Eight hundred and fiftieth chapters freight carriage
When the bandit infantry battalion rushed over, they advanced in a traditional formation, and then the arquebusiers in the middle fired, while the spearmen provided cover.
However, when the two sides were shooting at a distance of about 80 meters, the more numerous infantry battalion of the Bandit Army was actually suppressed in terms of firepower by the infantry of the Guards Army, which only had about 140 people.
This phenomenon almost made several mid-level officers of the bandit-breaking army on the opposite side unable to believe it.
The Pothief Army had been fighting with the Tang Army for many years, and they were already quite familiar with the Tang Army's combat methods. Therefore, even though they had several times the strength, they did not dare to show any contempt. Instead, they listed the most standard and intensive formation battles.
of.
According to past practice, even if the Puppet Tang thief army is more powerful, it is not that easy to defeat several times their strength, even if the opposite side is the Puppet Tang Guards wearing black military uniforms.
They also know that the Guards of the Puppet Tang Dynasty are said to be the guards of the Puppet Tang Emperor Li Xuan, and their combat effectiveness exceeds that of the ordinary Puppet Tang thief army, but even so, they are confident of a fight.
Especially when they got closer and found that these pseudo-Tang Guards did not have a large number of heavily armored spearmen, they thought that an opportunity had come!
Our side has a large number of troops, with more than 200 musketeers. The two sides use muskets to shoot at each other. Our side will not be at a disadvantage, and we will have the opportunity to kill more puppet Tang rebels. At the same time, they have no spearmen, but our side has
He is a spearman who is the core of hand-to-hand combat. If he rushes forward and engages in hand-to-hand combat, the chance of winning this battle is very high.
Otherwise, they would not have rashly come out of the village to attack.
But they did not expect that these pseudo-Tang Guards in black military uniforms were actually different from ordinary Tang troops. They were not equipped with spears, but their musketeers were arranged very closely for some reason.
In the age of matchlock guns, that was absolutely impossible.
Moreover, after the puppet Tang rebel army on the opposite side formed an extremely tight formation, they actually only formed three rows of horizontal formations.
In each round of shooting, nearly fifty flintlock guns opened fire!
On the other hand, the Bandit Breakers had more musketeers, reaching nearly 200, but because the traditional six-row horizontal formation was listed, there were only about 30 musketeers firing in each round.
And more importantly, the opponent's reloading speed is faster. It only takes three rounds of shooting. Even because the distance between the two sides is still relatively far and the hit rate is too poor, the musketeers on the Bandit Army's side are already down.
More than 20 people were killed, but only seven or eight people of the Puppet Tang Guards on the opposite side fell.
Sooner or later, if the shooting continues like this, it will be over, so the Ming army general on the opposite side ordered the troops to continue advancing and prepare for hand-to-hand combat!
However, as the distance got closer, the Ming army suffered more and more casualties, especially the last round of medium-range shooting, which almost killed and wounded forty or fifty people on the opposite side of the Ming army on the spot!
At this time, these thieves simply didn't have the courage to continue fighting, so they turned around and ran away.
Seeing that the bandits retreated on their own initiative, the captain of the Guards who led the group also breathed a sigh of relief!
Although our side is equipped with flintlock muskets, the reloading speed is faster, and the firepower is more intensive, but after all, the difference in troop strength is too big. If the Ming army on the opposite side continues to charge forward regardless of casualties, then our side can only be
Another round of volley fire. Although the last round of volley fire can kill a large number of Ming troops, the remaining Ming troops will at least exceed 300 people.
At that time, the two sides will enter into hand-to-hand combat. When the other side has a large number of spearmen, although our side is equipped with breastplates, we will still suffer some disadvantages in the fight. If one fails, there will be a large number of casualties.
Now that the enemy has taken the initiative to retreat, he is relieved!
At this time, he couldn't help it anymore. Why did the people above want to shorten the length of the flintlock? Using a musket and bayonet to fight the enemy's spearmen in hand-to-hand combat would have been a disadvantage. If the barrel was shortened,
The length makes it even more disadvantageous when fighting.
But this is just his own idea, which is completely different from the idea of the upper echelons of the Guards, because after analyzing the early tests and statistical data, the senior generals of the Guards are already inclined to continue to increase the firepower density.
Imagine that two armies are equipped with flintlocks and matchlocks. If the strength of both sides is equal, and one army is equipped with flintlocks, then if all the infantry has muskets, it can concentrate several times in a fixed battlefield width.
For troops equipped with matchlocks.
Just shooting with a musket can cause heavy damage to the opponent!
As for hand-to-hand combat, although the chance of it happening is still very high and it is very important, if you can kill a large number of enemy troops before the hand-to-hand combat, it will also create favorable opportunities for subsequent hand-to-hand combat.
Shortening the barrel will help increase the reloading speed, and as the reloading speed increases, the rate of fire can be increased. It is also acceptable to sacrifice a certain amount of hand-to-hand combat ability for rapid fire.
Besides, even if it is shortened, it is actually only ten centimeters shorter, which will not greatly affect the bayonet combat capability of the musket.
After all, the length of the musket is far inferior to that of the spearman. It is ten centimeters longer and ten centimeters shorter. There will be no fundamental changes.
