When the thirty-two one-pound cannons deployed by Li Zicheng in front of Guangde Palace rumbled, Zhang Yong, Qiu Lei, and Jin Shenghuan on Tangjiashan already knew something was wrong.
They didn't expect that Li Zicheng would pull so many cannons from Jiangling City all the way to the police station!
They did not expect that when Li Zicheng used his cavalry and artillery together, the Ming army, which lacked cavalry and artillery, would fall into a completely passive state of being beaten!
Zhang Yong, Qiu Lei, and Jin Shenghuan are no strangers to general cannons. Their troops have also been equipped with some large and small general cannons before. However, because this kind of artillery is not very powerful and difficult to use in field battles, it does not play any role and is a bit of a hindrance.
If you want to hit someone with a general cannon, you have to build a mound of earth first! Not only the amount of work is huge, but also it is easy to be discovered by the enemy. Usually, people move away when they see you piling up dirt... Who would be waiting for you to hit them with cannons?
Unless he is defending the city, or... he can't move at all!
There is usually only one reason why infantry cannot move on the battlefield, and that is because they are watched by a large number of cavalry.
Since ancient times, infantry and cavalry have to form formations to defend, and it is usually difficult for the infantry to move after formation. Unless they form a phalanx of muskets and pikes like the Spanish phalanx and the Morris phalanx, they can transform themselves into a phalanx. It became a "moving castle" and allowed the musketeers to slowly move around the pike phalanx.
However, even this kind of "mobile fortress" will suffer heavy losses when encountering a three-pounder cannon that can be moved quickly!
On the European battlefields of the seventeenth century, artillery had become a key factor in determining victory or defeat!
The armies of Zhang Yong, Qiu Lei, and Jin Shenghuan were all traditional Ming armies, and because they followed Zuo Liangyu to flee south after the Battle of Zhuxian Town, their armies left the north where horses were easily available early and fled. Went to Huguang, which was short of horses.
In the following years, the horses of the Zuo family army were damaged and useless. The direct line of the Zuo family still had some horses, but the collateral lines of Zhang Yong, Qiu Lei, and Jin Shenghuan gradually had no horses available. When we arrived at the police station, only Zhang, Qiu, and Jin's servants and horses were available... The three servants together amounted to 2,500 to 2,500 people. This is what happened on the Tangjiahe battlefield. All the cavalry of the army. Among them, only Zhang Yong's thousand servants are one man and two cavalry, which can be regarded as truly capable of fighting.
On the other hand, although Li Zicheng was also forced to go to Huguang, the time was relatively short, and he also had Xi'an and Nanyang at hand, and recently received the nominal allegiance of Yan'an and Yulin.
In addition, the Dashun Army and Zuo Jiajun currently do not have the support of the official camp and horse administration, so they can only rely on the soldiers below to raise their own horses. After Dashun encircled and granted farmland, the soldiers had Zhuangzi, which made it easier for them to raise horses.
Therefore, Li Zicheng now brings as many as 17,000 cavalry to the front line of the public security, most of which can still maintain one person and two horses!
With so many cavalry deployed on the battlefield, the infantry of Zhang Yong, Qiu Lei, and Jin Shenghuan could not move at all and could only endure the shelling...
"It's not a bear, but what should I do? It's not okay to stand up and be bombarded like this!"
Jin Shenghuan, who was watching the battle on Tangjia Mountain, was the first to lose his temper.
"Hu Chen, how can you do this if you don't stand up straight?" Zhang Yong spread his hands, "Just tell me what moves you have!"
Jin Shenghuan said: "How about we pick a front and attack the bandit's artillery array! I will send out 1,500 men, and you two will send out 1,500 men together. How about that?"
Both Zhang Yong and Qiu Lei knew that Jin Shenghuan's idea was unreliable, but they couldn't refuse it - the Jin family army had the largest number of people on the battlefield, and if Jin Shenghuan quit, the battle would not go on!
Besides, no one can bear to be bombarded like this!
Although there are only about thirty one-pound cannons, a salvo can fire out about thirty deadly stone bullets.
The bombardment was not very accurate at the beginning, but it became more and more accurate as the bombardment continued. The shells were all falling into the crowd!
One round of shelling can kill and injure more than a dozen people. If the bombardment continues until dark, there must be more than a thousand casualties?
