When the ancient riverbed of Zhangye Gobi was rolled over by the footsteps of the Ming army, the yellow sand was lifted into the sky, blocking the sky and the sun.
The Zhenyi Ranger Battalion of more than 2,000 people was divided into four divisions and five lines. The three infantrymen formed a four-step wide column, ten steps apart, to form a thirty-two-step wide battle line. The remaining armored cavalry
Divide the general's troops into two groups and provide cover on the left and right wings.
Lines of sergeants marched southward in the dust. The soldiers in the military formation couldn't see anything except the flags fluttering behind the guard team, and their vision was completely blocked by the yellow sand.
The marshal's flag was fluttering in front of the waiting marshal's army, and the artillery fired the powder line. The granular black gunpowder wrapped in silk burned fiercely in the copper-cast barrel. The light and the shells broke through the smoke and swept across the battlefield with a deafening roar. p>
Most of the soldiers in the Ming army column had no time to react to what happened. They only heard the sound of cracking wind in their ears. The seven-pound iron bullet had passed through the gap in the column and crashed further behind them. Then they continued to leap forward and finally crashed.
Five hundred steps away from the front line, embedded in the majestic chest of a maroon horse.
The war horse fell to the ground in mourning, and its hooves kept beating until it lost all its strength.
People had no time to worry. They waved the flags in front of the marshal's army, cleaned the gun barrels, and replaced the silk ammunition. The Zhenyi army formation was still advancing. The infantry columns on both sides each separated an artifact management team, and carried two people on the Franco machine.
The invincible general's chariot was pushed into the gap.
There were no mountains of earth in the camp. Tang Tong, the commander-in-chief of the Marshal's Mansion, stood on his horse's saddle and stared at the Ming army column coming from the smoke. He was muttering to himself: "Your pick of the vanguard.
Where?"
The war situation was changing rapidly, and he couldn't tell whose reinforcements would come first.
Therefore, Tang Tong was prepared with two things in mind. There was no other way to stand still and wait for help. If he couldn't stand, he would have to run. If he couldn't run, he would die. But if he was more aggressive, this would be a battle that belonged to him after all.
Tang Tong didn't have much qualms in his heart.
On the one hand, he has discovered that he is the most comfortable group of people in the Marshal's Mansion. They seriously lack central bureaucrats. The entire system is almost a replica of the Five Generations. Bandits follow the leader, the leader follows the military leader, the military leader recommends the general, and the general recognizes the marshal. p>
The core of power in the Marshal's Mansion is Liu Chengzong's small circle. There are almost no civil servants. Liu Xiangyu's attributes as the Supreme Emperor are much heavier than those of the civil servants.
The only difference between them and the military rulers is that Liu Chengzong himself is a scholar, and he respects Confucian generals more than the bravery of ordinary men. Even if he is in charge of a team, he cannot do it if he is illiterate.
Liu Chengzong set up a lot of rural schools and academies in Hehuang. He sent people to study after they had performed meritorious service on the battlefield. The higher up he went in the Marshal's Mansion, the less illiterate and reckless people there were.
Strictly speaking, the Marshal's Mansion only needs one kind of person, and there are only two conditions: first, he is educated, and second, he can fight. Tang Tong is this kind of person.
On the other hand, Liu Chengzong was neither a cannibal nor a barbarian with a feud between different races. He was nothing more than a traitor who didn't sound good. Rebellion required capital. From Tang Tong's point of view, Liu Chengzong's capital was already sufficient.
.
The equipment, supplies, baggage and support from superiors of the field headquarters of the Marshal's Mansion he led far exceeded the treatment he received when leading troops for the imperial court.
The last little awkwardness left is just the moral conflict of fighting against the old employer under the banner of the Marshal's Mansion. But in this moment when everything is broken, how can there be right or wrong?
Li Siyou said: The virtuous and dishonest people are like rats, they only depend on where they are.
