The construction of the pontoon bridge on the Yehe River was quite smooth. Although the engineers of the Liaodong Army were far less professional than the Imperial Guards who had independent engineers, due to the existence of Tingzhou in the river at this time, Tingzhou could be used as an intermediate fulcrum. This pontoon bridge The difficulty of construction is greatly reduced. Even with the additional step of cutting ice, it only took more than an hour to get it basically ready.
Cao Yu counted the time and calculated. With a little conservation of horsepower, Ma Chengxun should be almost back to Dongcheng at this time. However, he did not send a messenger, which meant that he had no battle situation to report - In other words, it may be that they did not catch up with or encountered the Mongols.
If he didn't catch up, Ma Chengxun would definitely choose to continue chasing. There's nothing to say; but if he didn't catch up, Cao Yu would have to be a little worried. He frowned, momentarily hesitant to send troops across the river.
The person who wanted to go with him again was Gao Yimin. And from the look on his face, Gao Yimin seemed to be more suspicious, and said in a deep voice: "Zongrong, the situation seems to be somewhat different from what was expected before."
"What suspicion do you have?" Cao Yu asked him while looking towards the forest not far from the front of Qi Jin's military formation on the east side, as if he wanted to find something in it.
"I have my doubts..." Gao Yimin also looked towards the forest and said slowly: "Buriha tried to divert the tigers away from the mountain, but the main force of the Tatars is still in the forest."
Cao Yan's eyes narrowed, but surprisingly he showed no fear. He just said calmly: "I entered the military camp when I was thirteen years old. So far, I have fought sixty-four battles, big and small, and won thirty-one major victories and seventeen minor victories. Invincible in eight battles, small losses in nine battles, and big defeat in one battle.”
He took a deep breath and continued: "However, there has never been a battle with foot to control cavalry. Now I have to give it a try. What regrets will I have in this life?" Suddenly he waved his hand and sent an order: "Instruct Qi Jin and Zhang Wanbang, two generals, to strengthen Be on guard and prepare to meet the enemy." Then he said to Gao Yimin: "Now that Ma Chengxun's troops have left, the northern front is empty, and it is inconvenient for me to sit in command of the central army and move lightly. Brother Gao, please take one thousand of my servants and five of my brother's servants. One hundred, fifteen hundred guards, a total of three thousand troops, will guard the northern front for me. I wonder if Brother Gao will agree?"
Gao Yimin wanted to say that he would just let Cao Jian go, but then he thought that Cao Yan might have other motives for not letting his brother go into battle. Although he didn't know why, he had to consider it. So he said: "With the trust of the commander-in-chief, the Yimin will definitely live up to their orders."
Cao Yu praised him greatly, ordered the dispatch of manpower to him and notified Cao Jian. Gao Yimin was originally a staff member and had never worn armor. At this time, he immediately changed his military uniform, put on his "cold iron treasure armor" and led his people to set up the battle formation on the northern front.
Unlike Cao Yu, Gao Yimin had a much deeper understanding of "controlling cavalry with footwork". Although he looked serious, he did not look at this war like a narrow escape like Cao Yu, and even said, "I have no regrets in this life." Come on like this.
The reason why the ancient cavalry was powerful was mainly because it was equipped with fast-moving horses. Compared with the slow-moving infantry, it had an absolute advantage in tactical time and space.
Although the advantage of cavalry is obvious, Taizu of the Red Dynasty said it well, "Weapons are an important factor in war, but they are not the decisive factor. The decisive factor is people, not things." Even the Song Dynasty, which had long been considered to have poor military combat effectiveness, There are also some generals who gave full play to their subjective initiative in actual wars and created some tactics of "controlling cavalry with foot".
For example, in the early Southern Song Dynasty, Monk Yuan and Xianrenguan battles under the command of Wu Jie used the Fanxiu battle technique, the Shunchang battle under Liu Qi's command, and the Yancheng battle under Yue Fei's command were all classic techniques used in the Song Dynasty. An example of victory through footwork and riding.
There were three main methods adopted by the Song Army at that time: One was to "take advantage of danger and use surprise", taking advantage of the terrain to limit the mobility advantage of the enemy's cavalry.
This method mainly relied on the natural geographical barriers at the junction of the Song and Jin Dynasties and the dangerous terrain in the Southern Song Dynasty to restrict the Jin cavalry team. In the tactic of "controlling cavalry with footwork", to achieve the goal of controlling cavalry, the focus is on "controlling danger", that is, launching operations on the basis of defense.
In the third year of Jianyan's reign, Lu Yihao, who was the Minister of the Ministry of Personnel at that time, believed: "The plains and shallow grass can be advanced and retreated, which is the place for cavalry. One cavalry can guard ten infantry; the mountains, forests, rivers and swamps are dangerous and difficult to enter and exit, so it is best to use foot." Ground, one of the infantry, can guard ten cavalry. Since the Jin Dynasty Nanmu, the soldiers of the Central Plains have been in a stalemate with the Jin people. Those who did not engage in confrontation and collapsed in the plains and wilderness captured many cavalrymen, but the Chinese cavalry was so small." It is advocated to rely on the geographical situation of the water town in the south of the Yangtze River to resist the attack of the Jin cavalry.
