Eighth year of Chongzhen

Chapter 430 White Armor and White Rod

The [-] white-armed soldiers were divided into two places, and formed on the left and right wings of the Ming army's gunners.

The white pole soldiers take the battalion as the unit, and each battalion has 100 people. According to the rule, five battalions are divided into "left, middle, right, front and back". Except that the middle battalion is in charge of the children of the Ma family and the Qin family, the rest of the battalions are controlled by two cronies or powerful families in the territory. command.

Each of the five battalions has a banner head, a banner leader, and a banner drum. The recruitment of battalions is quite strict, and all the campers are athletes from various villages.

Originally, due to limited financial resources, Qin Liangyu had only 5000 white-armed soldiers, and the rest were soldiers with incomplete weapons and armor and less force.

In the first half of the tenth year of Chongzhen, Zhu Youjian contributed funds from internal funds. In addition to paying full monthly salaries and grains to existing soldiers, he also allocated huge sums of money to recruit recruits.

With Qin Liangyu's prestige and great personal charm, plus generous food and salaries, and a huge amount of buried silver after the war, these factors superimposed together made the local Tujia young and strong compete for recruitment. In the end, the white-armed soldiers finally expanded to tens of thousands people.

The white pole soldiers are mainly composed of Tujia people in the area under the jurisdiction of Shizhu Xuanfu, mixed with a small number of brave men among the Han and Miao people.

The Tujia people grew up in the high mountains and rivers at the junction of Sichuan, Chongqing and Chu. They have developed a good physique and a brave heart in the confrontation with wild beasts, the unified dynasty of the Central Plains, and internal cannibalism.

As the hereditary chieftain of the Ming Dynasty, the Ma family has always regarded the white soldiers under the tent as the foundation of their lives, and conducted rigorous military training on a daily basis.

In addition to training general combat skills such as hook, sickle, spear and crossbow skills, hand-to-hand combat skills, and battle formations, white-bar soldiers also have very vigorous physical and courage training.

"One person fights a tiger, and 20 people help him. The limit is that he must be killed. The tiger is severely punished, and the same is true for hunting other beasts. If he catches it, he will be rewarded. The first one... the one who chases the enemy must go over the cliff. Capture it."

The battlefield discipline of white soldiers is as strict as their training.

In battle, those who are brave enough to go forward will be rewarded heavily, and those who are afraid of death and shrink back, and those who are greedy for meritorious deeds will be severely punished afterwards.

In the army, the method of sitting in groups is prevalent, and the composition of the soldiers is mainly father, son, brother and relatives, so the white-armed soldiers are bound to be like mad tigers and unstoppable in every battle.

In the impression of many people in later generations, they think that the white-armed soldiers are an army that is brave and good at fighting, but with extremely simple weapons and armor equipment. In fact, this is a huge cognitive error.

In fact, the equipment of the white pole soldiers is very sophisticated, even far exceeding that of most Ming troops.

When the two armies confront each other, soldiers who dare to face the enemy and fight at close quarters must not only have excellent combat skills and courage at all costs, but also rely heavily on the protection of armor.

The soldiers of the fifth battalion at the forefront of the battle formation among the white pole soldiers each wore an iron helmet lined with cotton wool and heavy iron armor weighing more than [-] kilograms.

This kind of heavy armor has a very strong defense against bows and arrows. Unless it is shot at vital parts such as the face and neck, it is difficult for the sharp arrows of the Qing army to penetrate within [-] steps.

Last year, under Zhu Youjian's order, the Military Weapons Supervisor specially built [-] more heavy armors for the white soldiers to prepare for the battle outside the customs next year.

The heavily armored soldiers who had far surpassed the original fifth battalion were like huge meat shields, protecting the rest of the soldiers wearing ordinary armor behind them.

The tactics adopted by the white soldiers are also different from those of the Ming army. Because of the formation, the tactics of the white soldiers are simple and efficient, and their lethality against the enemy is very powerful.

The formation of the white pole soldiers generally consists of 24 flags, and each flag has 25 people as a team, forming a flag head and one person, arranged in turn into three, five, seven, and nine people, forming a pointed team, and the rest of the soldiers are arranged behind the formation.

