Chapter 432: The Decisive Battle to Kill the Tiger's Mouth
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How can it be possible to prepare an army of hundreds of thousands of people for battle at every turn?
Therefore, the confrontation between the Ming army and the Junggar army went from testing each other in March to being basically in place in May.
Because the Ming army was slow in mobilizing troops, it could not hold on to the undefensible grassland area from the beginning. Whether it was the city of Baotou or the naturalized city of Hohhot, they quickly fell into Galdan's control at the beginning.
in hand.
Some of the Khalkha Mongolian tribes who were originally shaken or dissatisfied saw the power of Junggar and joined forces one after another.
Those who were really unwilling to surrender to their compatriots and had their hearts set on the Ming Dynasty could not wait to die where they were. Therefore, most of them fled west to the grassland where Chahar Mongolia was located, or fled directly to the southeast to the surroundings of Datong, where they were attached to the strength of the Ming army.
control area.
Zheng Chenggong and Li Dingguo did not feel ashamed that the imperial court had already lost tens of thousands of square kilometers of grassland outside the customs when they first arrived at the front line. This was normal.
As for the prairie, there is no danger to defend. Gains and losses can happen in the blink of an eye, which is not enough to prove any problem.
Considering that the Junggar cavalry comes and goes like the wind, and the composition of the entire cavalry, with one person, two horses or even three horses, if they can maneuver for two or three days, they may threaten Datong to the south and Zhangjiakou to the west. As for Chahar Mongolia
Ulanqab may also be attacked at any time.
Therefore, the front that stretches for at least five hundred miles may become the main battlefield. This has been proven in the hundreds of years before the Ming Dynasty fought with the Tatars. Every time the Tatars invaded, there were at least two people on the nine sides.
When you reach the three sides, you will be dragged into the battlefield, which is a normal operation.
…
After stabilizing the situation along the nine-sided traditional defense line, Zheng Chenggong and Li Dingguo finally sorted out the enemy and friendly forces in this battle.
"Galdan claims to control 300,000 strings, 50,000 musketry cavalry, and each person has two or even three horses. The total number of horses used is over one million, which should not be false.
He campaigned for thirteen years, and the territory he expanded is said to span eight thousand miles from east to west, and as far as six thousand miles from north to south. It is not surprising that he can easily pull out three hundred thousand warrior cavalry."
Zheng Chenggong also looked solemnly when he looked at the intelligence that Jiubian generals had collected from the outpost contact battle.
After all, he is already the third associate minister of the cabinet and is here to supervise the division. There is no need for him to go to the front line in the subsequent bloody battles. He is from the navy and is not good at fighting with cavalry regiments in the prairie and desert. In the end, it still depends on Li Dingguo, and
He didn't know how sure Li Dingguo was.
In contrast, Li Dingguo, who wants to go to the front line himself, is very confident in himself.
This sixty-three-year-old veteran suffered various marks carved on his head, face and skin by various weather disasters from south to north, as well as scars left by mosquitoes and poisonous sores.
During his fifty-two years of military career, he spent the first ten years as a thief and the last forty-two years as a general. He had been in so many fights that he could no longer tell the difference between wounds and signs of disease.
I saw Li Dingguo say in a calm tone: "The defenders that our Ming Dynasty has raised on the three sides now, not including auxiliary troops, are half a million strong. With the strength of our country's national power and the strength of our armor, we can defeat them."
Erdan is more than enough!
The only thing we need to worry about is how to fight this battle so as to wipe out Galdan's vitality as much as possible. If we suddenly appear too strong and Galdan uses the rogue technique of prairie nomads running away if they can't be beaten, we will have to chase and annihilate them.
It's difficult for him.
The hinterland of the Junggar tribe is as far away as Urumqi, Luntai, which is four thousand miles west of Datong. Even counting from Jiuquan out of Jiayuguan, it is still two thousand miles.