So at this moment, Tang Tong only has one idea in his mind: fight alone and win.
Tang Tong had a clear view of the incoming Ming army's organization. The enemy army was obviously composed of four complete generals, each with five hundred generals.
The picker he is looking for is not a servant. In some places, servants are called pickers, but in terms of organization, servants are miscellaneous. They are on the same level as the engineering and military bureau where Tangqi, Liang, and Road Opener work. In fashionable terms, both of them are the same.
It is a non-staff support unit.
What he was looking for was the first division of every unit in the regular army.
According to the Ming Army's traditional method of selecting forwards, the first division of each department selects forwards, the first round of each division selects forwards, and the first team of each round selects forwards. They have the best quality, the highest morale, and the most skewed equipment. Likewise,
He also took on the most risky mission in the war.
Tang Tong believed that in this kind of offensive battle, the enemy general would definitely put the choice of front to use, which was exactly what he wanted. After all, directly defeating more than 2,000 enemy troops was tantamount to wishful thinking, but the essence of war is to destroy fortresses.
It is not impossible to seize Qi and concentrate superior strength to defeat a selection of five or six hundred people.
His target was hidden in the five-pronged large column, but the sand and dust obscured his eyes, allowing him to clearly see only the small columns at the front of each column, and in those small columns, the soldiers holding shields were marching forward.
Undoubtedly, they are all the forward selection teams of each division.
The real selection department is hidden inside.
He originally thought that the enemy's vanguard would carry heavy artillery, but he never expected that the officers and soldiers would just overlap and advance amidst the shouting of drums and horns. He could vaguely see the soldiers on the outside of the infantry columns on the left and right wings with their horses, and then he saw the soldiers on both wings pushing out.
A heavy cannon.
Two invincible generals appeared a hundred steps away. This scene made Tang Tong so scared that he didn't even bother to let the flag bearer hold the flag. He jumped off the horse and shouted: "Fire the enemy's artillery three times quickly.
Dodge the cannons!"
He is very familiar with the application of the Invincible General in field battles. This is an improvement of the old front-loading General's Fran machine when Qi Jiguang was Prime Minister in Ji Town. It is a special version for Mongolia.
In the past, the biggest advantage of the structure of the Franco machine was its fast rate of fire. The biggest disadvantage was not air leakage, but the small size.
Even Western-style cannons have about one-fifteenth of the play. Most cannons in this era will leak air. Even as long as the air leakage is within a controllable range, given the material science and technology level of this era, it is not entirely a bad thing.
It can effectively reduce the internal pressure of the gun barrel and increase the speed of loading ammunition.
There is no play in artillery, so soldiers must have a hammer as a regular equipment to smash the shells into the barrel.
The reason why the Franco machine is not big is because its structure does not use the barrel to withstand the pressure of the barrel, but uses the musket as the barrel, so it has a high rate of fire.
In the past, the general's cannon required several or even a dozen soldiers to tilt the gun body to load it because it was not strong enough. The invincible general's sub-gun is much lighter than the entire artillery, but the problem is that it requires manpower.
Lift it up to change the ammunition.
The larger the caliber, the more powder is charged, and the greater the pressure of the blunderbuss, the larger it needs to be. Even the largest blunderbuss can only weigh 200 kilograms and it can reach the sky. No matter how heavy it is, it will be difficult for a person to lift it.
, the advantage of fast firing rate no longer exists.
Therefore, Ye Mengxiong was not satisfied with this cannon and further improved the blunderbuss, which inspired future generations to use materials that can withstand high chamber pressure to make blunderbuss under the condition that the total weight is fixed. It is obvious that copper is better than pig iron.
, wrought iron or even steel is better than copper.
Therefore, for the invincible generals in the late Ming Dynasty, the guns were basically forged. As field artillery, they were light, durable, and highly lethal. Therefore, even with the popularity of the red barbarian artillery, it was still active on battlefields everywhere.