In this small-scale contact battle, the Ming army left nearly a hundred corpses and wounded. It must have been a heavy loss for the Ming army participating in the battle, but for the entire central battlefield, this was just a trivial battle.
.
The Temporary Guards Brigade in the rear was continuing to march. The next day, the Guards Temporary Brigade arrived at Lujiang City and began to attack the city on the spot. The more than 3,000 Ming Army new troops defending the city were defeated and suffered casualties.
Fleeed after halfway.
As for the other thousands of old-style Ming troops in the city, that is, guardsmen and the like, both warring parties simply ignored them.
There is no way. In the current war between the Ming Army and the Tang Army, the old-style army is almost useless except for cavalry. It cannot fight in the field and cannot defend the city.
But the cavalry of the Ming army still plays an important role!
In the previous battles of Yangzhou, Huai'an, Xuzhou, Fengyang, etc., because the battles were all fixed along the banks of the canal, Huaihe River, and Yellow River, the Army of the Tang Dynasty marched along the rivers, and the same was true for logistical supplies.
This made it difficult for the Ming army's cavalry to find good opportunities.
At that time, during the Battle of Yangzhou, the Ming army deployed nearly 5,000 cavalry in the north of Yangzhou City!
However, these five thousand cavalrymen did not dare to launch any attack until the city of Yangzhou was defeated. They could only watch the city fall. Later, they successfully covered the retreat of more than 20,000 troops.
Because in a fixed position battle, these five thousand cavalry could not pose any limited threat to the huge Third Army.
However, in the battles at Luzhou Prefecture and Anqing Prefecture, the Ming Army's cavalry quickly played a huge role. There were quite a lot of Ming Army cavalry here. If all of them were added up, there would probably be three or four thousand cavalry. Well,
All professional cavalry are the original frontier cavalry.
Emperor Zhengde successively mobilized more than 80,000 frontier troops to go south. Most of the infantry of these frontier troops were destroyed, but the cavalry basically suffered no losses. Later, some of these cavalry were withdrawn to Shandong, and some were
Yu Dayou was included.
At present, these three to four thousand Ming army cavalry are active in the fields of Anqing Prefecture and Luzhou Prefecture north of the Yangtze River. They will not participate in city defense operations, let alone fight any decisive battles with the puppet Tang rebels.
It was divided into several groups of cavalry with a strength of thousands, specifically to attack the small Tang army and logistics transport troops.
For this reason, the 7th Infantry Division and the Temporary Guards Brigade had a headache, and asked Wang Chaohong, commander of the Second Army, to send cavalry for support.
However, the new commander of the Second Army, Lieutenant General Wang Chaohong, was also helpless!
His Second Army didn't have much cavalry. It only had a thousand soldiers at full strength. And because the troops were fighting in two groups, he didn't concentrate the cavalry from each unit, but divided them into two groups. Well, basically
Just keep it the same...
And even if you want to rely on cavalry to expel and annihilate the Ming army's cavalry, it is difficult to do so, because they will not fight your cavalry at all and will run away when they encounter it.
There was no cavalry, and Wang Chaohong just let the 7th Infantry Division and the Temporary Guards Brigade take care of their own affairs, and told them not to advance rashly, and not to rush to conquer Hefei and other areas. He only needed to hold back the Ming army and wait for him.
We can make plans after taking Anqing City.
Wang Chaohong didn't care about them, so the 7th Infantry Division and the Temporary Guards Brigade had to figure out their own solutions!
any solution?
In fact, there is no other way. The first thing is to act in groups and try not to be scattered. When the troops perform tasks, it is best not to have less than one battalion, because a standard infantry battalion of the army is about more than 500 people, forming a four-corner square.
The formation was strong enough to fight against the cavalry. Even if the Ming cavalry tried to attack them, they would have to pay a certain amount of casualties.
And exchanging infantry for cavalry would be a huge profit!
It is not only a group operation of the troops, but also a centralized operation of the logistics and transportation troops. For each transportation, the logistics department will use at least a thousand people, or even more than two thousand people, to form a temporary transportation group.
At the same time, there will be at least one standard infantry battalion to escort!
However, even so, they were ambushed several times by the Ming Army cavalry. Because the terrain was too flat and the cavalry rushed over too fast, it was naturally impossible for the civilians to form an array during the transportation, so they often rushed in.
spread.
In the end, they had no choice but to requisition carriages on the spot for transportation. When the cavalry attacked, they directly used the vehicles to form an array to block the cavalry attack!
Although this method effectively defended against cavalry attacks, these carriages were temporarily requisitioned, not to mention a mess, and they were all two-wheeled carriages with small transportation capacity and not very suitable for defensive operations.
After learning the news, the Privy Council urgently sought help from the Royal Institute of Technology. They wanted a standard carriage that could transport goods, effectively form a formation and block enemy cavalry attacks. It also had to be cost-effective. This high cost-effectiveness does not mean that the carriage
The manufacturing cost must be low, but the minimum number of horses must be used to drive the maximum amount of goods.
If the price-performance ratio is not high enough, the Army does not have so many horses to drag carriages to transport goods, so the designed carriages cannot rely too much on horses.