Unknowingly, Jia Ke quietly formed two systems among his subordinates. One was the regular army of Xuanhua and Kaiping towns under his command. Although these people were loyal to him, they still had some constraints from the court.
The other set is the Manchu Eight Banners that belong entirely to him and were established by him himself. These troops are completely under the command of Jia Ke, and Jia Ke can use them to attack anywhere.
These two systems form Jia Ke's two swords. The two swords are unified but do not belong to each other. This makes them both integrated and checking and balancing each other.
In the next few days, in order to verify his judgment on their combat effectiveness, Jia Ke held several confrontations between the Manchu Eight Banners and the regular army. The two sides conducted simulated wars on the grassland.
During the war, everyone used bows, arrows, spears and wooden knives made of wood covered with lime. This can not only reduce unnecessary casualties, but also show the combat effectiveness of both sides.
The result of the war was that the Manchu Eight Banners, who had been brainwashed by Jia Ke, achieved consecutive victories. They now regard being killed by Jia Ke as an honor.
In addition, the current Manchu Eight Banners are equipped with paper armor like the troops in Kaiping Town. With little difference in weapons, the Tatars have gained a decisive advantage due to their physical fitness trained in the cold northern regions.
Moreover, they are not afraid of death when fighting, and they are now well-equipped. If they cannot break through the regular army in Kaiping Town, they will attack from both sides non-stop, and even outflank the back roads. Once the cavalry in Kaiping Town
If they cannot stop them, the slow-moving Macedonian phalanx will face the raindrop-like arrows from the Manchu Eight Banners. Even if they wear paper armor, they will not be able to hold on for a long time. In the end, the Manchu Eight Banners will usually suffer heavy losses, and the Kaiping Town regular army will be defeated.
situation.
This has never happened in previous wars with the Tatars. The Tatars have not received systematic training and have a poor ability to withstand casualties. In the past, as long as they had one or two casualties, the troops would be at risk.
They were coaxed to disperse. But after being trained and brainwashed by Jia Ke, the Manchus were now able to charge forward without fear of death, even if they suffered 50% to 60% casualties.
The main problem of the regular army in Kaiping Town is that the cavalry cannot compete with the Manchu Eight Banners, and the number is small. Although these cavalry have been carefully trained by Jia Ke, after all, there is a big gap between them and the Tatars in riding skills. In addition,
Their bodies are also not as strong as the Tatars, so they can still win against the Tatars who are poorly equipped, but they will be at an absolute disadvantage against the Manchus who are equipped the same as them.
After Jia Ke saw this situation, he felt that the Eight Banners of the Manchus could not have such a big advantage over the regular army, otherwise the power of his army would be unbalanced, so he improved the bows and arrows of the regular army.
The previous ordinary bows and arrows were replaced by the powerful English longbow. Longbows are generally about 1.5 meters long. The back of the bow is bent from a complete piece of wood. A good bow is made of yew, which is hard and elastic. These long bows are
The effective shooting distance of the bow reaches 300 meters. The longbowman can release high parabolic arrows to attack the upper part of the enemy. The weakness of the war horse is the attack from above. Most war horses have no armor, so once injured, they will become
It is difficult to control. Even at the extreme distance of 300 meters, cone-shaped arrows can still penetrate ordinary mail armor. These improved English longbows are very powerful and cannot be resisted by the current paper armor. This way, at least in
To a certain extent, the combat effectiveness of both sides has returned to the same starting line.
This improvement effectively suppressed the attacks of the prairie cavalry and caused huge casualties to the prairie cavalry. Even if the Manchu Eight Banners were equipped with sophisticated paper armor, they would suffer heavy losses if they tried to pass through these arrow rains.
But these longbows also have a fatal weakness, that is, because the pulling force is too strong and the longbow is extremely large, it puts a huge test on the archer's physical strength. But it also has a huge advantage. The bow body is made of a single piece of wood, and the craftsmanship is very difficult.
It is relatively much simpler, and is very convenient to make and replenish. Unlike traditional Chinese bows and arrows, although it has huge advantages in flat shooting, its production process is too complicated. Moreover, its longest range and power are the same as those of England.
The longbow has a huge gap.
After the regular army in Kaiping Town is equipped with English longbows, they can fire 10 to 20 arrows at the enemy three hundred meters away in one minute. Such a powerful and dense arrow rain is enough to cause huge casualties to any army.
.However, such an attack cannot last long, but for the short period of cavalry charge, firing one or twenty arrows per minute is enough.
After the Manchurian Eight Banners suffered successive defeats, they also found a way to relatively restrain the English longbow, which was to move continuously and quickly on the periphery.
Then he looked for the weakness of the regular army in Kaiping Town, avoided the front of the English longbow, and took advantage of the slow speed of the English longbow to dodge and approach quickly.
Then he took advantage of the fact that the Central Plains bow and arrow he was equipped with was superior to the English longbow in a straight line, and used his excellent riding skills to continuously fire arrows while approaching.
That's also because the English longbow, although the bow and arrow flies farther and is more powerful, the flight speed of the arrows it releases is far behind that of the Central Plains bow and arrow. As a result, the troops can only move flexibly and quickly to effectively avoid the English longbow.
Bow strike.