Killing three more Junggar cavalry outside Datong Pass is not as difficult as going to Luntai County to kill one Junggar cavalry. Over the past few years, I have known for a long time that what the Prince and Your Majesty want is to completely annihilate the Junggar tribe, not just attack them.
Retreat, so it is necessary to take advantage of this time to eliminate as many of their effective forces as possible, and even to show weakness and fight hard to lure the enemy."
Although Zheng Chenggong was not good at riding on the grasslands, he was also very knowledgeable about soldiers. As soon as Li Dingguo raised the logistical difficulty of the future expedition, he immediately estimated it:
"This is very true. Our Ming Dynasty can deploy 500,000 elite troops in Xuanda and Zhangjiakou. But if the battlefield is moved to Wuyuan, it is estimated that we can only supply 400,000 troops to participate in the war.
If the battlefield is moved further west to the grasslands north of Lanzhou, the 300,000 elite troops will be enough. If we move beyond Jiayuguan, there will be less than 200,000, and the number who can go to Luntai to use troops will not exceed 150,000 at most.
This is still based on the premise that the number of Ming war horses and pack horses is not much less than that of the Junggar people, and it must be equipped with some new baggage vehicles suitable for long-distance marches in the grasslands and deserts. Otherwise, I am afraid that 100,000 people will arrive.
Can't get to the wheel platform.
Therefore, we must strive to weaken the Junggar tribe as much as possible on the battlefields from Datong to Guihua City and Wuyuan, and ensure that after this battle, the strength of the remaining troops cannot even defeat the Ming Dynasty's 100,000 troops. Only in this way can we defend and counterattack, and sweep Liting.
Acupoint! Brother Li, how do you think we should attack it now?"
Li Dingguo has obviously thought about it these days, and Zhizhu said with confidence: "First show weakness and pretend to be unable to get out, but then send a small force to attack Galdan from other places and attack Galdan.
Then, if Galdan mobilizes, we will also mobilize accordingly, pretending to use heavy troops to deal with the checkpoint where Galdan's main force is facing.
At this point, don't be too careful about Galdan's details. You can even let some of the already wavering Khalkha Mongolian tribesmen go back to join the enemy Galdan, so as to reveal to Galdan the secrets of the Ming Dynasty at each checkpoint on the three sides.
The number of defensive troops in real time.
Deliberately leaving out a gap where the defense is weakest, let Galdan think he has caught the weakness, and then seduce him to try to attack the key point. As long as he spends money to attack the key point, even if he finds that he can't break it after attacking for a while, then he will leave.
It's not that easy anymore.
I will personally lead the main force of the cavalry out of the passes on the left and right to attack, trying to outflank and delay the heavy damage."
Zheng Chenggong thought carefully about this line of thought for a long time, and felt that there was still a flaw: "Will Galdan fall into the trap of proactively leaking military aircraft and making the Great Wall's defenses false and true?"
Li Dingguo was very confident: "Sooner or later, we will fall into the trap. If it doesn't work, we will continue to mobilize with him. Because we did not lie to him, we really took the initiative to expose the weakness of the defensive force. It was a real self-weakening, not an act."
Therefore, even if he gets information once and fails to come, he will not find out later that we lied to him, because we have never lied to him from the beginning to the end. If you hear too much true information, there will be times when you can't help it."
Zheng Chenggong thought about it. Li Dingguo's weaknesses that he took the initiative to expose to the enemy were all real weaknesses. So what else could he reveal? There was nothing to reveal at all.
The only confidence the Ming army had here was its confidence in its defensive capabilities.
Just like even if I tell you, at any point in Datong, or next door to Xuanfu or Zhangjiakou, there are only a few thousand soldiers defending it at a certain moment.
But even if you know that there are only a few thousand people, and you pile up 300,000 people, you still can't break through this weak point defended by only a few thousand people within five and ten days. Then Galdan will be finished, or at least he will be defeated.
If it sticks, it will have to peel off the skin even if it doesn't die.