The second is to use crossbow projectiles to "non-contact" long-range attacks to defeat the enemy. If the infantry comes into direct contact with the Jin and Mongolian cavalry in the field, the cavalry will undoubtedly have a commanding advantage. Only by striking before contact with the cavalry can there be a chance of victory.
Compared with the Northern Song Dynasty, there have been some new developments in the manufacturing technology and functions of crossbows in the Southern Song Dynasty. The most commonly used ones are the divine arm bow inherited from the Northern Song Dynasty and the newly made enemy-defeating bow, divine power bow, etc., which will not be described here.
The third is to rely on infantry formations to defeat the enemy. Due to the shortcomings of the cavalry, the Song army attempted to rely on setting up large infantry formations to defend against the invading foreign cavalry. However, this method of tactics limits the impact of the opponent's cavalry, but at the same time sacrifices the mobility of the own army. In terms of actual combat effects, it is not a good strategy.
For example, in the battle before the "Chanyuan Alliance", the "Ping Rong Ten Thousand Formation" assembled 110,000 elite soldiers of the Song Army. Under Dingzhou, they set up a defensive posture like waiting for a rabbit. Unexpectedly, they were bypassed by the Liao Army and easily attacked. Damingfu and other cities in the rear.
All in all, the advantage of cavalry is that they always have the upper hand. They can fight when they want and leave when they don't want to. If the infantry wants to find its own advantage, it must first choose the right place, and secondly, choose the right weapon.
Today's battle has changed over time. The current situation is that the Ming army is fighting with its last stand - but there is a pontoon bridge that has been built behind it. The number of the Ming army is now slightly lower than that of the Mongolian army due to being "drove the tiger away from the mountain" by Burihatu, but the disadvantage is limited.
As for weapons and equipment, Gao Yimin believes that his side has an obvious advantage.
The one who may be under the greatest pressure is Qi Jin, who is facing the enemy from the front. Qi Jinben took more than 3,000 Qi family troops to Shenyang to take office, 3,109 to be exact, which was the standard number of people for a battalion of Qi Jiguang's car camp.
Under this configuration, Qi Jin's vehicle camp had 256 Jinghua No. 3 artillery pieces, 512 Wanli Type 2 muskets, and 8 Jinghua No. 2 artillery pieces. Later, due to the further improvement of firearms in the Ming army, the equipment of the car camp also increased to 1080 Wanli II muskets, and there were 1080 firearms operators, accounting for nearly half of the combatants (some of them were dedicated to logistics).
The standard tactics Qi Jiguang prepared for the chariot camp was that when the Mongolian cavalry was charging towards the Ming army, the chariot camp quickly formed a square formation, with the infantry and cavalry placed in the middle of the square formation.
When the Mongolian cavalry entered the firearms range, all firearms fired a salvo, knocking down a group of Mongolian forward troops; but the Mongols would still continue to charge forward. At this time, the infantry placed horse-repelling devices in front of the vehicle formation. A horse-repelling device is something like an iron caltrop. When a horse rushes forward, it will either be stabbed and startled, or it will stop moving forward, or even be directly hit to death. No matter what, it will cause chaos for the enemy's attack.
Taking advantage of this chaotic moment, the Ming army's long gunners and wolf snipers in the chariot formation began to stab each other with thousands of spears, and another batch of enemy troops were knocked down. By this time, the formation of the Mongolian cavalry was in chaos. The ones in front wanted to retreat, but the ones behind could not stop the cavalry and continued to rush forward. The team was in chaos and lost all its energy.
At this time, after fully consuming the enemy forces through the first two stages, Qi Jiguang's cavalry troops will suddenly rush out and give the Mongolian cavalry a final fatal blow.
But this tactic has now changed. After the rise of the bayonet formation, the musketeers also have close combat capabilities. Therefore, the number of spearmen and wolfswords has been greatly reduced, and the configuration of musketeers has only been increased to the 1080 people just mentioned.
This also caused a change in tactics, that is, the original "thousands of spears to stab" became the "thousands of spears to fire" under the highly pragmatic "hollow square" tactics, and hand-to-hand combat changed to shooting.
The Ming army has taken great reform measures in recent years, and its organization and tactics are constantly changing. Earlier, Qi Jiguang was in charge of Ji Town, and in the "Records of Military Training" he specified the firearms configuration (excluding cold weapons) and the number of people in each chariot camp, horse camp, and infantry camp. At that time, a complete chariot, infantry and cavalry camp had a total of 8,517 people. , at least three horse and foot camps, plus the baggage camp, with a population of nearly 30,000 people.
