere.

Then there is the consideration of simplifying logistics.Gao Pragmatism paid great attention to the versatility and simplification of equipment. Therefore, after he took charge of the household department and actually controlled the military department, he cut off many fancy weapons and equipment in the frontier army, and minimized the types of weapons and equipment. This not only greatly improved It improves production efficiency and greatly reduces the difficulty of replenishment.

Qi Jiguang is a great master in tactics, but when it comes to large-scale mass production, he is obviously not as good as Gao Pragmatism.Moreover, China has always paid attention to the fact that he does not seek his own government when he is not in his position, so Qi Jiguang, as a military general, does not need to consider issues such as the convenience of military supply production and logistics scheduling.

However, the time for Gao Yushi to fully grasp the household department and the military department is not very long. The result is that among the various armies trained by Qi Jiguang, except for the last one—that is, the imperial guards—the rest are all Followed his second phase of the car camp system.

If we regard the tactics of the car battalion just mentioned as the first stage of Qi Jiguang's car battalion, and regard the highly pragmatic and basically unused car battalion as the third stage, then what lies between the two is the second stage of Qi Jiguang's car battalion. stage.

The main features of the second phase of the car battalion are the simplification of weapons and the simplification of the organization, but in terms of combat thinking, it still relies on the protection of the vans to ensure fewer losses for soldiers.As for its presentation, today's battlefield can be seen -- but not completely.

In principle, the second phase of the chariot battalion is also a coordinated operation of vehicles, cavalry, and artillery. However, the soldiers are impermanent and the water is impermanent. According to different battle situations and different opponents, temporary adjustments can also be made.

Just like what they are facing today is the Japanese army. Compared with the Ming army, the Japanese army, whether it is cavalry or artillery, is not worth mentioning. Team.

In addition, although the Japanese army is generally short in stature, because of fighting each other for more than [-] years in the Warring States Period, the Japanese army's close combat is still relatively fierce.

Facing such an enemy, cavalry and artillery are actually useful, but before the main force of the cavalry went to conduct tactical deception, and have not returned yet, the artillery needs to continue to act, so as not to expose Yoshihiro Shimadzu prematurely, so they can only rely on specialized The car array of hedgehog tactics is coming to meet the enemy.

Fortunately, the car formation in the second stage can handle it.It goes without saying that the mobility and defense of Jinghua's improved van have been improved.Although the gun holes have been removed (artillery specialization), the fire density of musketeers has been increased.

The Japanese army had to take several rounds of volleys before attacking. Even if they attacked in front of the van, they would find that the upper part of the car would have a reverse beveled baffle, which was not easy to climb over, and thus became a close range Eat guns.

In short, unless all Japanese soldiers are super soldiers, they will collapse sooner or later.

When Kato Kiyomasa discovered that the effective range of the iron cannons of the Ming army far exceeded his own, he already knew that this battle would be difficult. When he saw the van, he knew immediately that something was wrong, but things have not allowed him to retreat now. , can only order to advance quickly.

What Kato Kiyomasa means is that since you have a sidecar that can defend against the salvo of our Iron Cannon team, then I will quickly approach and let the bamboo spear tachi behind the Iron Cannon team snatch the sidecar, and then use close combat to decide the outcome .

In terms of close combat, Kato Kiyomasa believes that his side will win.He had heard many stories many years ago, most of which were brought back to Japan by various "navy armies" who "wandered" along the coast of Daming.All the stories are almost the same, and they all say that the Ming army "if you fire the guns far away, you may dare to fight, but if you fight with swords, you will be defeated and flee."

Although after the Renchen year, Kato Kiyomasa slightly revised this statement in his heart, thinking that the cavalry of the Ming army were still daring and good at hand-to-hand combat, but the infantry was still underestimated by him because they seldom fought.

Under the strict order of Kato Kiyomasa, the Iron Artillery Team of the First Legion fought hard to lose seven or eight hundred, and finally approached the Ming army's van defense line, and in the process stopped to fire two rounds of volleys.Unfortunately, because the Japanese iron guns were difficult to penetrate the reinforced van, the actual effect of these two salvos was about zero.

At this time, Kato Kiyomasa no longer cared about the basic principles of the Iron Cannon Team, and ordered the Iron Cannon Team to retreat, while the Bamboo Spear and Taidao troops stepped forward to take the car in close combat.

Due to the limited financial resources of the Japanese army, even the direct descendants of Toyotomi like the First Army, there were only 1 iron gunners out of [-] before the war. The losses after entering the DPRK and today's losses make the iron gunners in Kato Kiyomasa's hands already Less than two thousand, if you lose any more, it will really be useless.

Kato Kiyomasa could only gamble, betting that his own soldiers could break through the defense line of the vans in close combat, and even capture the vans of the Ming army, and defeat the enemy who invaded Hanyang in one fell swoop in the subsequent melee.

However, to his surprise, he suddenly heard gold beeping from above the Hanyang city tower, and the sound of gold was extremely urgent.

Kiyomasa Kato was stunned, and even wondered if something happened to Yoshihiro Shimadzu: I finally attacked the Ming army with huge casualties, and as long as I broke through this car formation, I could turn defeat into victory and kill all sides Now, instead of making persistent efforts to cheer for me personally, Ming Jin wants me to retreat?
"Shimadzu Yoshi...His Majesty Shimadzu is confused. Is this an opportunity to withdraw troops? The whole army should not care about the Mingjin, just continue to attack! If the first person to break through the Ming army's chariot is not from a samurai family, I will award He has the title of warrior; if he is originally a member of the warrior family, I will reward him with Wanguan Yongle Tongbao!"

Identity, wealth, these tempting rewards have been clarified, the Japanese army cheered up and began to launch a fierce attack on the Ming army's side car formation.

At this time, the ringing of gold continued on the upper floor of Hanyang City, and the sound of ringing gold became more and more urgent, as if they would face annihilation if they did not withdraw their troops.Kato Kiyomasa frowned deeply, and still didn't understand the reason, so he simply assumed that Yoshihiro Shimadzu couldn't control the situation in Hanyang, and devoted himself to the command of this battle with all his body and mind.

Before the Japanese army's soldiers and the side-car formations defended, there were more than a hundred casualties soon, and almost all of them were shot and killed by the Ming army behind the car.But at this moment, Kato Kiyomasa suddenly heard the sound of a large group of galloping horses kicking.

The reason why Kato Kiyoshi's face suddenly turned pale was that the voice came from behind Kato Kiyomasa! ——
Thanks to book friends "Dr. Xu Jiahui", "First Landing", "Long in Disrepair nn", "Paradise huwz", "Rainy Season Blows", "Neighborhood Boy 1" for their monthly support, thank you!
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PS: I came back too late at night, so the update was delayed by an hour, but the debt was paid off.

(End of this chapter)