Since this kind of gun is specially supplied to Mongolia, its basic usage is to fire solid bullets. It is equipped with a mother gun and three sub-guns. Each sub-gun is loaded with 500 loose particles, and three rounds of rapid fire can be completed within twenty seconds.<
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In the midst of Tang Tong's shouts, the flag bearers and drummers around him also hurriedly played flags and drums, and more people followed and shouted together, and the sound was transmitted directly to the front of the formation.
But in fact, the soldiers in front of the battle line were protected by earthen ramparts and did not panic at all. The commander in front of the battle line, his eyes looking deep under the shadow of his eyebrows, looked back at the army, straightened his body and calmly ordered the soldiers to raise the flag. Five hundred people on the front line commanded eight lion artillery pieces, firing at the Ming army's heavy artillery team; at the same time, the rest of the soldiers quickly crouched under the protection of the earthen ramparts, and the soldiers in the back row put their chest-high shields on top.<
/p>
Then, amid the roaring sound of artillery, the commanders at all levels and the General Manager crouched down one by one. Wai Liangzi also squatted on one knee after his subordinates were all on guard, but he still raised his neck to try to observe the enemy's movements.
Eight one-pound artillery shells were fired at the Ming army's artillery. Several shells grazed the barrel of the Invincible General's cannon, knocking several Ming army artillerymen to the ground. Only one shell hit the artillery carriage on the right.
However, the gun carriage was not destroyed, it was just embedded in it.
Accurate shooting of artillery is itself an act of having a chance of hitting the target. It is no different in structure from a cannon. They are both a tube, but the magnification ratio is much lower, and aiming is more difficult. p>
Even the most experienced gunslinger would find it difficult to accurately hit an artillery piece, let alone an artillery piece, at a distance of a hundred paces.
The suppressive firing of the Ming army was only slightly delayed. Although the wounded artilleryman fell to the ground and groaned loudly, it was quickly suppressed by the roaring sound of the artillery.
The first to be bombarded was the unaffected invincible general on the left wing. Under the smoke, hundreds of loose particles shot out like slugs, spreading sixty steps wide from a hundred steps away, like a violent wind and rain, all over the front line of the entire marshal's army.
There was a popping sound on the earthen base.
There were more projectiles flying back over the half-man-high earth barrier, like hundreds of muskets fired from volleys, hitting the long shields set up by the soldiers at the rear. Some were embedded in the shields, and some penetrated the shields.
If you pass, hurt the soldiers behind.
The muffled sound of being shot resounded in the formation one after another. Crooked Liangzi did not look back, and the sound of wounded soldiers being dragged away from the front line could also be heard.
He dared to look up again and just saw the outline of the Ming Army's three columns continuing to advance. From the corner of his eye, he saw the position of the heavy artillery on the right wing also emitting flashes of light. He quickly lowered his head. At this moment, hundreds more scattered bullets were fired.
Sub-squirting.
Under the suppressive fire of two general cannons in turn, the soldiers on the front line of the Marshal's Mansion could only hide in the earthen ramparts and listen to the continuous sound of lead breaking through the air above their heads. They were so suppressed that they did not dare to raise their heads.
The three infantry columns of the Ming Army took this opportunity to overlap and march forward. The whole army was like a big crab. The invincible general on the left loaded his ammunition, and the infantry on the left pressed forward; the invincible general on the right loaded his ammunition, and the infantry on the right pressed forward.
The infantry pressed forward, while the Chinese army marched forward quickly between the shots of the two cannons.
Amidst the continuous firing, Tang Tong saw from the relatively safe rear that the cavalry on the outside of the three lines of infantry of the Ming Army were also idle. They took this opportunity to outflank the two wings of the camp, and quickly ordered General Li Baliang to lead his troops.
Go to the left wing to defend against cavalry.
As for the cavalry on the right wing, Tang Tong is not worried. There is a river on the right side of the camp, and the cavalry cannot rush over there. They are just waiting around to prevent them from escaping from there after they are defeated.
