Zhu Cijiong's military use perfectly inherited the style of his father Chongzhen, which was radical yet cautious. To put it simply, he was very radical when it came to being radical, but he was extremely cautious when it came to being cautious.
For example, not far from the Kelber Pass and even more than ten miles away from Peshawar, Zhu Cijiong ordered the camp to be stationed.
As a result, the Ming army had just set up camp when a huge army appeared outside the Ming army camp. After receiving the report, Zhu Cijiong quickly climbed to the watchtower to observe the enemy's situation, but found that there were not many enemy troops.
Xia Wanchun also had a look of astonishment on his face: "Your Highness, it looks like there are only thirty thousand people at most?"
"Thirty thousand? I'm afraid it's less than that." Zhu Cijiong shook his head and said, "Maybe it's 20,000."
"How dare you take the initiative to attack with less than 30,000 troops?" Xia Wanchun raised his forehead and asked, "Who gave them the courage?"
"Ignorance is not a crime. They don't know the power of our great soldiers." Hu Guozhu continued.
While the three of them were talking, a burst of neighing sounds suddenly came from far ahead. When Zhu Cijiong and others hurriedly raised their binoculars to look, they found that a group of elephants had come out from behind the hill in front of them.
"This is a war elephant soldier?" Xia Wanchun couldn't help being surprised.
As early as Samarkand, the Ming army had heard that both the Sawifa Dynasty of Persia and the Mughal Dynasty of India had war elephant soldiers, and there were a lot of them, but they had never had the opportunity to see it with their own eyes. Today they finally saw the war elephant soldiers.
.
I saw that these war elephants were huge, even bigger than the elephants Zhu Cijiong saw in the Forbidden City when he was a child.
I saw that these war elephants were carrying huge elephant carriages on their backs, and each elephant carriage had multiple musketeers.
However, Zhu Cijiong and Xia Wanchun were indifferent to these musketeers, but they were a little surprised by the huge bronze cannons dragged by the war elephants. Could the caliber be five inches or even larger?
The key is that there are fifty war elephants and fifty cannons.
"No wonder you dare to attack our 200,000 army with 30,000 people!" Hu Guozhu said.
"Prince Ding, the Mughal Dynasty seems to be stronger than we thought." Xia Wanchun said in a stunned voice.
Zhu Cijiong did not speak, he just held up his telescope to observe the enemy troops, not knowing what he was thinking.
After a pause, Xia Wanchun said to himself: "If we hadn't built the fortress in advance, we might have been in some trouble."
Xia Wanchun instinctively believed that the Mughal army's cannons had a larger caliber, a longer range, and greater power.
Therefore, the Mughal army's artillery can hit the Ming army's camp at a longer distance. If the Ming army had not built camp fortifications in advance and had trenches to provide shelter for the soldiers, the casualties would certainly not be small.
"Brother Duan, what you said makes sense, so we can't just defend." Zhu Cijiong turned his head and shouted, "Give me an order for the 1st Cavalry Division and the 2nd Cavalry Division to form an array on both sides, so as to compete with the main camp."
After several years of practice, Zhu Cijiong has really mastered it.
With just one glance, Zhu Cijiong could see the two fatal disadvantages of the Mughal army: they were small and they were all infantry!
In this campaign against the Mughal dynasty, Zhu Cijiong led four cavalry divisions from the 1st Cavalry Corps. The remaining two cavalry divisions were stationed in Samar Khan and Khiva respectively to guard against the Persian Sawifa dynasty.
As for Tsarist Russia in the north and Ottoman Turkey further to the west, Zhu Cijiong was not worried at all. Firstly, these two countries were far away and beyond reach. Secondly, the Ming Empire did not go to war with these two countries, so Tsarist Russia and the Ottoman Empire sent troops.
The possibility is slim.
Zhu Cijiong brought four cavalry divisions with a strength of 80,000.
What needs special explanation is that these six cavalry divisions of the Ming Army are no longer dragoons, but have become real cavalry divisions in long-term battles.
That is to say, there is no need to dismount and line up during battle.
Of course, another reason is that the rifles of the Ming army have evolved again.
After the rifle evolved into a breech-loaded gun with a metal cartridge and a fixed ammunition load, it became easier to fight on horseback.
The Ming army also included Dzungars, Turghuts, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Khivas, and Nokti.
The Gai and Turkmen servants numbered about 60,000 people.
Therefore, the total strength of the Ming army was 140,000.
The Mughal army on the opposite side only numbered 30,000 people.
The Ming army had an absolute advantage in strength, coupled with the high mobility of the cavalry, it became the best tactic to divide the troops in multiple directions to threaten the enemy's rear from both wings.
Zhu Cijiong's order was issued, and the 40,000 soldiers of the two cavalry divisions immediately left the camp.
The Mughal army on the opposite side was very overconfident. I don't know if it was because they had not encountered a strong opponent in the South Asian subcontinent for a long time, so they turned a blind eye to the Ming army's threat of dividing their forces.
Facing the threat of a three-sided attack from the Ming army, the Mughal army continued to move forward in formation.
Soon, the forward infantry of the Mughal Army entered the range of the Ming Army's artillery.
However, Zhu Cijiong did not order the artillery fire. He was waiting for the Mughal army's war elephant soldiers and the 50 or so bronze cannons dragged by the war elephants to enter the range of the cannon.
