Chapter 1431 The most miserable cavalry regiment in the Tang Dynasty
According to Ding Chenzhen’s own plan, the entire Malacca landing operation will last for more than ten days or even longer!
This is not to say that the landing of combat troops takes so long, but for landing, you can't just disembark, you have to bring the artillery, the shells, and the food.
Therefore, even if the landing of combat troops is completed in the first few days, a large amount of supplies must be unloaded later. Unloading various supplies loaded on dozens of transport ships cannot be done in a day or two.
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Of course, the subsequent unloading of materials, strictly speaking, is still part of the landing operation, but that is a later task. According to the general traditional concept, after the combat troops land, the landing is considered successful.
The landing time of purely combat troops, including the necessary artillery troops, will take about three days!
No way, landing on the beach is such a hassle!
After the combat troops, including the artillery troops, are all ashore, it will still take about three to five days to reach Malacca and complete combat preparations.
Just looking at the landing and the time required for preparation, we know that the Army's previous boast of conquering Malacca in five days was a boast!
In five or six days, if the army can transport the heavy siege artillery outside Malacca and launch the bombardment, it will have to burn incense. According to the plan formulated by the Seventh Army, this timetable is actually eight days!
According to the schedule, the first day, that is, today's landing, mainly involves the landing of some infantry and engineers, and then the beachhead defenses will be established under the cover of naval guns, and a small temporary dock will be built.
The first group to land was the 5th Marine Regiment of the Navy. Now all of this regiment has landed and is responsible for the initial defense mission. Then there is the 7th Arkbridge Regiment, which belongs directly to the 7th Army Headquarters. This unit is now fully staffed.
After landing, they are currently nervously and extremely difficult to unload the tools and equipment they used to build a temporary dock.
Next, we have the various units of the 19th Infantry Division. Now most of the 57th Infantry Regiment has successfully landed. Ding Chenzhen also landed with the 57th Infantry Regiment and established a military headquarters on the shore.
The 58th Infantry Regiment and the 59th Infantry Regiment of the 19th Infantry Division will make follow-up landings. The landings are expected to be completed in the evening. In the evening, because the risk of night landings is too great, large-scale landings will not be carried out.
The landing of personnel will mainly involve the landing of some scattered small-scale troops, and the speed will be much slower.
The next day, some artillery units and baggage troops will land!
As for the second temporary regiment of the Guards, I'm sorry, I'm an old man, and I'm not good at amphibious landings. They will wait until the temporary dock is set up the day after tomorrow, and then go ashore directly through the dock. In other words, the early landing operations
There is basically nothing going on with the Second Temporary Regiment of the Guards.
However, it is worth noting that the current landings of various troops are all lightly armed. In addition to carrying light weapons and a small number of shotguns, the combatants did not carry artillery for landing.
Because the artillery of each army is still on the ships floating on the sea, and a temporary dock that can bear the heavy weight has not been built, so there is no hope of being able to move the artillery and pills.
According to the landing plan, part of the infantry will be landed first, and beachhead defenses will be established to prevent the Portuguese from conducting beachhead blockades or sneak attacks. Then the 7th Bridge Regiment will start erecting temporary docks.
On the first day, the Seventh Boat Bridge Regiment will try its best to set up two small temporary docks. On the one hand, it is to allow personnel to land faster, and more importantly, to compare some of their own weight and volume.
Large equipment was moved down to prepare for the erection of the third temporary wharf, which was also the first large-scale temporary wharf.
After the construction of the temporary large-scale wharf is completed, the ships loaded with many heavy artillery and supplies can be unloaded directly through the large temporary wharf.
The entire preliminary landing operation will last for about three days. During these three days, although the troops will still focus on landing, the combat troops that have already landed must be deployed and advance inland and toward Malacca at the same time.
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This is mainly to expand the control range of the landing force, and more importantly, to free up the landing site for subsequent landing forces.
Tens of thousands of people and countless supplies are crowded on a small beach. This kind of chaotic situation is enough to make most officers collapse. Even Ding Chenzhen, who has a background in logistics and is good at planning, arrangement and material allocation, is shocked when he sees this scene.
big head.
If the early landing troops still moved inland and continued to pile up at the landing site, then subsequent landings would not be possible at all.
So even though the subsequent landings were still in progress, the 5th Marine Regiment had actually left their defense area and advanced inland, and behind them was the 57th Infantry Regiment.
The troops of these two regiments advanced about a thousand meters inland. Don't think that this distance is small. In fact, this distance is already more dangerous because they are already out of the fire support range of the naval guns.
