There was no main battlefield in the Northern Expedition because there were battlefields everywhere, and the 500,000-strong army led by Zhou Yuji did not encounter a large-scale enemy force after crossing the river.
The army reached as far as Fuyu River. Considering that there were too many infantrymen on this trip, it would be impossible to return by the original route before winter, so Zhou Yuji gave up.
Half a million people were dispatched, but the result was less than 5,000. It was achieved piecemeal, which made the elderly Zhou Yuji feel disappointed.
But in the area south of Laluwei, the situation is completely different.
Although battles involving tens of thousands of people were very rare, there were more than twenty times when both sides fought with thousands of people.
Take the battle that took place in the Fuerhewei area as an example. The Ming army dispatched two cavalry battalions with nearly a thousand troops.
There were three Qing troops setting up an ambush here, totaling more than 4,600 people.
Abata's third son Boluo and fourth son Yuele, who had not long received the Zhenghui Banner, discussed with their eldest brother Dudu, and each of the three sent out a Jia La to ambush the Ming army in the ravine.
If they can win, firstly, it can boost morale, and secondly, it can also establish prestige for the two brothers.
Du Du is willing to fulfill this, after all, these are two little brothers who can be relied on for the time being.
The problem is that in actual combat, although the enemy's seduction tactics were successful, they were discovered first by the Ming army when the army was dispatched.
Taking advantage of their superior numbers, the Qing army fought against nearly 500 Ming army cavalry, trying to devour the enemy in one go.
Unfortunately, the opponents were all equipped with revolvers, and their firepower was so fierce that the Qing cavalry was constantly knocked to the ground.
The Qing army did not carry artillery, and its blunderbuss and arrows alone were completely unable to deliver a fatal blow to the heavily defended Ming cavalry.
Three Jia La besieged hundreds of Ming troops but could not annihilate them, which made Boluo and Yue Le furious.
Bolo, who went into battle in person, wanted to demonstrate personally, but his mount was overturned by bullets from the Ming army.
Fortunately, Bolo reacted quickly enough and left the stirrups with his feet in advance, so his legs were not crushed by the fallen mount.
This shocked Bolo into a cold sweat. If he was pinned down by his mount and faced with the hail of bullets, his life would be in danger.
After paying the price of thousands of casualties, the Qing army's cavalry failed to eliminate the opponent in a short period of time.
They didn't know that this was a special operations battalion under Zhang Huangyan, and its combat effectiveness was unmatched by ordinary cavalry.
Not only equipped with revolvers, but also equipped with a small number of magazine-type rifles, the sustained firepower is almost ten times that of the Qing cavalry.
Instead of evacuating quickly when they encountered an ambush, the Ming troops in this battalion fired off signal flares and then defended themselves on the spot, using trees, stones, slopes, and grass as bunkers.
After finally encountering so many dog Tatars, it would be a fool to retreat back the same way.
It doesn't matter if there are many people on the other side. If you can't eat it yourself, you can call the nearby brother troops to come up and share it with you.
The Qing army that launched an ambush here really couldn't do anything to a mere battalion of special forces without the help of artillery.
Not to mention killing, he couldn't even steal a horse.
Since each special forces soldier has a long and short gun, some long guns are revolvers and some are magazine-type rifles, and short guns are all revolvers.
After the long gun ran out of bullets, once he saw that the enemy was approaching and he had no time to change bullets, he immediately pulled out the short gun and opened fire.
This made the Qing cavalry rushing in front feel extremely painful. They originally thought that after finally surviving the opponent's fierce firepower, they could catch the opponent off guard when they reloaded their ammunition.
As a result, the other party caught him off guard. As long as he was not protected by heavy armor, he would bleed on the spot if he was wearing two layers of iron armor, and he would die immediately if the vital parts were injured.
Due to the loss of the iron mines in Liaodong, the soldiers recruited later, whether infantry or cavalry, can no longer be equipped with armor according to Tie Chaodu's standards.
In a Jia La cavalry, usually one or two Niu Lu are Tie Chao Du, and the rest of the cavalry are just wearing cotton armor.
Only in the two yellow flags or two white flags where the previous losses were minimal will all members be protected by heavy armor.
The decline in defense directly caused the Qing cavalry to suffer increasing casualties in the face of the Ming army's firepower in close combat.
Including the special forces, all members of the Ming army were wearing heavy armor, and few dared to be lazy and slippery.
Because before setting off, Zhou Yuji had already issued Emperor Haojing's new order to the entire army.
If during the injury examination, it is found that the torso is seriously injured due to non-shellacking injuries to the muscles and bones, it will be regarded as the result of soldiers disobeying orders and not wearing armor.
It is impossible for the braided arrows and bullets to penetrate the Ming army's plate armor. The front is a steel plate!
Anyone judged to be disobedient will have their pension halved, regardless of life or death.
