Daming Yuanfu

Chapter 1886 The Sword Points at Dongying (Wei San) Gives Hope
What if the road is blocked?
This problem was not only a headache and nervous for the Japanese army, but even Gao Wushi, who was stationed in Sacheon, became a little nervous.

It is understandable for the Japanese army to be nervous. For them, they were fighting in a foreign country. Now they are surrounded on three sides and facing the sea. Then they are naturally worried about being surrounded and annihilated by World War I.

But why should Gao Pragmatic be nervous?

Without him, this battle does not conform to the war mentality of encircling three Queyi, and Gao Yushi knows that the encirclement is actually not as unbreakable as the Japanese army themselves scare him.

What is the current actual formation of the Ming army?

There are less than 1 people on the front line of the western front, that is, the Lianhuashan defense line, while Gao Yushi still has about 7000 people left in Sacheon, and the entire western front has about 6000 troops.There should have been some more, but those people were firstly chieftain soldiers of the Sichuan Army, and secondly, they had been stationed in Jeolla-do to secure the North Korean granary, so not all of them were transferred back for this battle.

On the eastern front, Liu Ting's troops were mainly outflanked in the past, with a strength of 5000 troops.The Japanese army misjudged this matter. They thought that Li Rumei's troops should also go in this direction, but they didn't.

Li Rumei's current location is actually about [-] miles north of Lianhua Mountain. This place is currently only a small settlement, and the name is high and practical. I don't know it, but this place still has a proper name in later generations of Korea, called Yining County.

In other words, Li Rumei's department is actually between Jinzhou and Changning, a little bit southwest of Sanjia, where Liu Ting's department was originally waiting for a rabbit.To a certain extent, he came here because the defense of the northern line of Lianhua Mountain was empty after Liu Ting's troops went to block the Japanese army's retreat, so he came to make up for the defense.

But this means that the Japanese army made a right bet, that is, if the Japanese army really went to attack Jinju, it would definitely be discovered by Li Rumei.Considering the difference in marching speed between the two sides, there is a high probability that Japan will be flanked by Li Rumei's troops before it reaches Jinzhou.

At first glance, the current situation is that the Ming army has blocked the Japanese army from three routes, but a closer look reveals that the encirclement is actually severely understrength: [-] troops directly under the High Pragmatists on the western front, and [-] troops under Liu Zhen on the eastern front. Thousands, Li Rumei has the strongest force on the northern line, with [-].

However, even if the three routes are added together, the total strength of the Ming army is only 4000.So, how many Japanese troops are there?
Excluding Kato Kiyomasa and Shimadzu Yoshihiro who stayed in Hanyang at that time, the total strength of the Japanese army was [-] when the main force of the Japanese army went south from Hanyang.Due to Li Rumei's harassment and attack all the way, the total strength of the Japanese army was slightly reduced before the Battle of Lianhuashan, but it was still around [-].

According to previous experience, who is stronger between the [-] Ming army and the [-] Japanese army?Of course, the Ming army is stronger.After all, based on the results of the Battle of Bichi Pavilion, the Japanese army could not take down a single Ming army with a seven times superior force. If this gap in strength is not "huge", it is at least "big".

But the problem is that the two sides are currently changing offensive and defensive positions, and the Ming army is encircling the Japanese army, which means that the army is the one with scattered forces.On the contrary, the Japanese army is gathering troops in one place at the moment, and because there is no way out, there may be a battle between trapped beasts, and it may even have the effect of breaking the boat and fighting with one's back, then the situation is different.

Assuming that the Japanese army attacked all the way alone, except that Li Rumei's troops on the northern line may not be aware of it for the time being, and should not be regarded as targets, then the Japanese army, whether advancing westward or retreating eastward, has about six times the strength when facing the Gaowushi headquarters and Liu Ting's headquarters. Force superiority.

Because Liu Ting's troops have been listed as one of the main forces of the Southern Army by Gao Yushi over the years, their equipment level and training intensity are very good, and they have been further tempered in the Battle of Yunnan and Burma and the Battle of Pingbo. It is still unlikely that China will be defeated by the Japanese army, at least it should be able to last until Li Rumei's reinforcements arrive.

However, Gao Pragmatism is not necessarily on his side.The current real core force on his side is three thousand Xuanda fine cavalry and three thousand white soldiers, and the remaining 1 people are Sichuan chieftain soldiers.

There is one thing to say, the combat effectiveness of the Sichuan chieftain soldiers is not weak, but their equipment system is still not strong even after Gao Pragmatic temporarily strengthens them with some artillery.

First of all, artillery is a technical arm in this era, and it is not that anyone can use a cannon just for everyone. The chieftain soldiers themselves will not use these artillery at all.If they were allowed to operate the cannon by themselves, they would be Amitabha if they didn't blow themselves up, and the best performance would probably be just to listen to the sound, and there was no need to have any hope for the accuracy.

The highly pragmatic enhancement is actually to temporarily dispatch the marine artillery (non-ship gunners) on the Sea Trade Alliance fleet to the chieftain army. When they need to fight, they can do it by themselves and alone. The chieftains only need to tell them the combat mission. However, the rest is useless.As for whether the mission is reasonable, the commander of the artillery battalion of the Marine Corps will negotiate with the chieftain.

