Although the three types of plate armor produced by the engineers who were personally guided and consolidated by Li Xuan were all considered plate armor, they were quite different from each other because they were prepared for different types of soldiers.
The first type is full body armor, which is prepared for heavy armor, sword and shield soldiers who participate in melee combat or other heavy armor units in need. A suit of plate armor basically covers it from head to toe. This is because heavy armor, sword and shield soldiers fight in combat.
At that time, it was all melee, and it was easy to be attacked from both front and rear. If you protected your chest, they would cut you on the back. If you defended for the first half of the year, they would cut you on the legs, so comprehensive protection was needed. In the past, the armor of the heavy armored infantrymen did not matter.
Whether it is chain armor or cotton iron armor, it is actually full body armor.
The second type is the half-body armor, which is simplified from the full-body armor. It focuses on protecting the upper body and crotch, and eliminates the protection of the legs, especially the calves. The weight is reduced, and soldiers can move more easily after wearing this armor.
More flexible than full body armor.
This is because the heavily armored spearmen fight in formation, and their enemies are directly in front, and most of them are also the enemy's spearmen. Therefore, the frontal protection of the chest is very important, and other parts can be simplified.
The third type is for the breastplate required by cavalry and other arms. It only focuses on the defense of the chest, hands and feet and other places, and abandons all defenses to minimize the weight of the armor, making the Mongolian horses and even the southwestern horses attached to the Tang Dynasty cavalry
They can barely support it.
Because the third type of breastplate is small in size and light in weight, it can be equipped not only for cavalry, but also for other arms, such as archers and musketeers.
After the concept of breastplates was proposed, some generals suggested that musketeers should also be equipped with breastplates. In view of the fact that the musketeers of the Tang Dynasty are currently facing a lot of dangers, the archers and musketeers of the Ming Army can inflict damage to them.
There were intensive casualties, so some generals thought that musketeers could be equipped with breastplates to reduce casualties.
However, Li Xuan believed that this would greatly weaken the musketeer's mobility. Although the breastplate had good protective capabilities, if it were worn, the musketeer's mobility would be greatly affected.
And another very important point is that although vigorously developing musketeers is an established policy of the Tang Dynasty's military system, why should we vigorously develop them? In addition to the huge power of the muskets they equipped, there is another extremely important reason, that is
Because the musketeer is a cheap consumable.
The cost of training a musketeer is quite low. Three months of training can already turn a farmer into a musketeer and fight on the battlefield.
If converted into monetary costs, even with the addition of musketeers' muskets and other equipment, the funds spent are only a dozen taels of silver at most!
However, if the musketeers are equipped with armor, the equipment cost of the musketeers will be greatly increased, which will greatly increase the financial pressure on the Tang Dynasty.
Although this idea may sound inhumane, it is actually extremely important.
However, since someone proposed it and gave many reasons, Li Xuan could not refuse directly. He agreed to make a simple trial first and select a few musketeers to equip with breastplates to try out the effect in actual combat.
Of course, this is all for the future. Plate armor has not yet come out. Even if plate armor begins to be mass-produced on a small scale, there are still many heavy armored infantry waiting to replace them. If it is the turn of the musketeers to equip them,
Breastplate, I don’t know when I’m going to get it.
By that time, maybe the Ming Dynasty will have developed heavy muskets, and then plate armor will disappear from the stage of history.
War is always the best catalyst for various technologies, especially armament technology. This is true for the Tang Dynasty, and it is also true for the Ming Dynasty!
Decades ago, the Folangji people fought against the Ming army for the first time. The Folangji people's artillery caused the Ming army to suffer a lot, but as soon as they turned around, the Ming Dynasty began to prevent the Folangji artillery on a large scale.
Nowadays, the Tang Dynasty has risen and used matchlocks and artillery on a large scale. After suffering a lot, the Ming Dynasty also began to imitate and equip matchlocks and artillery.
Although the Ming Dynasty has been at peace for a long time, and the local guards in the interior have long been reduced to rubbish, the heritage of a dynasty is still there, especially since Emperor Zhengde has been in charge of the government for more than 40 years, even if he is already on his sickbed.
Emperor Zhengde was an emperor who knew how to fight, and he was also the emperor who led his troops on several expeditions.
Therefore, under the background of the rise of the Tang Dynasty, Zhang Yue and other civil and military officials of the Ming Dynasty were sent to take control of Huguang, Jiangxi and Fujian. At the same time, they also began to imitate firearms on a large scale in an attempt to establish a bandit army that was more numerous than the puppet Tang Dynasty.
More powerful firearms troops are coming.
The Puppet Tang Dynasty was able to produce so many guns and cannons just by stealing a small area. The Ming Dynasty had thousands of miles of territory and tens of millions of subjects. There was no reason why it could not produce more guns and artillery than the Puppet Tang Dynasty.
And now, these guns and cannons built by the Ming Dynasty have officially entered the Huguang battlefield!
In Hengyang City, Xu Xinchang threw the letter in his hand to the ground with a straight face and angrily!