What morale will the Jin Jiajun have by then? Maybe he would collapse without Li Zicheng's troops attacking...
Zhang Yong thought for a while and said: "I'm afraid we won't be able to attack the artillery array, but we can buy some time... We have to make two preparations. If the attack fails, Brother Huchen will send his troops to Move a hundred steps back to avoid the cannon!"
Zhang Yong, Qiu Lei, and Jin Shenghuan also knew that the water level of the Hudu River was dropping - they could guess what happened. This kind of thing had not never happened on the battlefield in the Central Plains.
So they all know that the Hudu River currently blocking the Jin family's army can definitely be forded!
If the Jin family's army retreats under the watchful eye of thousands of Dashun infantry soldiers on the other side of the river, it is very likely that they will be attacked by them, causing the entire army to collapse.
"That's it!" Jin Shenghuan nodded heavily, "Well, let's choose a dead soldier and fight with the one named Li! Maybe we can succeed..."
After saying that, he bowed his hands to Zhang Yong and Qiu Lei, and then strode down the mountain.
...
With the sound of drums and the guidance of the red military flag, more than 3,000 Ming Army infantry troops began to ford the empty crossing from the bend of the Hudu River.
Under the urging of the Dashun Army's artillery, the Ming Army had to launch a counterattack - using artillery to force the opponent's infantry to attack its own position that was waiting for it was a very common practice on the European battlefields in the 17th century.
Li Zicheng is a blind cat meeting a dead mouse this time!
This counterattack, personally directed by Jin Shenghuan, was, to be fair, very professional. He did not let the three thousand selected forwards swarm out from the front of the Dashun Army's artillery position, but attacked from the left wing of the Dashun Army's artillery position, hoping to attack from the side.
Considering that the Dashun army on the battlefield had many cavalry, Jin Shenghuan asked half of the selected vanguards to attack with spears, and the rest were divided equally between swordsmen and archers.
The three thousand people were divided into ten teams. Each team formed a phalanx with pikemen as the core, and crossed the river across the tiger.
Li Zicheng, who was supervising the battle on Jinmao Mountain, saw the Ming army's counterattack from a distance. After watching it for a while, he couldn't help laughing: "Sure enough, it's the Ming army that I know!"
"Your Majesty, do you want to give you any orders?" Gu Junen asked at the side.
Jinmao Mountain is far away from the front line and it is not easy to transmit information, so Li Zicheng asked Ruhou Quan General Liu Zongmin to come to the battle.
"No need." Li Zicheng smiled, "You know what to do!"
As soon as he finished speaking, the right wing of Dashun Army remembered the thunderous sound of drums.
Liu Zongmin has already sent troops to fight! The troops facing the battle were cavalry and infantry - the old battalion cavalry in the rear, and the sword and shield soldiers in the front! They looked quite energetic, and everyone was wearing strong armor and forming a fairly neat queue.
"Your Majesty," Gu Junen held up a telescope and looked at it, then turned back to Li Zicheng and said, "Your Majesty has sent all Li Guoying's people up."
Li Zicheng sneered: "Bring them here just for now? If you want to be a veteran soldier of Dashun, just hand over your head! This is called surrender!"
Gu Junen smiled and complimented: "Your Majesty is wise!"
As soon as he said this, a cry of death suddenly sounded on the battlefield!
The ten teams of selected front soldiers commanded by Jin Shenghuan have already launched an attack on the more than two thousand sword and shield warriors commanded by Li Guoying.
Spears, swords and shields soon collided together - the soldiers from these two groups had been working together under Zuo Liangyu not long ago, but now they met each other with swords and became enemies on the battlefield.
And they were killing with great vigor... They were all screwed under Zuo Liangyu's hands, and now they can't help it. There are knives on their backs and all kinds of cakes on their fronts to lure them.
The conditions offered by Li Zicheng were "pay your head and enter the old camp". Once you enter the old camp, you can be granted land, and you will become the confidant of Emperor Yongchang.
As for Jin Shenghuan, Zhang Yong, and Qiu Lei, they are also coaxed by the territory of Guangxi and Yunnan. If they defeat Li Zicheng, they can go to Guangxi and Yunnan to become the overlords, and then they can also allocate fields and houses to the warriors under them. ...