Although the English longbow has shortcomings of one kind or another, its appearance put the two armies in a state of balance. Several subsequent exercises did not appear to be one-sided. Even if one side wins, it will be defeated by the other side.
The attack caused huge casualties.
Time passed slowly in the constant training of the troops. Summer is coming to an end and autumn is coming again. This indicates that the Tatar invasion will begin again this year.
And Jia Ke is now well-equipped with soldiers, whether they are Manchus or regular troops in Kaiping Town. They can be regarded as elites in the world. And the biggest difference between them and other troops is that they can withstand it, which is far better than other troops.
The casualty ratio. Only one thing can increase Jia Ke's troops' chances of winning.
The Tatars have tasted huge benefits from their invasion of the Central Plains for several consecutive years. Although they lost some men and horses in Kaiping Town in the direction of Jia Ke's guarding, overall, they still gained huge gains. Each tribe has
Because they went south several times and received a large amount of supplies, the population of the tribes has decreased very little in recent years. This made the tribes become enthusiastic about going south.
Invading the Central Plains every autumn has now become a consensus on the grasslands, because they found that except Jia Ke, no one in the Central Plains Dynasty was their opponent.
Jia Ke sent a memorial to the court at the end of summer. The main idea was: If the Tatars invade again this year, and Xuanhua and Kaiping are relatively peaceful, I hope the court will allow him to lead the cavalry into the grassland and use his people to
The tribes on the grassland carried out a large number of plunders to achieve the purpose of encircling Wei and rescuing Zhao.
Jia Ke did not expect that his memorial would cause an uproar in the court.
The three bachelors who went to the study had a huge quarrel because of Jia Ke's memorial.
Li Lu, a bachelor, admired Jia Ke's view very much. It could play a role in encircling Wei and rescuing Zhao, and it could also wipe out a large number of Tatars. But they still had the strength, so why not?
However, University Scholar Yan Mu believed that such a rash attack would result in heavy losses if defeated. Moreover, they would not know their direction when they arrived on the grassland, and the tribes in the grassland would follow the grass and their whereabouts were unknown. The outcome of the battle would depend entirely on luck.
It is better to have Jia Ke's elite troops waiting to rescue from all directions at any time.
Finally, there is Academician Pan Yong. This old man is exactly like those who know it. He talks about inner kings and outer saints. There has never been a Central Plains dynasty that sent people to kill innocent people indiscriminately. This is against the teachings of Confucius and Mencius. But for this, Li
Lu and Yan Mu both sneered. None of them knew how Pan Yong climbed up. Now he dressed himself up as a gentleman. It was just a cover-up. He had no choice.
The three college students were almost divided into two groups. Only Li Lu, the bachelor, firmly agreed with Jia Ke's method. No matter what the reason was, the other two bachelors did not agree with Jia Ke's sending troops. The first premise was that they did not agree with Jia Ke's sending troops. In fact, they were still afraid.
Except for Jia Ke, no one else had ever won the Tatar war. They were afraid that Jia Ke would also fail, throwing away the last fig leaf of the Central Plains dynasty.
In the end, the three people really couldn't come up with a conclusion, so they could only summarize their opinions and ask for a holy judgment.
After receiving the memorial from Jia Ke and the instructions from the three men, the emperor was also caught in a dilemma. He had been passively beaten over the years and had hated the Tatars to the bone. Of course he was happy if someone wanted to go out and beat the Tatars hard.
Yes. But what the other two college students said is also reasonable. If Jia Ke fails again, the loss of troops will be second. The main reason is how the people of the world will view the Central Plains Dynasty.
The emperor took Jia Ke's memorial and read it carefully over and over again. After reading it, he put it down and then picked up the memorial again. He felt very deeply about the above sentence. That is: The enemy can go to me and I can go.
The emperor was deeply touched by this sentence. Among the many generals in his court, none had the courage of Jia Ke, let alone going deep into the grassland to defeat the Tatars, or even fighting the enemy in a decisive battle under the city.
The emperor once again read Jia Ke's memorial, clenched his fist and dropped it hard on the imperial case. Finally, he picked up the ink pen and wrote a sentence on Jia Ke's memorial: attack as appropriate, with self-preservation as the first priority.
After writing this sentence, the emperor thought for a long time and added another sentence at the end: If it succeeds, I will not hesitate to be rewarded with a title.
After the emperor approved this sentence, he felt much happy, and then he quickly sent the paper out by himself, asking Jia Ke to make preparations in advance.
When Jia Ke received the emperor's reply to the memorial, it was already autumn. Jia Ke thought that the Tatars would attack everywhere soon.
Jia Ke looked at the two lines on the memorial: "You must attack as appropriate, with self-preservation as the first priority. If successful, I will not hesitate to reward you with a title." He felt like he was on fire. It would be a lie to say that he was not excited.
They are happy because they can get opportunities such as being granted a title. They are also happy that they can go to the grassland to rob in a legitimate way. If they can succeed in going north to the grassland this time, it will establish Jia Ke's future status in the court and make him the world's leader.
Famous general.
Jia Ke believes that this time the Northern Expedition has a nine out of ten chance of success. The Tatars have invaded the south many times and have never considered the safety of their home base. This time, when they go, they will definitely return with a full load. What they are waiting for now is the opportunity.
When all the Tatars invaded south and were stumbled everywhere, that was the time to attack the grasslands.