The 28,000 cavalry of the Ming Army quickly set off again on the road under the banner of the Mongolian and Yuan Dynasties. During this march, because it was not a complete army, Gao Pragmatic also left the carriage prepared for him by Jinghua and returned to the state of horseback marching.
Speaking of which, it has only been two years since Gao Pangshi last rode a horse in person. Thinking about it, he was obviously a civil servant, but who would have expected that when he looked back now, he could be regarded as a man who had been in the army for more than ten years. From this point of view, I am really worthy of the word "Wen Shuai".
Although riding a horse is impressive, by analogy, it is like driving a Ferrari in later generations. If it is a fully or semi-equipped war horse, it is as powerful as driving a main battle tank.
But to be honest, the feeling of riding a long distance is really no joke. This thing is several times bumpier than a walking tractor. After a few hours, it seems that the whole person is just one step away from falling apart. When I just get off the horse, it feels like the ground is still shaking when I walk. shake.
What's worse is that although the saddle is equipped for the convenience of riding, because the saddle of the war horse is mainly to ensure a stable seat and enhance the ability to control the horse, its riding experience is not like the saddle of some tourist attractions in later generations. So soft and comfortable.
Gao pragmatically spent more than four hours from setting off to setting up camp for dinner. When he dismounted, he felt that the skin on his inner thighs was almost worn out, and it was burning and uncomfortable. No wonder Liu Bei in "The Romance of the Three Kingdoms" lamented that his "buttocks were resurrected". In just two years, his adaptability to horse riding has also significantly declined.
Gao Pragmatic suddenly thought that if viewed from this perspective, Li Chengliang had been fighting life and death for more than 20 years. As he got older, he gradually became arrogant and comfortable, which might be considered human nature.
At its peak, the servant cavalry under his command was fully worthy of facing off against a comparable number of Mongolian cavalry. However, in the final analysis, most of these servants were still Han Chinese, and not all of them were Mongolians who were "born on horseback." Who can really put it into perspective? Is your home on horseback?
Thinking of Li Chengliang and Li Jiajun, Gao pragmatic thought of Li Rusong. Before he set off at noon, Li Rusong was not mentioned in the pre-war analysis, but at this moment, after some bumps on horseback, he suddenly had a strong hunch: Li Rusong might be advancing westward faster than he originally thought.
Sun Tzu's Art of War said: "Therefore, it is as fast as the wind, as slow as the forest, as aggressive as fire, as motionless as a mountain, as unpredictable as the shadows, and as moving as thunder." The original meaning is that all generals should command operations according to the needs of the battlefield situation. When the army moves quickly, it is like a strong wind blowing across the earth; when it marches calmly, it is like a forest slowly unfolding; when it attacks a city, it is like a fire sweeping across the land; when it is stationed for defense, it is like a mountain standing still; when the military situation is concealed, it is like a dark cloud covering the sun. ; When the army is dispatched, it is like a thunderous force that cannot be stopped.
However, although it means that generals need to have different responses and standards in various situations, in fact, the vast majority of famous generals will perform exceptionally well at one or more levels, so their most outstanding aspects or Several aspects are praised by people.
Just like some of the famous generals of the Ming Dynasty, Li Rusong's characteristics are probably related to the characteristic of "fierce", which is as fast as the wind, as swift as fire, and as moving as thunder. Generally speaking, the command style of a general will be similar or even identical to his personality.
In the past, what Gao Pragmatic was best at in political struggles was to judge the opponent's possible actions from aspects such as the opponent's character and interests, and he often used this judgment criterion when commanding operations. This is true for the enemy, and it can naturally be reversed for one's own side.
Needless to say, Li Rusong’s character? Just one word: "fierce". In the words of later generations, this person was a group of reckless people who would do whatever they came up to and do it as fast as they could.
In fact, this can also be seen from the examples of his commanding operations in history. In a battle in front of this grand master, you can open up the ground twenty or thirty miles away and deploy three armies on the left, center and right to help each other. Li Rusong will most likely not care about your left and right wings. He will most likely concentrate his elite troops to attack the central army and capture the thieves. Capture the king and settle the matter in one battle.
If he still has some infantrymen under his command who are not that fast, they may be able to intersperse between your left wing and the center army, or between your right wing and the center army, to prevent the two wings from relieving the siege concentrically. But no matter what, his combat philosophy of directly breaking through the middle will not waver.
Not only that, if you look at Bi Ti Pavilion, you will know that this Ye Tai will not only attack directly in the middle, but also rush to the front line. It is like the possession of the King of Chu and the resurrection of Huo Qubing. The only person who can compete with him in the Ming Dynasty at this moment is probably Liu Wei, who is currently in charge of pacifying the chaos in Bozhou. This man is also addicted to killing people himself.
