Chapter 290 Manguda

Lin Danhan lost the blood transfusion from the Ming Dynasty court, but had no choice but to move westward to Qinghai, and lost Lin Danhan's restraint and opened the gates of the southern Mohe grassland. After that, the Later Jin Dynasty could finally bypass the city of Jinzhou without restraint, cross the Great Wall from the southern Mohe grassland, and drive straight into the wealthy land of the Ming Dynasty. This is another historical fact that has not been recorded in the history of the Ming Dynasty, but has actually happened. It is a blood debt caused by 400,000 taels of silver every year.

The Later Jin Dynasty of Chongzhen entered the pass five times in succession, and the value of the wealth it plundered was 400,000 taels.

This is another proof of Donglin's stupidity's short-sightedness and selfishness. He gave up a powerful ally and had no strategic vision for just 400,000 taels of silver.

In April, the cold wind in Baicheng was still raging, and Lin Danhan could not hold on for a day without the Ming Dynasty's blood transfusion. The extreme climate of the Little Ice Age also affected the Mongolians. The grassland drought and the cold winter deaths in large numbers. It is now all thanks to the Ming Dynasty's support. The annual salary of 400,000 taels of silver is the life-saving money of Lin Danhan's tribe. If you lose this amount of money, Baicheng could not even defend it for a day.

It was a little different from later generations. At this time, Lin Danhan had a large copper mine in his hand, and the copper mine dividend was hundreds of thousands of taels of silver every year. This silver was used by Lin Danhan to purchase weapons, and the 30,000 young and strong equipment under his command was greatly improved. The elite cavalry of the king tent used armor-breaking arrows, and some cavalry in armor could vaguely see the magnificence of the Mongol Empire in the past. The Mongolian cavalry with excellent equipment was still extremely fierce.

The cavalry of the kings wearing heavy armor and holding strong bows and arrows are purely the nomadic people who grew up on horseback, which is much stronger than the half-tone cavalry of the Jurchens. In addition, the cavalry of the five thousand kings still retains the logo of the Mongol Empire. Each of them is equipped with several spears, which can be thrown and used as long weapons. After more than 300 years, this set of tactics is still very sharp. The spears from the sky can cause extremely effective damage to people and horses because of their weight.

Ma Cheng was not afraid of raising a tiger as a disaster. Before the destruction of Jiannu, Lin Danhan would not betray the Ming Dynasty and seek death. He also needed the Ming Dynasty's blood transfusion. That would have happened ten or twenty years later. If the Ming Dynasty still had no revival in many years, it would have been destroyed.

Baicheng, copper mine.

It is very inconvenient for copper mine mining to penetrate deep into the ground, but it still produces copper materials continuously. These copper materials are transported to Ji Town to refine copper, and the annual income is about 500,000 taels. After the distribution of the funds, it is still a huge sum of money. The prospecting team discovered an iron ore in the southeast of Baicheng. Lin Danhan and Macheng were unable to develop it. There are only so many people near Baicheng, and the population of less than 200,000 is still the whole people. The people of the Ming Dynasty were unwilling to leave their hometowns and earn such a small income on the grassland.

Lin Danhan did not dare to plunder the Ming people as slaves, so the mines faced serious manpower shortage.

After Macheng walked around the mine, he mentioned with great meaning: "If you win this battle, the benefits will be yours."

Lin Danhan's eyes immediately lit up and even became a little fanatical. The implication was that if this battle was won, there would inevitably be a large number of prisoners, and using prisoners to mine was naturally excellent. The Mongolians also started their business by stealing the word "slaughter". It was very easy to use slaves. The detective cavalry reported that there were a large number of Mongolian miscellaneous soldiers in the Jianlu army, and the infantry in the Han army, and the grassland combat was so distinctive. The defeated cavalry could escape, but the infantry could not fly.