If one person in the front row falls down, they will make up in order to ensure the rigor of the team. If the former loses, the person in the middle will make up for it, and the same is true for the two wings.

The victory and defeat are limited to five levels, if all are defeated, victory is hopeless.

The banner chief and chief director of each banner are in the rear of the banner or division. The banner soldiers are arranged like sharp cones, while the 24 banners are arranged into an overall pointed cone.

If thousands of people are lined up in a large formation, the cone-shaped formation remains the same, but the unit of people has changed to the unit of flags.

Now the white pole soldiers are arranged on the two wings in a sharp cone formation composed of six nearly 700 people. In the Middle Ages, on the European battlefield, this formation was called "wild boar's head".

Qi Jiguang, a famous general in the Wanli period, borrowed from the formation of white soldiers and created the famous mandarin duck formation.

The loud and clear horns sounded all over the sky, and the large formation of the Qing army with two white flags on the left wing and two blue flags on the right wing began to move slowly, coming towards the white soldiers lined up on the two wings.

For the six sharp-cone formations aimed at the white pole soldiers, the more than 500 troops of the two white flags on the left wing were also divided into six groups, the two groups in the middle had 800 people as a team, and the remaining four groups had [-] people.

Dorgon's intention is obvious, which is to send heavy troops to break through from the middle, defeat the white soldiers in the front, and then rush to the two wings.

As the Qing army entered the range of the Frang machine gun, the eight cannons of the Qing army on the left flank fired one after another, and bullets whizzed across the sky, smashing towards the Qing army.

But the killing effect of the shelling this time was not as obvious as before. The eight projectiles hit the ground and jumped a few times, and stopped rolling after causing more than [-] casualties of the Qing army.

The Qing army with strict military discipline ignored the screams of the wounded and continued to advance silently.

The Qing army, which had seen the power of the Ming army's artillery for a long time, adopted a relatively loose formation. The purpose was to withstand several rounds of artillery bombardment by the Ming army, and then start charging when it was [-] steps away from the white soldiers. Together, the artillery of the Ming army lost its effect.

The gunners of the Ming army didn't care about the damage effect at all, they just loaded the guns quickly one after another, and then continued to fire.

After three rounds of Flang machine gun fire, killing and injuring more than a hundred Qing troops, the Qing army in the front team had already entered the charging distance.

With the shouts of Niu Luzhangjing from each team leader, the forwards of the six divisions charged forward.

In order to break through the formation of white soldiers in one go, Dorgon also spent a lot of money.

Each of the six Qing army selection fronts was equipped with 120 white-armored soldiers, and a total of [-] white-armored soldiers were put into the battlefield. This has never happened in the history of the Eight Banners.

In history, the Qing army entered the territory of Ming Dynasty several times to plunder property. The number of white-armored soldiers sent by each banner was only about a hundred people, and these more than a hundred white-armored soldiers did not gather together, but followed the Qing army in various teams. Look for fighters to fight with the Ming army.

It is precisely because of the existence of these brave and skilled white armor soldiers that the Ming army has been repeatedly defeated.

You must know that there are only more than [-] white armor soldiers in the two white banners. This time, a small half of them will be taken out at one time. This is the treasure of the eight banners.

Each of the white-armored soldiers wears three layers of armor: the innermost layer is cotton armor, the middle layer is chain armor, and the outermost layer is white-painted iron armor.

The selection conditions for the white-armored soldiers are very strict, even more stringent than the fifth battalion of the white-armored soldiers.

Eight Banners soldiers must kill at least 200 people in previous battles to be eligible to wear this white armor, which symbolizes supreme glory.

And the first banner at the front of the six formations of white-armed soldiers is also an unstoppable five-battalion of powerful soldiers. The armor worn by these five-battalion soldiers is not inferior to the white-armored soldiers with three layers of armor.

In terms of combat strength, these two world-renowned powerful armies are almost the same. They are both warriors among warriors and elites among elites. What will be the result of the collision between the two sides?

Let's listen to the next chapter.

(End of this chapter)