The main firearms configuration of this nearly 30,000 vehicle, infantry and cavalry joint combat unit is as follows: (excluding the firearms configuration and personnel of the supply camp) a total of 384 vehicles, 768 No. 4 guns, 12 rocket vehicles, 24 No. 2 guns, 180 No. 3 guns, 8,232 musketeers (Wanli Type 1), 1,296 quick shooters (Wanli Type 2), equipped with 76,800 No. 4 artillery shells, 720 No. 2 artillery shells, 1,497,600 musket bullets, 388,800 quick gun bullets, and 104,280 rockets , No. 3 shells 162,000, total number of people 25,551.
If the supply battalion is included, the number of various equipment will be increased, and the total strength will reach 30,531.
With the victory of Gao Pragmatic, some changes were made to the vehicle camp organization to adapt to the changes in tactics, but in any case, according to Qi Jiguang's thinking, only these 30,000 people can form a "complete organization."
Unfortunately, although the theory is good, it is difficult to implement under the military system of the Ming Dynasty. The reason has been mentioned before. The military power of the General Soldier has been suppressed, and the Ming Army does not have a regular establishment of up to 30,000 people. This establishment was equivalent to a reorganized division of the Blue Army during the later Red and Blue Civil War.
Therefore, when Qi Jiguang himself was in charge of Jizhen, he could be trained and "established" in this way, but when he left, this organization actually ceased to exist. The only good news is that after he took office as the Imperial Guard, he discussed this organization with Gao Pragmatic and came up with a Beiyang Army-like organization that was very close to Yuan Shikai's "Xiao Zhan New Army".
Although Qi Jin brought a complete car camp to Shenyang, this time he left a thousand people to look after the house in Shenyang, and only brought two-thirds of the manpower. Theoretically speaking, Qi Jin only has a castrated version of the car camp in his hands now, and his combat effectiveness will definitely be affected.
Zhang Wanbang's department, which defends the southern front, is simpler than Qi Jin's department in terms of organization. He has 500 servants and 1,200 guards. Among them, the servants are all mounted infantry, and they have already dismounted and formed a formation.
Since Zhang Wanbang's department is a typical "highly pragmatic organization", it has a higher firearms ratio, but it does not have sidecars and relies entirely on bayonet formations. The characteristic is that it looks weaker than Qi Jin's troops. As for fighting... Anyway, his record is there, no one dares to doubt that he can't handle it.
In comparison, the three thousand people now led by Gao Yimin are much more "primitive". First, their proportion of firearms is insufficient. The servants are fully equipped with Wanli Type 1 muskets and "Hantie Baojia", but the guard soldiers are not equipped with all Longqing Type 2 guns. Of course, the Longqing Type 2 guns have been discontinued. It is estimated that They won't match it again, what they have is old stuff.
These guardsmen brought by Cao Jian came from Jinzhou in southern Liaoning. There was almost no war in Jinzhou, and the priority of changing equipment was not enough. The 1,500 guardsmen only had 400 Longqing II muskets, and the remaining The musket is not a three-eyed blunderbuss, but a bird blunderbuss that was eliminated from Ji Town in the early years.
The shooting range of the bird gun is actually pretty good, but the main reason is that the accuracy and killing range are not as good as the Longqing Type 2, and the reloading is much slower. As for comparing it with the Wanli Type 1 and Wanli Type 2... let’s not compare, it sounds sad.
Since neither the Longqing Type 2 nor the muskets can be equipped with bayonets, in fact, only 1,500 people on Gao Yimin's side can set up bayonet arrays, and Gao Yimin suspects that their bayonet array training is seriously insufficient.
Bayonet array must be trained. One of the biggest characteristics of this "modern tactic" is that it treats people as machines. A similar idea can be seen by comparing it with "queueing to shoot": you don't need to have thoughts; You have your own mind, I just need you to behave and obey orders!
The main purpose of training this kind of army has been summarized by someone in history. The general idea is to make soldiers "fear officers more than bullets." Gao Yimin knew this very well, and it had not been long since the Cao brothers entered the ranks of "high-level generals". Most of the servants under his command were still the same as before: fighting bravely, with outstanding personal force, but their discipline was hard to say.
Therefore, the current form of defense of the Ming army on the three sides of the north, east and south is that the north has the largest number of people but a slightly outdated combat system; the east has the most complex tactical system but the most elite training; the south has fewer people but an excellent tactical system. By the way, this army The morale is extremely high and they have no fear of the Mongols (Zhang Wanbang's troops defeated the Mongolian cavalry twice with inferior troops).
Cao Yu himself was in charge of the central army, and he only had seven or eight thousand men left at hand, and most of them were just guard infantry. The task of these people is naturally to support whichever side is in emergency, but that being said, the eastern and southern fronts are actually less suitable for support, because the tactics of these two sides have their own systems, and supporting the former garrison soldiers may not be effective. Cooperate.
Relatively speaking, his support here will be more useful only if there is a problem on the northern line.
Gao Yimin obviously understands the current situation. He has the largest number of people here, but his actual combat effectiveness may be the lowest. He rushed to the front of the formation, and while commanding the arrangements, he felt a little nervous: If I were Burihatu, I'm afraid I would have to choose to break through from the north.