Secondly, the chieftain soldiers themselves have almost no hot weapons, and they are all old-fashioned cold weapons.Although they are generally more daring to fight than the non-domestic troops of the Ming army, facing the Japanese iron artillery team with the nature of a platoon of guns, this kind of daring to fight means that they will have to suffer two to three rounds of salvo before the melee occurs. At a disadvantage from the start.

In addition, the Japanese army's close combat capability is not considered weak, so assuming that the battle is just the chieftain soldiers facing the Japanese army, it is actually difficult to explain how much advantage the army can take.

In the final analysis, the main reasons why the Ming army was stronger than the Japanese army were two points: the superiority of firearms and the superiority of cavalry.Because the Japanese army couldn't find a way to solve these two points, the situation of "field battles cannot be done" appeared.This situation is fundamentally different from the fact that most of the field battles between the Ming army and the Hou Jin army were defeated in history.

First of all, it is clear that the so-called Ming army could not defeat the Eight Banners in field battles is actually a false proposition.Because the Ming army won or lost many battles in the field.

For example, in the Battle of Ningjin, Mangui fought against the Eight Banners on the way to aid Ningyuan, and even fought against the Eight Banners under the city of Ningyuan without losing the Eight Banners.

During the Battle of Dalinghe, a Ming army also brought down Duduo, the leader of the Eight Banners. If Duduo had not been rescued by his subordinates desperately, history might have undergone some changes.

There is also the Battle of Hunhe, where the white-armed soldiers once fought the Eight Banners Red Baya and captured two generals of the Eight Banners.In the battle of Rufeng Mountain in the battle of Songjin, the Ming army took the initiative to attack, and the victory and defeat of the two sides were even.

Quite a few original archives and pond newspapers have been preserved in the Ming Dynasty Archives Collection and the "Ming and Qing Historical Materials" compiled by Taiwan. If you look closely, you will find that many battles were not as described in "Qing Shilu" and "Manchu Old Files". As boasted, the Eight Banners are invincible.

In fact, in the 16th year of Chongzhen on the eve of the fall of the Ming Dynasty, the Eight Banners attacked Ningyuan, and even Wu Sangui used the cannons hidden in the formation to cover his face with shells, and finally returned in a big defeat.

To be honest, most of the previous battles of the Eight Banners have gone through quite difficult processes. For example, the battle of Songjin was precisely because of the unfavorable situation of the Qing army. Banner owners such as Dorgon even proposed to withdraw troops. Nosebleed rushed to the Songjin battlefield.

A careful study of the previous battles of the Ming and Qing Dynasties reveals that in these battles, especially in many partial field battles, the Ming army fought very well and did not show obvious invincibility.However, in the end, except for Ningyuan and Ningjin, the Ming army basically lost all previous major battles.

This may seem weird, but if you really want to explore, you have to think deeply about why this is the case.Gao Yushi used to watch some forum discussions as a fan, and even participated in them himself, remembering some interesting things in them.

For example, in the battle of Hunhe, the Liao army sat idly by and did not save the Baigan soldiers and Zhejiang soldiers.Why not save?In fact, it is not that the Liao army on the side is greedy for life and afraid of death, but that the Liao army and the southern army have inherent conflicts (there were conflicts when they aided Korea, which has been mentioned in the previous article).What's worse is that the Southern Army not only had conflicts with the Liao Army, but also had conflicts with the Jizhen Frontier Army at that time.

Why are the southern soldiers and the white rod soldiers arranged in separate rivers?This is not a tactical plan at all, but a complete distrust between the two armies, because before aiding Liao, the two armies had already fought a group fight in Jizhen, not only causing casualties, but even using artillery. How about trust and cooperation in a tense relationship?To put it bluntly, if the enemies are not stumbling each other, even if the conscience is not broken.

What's more, some generals often choose to escape in order to preserve their strength.For example, in the Battle of Changshan in the Daling River, Wu Xiang led his family cavalry and two cavalry battalions who surrendered to barbarians and ran away directly, leaving Song Wei's chariot battalion and infantry to Huang Taiji.When he returned to Jinzhou and took an inventory, the army he led did not suffer much loss.

What does this situation mean?It means that at this time, the control of the imperial court has further declined, the degree of privatization of the military has become higher and higher, and the formalization of warlordization has begun.

There are also some people who use war to make money for the country.At the end of the Ming Dynasty, the grain transported from the Bohai Bay to the Liaodong Sea drifted away at every turn, and often in a fixed proportion.This is the Bohai Bay. If sailing in the Bohai Sea is so dangerous, how do you go to the West?According to the degree of drift, no one can return from the voyage.

To give another example, during the Songjin War, many people said that Huang Taiji stole Hong Chengchou’s granary, which was the key to the defeat of the Ming army, but in fact, the son of Joseon, who was sent by the Qing army to transport grain, found that the so-called grain in that granary was all rotten. Not smellable, not edible at all.

What is the actual situation?In fact, all the stored grains shipped to Liaodong have been "inserted with sand and chaff" by the officials. It is no wonder that the son of the Joseon Dynasty was shocked by this.

