Dantu Town, suburbs.
The military flag is fluttering, and the tiger is as fierce as the forest.
Nearly two thousand soldiers formed two square formations facing each other in an open space on the bank of the Yangtze River.
One of the phalanxes contained four hundred Japanese soldiers of short stature, carrying swords and muskets, wearing Japanese-style ashigaru iron armor and array hats on their heads.
Of course, these Japanese soldiers are not invading Japanese pirates, but Zheng Zhilong’s servants!
Among the Japanese goods sold by Zheng Zhilong, one is called "Japanese soldiers". Although the troubled times in Japan ended thirty years ago, the rule of the Tokugawa Shogunate has also been stabilized. However, the problem of too many ronin, a sequela of Japan's Warring States Period, has still not been completely resolved. A group of warriors who had participated in troubled times and lost their masters had become a hot commodity on battlefields across Southeast Asia.
Not only the monarchs of Southeast Asian countries like to hire them, but also Western colonists and great Eastern pirates like Zheng Zhilong also like to use cheap and high-quality Japanese ronin to charge into battle.
Therefore, in Zheng Zhilong's army, those who fought in naval battles were all Chinese, while the Marines used Japanese soldiers as servants.
The Japanese soldiers of the Zheng family were all equipped with cannons and swords, and they also had iron formations and casings made in the style of the Japanese Ashigaru Armor - the so-called casing was actually a kind of armor made of iron plates, cardboard, wooden boards, etc. The plate armor made of materials is made with reference to European plate armor.
Zheng Zhilong is rich, and his territory is close to Foshan, the iron industry center of East Asia. Of course, he will not fool people with cardboard and wooden boards. His Japanese servant Ishui is equipped with an iron trunk and an iron sheet formation, and his defensive capabilities are quite poor. weak.
The other square formation was composed of four four-column horizontal formations stacked on top of each other. There were nearly 1,600 officers and soldiers, all wearing neat red cloth armor, standing silently, showing a surprisingly perfect lineup.
What’s surprising is not just their lineup, but also their equipment. Among the 1,600 officers and soldiers, except for the flag bearers, drummers, trumpeters, and cavalrymen, all used firecrackers! A quarter of them used heavy turtle-dove-foot fire cannons, and the rest were all equipped with bird cannons. And the muzzles of all bird guns are equipped with three-foot-long thorns!
Under the sun, more than a thousand gun thorns glowed with cold light, like a jungle composed of sharp knives!
Not to mention Zheng Zhilong, who was not very good at land warfare, even Reinstein, a German who had been fighting on the battlefields of the Thirty Years' War in Europe for half his life, widened his eyes and looked at him with disbelief. Looking at the "jungle of sharp knives" in front of us.
Reinstein had seen a lot of the Japanese combination of firecrackers and scimitars. The Turkish Sudanese soldiers were equipped in this way. But this was the first time I saw a knife inserted directly into the mouth of a fire gun.
But after inserting the knife, can the gun still fire?
"Father," Reinstein, a tall man in his forties and slightly thin, asked Tang Ruowang beside him in German, "How do you load the knife on the musket? Can you still fire after loading the knife?"
"Yes, this is a sleeve bayonet," Tang Ruowang said. "His Royal Highness the Crown Prince made a sleeve bayonet that can be directly attached to the gun body."
"That's it!" Reinstein showed a very surprised expression, "Why didn't I think of it? This will be an invention that changes the mode of war... It's amazing!"
"Change the mode of war?" Tang Ruowang was stunned, "Is it that powerful?"
"Of course!" Reinstein nodded and said sternly, "This invention perfectly combines a blade with a firecracker... I think it will eliminate long guns in the future."
"Abandoning the lance?" Alfonso Lopez, the Portuguese governor's special envoy, a very handsome Macau arms dealer with curly black hair, showed a surprised expression, "Can a musket equipped with a blade be able to deal with the cavalry?"
"Yes!" Ruinstein said, "The effect is not as good as the spear, but it is definitely better than the machete used by the Japanese... If these Chinese musketeers can use their matchlock guns correctly, they will definitely be able to defeat the same people. Number of Japanese Musketeers.”
