The Qing soldiers are coming!
In the dimly discernible sky in the early morning, shield vehicles that looked square from the front suddenly appeared in the distance. At the same time, the sound of intensive footsteps and horse hooves also rumbled. The sounds became louder and denser, like thunder, and they rang together. Needless to say, this is the Qing Dynasty’s heavenly soldiers coming!
Although the Qing Dynasty in later generations liked to boast about conquering the world with bows and horses, and about Manchuria's riding and shooting skills, in fact, the war between the Eight Banners in Manchuria was mainly "wretched flow". It is rare to ride a war horse and shoot arrows while running. It is a unique skill of the Mongols. The Manchus are not nomads. Although they can ride and shoot, they do not rely on this mixed market.
Their most common method of fighting is to have the coated slaves push the shield cart in front, and the Eight Banners soldiers to dismount and hold bows and arrows in the back. In many cases, they will also bring Han or Korean musket soldiers. If it was a large-scale battle, they would drag the Hongyi cannon out to fight in the field!
The real advantage of the Eight Banners Soldiers is not the bow and horse at all, but a multi-purpose soldier - archery, horseback riding, hand-to-hand combat. An Eight Banners Soldier can cover them all, and their various killing skills are very good. As for the Ming army, cavalry, archers, musketeers, swordsmen, spearmen, etc. all perform their own duties, and few people can do more than one thing.
If we want to divide it more roughly, the Eight Banners Soldiers have projection, impact, and melee combat all in one, while the Ming Army has three separate forces.
Therefore, when fighting in formation, the Eight Banners soldiers can easily form a relative advantage in firepower and quantity. Their combat effectiveness was already much stronger than that of the Ming army, and with their relative numerical advantage, they were naturally invincible.
In today's battle known as the "Battle of Tuhe", the approximately 13,000 Eight Banners True Manchurians deployed by Duduo were the "three-in-one" troops. 5,000 of them now carry eight-power bows and follow more than 300 shield carts driven by coated slaves. Acting with them, there were about 800 artillery soldiers of the Eight Banners and Han Army. These firecrackers were equipped with bird cannons or turtle-dove-foot firecannons of quite good quality. They wore cotton armor, spread out in formation, and walked in front of the shield vehicle.
There was also a Niulu Eight Banners soldier scattered around the battlefield on horseback, responsible for searching for the Ming army's cavalry and ambushes. However, since the Shandong regiment did not have many cavalry for military training, and Li Chengdong and Ma Degong refused to disperse Ye Buzuo far away. So these Eight Banners soldiers on horseback didn't find anything, and they didn't fight anyone.
In addition, there are nearly 20,000 Eighth Banner and Green Battalion infantrymen holding down the formation behind, waiting to launch the second and third waves of offensive...
"The enemy is attacking, the Tatars are coming!"
A shrill shout suddenly sounded in the Ming army's chariot formation!
Then there were more and more shrill shouts, and the harsh sound of golden drums also sounded from the tall simple watchtower. The soldiers and generals who were resting in the camp were alerted, and either rushed out of the tents or simply jumped up from the field. Most of these soldiers and generals are regiment members. They have not been trained for a long time and have little actual combat experience in the past. Now that the Qing army is attacking, how can we not panic? There was sudden chaos in the camp.
Fortunately, Gao Hongtu's Shandong regiment took the approach of combining old and new. The team was led by not only the children of local tyrants and evil gentry, but also by many veterans who had been patrolling in Shandong as the backbone, supporting the scene.
Gao Hongtu didn't treat them badly either. He allotted 300 acres of land to each of them in Jinan Prefecture, and his family members were all sent to live in Wohu Mountain City on Mount Tai. Crouching Tiger Mountain is part of the Taishan Mountains, close to Jinan Prefecture, and there is a mountain below the hillside. The valley is open and fertile, so it became Gao Hongtu's old camp. Crouching Pass was built at the mountain pass, and Crouching Mountain City was built on the northern slope of Crouching Mountain.
Once Jinan Fucheng falls, Gao Hongtu will retreat to Crouching Mountain City, chewing roasted sweet potatoes and persist in resisting the Qing Dynasty...
Officers at all levels, who were composed of veterans, quickly reacted to the panic, shouted orders, and directed their respective troops to get into position.