Ma Cheng never regarded these Han troops as Ming people. These Han troops betrayed their ancestors and killed the rebels in Liaodong even more fiercely than Jianlu, and were already aliens. The two made a covenant to make an oath, so they were determined to prepare for war. On the low wall of Baicheng, Ma Cheng suddenly saw more than ten cannons, general cannons made by the Ming army, and two general cannons. I don’t know where they bought them, and they were all half-new and half-old cast iron cannons.

Ma Cheng saw it as if he was gone, but he silently thought in his heart that Shanxi, the lawless Shanxi merchants dared to sell cannons.

More than ten general artillery pieces, the second general artillery can only fire hoppers for short-range defense, but it greatly improved Baicheng's defense ability. It was impossible for Jianlu to bring cannons. They had to cross mountains and ridges from Jinzhou to take shortcuts and go deep into the southern desert grasslands. It would take a month or two to be transported by the cannons. Therefore, these dozen cannons will cause a great psychological blow to the Han army that was sieging the city, and the Mongols also had cannons.

Back at the tent, Ma Cheng's face was gloomy and wrote a letter to Governor Wang Guozhen to investigate the cannon. A team of light cavalry left the camp and headed towards Shanxi. Wang Guozhen was mostly unaware of this matter. It should be not low to resell cannons from the army. Ma Cheng narrowed his eyes and the army was on the side. If he didn't deal with a few Shanxi's unscrupulous merchants, how could he get rid of the soldiers of the three armies? The eight major merchants in Shanxi should have fewer.

Baicheng, five thousand cavalrymen of kings, and twenty thousand young and strong gathered together, and people shouted and horses were neighing. Horses slowly left the city with their neighing sounds. Horses saw the other side of the Mongolians fighting, the tactics used by the Mongols when they conquered the world three hundred years ago, and the center broke through and surrounded the two wings. Heavy armored cavalry resisted the main force of the enemy from the front, and a large group of light cavalrymen on both wings surrounded the enemy at high speed, quickly rushed to the front of the enemy to shoot arrows, and used precise archery techniques to defeat the enemy's resistance.

The Mongols also had a Mangude tactic, which was called the Ancient Romans' archery technique, which was riding and shooting. To this day, everyone seems to have forgotten that the Mongols were the ancestors of riding and shooting. The Mongols who actively retreated were the most terrifying. They escaped and lured the enemy to pursue while shooting archery, which brought the maneuverability of the cavalry to the extreme. The essence of the Mongol tactics is to attack the enemy from a long distance, continuously attack the enemy, and not give the enemy a chance to fight back. Under this attack, no matter how strong the enemy's spirit and armor are, it is only a matter of time to completely collapse. At that time, most European knights were equipped with heavy helmets and heavy armor. Although they were very powerful in melee combat, their mobility was simply impossible to compare with the Mongolian cavalry.

If you encounter a Mongolian cavalry archer, you will not only not be able to catch up, but you will not even be able to escape, and you will only be a target for archers. Moreover, the Mongolian cavalry does not rely entirely on strong attacks like European knights. They will only fight with the enemy when they use bows and arrows to kill most of the enemy. The Mongolian cavalry relied on this tactic to defeat the most elite Hungarian army in Europe on the banks of the Danube, killing more than 70,000 enemies, and played a song "Red Danube" with bows and arrows, almost completely eliminating Europe's resistance.

From the perspective of Macheng, this tactic is unreplicable because the Mongol Empire at that time had a large number of sharpshooters. Manguda was a specially selected army, and they had to attack the enemy alone. Manguda was able to quickly rush to the enemy's army, shoot arrows from all directions like a storm, and then escape immediately, without confronting the enemy's infantry's swords or spears from beginning to end. They successfully combined the horse's fast galloping, clever control and timing choice, first launched a fierce attack to cause considerable losses to the enemy, then defeated and retreated, pretending to be frightened and seemed to be aimlessly fleeing. (To be continued)
Chapter completed!