Chapter 936: The Tang Cavalry: You don't need a musket to die!
Nowadays, in the Tang Dynasty Army, the dangers of various services are quite different.
The safer ones are naturally the baggage troops. They usually transport and escort the baggage in the rear. In battles, even in decisive battles, the frontline generals will pull the baggage troops up to act as line infantry, but they are usually placed in the rear.
The secondary front rarely withstands the impact of the enemy's main force.
Then ordinary musketeers, artillery and even some spearmen are relatively safe!
Although they suffered a lot of casualties in the decisive battle, that was because of their large base. In fact, as long as they did not suffer a disastrous defeat, the number of casualties would be relatively limited.
The more dangerous ones are the cavalry, assault battalion soldiers, and grenadiers!
The cavalry needs to perform reconnaissance missions, and sometimes needs to engage in frequent battles with the enemy's small and medium-sized cavalry. In this kind of battle, the outcome depends entirely on individual skills and has basically nothing to do with tactical formations. However, Datang
The cavalry's personal skills are generally not very good, and they are basically no match for the elite cavalry of the Ming Army or the Tatar cavalry.
Even in a large-scale charge battle where the Tang cavalry had the advantage, the cavalry casualties would be relatively high!
Needless to say about the soldiers of the assault battalion, they always rush forward to face the enemy's guns and artillery, and risk their lives to launch charges to occupy key locations. The casualty rate has always been high.
Over here are the grenadiers!
The grenadiers are the most elite unit in the Tang Dynasty Army. It can be seen from the conditions in which they select soldiers. How dangerous the tasks they undertake are. The grenadier units select grenadiers from veterans.
, basically do not select from recruits.
To be selected as a grenadier, one must have two years of service experience or have participated in three large-scale battles with outstanding performance.
In terms of physical fitness, the height should not be less than 1.75 meters, good physical fitness, and the maximum distance of throwing grenades should not be less than 35 meters.
But more importantly, if you want to be selected as a grenadier, you need extraordinary courage!
Yes, it is such a difficult person to have the courage to accurately judge!
Because the grenadier needs to throw grenades, and he holds a grenade that can explode at any time, and he cannot throw it immediately, he must wait until the last few seconds to throw it, otherwise the enemy will pick it up and throw it back!
And during the throwing process, you can clearly see the enemy shooting at you from a distance of only more than 20 meters and never more than 30 meters!
In this situation, it is impossible to successfully throw a grenade without extraordinary courage. If you shake your hand and throw it in advance, it is better. If you hold it in your hand and do not throw it, then you will be killed.
People.
However, it is precisely because grenadiers usually possess extraordinary physical fitness and courage that frontline commanders prefer to let grenadiers undertake solid tasks.
This also leads to the fact that in addition to throwing grenades, grenadiers often appear frequently on the most dangerous and difficult fronts. This also leads to the death and injury rate of grenadiers always being high!
However, the most dangerous service in the Army of the Tang Dynasty was not the heavy-armored sword-and-shield soldiers in the assault camp, nor the musketeers who only wore breastplates or even no armor, nor was it the one who ran to the enemy's distance in the face of the enemy's artillery fire.
If a soldier throws a grenade from more than twenty meters away, he will always be a grenadier on the most dangerous front!
But the gunner of a heavy short-barreled howitzer!
That's right, the most dangerous service in the Tang Dynasty's army, well, including the Tang Dynasty's navy, is the gunner of the heavy short-barreled howitzer!
Limited by the fuze problem, nowadays Datang Army's howitzers often have accidents. Even if the chamber explodes, it is considered a good thing. At most, it only kills or injures one artillery crew. But what is even more unlucky is that as soon as the shell is fired, it will hit the enemy's own troops.
It exploded in advance when it flew overhead.
The Fourth Army encountered this kind of misfortune when it attacked Kaifeng. As soon as a 24-pound grenade was fired, it exploded prematurely above the heads of its own troops. A musketeer team under the shell killed and injured dozens of people on the spot.
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So much so that this musketeer team actually participated in the battle and had completely lost its combat effectiveness!
Nowadays, the Datang Army and the Datang Navy have invested a lot of money to support various arsenals and the Royal Institute of Technology in developing new grenade fuses, hoping to completely eliminate this damn matchlock fuse as soon as possible.
The teachers and students at the Royal Institute of Technology have been trying to find other fuses to replace the ancient and extremely dangerous matchlock fuses. They have tried many methods, but the core goal has not been deviated from it, that is, to abandon the need for gunners.
Lighting the match rope attached to the shell before firing is a backward and extremely dangerous control method.
What they are trying now is how to ignite the fuse of the cannonball through the high temperature in the bore pressure, or simply imitate the flintlock gun, where the cannonball hits an impact fuse, and when the cannonball hits the ground, it drives the iron piece, the flint ignites, and then ignites the cannonball.
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But no matter which method is used, there are many problems now, and it still can't be solved for a while.
Although Li Xuan knows a lot of things, to be honest, as a person who uses battlefield scenes in movies and TV series as military teaching materials, you can't expect him to know how modern fuses are made, so he can only give some big ideas.