Therefore, these two troops were also cautious, deeply afraid of encountering Portuguese attacks, especially ambushed artillery attacks.
What reassured them was that throughout the whole day today, and even in the evening, they did not see the Portuguese coming out of the city to attack them on a large scale. At most, they encountered a very small number of Portuguese reconnaissance troops.
This made the anxious officers and soldiers of the landing force feel relieved.
The Portuguese may not know it, but they themselves know that the first day of the landing is the most dangerous. Not to mention the chaos, the landing force does not have any heavy firepower, and even the fortifications have not been built yet.
If we were ambushed by the Portuguese at this time, it would very likely cause the situation to get out of control.
However, the Portuguese's indifference and strategy of hiding in the city allowed them to survive the most dangerous day.
By the next day, even Ding Chenzhen, who had become sensitive and irritable due to the chaos of landing, became much kinder!
Wearing a general's summer combat uniform that was wrinkled and stained with a lot of mud, Ding Chenzhen left the landing site with a group of equally dirty officers and went deep into the defense line of the 57th Infantry Regiment.
This is a small hill in the northeast of the landing site. It is not high, only tens of meters at most. However, this hill looks condescending when placed here. If the Portuguese deploy heavy artillery troops here, they can effectively attack them.
The landing site was bombarded.
So yesterday, the 57th Infantry Regiment occupied this hilltop and the surrounding area, and used the engineer shovels and hoes carried by the army to temporarily build a simple parapet defense line.
As for why it is not a trench, it is because we are in the era of line combat, and simple parapets are actually more effective than trenches.
Because the firepower of muskets alone is often unable to stop the enemy's intensive charge. If you hide in the trench, and others rush to you, you will be condescending, and you will hit with a bayonet accurately.
But if you hide behind the parapet, you can also gain protection when shooting. When the enemy rushes up, you can also stab the enemy through the parapet. In some key defense lines, the inner part of the parapet is still raised.
Soldiers can fight on it, giving them a commanding advantage.
Of course, more importantly, the Portuguese on the opposite side did not have mature grenades. If they were equipped with a large number of grenades like the Tang Army, then in order to avoid the bombardment, the Datang Army would definitely have built a trench defense line without saying anything.
Ding Chenzhen took a large number of generals to the front line to inspect. After climbing the hill, he took out his telescope and looked at the city of Malacca in front of him again. In fact, this place was not that far away from the city of Malacca. The straight-line distance was about
About two kilometers.
At this distance, the enemy may come over at any time and engage in combat!
But the good thing is that the Portuguese on the opposite side have no cavalry troops!
In contrast, Ding Chenzhen did not have any cavalry troops under his command, not even many horses!
Sea transportation these days is very bumpy and slow, and it can take several months at a time, which is enough to put any cavalry unit at risk.
Because war horses are very pretentious. After a month or two on the sea, they will die as many as they come. What's more, in this poor place like Nanyang, it is useless to have cavalry. There are tropical jungles everywhere, and the cavalry can run.
The few horses of the landing force were actually transported by a few thousand-ton ships and even battleships. These days, only those thousand-ton ships were slightly more stable when sailing, but even so, because of the Tang Dynasty
Both the army and the navy lacked experience in large-scale long-distance sea transport of war horses, so that the cavalry regiment of the 19th Division had less than 300 of the more than 600 Central Asian war horses in good condition before departure, while other troops added
There were only more than 800 northwest horses left out of a total of more than 1,400, and the rest all died while being transported by sea.
The mortality rate of horses during sea transportation reached more than 50%, which made the cavalry, artillery, and baggage troops and other troops that needed horses almost cursed. This was due to the lack of large ships and the consumption of horses.
There were too many supplies, so I didn't bring many horses, but I didn't expect that only half of them would be left after arriving at the destination.
More importantly, after the surviving horses landed on land, they were in very bad condition. The commander of the 19th Cavalry Regiment said to Ding Chenzhen with a mournful face that his cavalry regiment could only gather twenty horses in good condition.
The cavalry joins the battle!
It's not that there is no cavalry. He has more than 600 cavalrymen under his command, but there are only about 20 horses left that are in good condition and capable of charging and fighting!
He felt like crying when he thought that his cavalry regiment, which was fully equipped and all members were attached to the Central Asian horses, had only a pitiful twenty-odd horses left without fighting a single battle!
Throughout the 20 years since the founding of the Tang Dynasty, there has never been a cavalry regiment leader as miserable as him!