In addition to fighting fiercely, Li Rusong also has a special sense of honor - this is a complimentary description, but a more neutral description means that he has a particularly strong self-esteem. Something happened to him when he was the commander-in-chief of Shanxi Province. The specific incident has been mentioned previously and will not be repeated here. In short, this gentleman cannot tolerate being overpowered by someone of his "equal level".
Fortunately, Gao Jingshi and he have always been "not equal", and before he returned to Liao Commandery, he personally experienced Gao Jingshi's status and influence in front of the nobles of the capital, so Gao Jingshi had no idea whether he would "serve and manage" Basically, I have a positive attitude.
However, this does not mean that Li Rusong has lost all his autonomy. He will still try his best to create some "surprises" where he has the initiative.
For example, a few days ago Gao Jingshi ordered that he be transferred westward from the south of Yuerhai. Gao Jingshi's secretaries estimated Li Rusong's itinerary based on the normal marching speed of the cavalry, but at this moment Gao Jingshi suddenly felt that this Estimates can be wildly off.
Li Rusong wouldn't be so slow!
For a person of his character, since Gao Pragmatic is at the top, it is not feasible to compete with him. However, in this battle against Yuan Dynasty, six generals were dispatched, and there was also a special forbidden soldier. Commander of the Guards, this is finally equal, right? Since there are five or even six competitors, how can he, Li Rusong, not strive for first place?
Striving for first place is a huge challenge, especially in the current situation in Liaodong Town - Xiao Ruxun, the deputy commander in chief of Liaodong Town, is not a member of his Li family.
In order to ensure that Gao Pragmatic would not take the opportunity to suppress him, he had to let Xiao Ruxun achieve the most remarkable first achievement of this battle so far - the capture of Chahanhot.
Under this situation, Li Rusong needs a prominent victory to prove his excellence, and a prominent victory must first ensure that he can win the battle! Now that the possibility of Tumen's army marching westward is so great that there is only one final piece of news left to prove it. With Li Rusong's character, how could he not rush there in a hurry?
When he first sent out troops, he rushed to Yuerhai to make arrangements in advance so that he could fight against the main force of Tumen. Now that the situation has changed, if he wants to catch the main force of Tumen, shouldn't he have to run a thousand miles again?
Of course, running thousands of miles will hurt the horse, but it is not as exaggerated as some claims, and they often say that the horse will be disabled.
It's autumn now, when the horse grass is at its fattest. The Li family's army has been known as the "Liaodong Iron Cavalry" for more than 20 years. The army has brought plenty of concentrated feed, so they can run wildly, as long as they don't overuse their horses to the point of overdoing it. At the limit, the probability of "waste horse" is not high.
The really important issue is that it will be difficult for these war horses to gain weight this autumn. This will greatly increase the risk of freezing to death after winter this year, and secondly, it will also affect the total service life of the war horses.
This is just like the cars of later generations. The scrappage years for family cars are different from the scrappage years for commercial cars. Excessive use of war horses is also equivalent to advancing the "disposal date". If Li Rusong was overused twice in two months, it is expected that these war horses will serve at least two years less in the future.
But even so, in Li Rusong's eyes, this is just a matter of property damage. As long as it does not seriously affect the current war, he won't care too much - if he cares about these things, how could the Li Jiajun in the original history defeat half of the enemy in a few years? Disabled? In the final analysis, the truth is that Li Rusong really didn't take "overuse" to heart.
Thinking of this, Gao Pragmatic took advantage of the break to call Ye Bangrong over and asked him how fast Li Rusong's troops could go if they were not afraid of overuse of their horses.
In fact, Ye Bangrong himself had some doubts about Gao Jinglue's hypothesis. After all, an excellent war horse is a "Ferrari". Who would drive a Ferrari to an extreme cross-country rally? Isn't this crazy?
But Gao Jinglue was not something he could doubt. Don't talk about him. Even his old boss and "benevolent commander" Qi Jiguang has never said a bad word about Gao Jinglue in more than ten years since he joined Gao Jinglue's command. This even led to the generals who came from the Qi Army to treat Gao Jinglue. There is also an inexplicable respect for Jing Lue.
Since Gao Jinglue asked this question, no matter how unreasonable the question seemed, Ye Bangrong would definitely answer it truthfully.
Out of caution, Ye Bangrong did not open his mouth to come, but immediately carefully took out a small-scale battlefield map issued by the Ministry of Economic Affairs before the war from his arms, spread it out on the ground, and drew it carefully. After some calculations, he asked cautiously: "Jingtai, I know from my humble position that General Li is leading all his servants in this battle, so he has at least one man and two horses under his command. Is this news true?"
Gao pragmatic replied: "It's true. According to the headquarters' understanding, his current command is probably two people and five horses."