As for the guidance in the direction, he won't get involved in the specifics.
But it doesn’t matter if you don’t know the specific method. This fuze is nothing more than a smooth and safe ignition and control of the detonation time. These are just a few key points. It mainly requires basic scientific knowledge, looking for more methods, and testing it several times, and you can finally find it out.
Although today's heavy-duty short-barreled howitzers are very dangerous, and the results depend on character, it is undeniable that when this weapon appears in this era, it is an epoch-making weapon!
Letting the artillery shells fly to the enemy and then explode, this simply subverted the current war model, and also allowed the Tang Army to rely on this weapon to have more tactics, especially when siege, against this heavy short-barreled howitzer.
Very dependent.
Dozens of heavy howitzers carried out shelling, not to mention how many times they exploded. After all, this matter did not matter to senior generals such as Wang Chaohong. The key point was that they cooperated with those cannons and successfully suppressed the Ming Dynasty on the top of the city.
The army's counterattack.
Thus covering the troops for blasting and assault!
On the fourth day, when the Second Army deployed an assault battalion of more than a thousand people as the forward force and more than 20,000 infantry troops launched a charge, the artillery unit also launched the last round of large-scale artillery bombardment.
They fired rapidly, trying to fire out more artillery shells in a short period of time, and basically aimed at the top of the city before firing. Some of the grenades were aimed at the deep areas where they planned to attack the city wall.
This time the artillery attack was not intended to kill many enemy troops, but to comprehensively suppress the Ming army's counterattack and cover the infantry's charge!
Otherwise, if the Ming army withdraws its artillery for counterattack, it doesn't need to be large or powerful. It only needs to push out those Folan cannons and drawbars to defeat the charging Tang infantry.
They suffered a lot of casualties!
The direction of the breakthrough of the charging troops is to choose the blasting point. They will use the huge gap in the ruins in the blasting area to advance quickly, then occupy the city walls on both sides, stabilize the breach, and cover the main force entering the city!
Usually once this step is completed, the city can basically be declared broken!
However, as an old opponent of the Tang Dynasty King's Division for many years, Du Biao also knew the Tang Army's tactics. Although there was no way to completely control it, he still had precautions.
When the governor is defending the city, he usually deploys reserve troops at each section behind the city wall, and they are all heavy armored infantry, with musketeers as support.
They were used to block the gap and compete with the Tang Army's assault troops for the gap in the ruins.
This time, they did it again!
When the huge sound of explosions reached the ears of every Ming army soldier, the leading senior Ming army generals did not go to the ruins that were still shrouded in thick dust and smoke, because they knew without looking that
The local city walls turned into rubble.
Their first reaction was to order the reserve team in the rear to immediately go up and block the gap!
The Second Army assault battalion just outside the city quickly advanced through the ditch, then jumped out from about thirty meters away from the city wall. When they rushed towards the ruins, hundreds of Ming troops were on the side behind the ruins.
The reserve team also immediately rushed towards the ruins under the leadership of the generals.
At this time, there must be one person in the ruins, well, it should be said that there is no living person. The Ming army that was originally defending the city wall could not survive such a violent blast, and even the people on the nearby city walls on both sides
Ming army soldiers will also be affected.
At this time, the ruins are just a blank area. Whoever rushes up first will be able to take advantage of the superiority and cause heavy damage to the opponent!
The Second Army assault battalion outside the city was still charging. At this time, the smoke and dust on the ruins had been blown away by the cold winter wind. Although it was still a little blurry, the outline could be clearly seen.
The soldiers of the assault battalion wore thick full-body plate armor and half-body plate armor, and held waist knives made of fine steel. Among them, some soldiers wearing half-body armor held a knife in one hand and a sword in the other.
With a short musket!
This is the latest invention of the Royal Institute of Technology of the Tang Dynasty: the flintlock pistol!
The principle is basically the same as the flintlock rifle used by infantry, except that the barrel is much shorter. This type of pistol was not actually developed for the soldiers of the assault battalion, but for the cavalry.
It's just that the cavalry troops of the Tang Dynasty were severely deceived by the previous matchlock lances and matchlock pistols, so they are now very repulsive to muskets, even if the matchlocks have now become flintlock muskets.
Many cavalry generals of the Tang Army have never used muskets in large-scale battles, let alone pistols. They don't even use lances very much. A very few cavalry generals even shouted: They will die without using muskets!
Even Li Xuan's curses could not change the bad impression of the cavalry generals of the Tang Dynasty towards muskets. Their thinking was that it was enough to be tricked once, and they were determined not to be tricked a second time!
Moreover, muskets don’t go well with their wall-mounted charging tactics!
Therefore, these two weapons were used as decorations most of the time in the cavalry of the Tang Dynasty!
The cavalry of the Tang Dynasty only trusted the swords in their hands!
There is nothing that can't be solved by charging forward and slashing with one knife. If there is, then use two swords!
If it still doesn’t work, turn around and try again!
It sounds a little silly, but that's what the Tang cavalry did!