In Chenzhou City, the several Ming army civil and military officials gathered together were all panicking!
"What should we do? The puppet Tang rebel army is about to launch an attack. If we can't stop it, I'm afraid something will happen to our soldiers and civilians all over the city!" A short and round middle-aged official said with deep sorrow.
A guard commander comforted him: "Master Li, don't panic. There are only 4,000 rebels outside the city, but we have 13,000 soldiers in Chenzhou City. We have a strong city to rely on and a lot of artillery."
, if the puppet Tang bandits dare to attack, they will definitely have no chance of coming back!"
Short and round, he still felt uneasy: "But the puppet Tang rebel army outside the city has a lot of artillery, and they are all heavy-weight cannons. Can we, Chenzhou, really be able to defend it?"
His worries did not come out of thin air. Although he was not present in person the last time the Chenzhou defenders went to battle, he watched the battle from the rear. More than 10,000 officers and soldiers rushed over, but they could not help but the 4,000 puppet Tang rebels on the other side.
, and the people who were bombed were thrown off their backs. In the end, the army was defeated even before they reached the formation of the puppet Tang rebel army.
The scene that day truly allowed the prefect of Chenzhou Prefecture to see the true combat effectiveness of the puppet Tang thief army!
Moreover, he heard from others that the Puppet Tang thief army outside the city was just a partial army and was not equipped with many firearms. However, such a partial army was already so capable of fighting. It is conceivable that the Puppet Tang thief army
How powerful is the main force!
To be honest, although the combat effectiveness of the Tang Army is much stronger than that of the Ming Army, it is still limited. There is no messy faith bonus here. Although the weapons have a certain advantage, they are only certain.
Just an advantage.
Today's Army of the Tang Dynasty is at the middle to lower level at best among modern armies. The reasons are naturally simple, including insufficient training time and slightly poor equipment levels, especially the proportion of artillery and muskets.
The Datang Army is the only powerful country in Europe that has rich experience in large-scale battles. Frequent wars have allowed the Datang Army to accumulate rich war experience, and these experiences are not just small-minded war experiences.
, all are large-scale battle experiences involving thousands or even tens of thousands of people.
The Datang Army also has a tradition of post-war discussions. Detailed battle reports and discussions at post-war meetings of frontline generals will be submitted to the Privy Council in detail for reference, providing opinions on the equipment, tactics and other improvements of the Datang Army.
.
But no matter what, the Army of the Tang Dynasty was an army with the characteristics of a typical modern army. It was a professional army, and for this reason alone, it already had too many guardsmen than the Ming Army.
That's why the Ming army was unable to defeat the Tang Army several times over!
What caused this situation? Nine out of ten Ming army generals believed that the weapons of the pseudo-Tang rebels were sharp. For this reason, the Ming Dynasty also made a countermeasure: imitating guns and training firearms.
military.
However, some core elements of the Tang Army, such as the extremely cruel military obedience training, high-intensity physical fitness and live ammunition training, were intentionally or unintentionally ignored by the Ming army generals.
The reason is also very simple. Not every army can implement strict military laws. First of all, you have to make the soldiers willing to accept these rigorous trainings, and this involves the personal treatment of a soldier. If you don’t give him enough food,
, pay high wages and divide the fields, why should people not be regarded as deserters despite being whipped and beaten by you? Or to put it more directly: why should people work as soldiers and work for you?
Loyal to the emperor and patriotic?
Nonsense! Without free money or land, they won't come to serve as soldiers for you even if you shout at them!
High-intensity physical fitness and live ammunition training also involve money. The muskets used for live ammunition training will be worn out, and the ammunition also needs to be consumed. These are all money. High-intensity physical training needs to be given to soldiers.
Provide adequate nutrition, otherwise the soldiers will become skin and bones as they practice, and eating costs money, and it is very expensive!
If you want to train soldiers to be extremely strong and physically energetic, you need to pile up a lot of food, and food is much more expensive these days than in later generations, because this cost is even more expensive than live ammunition training.
The Tang Dynasty spent tens of millions of taels of silver every year to barely support an army of less than 100,000 people. However, Zhang Yue had hundreds of thousands of troops under his command. In the second year of Xuanping, he only spent
Just a few million taels of silver.
Even the supervisors under Zhang Yue can only do one exercise every three days and one exercise every half month. It's not that they don't want to make training more frequent and intensive, but that training requires countless money.
However, the army of the Tang Dynasty, except for battles, basically trained every day. The recruits in the new barracks would start to conduct a small amount of live ammunition shooting, and after reaching the supplementary brigade, they would conduct live ammunition shooting frequently.
After a new recruit is added to regular army units such as infantry divisions and mixed regiments, the recruit basically has basic physical fitness, tactical skills, a large amount of live-fire shooting experience, and experience in performing light-intensity missions.
Where did the Tang Dynasty spend its money? A lot of it was spent on training and training-related aspects.
Under this situation, if the Tang army still cannot defeat the Ming army, it will be worth the tens of millions of taels of silver spent every year!