Anyone who can afford to have their pension reduced by half can do without wearing it.
In order to avoid the behavior of pretending to be free of charge, the verification is very strict, and you cannot sign in advance.
This led to the fact that on the battlefield, no matter how hard the Qing cavalry worked, it was difficult to kill a counterpart on the opposite side.
Injuring the limbs is relatively easy, but it is too difficult to injure the torso of the Ming cavalry.
There is no need to worry about the head. After wearing the chicken helmet, although the vision is very poor, the defense is extremely amazing.
So far, during the Northern Expedition, the total number of Ming soldiers who died due to head injuries did not exceed a hundred.
Aside from a heavy hit with a mace, there's almost no good way to break armor.
It's not like the Qing army didn't install this kind of weapon. It was mainly used to avoid taking advantage of it, and the Ming army would hit those who took the mace first.
After seeing the signal flare, Ming cavalry from a nearby battalion quickly rushed to the scene of the incident.
When the Ming army's reinforcements arrived on the battlefield, Boluo lost interest in fighting and quickly withdrew his troops along with Yue Le.
Unlike the reckless Haug, these two brothers ran away when the situation turned bad, while also avoiding greater losses.
As a result, they were chased and killed by a battalion of Ming troops who came for reinforcements. In the process of running away, they lost more than two Niu Lu's cavalry.
After a post-war inventory, it was found that seventeen Ming soldiers were killed, 62 were seriously injured, and nearly 300 were injured.
Counting the subsequent cover-up killings, 1,185 Tatars were killed and 509 wounded and captured.
Those who are willing to surrender are basically Menggu cavalry, and most of the Eight Banners soldiers are proud.
Taking into account the casualties of the opponent, this battle was equivalent to the elimination of a multi-kala cavalry and a heavy injury to a jia-la.
Due to injuries and the encirclement and interception by the nearby Ming army, only about one Jia La of the Qing cavalry who set up an ambush finally escaped and ascended to heaven.
Dorgon's previous tactics were to disperse attacks and harass continuously, because he was worried that large groups of troops would be unable to escape after being discovered by the Ming army.
This kind of worry is actually very necessary, because the more troops are invested, the easier it is to be discovered by the Ming army's airship.
Once the number of war horses exceeds a thousand, the dust they stir up can be easily seen twenty miles away in the air.
Ming army pilots all passed a vision test before taking to the sky, and all of them achieved a score of 5.0 or above.
In addition, there is a high-power telescope on the airship, and the observation radius can reach about thirty or forty miles.
Under good weather conditions, unless the Qing cavalry is hiding in the woods.
Otherwise, if you run on the flat land during the day, you will definitely be discovered by a nearby airship.
By the end of the summer offensive, the Ming army had killed more than 15,000 Tatars and injured an estimated 60,000 more.
Although this result was achieved piecemeal through large and small battles, it was not easy.
The situation has become very clear. The Tatars no longer dare to confront the Ming army and can only use guerrilla methods.
However, 800,000 people were invested in the early stage, and 100,000 people were reinforced by Hong Chengchou in the later stage. The result was such little results, which made Zhou Yuji feel ashamed of his divine grace.
A certain new emperor received a summary of the results of the battle sent by the Raptor, what else could he say? ? ?
I don't have a high altitude, and I don't look like I can fly to the sky or escape from the earth.
After much thought, I finally had to resort to my ultimate move - code defense!
In the area north of Anle Prefecture, the blockhouses will be stacked up for me!
Although the cost of building a fort is not low, it is still much cheaper than using large-scale cavalry groups to repeatedly raid.
Especially having so many troops traveling back and forth is a huge cost in itself.
A certain new emperor meant to restore the original garrison posts, but there was no need to restore the garrison military system.
Just station a large number of mercenaries directly. It is enough to station a company in a gun tower and equip it with mortars and turrets.
The first phase of the project is to build blockhouses along the river from the upper reaches of the Songhua River to the Huhehai River. Construction will start next spring.
At the same time, the functions of major guard posts such as Lalu Guard were restored, and no less than 5,000 people were stationed at each important tactical node.
There are small eyes and big fists, it just depends on where Shunji plans to bite first...
Zhou Yuji saw that the tactics he used before had not achieved much results, so he used another move when his master returned to the court.
The 800,000-strong army was divided into 117 groups, divided into groups of 5,000 to 10,000 people.
The wide front from Sacha River Guard to Sudden Triton Plowed back like a comb.
The generals of each department relied on luck this time, and encountering the enemy was like picking up a big fish.
Dorgon had no idea that Zhou Yuji would use this trick.
The area where the other party was plowing happened to be the defense area of the Dorgon brothers, which led to people from various ministries under the jurisdiction of the two white flags constantly running into this huge fishing net.