The result was exactly as Zhu Cijiong had guessed.
The Mughal army's bronze cannons were as close as two thousand steps.
Seeing this, Zhu Cijiong, Xia Wanchun and the Ming army generals behind them all laughed out loud.
"Prince Ding, it seems we overestimated them, haha." Xia Wanchun said with a smile, "Although the Mughal army's bronze cannon has a large caliber, its range is far less than our 2.5-inch mountain cannon."
Zhu Cijiong hummed slightly, then turned around and shouted: "Send the order, all artillery regiments start preparing for artillery fire."
The messenger guarding behind Zhu Cijiong immediately raised a flag and conveyed the order to the artillery.
The next moment, the sound of artillery fire was heard continuously in the Ming army's camp. Along with the sound of artillery, rows of 2.5-inch caliber shells flew into the air.
At this time, the Mughal artillerymen on the opposite side, two thousand steps away, had just set up their cannons.
Before the Mughal artillerymen could load gunpowder and solid bullets into the barrel, rows of explosive shells fell from the sky, and then exploded continuously in the Mughal army's formation.
Zhu Cijiong and Xia Wanchun raised their telescopes at the same time.
You can see very clearly through the field of view of the telescope.
I saw among the dense array of infantry and artillery of the Mughal Army, groups of dazzling red lights suddenly rose up. Along with these dazzling red lights, the waves of air spread fiercely.
After the air wave spread, there were clouds of smoke and dust, and the entire Mughal army formation was quickly obscured by the smoke and dust.
After about ten seconds, the smoke finally dispersed slightly.
When I looked closely, I saw that there were more than two hundred smoking craters in the dense infantry formation of the Mughal army. The Mughal infantry in the center of the crater and around it were either torn to pieces on the spot or
Overturned by the air wave generated by the explosion, the originally dense and complete infantry formation suddenly became more than 200 empty areas.
Just this round of shelling caused nearly 10,000 casualties to the Mughal army!
This is the dimensionality reduction blow brought by weapons separated by two eras!
To be honest, the performance of the Ming Army's artillery was actually very average. A total of 4 cavalry divisions had 12 mountain artillery regiments, equipped with a total of 324 2.5-inch mountain artillery pieces.
A row of artillery fire consisted of 324 rounds of artillery shells, and only more than 200 rounds hit the target. Such performance can only be considered a failure.
But even so, the Ming army's artillery bombardment also dealt a devastating blow to the Mughal army. The Mughal army was caught off guard and was stunned, and even forgot to flee.
【In view of the general environment,
However, the fifty war elephants were frightened and broke free from the control of their drivers and ran away.
It must be admitted that the vitality of elephants is indeed stronger than that of humans.
Of the fifty war elephants, many were injured, but none of them were killed by the explosion.
A few seconds later, the second row of shells from the Ming army's artillery roared in. The stunned Mughal army finally reacted, and then scrambled to flee.
The Mughals who looked menacing just now
The army only suffered two rounds of artillery fire from the Ming army and immediately collapsed.
Zhu Cijiong immediately ordered all the servant troops to pursue him, and the 1st and 2nd Cavalry Divisions on both wings surrounded him. In the end, no one of the nearly 30,000 Mughal troops who attacked was spared, and they were all killed or captured.
In the evening, groups of Mughal prisoners of war were escorted to Zhu Cijiong.
Looking at these Mughal prisoners of war, Zhu Cijiong's eyebrows suddenly knitted into knots.
Because of the skin color of these Mughal prisoners of war, Zhu Cijiong felt a strong sense of discomfort.
Zhu Cijiong had met Kunlun slaves. In fact, there were many Kunlun slaves sold by Arabs in the Ming Dynasty through the Western Regions. These Kunlun slaves were all castrated and most of them were very docile.
Zhu Cijiong originally thought that Kunlun Slave's skin color was enough to make people sick to his stomach, but he never expected that there was someone in this world who was more nauseating than Kunlun Slave's skin color.
The skin color of the Mughal prisoners of war in front of me was not only dark, but also dirty, which made people extremely uncomfortable.
What made Zhu Cijiong even more intolerable was that these Mughal prisoners of war also exuded a strong stench.
At that moment, Zhu Cijiong pinched his nose and said, "Kill them all. If you encounter someone like this in the future, they will all be executed. Black and smelly garbage like this should not exist in this world."
Hearing this, the generals of the servant army behind Zhu Cijiong suddenly became excited.
The next day, after the Ming army used the captured Mughal army's bronze cannon to blast open the gate of Peshawar, the servant army headed by the Dzungars faithfully carried out Zhu Cijiong's will. More than 300,000 South Asian indigenous people in the city were almost slaughtered. Only
Only about 10,000 upper castes with light skin and no body odor were spared.
The servant army also seized a large amount of gold, silver and jewelry.
Abdullah did not lie, Peshawar is truly a city of gold.
The servant army seized countless gold utensils and gold jewelry from the city. In addition, they also peeled off a large amount of gold foil from the roofs and walls of more than a dozen Qingzhen temples in the city.
Even according to the most conservative estimate, the amount of gold stolen was as much as 500,000 taels.
Abdullah said that there was more gold in Delhi and that there were dozens of cities like Peshawar in India.
