Wulan Mountain is a paradise in the deserts of Huaidan.
Thirty miles to the west is the Keke Salt Lake, to the south are the Yak Mountains, Dulan Lake and the Great Wetland, to the north is the lush forested Harihatu Mountain, and to the east is the Chaka Salt Pond across the 140 miles of mountain road. p>
There are both vast woodlands suitable for grazing and a large amount of irrigable land for farming...
Mongolian men set up an endless camp at the foot of the mountain and built a city.
The city was built very simply. The wall, which is wide at the bottom and narrow at the top, is one foot high and square. The base of the wall is six feet wide. The top of the city is four feet wide. There is a foot-thick parapet.
The city wall is very low and narrow, and no other fortifications were built except for the water diversion ditch, but it is enough to make Arslan proud... This is the city he presided over the construction of, what a city!
In such a huge Mongolia, there are only a few people who are in charge of building cities. Starting from this city of Ulan, he, Arslan, must be one of them.
At this moment, Arslan stood at the foot of Wulan Mountain, looking at this rammed earth city, his heart almost floated to the sky: relying on the 10,000 troops left by his father, he strangely found the feeling of sweating profusely. Arslan never felt like a leader.
In the past in Khalkha, his elders were the leaders of the tribes in Khalkha, and his father was just one of the many nobles. As for himself, he was not special among the many noble warriors.
Even outside Gansu, with his father as the leader, he only thought that he was one of the dozens of thousands of men in this Mongolian army.
Even if he controls the army, he does not consider himself the leader... The traditional nomadic tribe life is not just about warriors, but they are only tired, hungry, and fleeing warriors.
Only in Wulan Mountain.
Not long after Chuoktu Taiji launched the Eastern Campaign, countless Mongolians came from Monan to defect to the Mongolian heroes who invaded Qinghai - not to Chuoktu, but to him, Arslan.
These newly defected Mongols came from the right-wing Tumut, Yongshebu and Ordos. They were the losers in Lin Dan Khan's Western Expedition.
When the war ended, they lost their hometown and were stationed in Yanbian. They followed Chuoktu Taiji to find Lin Dan Khan's messenger, and then went all the way to Qinghai.
Arslan considered not accepting them.
The vast majority of these people are not soldiers. The strong and powerful people died or were killed in the war. Most of the old and weak also died in the early frost last spring. The survivors are mostly defeated soldiers and women and children. They are not a threat to them.
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One month after they settled in Wulan Mountain, the place was changing with each passing day. They were no longer a group of failed troops who had fled from various places. They now had knowledgeable old men, gentle and hard-working women, and even some who were good at riding colts.
Boy.
In the June grassland, under the junipers and green poplars, rapeseed flowers bloomed everywhere. The displaced people finally found a place to settle down. They indulged in love in the bonfires in the forest and imagined the future under the boundless night sky.
In the laughter, Arslan found the feeling and happiness of being a leader.
People are grateful to him, women and children are grateful to him for his magnanimity and providing a place for the exiles; soldiers are also grateful to him for his tolerance and generosity, for bringing wives and children to bachelors.
Someone told Arslan that he was just a boy and could create a new Ulan tribe.
Just like lightning flashing across the sky, it only flashes away, but can burn a raging fire in the forest. Maybe the speaker just mentioned it casually after having fun, but it is deeply rooted in Arslan's heart like an obsession.<
/p>
He has a city, tens of thousands of tribesmen, fields suitable for farming, endless pastures, inexhaustible salt lakes, huge mines, inexhaustible forests, and powerful artillery.<
/p>
Why can’t we establish our own Wanhu Department?
It's just that everything has its good and its bad. While people are supporting him more and more, he has noticed more than once that the brave and capable warriors are slacking off.
The monks who accompanied the army said that this was the will of the Buddha, a dreamed land, and even women and children, and they did not need to march eastward.
Arslan worshiped the Buddha statue and said in his heart very piously: Fart.
Born in the most prominent family in Khalkha, although he is not special among the same nobles, he still received an excellent education. He is not a fool and does not believe this.
When they were eating the cannonballs of the Gansu General Soldier in the desert outside Suzhou, what was the purpose of the Buddha's teaching?
But it doesn’t matter whether you believe it or not, nor does it matter whether people have a clear understanding of the teachings and scriptures. What matters is identity.
Mongolian nobles pay attention to the blood relationship of the golden family, but the Mongolian tribes cannot be united by blood, especially the Mongolian tribes in Qinghai.
Ever since Anda Khan sent people to occupy the sea, this place has been like a gathering of losers, gathering all the tribes from the Red Army of Central Asia to the people in the forests of Lake Baikal.
Pick two herdsmen at random, they may have the same grandfather, or they may be more distantly related by blood than Emperor Chongzhen and Lin Dan Khan.