"Really?" Alfonso Lopez didn't believe it. "Japanese samurai are very good mercenaries. The monarchs in Southeast Asia like to hire them."
"Yes, but their equipment and tactics are not good." Reinstein said, "They only have light matchlocks, basically no heavy matchlocks, and they lack artillery. And they can't use phalanx tactics, mixing muskets and spears. Ed."
"But their sword skills are really great... If you just arrived in the East, you may not have seen the knives of these Japanese dwarves!"
Tang Ruowang interrupted the argument between the two at this time. He pointed forward: "Look, there are many wooden targets erected there. It seems that the Chinese musketeers and the Japanese musketeers want to compete!"
"Really? Then you have to take a good look!"
"Yes, we need to take a closer look at this country's military capabilities... The Spaniards had a low opinion of them back then!"
Reinstein and Alfonso Lopez both turned their eyes to the direction of Tang Ruowang's finger, and saw a row of wooden targets already arranged side by side, with a total of three to four hundred!
"Woooo..."
The horn sounded immediately, and then a new army of artillery soldiers who originally formed a phalanx began to move in columns. The four battalions marched in turn, walked a hundred paces in front of the row of wooden targets, and formed a parallel line with the wooden targets, then stopped advancing, and turned to face the wooden targets at the officer's command, and then continued towards the wooden targets. They moved forward in the direction of the target until they were about fifty steps in front of the wooden target, then they collectively stood still.
The whole process looked quite neat, it was obviously a strictly trained force!
Several foreigners, as well as several Ming officials such as Zheng Zhilong, Zheng Zhifeng, Zheng Sen, Wu Sanfu, etc., all had a monocular telescope and began to watch the target shooting performance.
This target shooting competition was proposed by Zheng Sen, for no other reason than to let his father see how powerful the new army is!
Only when you know how powerful you are can you position yourself correctly. In the current Ming Dynasty, the Zheng family's status is actually unshakable, but they have to know how much they weigh.
With a burst of rapid drumbeats, the turtle-dove foot gunners in the first row of four columns of fire guns had finished loading and lit the match rope. There was another drum beat, and all the firecrackers were flattened and clamped on the stands.
Bang!
A gong sounded.
Then there was a thunderous bang!
320 turtledove-footed fire cannons were fired almost simultaneously.
The projectile weighing one to two five cents is pushed by the power of gunpowder detonation and ejects from the muzzle at a muzzle speed close to or exceeding 400 meters per second, flying towards the target. The distance of only 50 steps was reached in an instant, and more than half of the targets were instantly smashed to pieces!
A volley fired from 50 steps away has half the hit rate! Although it was target practice, this result was still quite good.
Several foreigners nodded slightly, while Zheng Zhilong and Zheng Zhifeng's expressions changed slightly. The Japanese servants of the Zheng family who were watching from the side also showed surprised expressions.
After completing the launch, the 320 gun soldiers started loading again at the officer's command. Loading the Turtle Dove's Fire Gun is very complicated, and even if fixed ammunition is used, there is only a slight improvement.
However, these fire gun soldiers have undergone rigorous training for at least five months, so they completed the reloading in a short time. Then, under the command of drums and gongs, a second volley was fired.
Most of the remaining more than a hundred wooden targets were smashed to pieces again!
After firing the second wave of salvos, they did not reload. Instead, they used the flag team as a unit to form a column amid a dense burst of gongs. They evacuated from the gaps between the four battalion lines to prepare for the attack behind them. The hand freed the way forward.
Although the entire evacuation process was not neat, it was neat and tidy, and it was obviously practiced regularly.
Next is the performance of the Bird Gun Soldiers!
Now, the standard combat formation of the new army's musketry has changed to three rows, and their standard tactics are still salvos and bayonet assaults.
The posture adopted when firing a salvo is one column kneeling and two columns standing. The last column holds the fire blunderbuss on the shoulders of the second column and fires.
Four dense battalions of gun soldiers were discharged, and began to advance slowly under the officers' orders, until they reached 20 steps in front of the scattered targets, and then stopped at the same time.
Then there was still a thunderous volley of firecrackers, smashing all the wooden targets that were still standing!