Zheng Chenggong finally made the final decision and approved the plan: "Okay, let's ask Brother Li to act according to the plan. Since we need to lure the enemy to show weakness, I will defend and you will attack. I will act as the anvil and you will act as the hammer. Anyway, my supervisor does not need to leave the seclusion.
Leave the defense line of the Great Wall to me. I guarantee that no matter how weak you are, the other side will not be able to break through it within ten days. The subsequent decisive battle and encirclement and annihilation will be left to Brother Li."
…
Li Dingguo quickly began to implement the established strategy.
While he made it look like he was defending the passes on all three sides and refused to send out large regiments to fight, he also sent out small groups of fast light cavalry to harass them.
At the same time, he also deliberately and occasionally leaked false and true information about the actual defense on three sides of the Great Wall.
Among them, there is no need to go into details about the complicated and repeated strategies, but the only remarkable thing is the harassment of light cavalry deployed by Li Dingguo.
He never allowed large-scale cavalry attacks. They were all small troops with as few as three hundred cavalry, as many as five hundred cavalry, and definitely not one thousand cavalry.
They would never attack from the checkpoint where Galdan's main force was waiting, but from the left and right flanks, slightly away from Galdan's main force. They would rather have to march dozens or hundreds of miles to reach the battlefield.
Although Galdan claims to have 300,000 troops, his cavalry still have to eat grass every day. Without first-level combat readiness, they will definitely be scattered, which makes it easy for them to be caught by the lone small group of troops.
.
The small group of elite cavalry sent by Li Dingguo can be regarded as a new height in the construction of the Ming cavalry force in recent years. The equipment used and the training received have all kept pace with the times.
As early as the war to destroy the Qing Dynasty thirty years ago, the Ming army already had a small number of rifled guns, which could ensure relatively accurate shooting at medium and long distances.
It's just that Ming Dynasty's technology and industry were still in their relative infancy and were much poorer than they are today, so rifled guns were only used by sniper battalions and were considered "special forces equipment."
Nowadays, although the Ming Dynasty has not eliminated the "Made in Wuchang" series of smoothbore guns, it has also made many fine-tuning improvements to improve the loading efficiency. However, at least the proportion of rifled gun equipment in the army has increased to about 20 to 30%, becoming
A large-scale organized force is no longer exclusive to special forces.
Therefore, each of the thousands of elite cavalry sent by Li Dingguo to harass was equipped with a breastplate that was lighter and thinner than before, but the quality had not shrunk, and two muskets.
They are a long-barreled rifle, plus a short-barreled double-barreled breech-loading spray gun, or the spray gun can be replaced by a revolver.
This kind of firepower combination is enough to eliminate all long-range cold weapons such as bows and crossbows. From then on, it is ensured that firearm firepower can also be matched from both distance and distance, with snipers at long distances and sprays at close range.
Moreover, the quality of these sprayers is far from comparable to the old models from more than 30 years ago.
At least now, Ming Dynasty has ensured that the processing accuracy has been improved, so that when using low-pressure short-range ammunition, the newly produced breech-mounted nozzles will not leak firelight from the gap at the rear of the chamber. At most, only a few strands of black smoke will leak out.
In this way, the musketeer does not need to wear thick leather gloves, nor does he need to worry about burning his hands with the fire from the tail, and the operational accuracy can also be improved.
Small optimizations of various loading mechanisms and air-tight mechanisms allow the Ming Army's latest rear-mounted double-tube nozzle to be able to load about eight rounds per minute. Even in a bumpy environment on horseback, the movement and deformation operation will be slower, at least
It can also be five or six rounds per minute.
Two rounds of ammunition can be fired at one reload, which means that the sprayer can spray 1 shotshell per minute, and it can shoot 10 rounds in the slowest and most bumpy situation. This firepower density will definitely give Galdan a good drink.
pot.