From the time when Emperor Shun of the Yuan Dynasty arrived in Yanhan, the various Mongolian tribes had been enfeoffed many times. Each tribe still used its old name, but the blood relationship was a mess, not to mention that there had long been no powerful Khan who could unite all the tribes and call them Mongolia.
.
So what do you rely on to maintain your identity? Religion.
At this time, Mongolia is in an embarrassing situation. They cannot live without the identity brought by religion, but if they want to rely on this, they must passively join the sectarian disputes in the snowy mountains.
This is really funny. As a Mongolian noble, Arslan may hope that the disputes in the snowy mountains can be restored to peace more than many Uzbek nobles.
Another iron cannon was forged. Arslan looked at his own magical weapon and felt extremely satisfied.
The iron cannon made in Wulanshan is based on the bronze cannon captured by the Orus bandits in Oirat, but Arslan cannot imitate it because he is very short of copper materials.
To illuminate people's thoughts, if there is no copper material, use cast iron cannons.
Arslan wanted to cast iron cannons... Although cast iron cannons were heavy and not as durable as cast copper cannons, they were very simple according to the technology of the Ming Dynasty. Liu Chengzong got two red barbarian cannons in Shanxi, and only kept the bronze cannons.
The heavy iron cannon was thrown at Yan'an Guard.
Because the performance of the cast iron cannon is not very good, it has only one most important advantage, which is that it is cheap.
But looking at the world, the production process of cast iron cannons is one of the first echelon of technical difficulties in the world. Even the maritime power Spain does not know it, and only a few countries have this technology.
During the Apocalypse, Sweden's export of cast iron cannons attracted the attention of the United Kingdom, because before this, the export of cast iron cannons throughout Europe was completely monopolized by the United Kingdom.
For Ming, this thing is technology that can be used at any time, but for Arslan, it is science that needs to be studied.
Assembling a large number of craftsmen and having enough materials, Arslan can forge the best scimitar, the best armor, the sharpest arrow clusters, and even knock out a good blunderbuss tube. There are ready-made imitations of bird blunderbuss, etc.
There are no technical difficulties with the parts.
But if you put a cast iron cannon in front of him, no matter how many Mongolian craftsmen you give him, he can't imitate it.
However, if you can't imitate it, you can find another way. There is not much difference between people in terms of intelligence. Arslan's cannon is a wrought iron cannon about the same size as the lion cannon. It uses a hammered iron barrel as the barrel.
The layers are made with reference to Hami's muskets, rolled up layer by layer with wrought iron bars, and rolled forward and backward.
It is lightweight and of very good quality. It has almost no shortcomings except for the high cost, long working hours and small diameter.
For more than a month, he mobilized many craftsmen and only made five iron cannons and more than 200 cannonballs.
Iron cannonballs were also hammered by craftsmen, because they did not know how to cast iron. Only Mongolian craftsmen from Tumut on the grassland could cast iron, but Arslan did not participate in the Eastern Expedition, and there was no one under him who could cast iron.
Even so, since everyone who ran from Monan to Mobei to Wulan Mountain has rich experience in being cannoned in various places, every iron cannon and every forged shell is valuable to the Mongolian tribes.
Like a festival worth celebrating.
However, on the day when the fifth iron cannon was forged, Arslan did not have time to celebrate when he received an urgent message from the herdsmen grazing in the forest to the east.
"The local Han army crossed the Chaka Salt Pond and built a wooden fort at the mountain pass!"
Arslan was gearing up to test the power of artillery, and the galloping cavalry surged out from outside Ulan City, rushing from the wetlands to the forest.
They found that the Han people were building a mountain wooden fort with an outer fence among the mountain roads. While there were only dozens of defenders on the fort, they immediately launched a siege without waiting for the artillery to arrive.
The siege went very smoothly. After taking dozens of heavy bullets and losing dozens of soldiers, the Mongolian army set up camp under the lonely fortress mountain.
When Arslan arrived at the foot of the mountain, he looked at the condescending wooden castle and scolded the hunting herdsmen around him.
The fort seemed to have at most a hundred defenders. With the size of the garrison, it would take at least a month to build the fort. For a month, they didn't know that the Han army had cut off the main road. Arslan thought it was
The shepherd’s dereliction of duty.
He really wronged the tribesmen who were hunting nearby. This fortress was actually built three days ago and was discovered by the Mongols on the second day after the construction started.
The guard of the wooden fort was Bai Zong under Qian Zhong Hu. He had already discovered a suitable location in the local area for building the fort. He prepared the wood for building the fort in the east in advance. He asked for 300 men from Zhong Hu and drove the donkey cart directly.
They rushed to the mountain pass and built a stronghold overnight, which allowed the large troops to retreat.
His mission was to conceal the enemy's detection of intelligence from the east and delay it for two days to cooperate with Liu Chengzong's plan to inform Arslan.
This hundred generals were soldiers of Liu Chengzong, and they had very good archery skills. When defending the city, each man had two pots of arrows, and with more than a dozen marshal's heavy muskets, he blocked the mountain road to attack the fort. When there were few people, he shot when there were more people.
