The entire meeting ended in vain. After everyone else had dispersed, Xue Yongli stayed alone. He said to Wu Shigong: "Uncle, I'm a little sorry for refuting your face. But I still have to fight for the sake of following you.
The brothers who come here think about it, they all have families and families."
"It's okay." Wu Shigong made a gesture to reassure Xue Yongli. He was not a man without courage. He waited for Xue Yongli to continue.
"Uncle, your idea is actually very good. Line up the troops and attack the enemy with firecrackers. But to put it bluntly, this idea is a bit armchair. Even I have several ways to defeat you, uncle.
formation."
"Oh?" Xue Yongli's words aroused Wu Shigong's interest, "Then tell me how to break it?"
"Suppose the smaller ones come to break the formation. If time and manpower are sufficient, the smaller ones only need to surround the formation of thousands of people with firecrackers, dig trenches, build earthen walls, and surround it tightly. Then in order to break through, the small ones can use thousands of people with firecrackers.
The formation must be attacked. At that time, the offense and defense are reversed. Even if the formation of a thousand people breaks through the encirclement, the loss will be extremely heavy. At most, half of the people can escape."
"If you want to win a quick battle, the small team only needs 500 cavalry to contain them at a distance, 150 steps away from the fire cannon formation and beyond the range of the fire cannons. The small team only needs to divide the cavalry into three or four teams.
.One team restrains and harasses, while the rest dismount and rest, feed the horses, and build up power. They take turns, and then wait.”
"If one hour is not enough, wait two hours. If two hours is not enough, wait three hours. When the firecrackers queue is too tired or wants to retreat, as soon as the formation loosens, the small ones immediately gather all the troops.
The horses formed a formation and launched an attack."
"At a distance of one hundred and fifty steps, the horses can reach it in less than ten breaths. No matter how powerful my uncle's fire cannon is, it can knock out more than a hundred horses at most. After the horse team rushes into the fire cannon formation,
Just kicking with a horse's hoof can kill more than a thousand people."
After listening to Xue Yongli's words, Wu Shigong pondered for a long time. Then he said to Xue Yongli: "Thank you, what you said makes sense. My uncle, I am indeed a layman on war matters, and I will rely on you for more help in the future. You
If you have any ideas, you should tell me in time. Don't hide it, for fear that I will be angry. I am not a short-tempered person. What should I do now? Let me think about it again."
So, Xue Yongli bowed and resigned. Wu Shigong found that he was a little shaken by Xue Yongli's words. Is his idea really wrong?
Wu Shigong didn't know that the direction of his idea was not wrong, but it was too advanced. His idea of equipping everyone with firecrackers and forming a formation was not realistic under the current circumstances. It was the famous Spanish side.
The formations were all used together with hot and cold weapons. However, faced with the decisive impact of large-scale cavalry, the Spanish phalanx would still suffer huge losses. The effect of the cavalry impact would not be eliminated until the large-scale use of machine guns.
After Xue Yongli resigned, Wu Shigong was thinking quietly by himself. He carefully recalled all the knowledge he had about the military before traveling through time. As he thought about it, he thought about the lingering person who led him to travel through time.
Qin Bai.
Although Qin Bai did not graduate from the military academy, he occasionally talked about some military knowledge during his chat with Wu Shigong.
Qin Bai talked about two things that had the deepest impact on Wu Shigong.
The first point is about strategy and tactics. Qin Bai said this to Wu Shigong at that time: "Telling you about strategy and tactics is too complicated and you don't understand it. You only need to remember two rules: One rule is
, every war needs to have a clear strategic goal beforehand; another rule is that there can only be one strategic goal at a time. If there are two or more, it will often happen that the last one will be defeated.
Unobtainable results.”
Qin Bai then made an analogy to Wu Shigong: "For example, you bring a hundred people to compete with a hundred opponents to grab an apple. Then you must know in advance that your main purpose is to grab that apple?"
Or should you defeat all one hundred of your opponent's people? Of course, in actual situations, defeating all one hundred of your opponent's people basically means that you have grabbed the apple. However, in a battle, it does not mean that you have won the apple.
must."