"Trash, they are all a bunch of rubbish. Tens of thousands of troops surrounded the puppet Tang thief army from many sides, but they were unable to cut off the supply line of the puppet Tang thief army. They also lost troops and generals, and even Yizhang was lost. These are all ruins. My officer
If you want to meddle with them, meddle with them hard!"
When the people nearby saw Xu Xinchang furious, they all lowered their heads and closed their mouths, for fear of offending Xu Xinchang.
Xu Xinchang, this man is not a simple man, he is Zhang Yue's confidant. Of course, Xu Xinchang is not a rude general, but a serious civil servant. He is also a civil servant from Hanlin. He was previously in the Inspectorate.
The appointment was in Zhang Yue's old department. When the Tang bandits rebelled, Guizhou and Guangxi fell. In order to suppress the bandits, Zhengde appointed Zhang Yue as the governor of four provinces, and later changed it to the governor of six provinces.
Zhang Yue is the governor of the six provinces and is fully responsible for the extermination of the Tang thieves. He is a very powerful person and has basically reached the peak of the feudal minister. However, if he wants to successfully take office and control the power of the six provinces to exterminate the Tang thieves, he naturally needs
Confidant.
After Zhang Yue came to the south and took office, he recommended a large number of his confidants, including Xu Xinchang. Xu Xinchang was recommended by him as governor of Huguang, mainly responsible for military affairs in southern Huguang.
Well, although Huguang is large, Xu Xinchang is not responsible for military affairs alone. The person in charge is naturally Zhang Yue, the governor of the six provinces. The war in southern Huguang is handled by Xu Xinchang, the governor of Huguang, while the governor of Huguang in the west and northeast of Guizhou
The war at the Ministry was put in charge of another general under Zhang Yue, namely Tan Rong, the commander of Huguangdu who suffered a defeat at Xingquan Prefecture and fled north in despair.
What's interesting is that after Tan Rong suffered a defeat in Xingquan Mansion and fled north, instead of being demoted, he was promoted and made a fortune because he "severely inflicted heavy losses on Tang thieves and beheaded tens of thousands". Now he has the title of Commander-in-Chief of Pianyuan.
, and this title is basically the highest level that a military commander can achieve.
As for governors, governors and even supervisors, they are the exclusive preserve of civilian officials and have nothing to do with military generals!
In addition to these old subordinates and cronies, even Song Zhiwen, the guilty minister who was fished out from the prison, has now put on an official hat again. At the beginning, he still had no official official position and just followed Zhang Yue to participate in military affairs.
, but Zhang Yue quickly recommended Song Zhiwen as the prefect of Wuchang Prefecture because of his meritorious service as counselor in military affairs.
Now Song Zhiwen has become the master of the government again, but after Song Zhiwen took office as the prefect of Wuchang, his mind was naturally not on civil affairs, but on Zhang Yue's entrustment, he was planning to build a workshop in Wuchang to build guns, and then he also wanted to help
Zhang Yue recruited soldiers to train his army.
After Zhang Yue had trained 20,000 supervisors in Changsha and Hengzhou, he still felt that his troops were insufficient, especially the local guards' combat effectiveness was weak and could not bear a battle, so he asked Song Zhiwen, another subordinate of his, to
A civil servant who was considered to be knowledgeable about soldiers continued to recruit soldiers and train them in the rear area.
From Zhang Yue's deployment, it can be seen that Zhang Yue also noticed that the war to suppress the puppet Tang Dynasty will inevitably become long-term, and in this long-term war to suppress thieves, it will take months or even years.
There is even no way to tell the winner, and the defeat of one or two battles cannot completely determine the outcome.
Therefore, he is also preparing for a long-term war, and in a long-term war, those local guard soldiers will be of no use except to waste the precious money and food in his hands.
If you want to wipe out the Tang thieves, you have to rely on the newly recruited governors and border troops. In addition, Yu Dayou's musketry army is not bad!
But now these newly recruited troops mainly equipped with firearms are still too few, only 20,000 to 30,000 people, not even the number of real thieves in the Puppet Tang Thief Army, so Zhang Yue is now trying hard to expand the scale of the supervision.
, not to mention practicing for hundreds of thousands, but as long as you practice for about 100,000, it will be barely enough!
Song Zhiwen was one of the important personnel he sent out to train troops!
Song Zhiwen was the first high-ranking civil servant to fight against Tang thieves. Moreover, Song Zhiwen was also good at military training at that time. Among a group of civil servants who only knew a few things, he was a rare civil servant who knew the military. Otherwise, Zhang Yue would not have known it at the time.
Get Song Zhiwen out of the prison.
Without Zhang Yue's efforts, Song Zhiwen would not have been able to be fished out so easily, even if Song Zhiwen's mentor was a senior official in the imperial court.
You must know that Song Zhiwen's crime is not small, and the ground lost in defeat is still small. More importantly, this pseudo-Tang thief army rose from his Xingquan Mansion. The pseudo-Tang thief army was able to develop to the point where it is today, and
Song Zhiwen's initial inaction was directly related to
But the current situation is difficult, and Zhang Yue has no capable people on hand, so even though Song Zhiwen has these shortcomings, Zhang Yue still chooses to reuse him.