That is, on average, a cavalryman owns up to two and a half horses. This is a super luxurious configuration among the Ming army cavalry. Generally speaking, only the elite among the elite can achieve this ratio.
Of course, among Gao Jingshi's own cavalry, those who Gao Jingshi had placed beside him in previous battles would sometimes be full of one man and three horses. That was another matter. After all, Gao Pragmatic had the most powerful source of war horses in the Ming Dynasty and was not short of money. During the war at that time, he usually only mobilized a few thousand horses. Such deployment was not an exaggeration.
However, this time Li Rusong mobilized almost all the most elite cavalry servants of the Li family army to go on the expedition. The total number reached more than 30,000 and nearly 40,000 cavalry. He could still guarantee two men and five horses, which was very strong. This fully illustrates the Li Jiajun's strong family background at this time, as well as Li Rusong's personal style of spending huge sums of money to win.
Ye Bangrong was also a little speechless, but after sighing, he quickly replied: "General cavalry troops march normally, and when there is no fighting in the middle and no enemies around them, the distance is usually about forty to sixty miles. .
Considering that General Li's troops have more horses, and it is the time when the autumn grass is thick and thick, his troops can normally run eighty miles.
And if Li Zongrong was as expected by the scriptures and ignored the fat of his war horses and overused them, he could have walked a hundred and twenty miles a day, or even more, a hundred and forty miles was possible. "
Gao Pragmatic wondered: "Is it only a hundred and twenty miles or a hundred and forty miles? Our headquarters has previously studied the Mongolian Western Expedition two hundred years ago. They were even able to maintain a daily march of one hundred and eighty miles for a long time. This How do the differences arise?”
"Why did the Mongols march so fast during the Western Expedition?" Ye Bangrong seemed not to understand this, but after thinking about it, he quickly found the answer and suddenly said: "Oh, that may be because the Mongols were pure light cavalry at that time. The war horses were almost completely unequipped. In addition, the Mongols had a lot of horses at that time, which was quite different from us.
Jingtai may not know that the Mongols walked with their horses. The war horses they owned may be similar to ours, but the number of draft horses is far beyond what any cavalry in the world can match. "
Unlike war horses, which are used for people to ride and fight, draft horses are used to transport supplies, including towing artillery carts and baggage carts. Therefore, drafting horses requires endurance and strength, not flexibility and the like. Draft horses are subdivided into heavy draft horses and light draft horses. At this time, the draft horses in Ye Bangrong's mouth should probably refer to light draft horses, that is, those that help the Mongolian army carry armor and weapons.
Since the number of Mongolian draft horses is extremely large, the average amount of materials each draft horse needs to carry is not large, so it does not affect the speed very much. Therefore, the Mongolian army can march at high speed during its thousands-mile westward expedition. It can be said that no one in the world can match it.
No matter how luxurious the horse configuration of Li Rusong's tribe is, at least the draft horses cannot be compared with Mongolia, which was at its peak more than two hundred years ago, so it is impossible to travel one hundred and eighty miles (180 miles) in one day.
However, one hundred and forty miles is an extremely exaggerated speed nowadays. Ye Bangrong even felt that even if Tumen was sweating at this time, it was unlikely that he could exceed this speed unless he was fleeing for his life.
Gao Pingshi listened to his explanation and felt confident. He looked at the map of Kanyu for a while, and a thought suddenly came to his mind: If Guihua City was not captured quickly this time, it would only take about seven or eight days, and a three-way siege might form again.
If this situation really happens, I wonder how Tumen Khan - or Buriha Tu - will make a decision?
beat?
If they could fight, the Chahar Ministry would not even abandon Chahanhot, but would choose to leave directly.
Do not hit?
The former left-wing Mongolian territory has now been abandoned. If there is no fight, where can the Chahar people go?
What's more, once the three-way encirclement around Guihua City is completed, how will Zhongjin Hatun, who still has 20,000 elite men, react? If she chooses to leave the city and cooperate with the three Ming armies to directly block the Chahar people from being naturalized, wouldn't the Chahar tribe be unable to fly this time?
In such a situation where life and death are only on a thin line, with Burihatu's wisdom, couldn't there be any prediction?
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PS: After receiving the notice, my children will be sent back to school tomorrow for additional nucleic acid testing (they were tested once two days ago). I predict that the community may also conduct nucleic acid testing again. Personally, I feel that this wave of epidemic may be quite dangerous, and there may still be a lot of cooperation required in the subsequent anti-epidemic work.
Of course we should cooperate in the fight against the epidemic, but this may have an impact on updates, so we will notify you in advance. If there is no impact or can be overcome, the update will be as usual. If there is an impact, I will apologize in advance today. I hope Haihan.