Starting from late September, the Ming Dynasty's joint forces will move south, and the Qing army fighting in the area south of the Songhua River will return north. The two sides will inevitably meet.
At this time, the Qing army did not need to cross the river. Since it was the flood season, there was no way to cross the river without a large number of ships and the river was not frozen.
Dorgon calculated that Zhou Yuji's army would return along the same route and perhaps garrison where it was, but his speculation could not be based on fact.
At the beginning, a Jia La Menggu cavalry ran into a Japanese army who was eager to return home. The strength was about 6,000.
The opponent was a troop under the command of a very unpopular foreign daimyo. The Menggu cavalry, who originally thought they had encountered a soft persimmon, almost lost their front teeth.
If it weren't for the short legs of the Japanese army and the lack of horses, they really couldn't catch up with the four-legged grassland mounts. Thousands of menggu cavalry would have been chewed alive by the Japanese soldiers who rushed forward.
Since the various ministries were marching at different speeds, Zhou Yuji did not impose a return time, but followed the wishes of the generals of each ministry. Therefore, the entire "comb" was actually jagged and uneven.
This also happened to form two rakes in front and back, and the northwest wind blowing at the same time was just enough to help a large number of airships swim southward.
The three Niulu troops with white flags under Duduo's jurisdiction were impartial and bumped into the Ming army heading south. To be precise, they were the fierce tiger tribe, the Gaojie tribe, and the Hu Dawei tribe.
Although Zhou Yuji came in a large formation, there was also a division of labor. The Japanese army needed to board the ship to go home, so they were naturally placed on the easternmost side to facilitate boarding from Heilewenhewei.
The German army was placed on the west side, so that if something happened, the Ming army in the center could easily support the friendly forces on the east and west sides.
This time it was a self-guided safari. Zhou Yuji took his headquarters and followed Zhang Yilong's troops from the Guards Battalion.
The rest of the Ming army gathered together according to the generals' relationships and relatives, and those who had close personal relationships would naturally go together.
The Ming army in the northern capital was divided into one group, the Jifu area was another group, and various parts of the north were divided into several groups.
Zhou Yuji was not worried at all that something would happen with this arrangement. If he was really defeated by the Tatars, it would mean that his previous training was in vain.
And the reward amount is still valid, two hundred taels per Tatar, otherwise there would be no need to use the method of digging three feet in the ground to search for the main Tatar force.
As the assembled cavalry returned to their respective organizations, each department was equipped with varying numbers of cavalry, ranging from a thousand to several thousand, and their mobility was restored.
When being ambushed or raided by Tatars, as long as a signal flare is sent out, the cavalry from nearby troops will quickly come to the rescue.
However, Zhou Yuji believed that after fully realizing firearms and supplemented by a large number of steam tanks, the Tatar cavalry could not defeat even the Wang Division infantry.
On the plains, although the cavalry's assault capability is extraordinary, its inability to fight tanks is a fatal problem.
Even if the Ming army has only one steam tank left on the battlefield that can continue to fight, it can pose a serious threat to hundreds of Tatar cavalry.
Each unit of the Ming army installed at least one hundred steam tanks, and the combat effectiveness of the armored troops alone was enough to offset two to three thousand Tatar cavalry.
It can be said that without more than 4,000 cavalry, no Tatar cavalry dared to worry about the 5,000-person Ming army infantry unit.
The three Niulu cavalrymen under the Xiangbai Banner had been wandering around the west side of Changbai Mountain. Relying on the favorable conditions in the mountains and their good luck, they had suffered few losses.
They think this area is a place that has been neglected and easy to succeed, and this is indeed the case. After the falling snow, it’s the signal to return north.
When I walked calmly to a place about twenty miles west of Jingbo, I suddenly discovered a large number of Ming troops heading south.
Since Jingbo was in the shape of a crescent moon, and their location was at the gap, it was too late to go around now.
In particular, the Ming army not only had thousands of infantry, but also many cavalry. The reconnaissance cavalry had discovered their traces. Only a battle could escape and ascend to heaven.
The three Niulu cavalrymen with white flags broke out in three directions. The established route happened to be the path of the three troops of Mengruhu, Gaojie and Hudawei going south.
The three veterans are all getting older. They originally thought that their trip was in vain, but they didn't expect that there would be an unexpected surprise.
A dog costs 200 taels, and killing a hundred of them is 20,000 taels. At least the soldiers under his command can have a banquet on New Year's Eve.
After the scout sent out a signal flare, the three men, like wolves and tigers, swarmed in for the New Year's red envelope.
The infantry ran too slowly to catch up, but nearly three thousand cavalrymen kept chasing the opponent's less than nine hundred men, pounding away with their revolvers.
Winter has not yet arrived, the weather is fine, and I have nothing to do. Beat a few dogs to death to celebrate the New Year!