Although the Shandong regiment training also referred to the establishment of the new army to overcome difficulties, it also had its own characteristics, that is, there were many archers. Taking the banner of a hundred as a unit, the archers accounted for almost fifty people, and the pikemen and sword and shield bearers combined totaled fifty people. Guns and offensive artillery are separately organized in firearms battalions. Each association is composed of one firearms battalion and three infantry battalions.
However, the establishment of the Shandong Tuanlian was still too short, and there was no time to build weapons and armor, and there were not enough Kaiyuan bows (a composite bow with a relatively soft bow body) to use, so most archers used wooden bows and bamboo bows. Under the arrangements of the officers, the troops spread out behind the shield car, lined up neatly, and prepared to meet the enemy.
The gunners and gunners of the firearms battalion were also in position. The assault cannons had already formed a car fort with the shield vehicles, so the gunners went directly to the front line, while the fire gunners set up the three-eyed muskets in the gap between the two shield vehicles.
Zhang Mingzhen had already reacted and gave an order at the top of his lungs: "Send me the general's order! I'll stand up to you all, and the firearms soldiers are not allowed to fire without orders... Whoever dares to take half a step back, Behead them all!"
Most of the soldiers behind him accepted the promise and went to deliver the order. Zhang Mingzhen, surrounded by the remaining soldiers, strode towards a high platform built with earth at the front, taking in the entire battlefield.
Under the dim and bright sky, countless shield vehicles were lined up in a line, slowly pressing forward, giving people a feeling of being suffocated.
Suddenly, Zhang Mingzhen saw another flash of fire...and then a crackling sound, like fried beans.
This is the Qing army firing cannons!
"So far away...how can we fight? Look at the Qing army, it's just like this!" Zhang Mingzhen was muttering to himself, and there was a roar in his ears, and the smoke was filling his eyes!
This is the attack artillery and three-eyed muskets of the Ming army firing! It turns out that the purpose of the Qing army's indiscriminate firing was to lure the Ming army's firearms to fire outside the effective range...
"Damn it! Don't shoot indiscriminately..." Zhang Mingzhen's face turned pale and he shouted at the top of his voice.
But his voice was drowned out by a crackling roar! The artillerymen and artillerymen trained by the Shandong regiment were almost all new recruits. Now they were extremely nervous. How could they hold back from firing when the Qing soldiers lured them away?
Even if you can't catch anything, it's good to listen to the noise to strengthen your courage!
He Luohui, who was following Duduo on horseback, looked at the flickering fire ahead and said to Duduo with a smile: "Your Majesty, the Southern Barbarians' firearms soldiers are still the same. It seems that today's battle will not take much effort."
Of course what he said was not nonsense, despite the fact that most of the Ming army's firearms were unreliable. But in many previous battles with the Ming army, it was these firearms that could really cause certain casualties to the Eight Banners soldiers.
For example, in Dagokou and Qufu City, only the Ming army's firearms were used properly to kill a certain number of Eight Banners warriors.
The Shandong regiment training in front of them obviously cannot make good use of the limited number of firearms...
Duduo also smiled: "Without any effort, we are all sure to win... Send the order and have the Han army's artillery soldiers approach within fifty steps before attacking."
"twitter!"
Several red-armored soldiers behind Duduo received the order and flew forward.
At this time, the Qing army's fire blunderbuss, whether it was a turtle-dove foot blunderbuss or a bird blunderbuss, was somewhat lethal within fifty steps. The Ming army's three-eyed fire cannon was ineffective within twenty steps, and even the attack artillery had limited power at a distance of fifty steps. Moreover, at this moment, the Qing army's artillery soldiers did not form a dense formation, but fought in skirmish mode. It was really a waste of ammunition to bombard them with artillery.
In addition, the attacking cannon and the three-eyed musket have two more fatal flaws. First, it is very troublesome to load, and it is difficult to fire repeatedly in a short period of time.
Second, the cannon body and blunderbuss body are both made of pig iron, which makes them easy to explode. Once you get busy, accidents often happen, such as the weapon exploding when you fill it with more gunpowder!
Therefore, in actual combat, the Qing army often used tricks to induce the enemy to fire. As long as you and I fought for a few more rounds, more than half of the Ming army's firearms would be useless.