Just use five or six heavy muskets to fire a volley, and the Mongolian soldiers besieging the city can't attack at all.
But when Arslan's iron artillery joined the war the next day, the situation was different.
In order to manage five iron cannons, Arslan specially formed a hundred-man artillery team. The selection of artillerymen was very strict and the rewards were generous. As long as the artillerymen were selected, they would be rewarded with a war horse.
Arslan also had no choice but to do this. In terms of technical level, each of his more than 10,000 men is capable of being an artilleryman.
Except for the few craftsmen who participated in the cannon test, most people's understanding of artillery is on the same starting line: they are all Mongolian boys who have been beaten by cannon.
Which hero galloping on the grassland never thought that one day he would be able to blast others with cannons?
In this case, he can't just assign some people to serve as artillery, otherwise he won't be able to convince the public, so he has to set a threshold... But the threshold can't be too high. If you set a threshold that is too high at once, for example, if you have touched a cannon, then you will brush it off.
More than 10,000 people went down.
Arslan thought hard and finally figured out two very demanding requirements, which had little to do with artillery and could also maximize the power of artillery under the current conditions.
The first is that they must have been fatally injured in previous battles; the second is that they are still alive and kicking.
Luck, the selection criterion for artillery is luck.
Separated by more than 200 steps, a hundred Mongolian soldiers transported five iron cannons to the mountain road. There was no artillery position. The five iron cannons were lined up towards the mountain fort.
Then dozens of monks clasped their hands next to the cannon, invited the majestic clay Bodhisattva, chanted the Buddha's trumpet, and fired five cannons one after another. The sound of the cannons echoed in the mountains, frightening the soldiers on the wooden fort. When the gunfire was about to sound, the soldiers shrank back and hurriedly hid behind the wooden fence.
The most frightening thing was General Manager Bai. As an officer, he had to stand upright with his upper body exposed outside the wooden fence, his calves were shaking, and he had to stare at the five artillery pieces with bright eyes.
Everyone is not afraid of artillery. The more veterans have seen several major battles, the more afraid they are of artillery.
Because the artillery these days is not a howitzer that can directly blow people to pieces or shock them to death. It shoots iron eggs. Unless it directly penetrates the chest and crushes the skull, otherwise the gun will not go directly to the sky, and there will be no chance of recovery. It is very likely
After the battle is over, a person who has not yet died is a standard death.
The sound of the cannon was so loud that a thin layer of sweat broke out on the forehead under the brow of President Bai's helmet. His eyes quickly roamed around the wooden fort. He was so panicked that he couldn't see the impact point of the cannonball even though he was so wide-eyed just now!
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Nothing happened to his soldiers. Each of his subordinates loudly announced the news that there were no casualties. Instead, he lowered his head and looked down the mountain. A large number of Mongolian soldiers gathered near the artillery had withdrawn, and some people were running up the mountain. p>
President Bai ordered to prepare to defend against the enemy, only to find that the Mongolian soldiers who had climbed up the mountain were returning with cannonballs.
Mr. Bai was so angry that he just wanted to throw off his helmet and go down to fight with them hand-to-hand... How could it be so scary?
Several more bombardments followed, and the soldiers stationed at the wooden fort discovered something was wrong with the enemy's artillery. They finally figured out something.
The enemy had a total of five cannons. Every time they fired, each cannon had its own idea. There were never two cannonballs hitting the same place. Moreover, they hit their wooden stronghold. The Mongols seemed more anxious than if they missed the hit.
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It seems that after they fired a cannon, they had to send people to pick up the cannonballs. Unfortunately, a cannonball hit the wooden village and was embedded in the wooden fence, so the cannonball could not be picked up.
The lion soldiers guarding the wooden fort were not even interested in fighting back. President Bai was also happy to train the soldiers' ability to withstand shelling. Everyone was bombarded by five iron cannons from 200 paces away. It only took one person to change their expressions from panic to indifferent.
Afternoon.
In the evening, the Mongolian soldiers gradually withdrew to rest in the forest. The Lion Soldiers also burned the wooden stronghold and retreated. Before leaving, they sent a prisoner and a letter to Arslan.
Arslan unfolded the letter and found a monk who knew Chinese to read it out: "Arslan, your father's name is, no, it's Choktu Taiji. He ordered you to immediately lead your troops and march into the Heka Grassland with artillery, and attack Liu Chengzong from east to west.
Don't delay, drop..."
After reading the text message, the monk was a little doubtful about life. He looked up at Arslan, looked down at the letter, blinked in confusion, and then looked up at Arslan: "Well, this letter, this letter is signed Liu Chengzong, this is written by Liu Chengzong
Letter."
"Ha!"
Arslan was overjoyed. He sneered and stared at his left and right: "Does he think I'm stupid? Do I believe this kind of fake military information?"