The officials of the Ming army naturally did not delve into the logic behind these. They just knew that their own army could not defeat the puppet Tang rebel army!
Even though there were only more than 4,000 puppet Tang rebels outside Chenzhou City, they were still extremely worried. This worry reached a peak after the Third Infantry Regiment of the Tang Army arrived outside Chenzhou City!
When the civil and military officials of the Ming army on top of the city saw that another 3,000 puppet Tang rebels had arrived, and the number of puppet Tang rebels gathered outside Chenzhou City had already exceeded 7,000, many people's hearts collapsed.
of!
They didn't have the confidence to stop the more than 4,000 traitor troops. Now, another 3,000 people have come, making the total of more than 7,000 puppet Tang rebels. How can they fight this!
At this time, even the most optimistic Ming army generals believed that the situation had become quite dangerous, and they had to request reinforcements as soon as possible, especially the officers and soldiers of Guiyang Prefecture, not far from Chenzhou.
Taking advantage of the fact that the puppet Tang bandit army had not completely surrounded Chenzhou City, the Ming army in the city sent many groups of fast horses to rush out of the city and rush to Guiyang City for help!
The distance between the two places is not far. The fast horse runs all the way. It takes half a day to reach Guiyang Prefecture and deliver the letter for help to the city of Guiyang Prefecture.
But the officials in Guiyang Prefecture frowned when they received the rescue letter!
They have to be able to save Chenzhou City only if they can survive!
There are also thousands of puppet Tang rebels outside the city of Guiyang Prefecture, and the number is 2,000 more than the previous two days. Five thousand puppet Tang rebels are entrenched several miles outside the city. As soon as our own army leaves the city,
I'm afraid I'll be intercepted and killed by them immediately.
By that time, wouldn’t it be possible to fall into the trap of the opponent’s surrounding area for reinforcements?
If that really happens, it's hard to say whether Chenzhou City will be destroyed, but the reinforcements from our own army from Guiyang Prefecture will definitely be destroyed.
Some time ago, they had more than 10,000 troops leaving the city, but only half of the troops were recovered, even though the slain people were on their backs. Now, although there are still more than 10,000 troops in the city, they really want to leave the city with the 5,000 real thieves of the Puppet Tang Dynasty.
To be honest, they really don't have the guts to fight.
However, it was not okay to remain indifferent in the face of calls for help. This was politically incorrect, but it was also not okay to send out all the main forces, so they just cautiously sent a mere thousand people out of the city.
The behavior of these thousands of people after leaving the city was also quite interesting. They only left the city for a few miles when they were intercepted by the 1st Supplementary Brigade Supplementary Cavalry Battalion!
Well, this supplementary cavalry battalion is also a force with barely combat effectiveness in the first supplementary brigade. That is to say, the Ming army has few troops leaving the city, so it goes to war. The idea is to fight if it can be fought, and if it cannot be defeated, rely on
The high mobility of the cavalry led to a direct retreat.
But what happened next was quite interesting. A few miles away from the city, more than a thousand Ming troops found more than 300 pseudo-Tang cavalry in front of them. They still dared to move forward. They didn't even dare to stop. They just turned around.
He fled back to the city, not even having the courage to fight.
After more than a thousand people fled back to the city in panic, the Ming army officials who defended the city immediately reported to Xu Xinchang, who sent a fast horse to the direction of Hengyang: The bandits were besieging Chenzhou. Our defenders tried to send troops to rescue, but were defeated by thieves outside the city.
The army is blocked by heavy troops, so send a large army to Hengyang for reinforcements!
They naturally don't expect to ask for reinforcements. Now everyone knows that there are tens of thousands of puppet Tang rebels in the direction of Hengyang. The Ming army in the Hengyang direction is the same as the Ming army in the Guiyang Prefecture direction. It will never leave the city unless it is absolutely necessary.
Warlike.
The key to this report is to clear away responsibility. The Ming army in Guiyang Prefecture did not fail to save the city, but tried hard and struggled. However, the rebel army was so powerful that they could not save Chenzhou!
When Guiyang Prefecture was making these moves, Major General An Zihe had already begun to command the troops to launch a general attack on Chenzhou!
It's still the same old siege routine, digging tunnels and blasting, artillery bombardment, musketeers and archers as cover, with heavy armored infantry as the core, light armored sword and shield soldiers, and grenadiers as the auxiliary to force the way to the top of the city!
The Ming army in the city was already in despair, had no morale, and had no intention of resisting at all. Even if a few Ming army generals on the front line commanded their troops to resist desperately, they could not stop the entire city's soldiers and civilians from surrendering!
Two days after the launch of the general offensive, the Tang army had successfully conquered the southern city wall. On the same day, the Ming army in the city, led by the prefect of Chenzhou, and a large number of civil and military generals led the remaining soldiers to surrender!
After capturing Chenzhou, Anzihe did not stop and quickly moved westward to Guiyang Prefecture City. Only by capturing Guiyang Prefecture City can the battle situation in the south of Hengyang be completely established and prepare the ground for the subsequent Hengyang and Shaoyang offensives.