Then, Qin Bai gave Wu Shigong a real-life battle example: "Look at the Battle of Midway Island. When the Japanese fleet set off, it did not decide the purpose of launching this battle: Is it to capture Midway Island? Or to destroy the United States?
The aircraft carrier fleet? As a result, the 'reloading incident' occurred in the end, causing the Japanese fleet to return with a great defeat. This is the consequence of not complying with the two rules mentioned above."
(There are many other reasons for Japan’s failure in the Battle of Midway, but the author believes that the confusion of the Japanese fleet’s strategic thinking is the main reason for the failure. This can be argued.)
Another point Qin Bai emphasized was the issue of military discipline. He told Wu Shigong: "In fact, in reality, let alone a soldier who travels to ancient times, even a famous general who travels to ancient times, may not be able to
Forge an army that is invincible in every battle."
"On the contrary, if there is a modern regular army that travels back to ancient times, as long as they receive half a year of cold weapon training, they will sweep away any same number of ancient armies. Including Genghis Khan's cavalry and the Yue family army. Why? Mainly modern armies
discipline.”
"The discipline of the modern army is simply outrageous. Any soldier's behavior must be in accordance with the regulations, including soldiers' eating and sleeping. Not only that, in fact, everyone in modern times must be disciplined as soon as they go to school.
For every primary school student, the labor committee is in charge of sweeping the floor; the study committee is in charge of handing in homework; even if you pull the pigtails of your deskmate, the monitor will take care of it (the author is worried about this point).
So in modern times, everyone is actually trained as a soldier from an early age."
"But why do you do that? Because in the army, each soldier does not actually need to have his own thoughts. When they are combined, they condense into a terrible war machine. How can such a war machine be like those in ancient times?
, can an army composed of basically undisciplined farmers and herdsmen be able to compete?"
Wu Shigong pondered Qin Bai's words over and over again, and his ideas began to become clear. First, he needed to have a strategic goal. But what is his current strategic goal? It is very simple, to save his life in the war in the late Ming Dynasty.
So, what should you do? It is very clear. After arriving at Qianhu Station, train the army, build a strong fortress, and turn your Qianhu Station into a fortress. And when defending in the fortress, the power of fire cannons is not as good as
Is it just ready to be used?
In addition, isn't queue training the discipline of training soldiers? Therefore, the training of firecrackers and queues should not only not be abandoned, but should also be the focus.
Wanting to understand all of this, Wu Shigong found Xue Yongli and communicated with him. Wu Shigong told Xue Yongli about his idea of building Qianhusuo into a fortress, and Xue Yongli welcomed him with both hands.
Then, Wu Shigong proposed that Xue Yongli be in charge of all the cavalry teams he brought to Guide, and let him be responsible for the training of the cavalry teams. Because, in the previous conversation with Xue Yongli, Wu Shigong had already seen that Xue Yongli's attitude towards the cavalry teams
It’s a great experience to use. It’s better to leave this kind of thing to the experts.
In addition, Wu Shigong also proposed to Xue Yongli that he would participate in the training of the cavalry. In these troubled times, it is always good to have more self-defense skills.
Wu Shigong also proposed to Xue Yongli that after arriving in Guide, if additional recruits are recruited at Qianhu Station, the training of those recruits will be based on Wu Shigong's training methods. Wu Shigong will also personally lead their training.
Xue Yongli thought about it and agreed. Anyway, he was not brought from the capital, so he could practice however he liked. Anyway, in Guide, the possibility of fighting was almost non-existent.
Finally, Wu Shigong proposed to Xue Yongli that no matter who he was, he should master the shooting skills of fire gun.
Xue Yongli still agreed. It is always good to master one more military technology.
Judging from the ending, Wu Shigong basically achieved his goal this time.
In the capital, Emperor Chongzhen finally approved Xue Lian's resignation. Among the nobles, he selected a man with the strongest scholarly atmosphere, a good tutor, and basically no contact with Wei Zhongxian, as Xue Lian's successor. That one
Xungui is Wu Shigong’s father—Gongshun Hou Wu Weizhong!?
If Wu Shigong knew this situation now, he would definitely look up to the sky and sigh: "Feng Shui is changing!"