In addition to the above accidents, the Xifa Party, which has been highly praised by later generations, proposed to train 47 elite soldiers in the 2th year of Wanli.That is to say, if you have trained 40 troops, you dare to ask the court for 50 taels. This price made the later governors of Ji and Liao cry and complain that the Liao pay was too little!

The reason for such a high price is "manufacturing extremely fine equipment, one person eats several people's salary", and then a funny thing happened: during Chongzhen, the Western French Party finally began to train soldiers in Shandong. These soldiers trained for a chicken, and finally rebelled Eight flags were thrown.

No, how could you, an elite soldier who "eats several people's salary", be so hungry to grab a chicken?Is the salary not worth buying or is it going somewhere it shouldn't be?
At the beginning of Chongzhen, soldiers in the Beijing camp were paid one tael or four plus one dendrobium rice per month, but they had no combat effectiveness at all. They ate 97 shi of grain a year, but only less than 8 soldiers were selected.

关宁军月饷1.4两加一斛米；南兵1.5到1.7两；东江军月饷7钱加一斛米；其他九边军镇就更惨了，基本从2钱到8钱不等。如蓟镇有4.5钱的，也有7.5钱的。明明都是兵，差距就这么大。

Yongping City originally had [-] pacesetters and more than [-] Minzhuang soldiers. After the rise of the Liao Incident, [-] Zhongwu Battalions were added.However, Chongzhen started to eliminate troops, and the strength of the battalion was reduced by two-thirds, and the number of cavalry troops was reduced by six to seven.So when it came to the change of Jisi, it was easily defeated by the Qing army.

Qi Jiguang once ordered the rockets used by Ji Zhen to defend the platform. It takes 5 cents of silver to produce a qualified product, and the stock has to be eliminated every year and replaced with new ones.At the end of the Ming Dynasty, during the reign of Chongzhen, this rocket became 8 cents a piece, but in fact it was only made by craftsmen with 4 cents of silver, and it was never replaced.

Not to mention the use of this kind of rocket other than setting off fireworks, it is even more necessary to ask whose pocket the other 4 per cent ends up in.

For another example, in the 19th year of Wanli, the imperial court set [-] soldiers in Datong Town to guard the [-]-mile border, but when it came to Chongzhen, there were only [-] soldiers left in the important town of Datong.The big thing about raising horses is to give some beans and grass in spring and autumn, and in summer and autumn... let's graze and raise them by ourselves.

"It's not that there are no soldiers in the Liao Dynasty, and the generals and family members have a number of quotas." A family in Liaoxi received the salary of five or six soldiers, and half of the family's salary went into the general officer's pocket.

It was said earlier that Guan Ning's monthly salary was 1.4 taels, but in fact most of it was deducted from the servants, and then only 4 taels were paid to ordinary soldiers.Zu's family has many family members, and Wu Xiang raises three thousand Yi families, all of which are done as good business.

At the beginning of the Liao incident, the imperial court transferred soldiers from the three provinces of Sichuan, Hugui and Guizhou.This was originally a routine operation of Ming Dynasty, but when you transfer troops, you also transfer chieftain soldiers. As a result, in order to make up the numbers and reduce expenditures, the Ministry of War recruited the homeless Miao people to join these reinforcements.However, many of these Miao people are feuds with each other, so "those who were killed with feuds rushed in at the same time", the ghost knows what kind of manipulation this is.

In a word, in the original history, the Ming army could not defeat the Jin army. The main reason may not be that the "Ming army" is not good, but that the "Ming system" is not good. Those old bad systems are showing faster and faster collapse. Everyone was just trying to make money out of it, so they ended up playing GG.

The current military reform of Ming Dynasty has not actually touched the reform of the family system. The high pragmatism has only stripped out the equipment manufacturing. At the same time, it has greatly strengthened the supervision and transparency of finances.

It's just... how should I put it, if it is said that the Ming army became a warlord, then Gao Yushi himself is now the biggest warlord under the imperial power.When will he slash at himself?no one knows.

However, the good news is that for the time being, this kind of warlordization has also caused the Ming army on the Korean battlefield not to just try to protect itself-the leader of the big warlord personally sits in the town, and the little leaders rely on him for food, so they dare not fight casually.

In contrast to the Japanese army, the controversy in its military discussions was also due to the warlordization.Everyone is a big name, Toyotomi Hideyoshi is great as a "martial arts lord", and the lord took him to grab the benefits, so naturally everyone scrambled to be the first, but now suddenly found that the benefits can't be reaped, not to mention that he might have folded all his money, then I have all kinds of thoughts.

However, except for the Ukita Hide family, no one really regards loyalty to Taiko as the highest purpose.Unless you have to.

Under what circumstances would it be necessary?Naturally, there is no way out.

Therefore, after Gao Wuzhen learned that the Japanese vanguard's attack had been frustrated, he temporarily stopped the offensive and retreated, and suddenly ordered that the frontline army at Lianhua Mountain immediately withdraw to Sacheon.At the same time, the latest instructions were issued to Li Rumei and Liu Ting.
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(End of this chapter)