As for the huge inventory of old-fashioned double-barreled nozzles, they were replaced and given to the second-line troops. Anyway, the ones Li Dingguo sent out this time to harass were the first-line elites, and priority was given to equipping the newly produced batches.
…
The progress of the initial harassment war was exactly as Li Dingguo expected.
The small groups of Ming army cavalry with hundreds of riders are all well-equipped and equipped with three horses. They come and go like the wind. Because they only wear a steel breastplate, the load of the horses is not heavy. The armor of the Junggar tribe is heavy.
The cavalry couldn't catch up at all. The only ones who could catch up were the light-armored horse archers and rangers.
However, the Dzungars' rangers were no match for the Ming Dynasty's long-distance and close-range double lancer cavalry. After repeated small-scale encounters, the scouts were beaten to pieces, and hundreds of corpses were often left lying on the ground. It was too horrible to watch.
Although the frequency of such knife-opening battles was not high, and they were dragged out one after another, a total of thousands of Junggar cavalry were killed, and a considerable part of them were cannon fodder from the Khalkha tribe they had just kidnapped. But these results have dealt a huge blow to the Junggar tribe.
Department morale.
Galdan, who was incompetent and furious, had no choice but to use his trump card - let his 50,000-strong musketry cavalry armed with flintlocks originally imported from the Rakshasa Kingdom join in the scouting and patrolling battles.
Since the cavalry archers can't defeat the musketeers of the Ming army, then let's fight fairly with the musketeers!
Unfortunately, another half month later, there were several small-scale fightings, which once again proved that the Dzungars' musketeers were not good either.
There are also differences between musketeers and musketeers!
The Ming army used snipers, while the Junggars used muskets. They would definitely suffer a big loss in long-range sniper attacks. I wanted to rush up and deal damage in the face, but in the end I was sprayed by continuous sprays and couldn't take care of myself.
Galdan suffered repeated setbacks, but could not seize the opportunity to fight the main force of the Ming army. This made Galdan firmly believe that "the Ming army should have such good equipment, only a few elites, so the Ming army did not dare to confront me head-on."
, just want to rely on the Great Wall and use elite soldiers to consume me."
The small Ming army knew how to advance and retreat very well. Each time they attacked with three horses, once the ammunition and supplies carried on the backs of the other two horses ran out, they immediately retreated without hesitation and took a detour back to the pass.
After a month or two of teasing and pulling, in the midsummer and May of the 22nd year of Xiaokang, Galdan finally couldn't bear it anymore and finally believed the information about the Ming army's deployment that he got from the Khalkha traitors.
He caught a gap and realized that the Ming army's defense at the right guard of Datong was very weak.
It is said that the Ming army was deceived by his maneuver to the east. A considerable part of the original defenders of Datong were transferred to Zhangjiakou to fill their positions. It is said that there are currently less than 4,000 people defending the Datong right guard's killing tiger mouth.
He decided to concentrate his muskets and cannons and launch a forceful attack, forcing the Ming army to fight his main force - anyway, he was not a traditional Mongolian army. He was a combination of Mongolia and Rakshasa. Since forming an alliance with Rakshasa thirteen years ago,
He bought enough muskets and cannons.
Therefore, to deal with the traditional Great Wall passes and old city walls, Galdan was confident that he could use cannons to blast out gaps and quickly break through the city.
By now, of course he knew that the Ming Dynasty was also good at building bastions, and that it had new anti-gun fortresses. But the problem was that the bastions could only be used to upgrade cities in key areas, and could not upgrade the Great Wall——
Because the amount of this project is too large, even if some sections of the Great Wall are upgraded with anti-gun performance, there will always be areas that have not been upgraded. Grassland Nomads can specifically select those areas that have not been upgraded to attack, bypassing you who have upgraded them.
The place.
At this moment, the right guard of Datong who was selected by Galdan to kill the tiger's mouth is a typical old pass of the Mingwai Great Wall that has not yet been upgraded.
This is it! Blow it away first, and then force the main force of the Ming army to fight!