This couldn't help but make him smile in his nervousness: The enemy general seemed to be sure of victory, so much so that he was a little overconfident - why did he think that he would win as soon as he got closer?
Wailiangzi was infuriated by the endless bombardment. The most important thing was that it was difficult for him to fight back. The only heavy cannon in Qianqian Headquarters was right next to him, but the artillerymen next to him could not load it.
The problem that the Ming army's heavy artillery was difficult to cock did not exist for them, because the ammunition in the Marshal's Mansion was made of silk fixed ammunition bags, and the ammunition could be stuffed in even if the muzzle was pointed downward.
The problem they can't load is also because of the ammunition package. If they are hit by loose powder when loading, the tightly packed gunpowder is likely to explode. The first 700 loose powder there are likely to beat the soldiers within ten steps around.
Sieve.
Seeing the two general cannons continuously spraying deadly projectiles, shattering the cart boards fixed with wet sand on the outside of the earthen fortress, and even the inner boards being penetrated many times, injuring the frontline soldiers, Wailiangzi was furious. p>
In the past, when I was in Qiufang, Ningxia, I didn't feel much when watching friendly forces use this thing to bombard the Mongolians. This would cause a hail of bullets to hit my head, making him curse in anger.
The two large general cannons that alternately fire in turns are too powerful at close range. Even if they are protected by earthen barriers, the soldiers still press forward in order to avoid the cannons. The crowd is so crowded that the formation is broken. There is no need to lift the guns.
The guns were huddled together and there was no way to fight back.
If this continues, when the enemy forces close up and fight, they will be defeated even if they don't have many casualties.
Because casualties are not the scariest thing in a battle, the scariest thing is being beaten while standing without being able to fight back.
At this moment, Wai Liangzi clearly heard that after the general's cannon on the left wing was fired, the cannon on the right wing soon followed. The shooting gap between the two cannons was a bit short, which made him happy. He stood up and shouted several times to boost morale.
: "Fill the lion cannons with liquor and make those two cannons mute!"
During the entire six rounds of shelling in deathly silence, Wai Liangzi was the first one to stand up. Hearing this, the stunned chief executives also came to their senses. They all stood up to boost morale and shouted at the soldiers to stay away.
Too close, maintain formation.
Soon, the soldiers took the risk of pouring the shorter 200-pound Lion Cannon into the powder bag and adjusted the angle. However, before they could start shooting, there was another muffled sound, and the enemy's Franco-style General Cannon had already fired.
After completing the loading, the powder was sprayed in front of the formation again. In an instant, an artillery commander and several soldiers fell to the ground.
But they finally took action, and a lion cannon on the right wing fired at the enemy formation. However, it seemed that because the artillerymen were nervous, they did not listen to the military order clearly and fired a shot at the military formation advancing directly ahead.
There was no shock of bleeding, and the two sides were only forty steps apart. The top ten soldiers in the enemy formation, who were holding shields and placing anti-captive cannons, fell silently.
Immediately afterwards, several fully loaded Lion Cannons were fired at the same time. Accompanied by the dull sound of cannons, there was the soft sound of loose particles cutting through the gunpowder smoke. The lead shot and the gunpowder smoke drew dense lines on the battlefield between the two armies.
, and finally converged around two invincible general cannons.
Like a violent storm, it overturned the two artillery teams.
The artillery that suppressed them no longer existed. Taking this opportunity, every hundred commanders at the front of the position issued orders almost at the same time. The tripods for carrying guns were opened, and heavy muskets were placed on the earthen ramparts.
On the side, the infantry line composed of spears and waist knives is also ready to defend against attacks at any time.
The flags symbolizing shooting were held in the hands of President Bai and raised above his head. Wai Liangzi did not speak. He just raised his arms and slowly lowered them. A high-pitched suona sound sounded behind him, and he was immediately fired by large-caliber muskets.
