What should I do if the road is blocked?
This problem is not only a headache and nervous for the Japanese army, but even Gao Pragmatic, who is in charge of Sichuan, is a little nervous.
The Japanese army was understandably nervous. For them, they were fighting in a foreign country, and now they were surrounded on three sides. On one side facing the sea, the navy didn't know their situation and couldn't come to pick them up - and they didn't have the ability. , then they are naturally worried about being surrounded and annihilated in a battle.
However, why should Gao pragmatism be nervous?
Without him, this battle is not in line with the war mentality of surrounding three ques and one. And Gao pragmatically knows that this encirclement is not as unbreakable as the Japanese army frightened themselves.
What is the current actual troop formation of the Ming army?
There are less than 10,000 people on the Western Front, that is, the Lianhua Mountain Defense Line. Gao Pragmatic still has about 7,000 people left in Sichuan, and the entire Western Front has about 16,000 troops. There should have been some more, but those people were all chieftains of the Sichuan Army, and secondly they had been stationed in Jeolla Province to secure North Korea's granaries, so not all of them were transferred back for this battle.
On the eastern front, Liu Wei's troops were mainly outflanked, with a strength of 15,000. The Japanese army made a misjudgment in this matter. They thought that Li Rumei's troops should also have gone in this direction, but in fact they did not.
The current location of Li Rumei's tribe is actually about sixty miles north of Lianhua Mountain. This place is currently just a small settlement, and the name is unknown even to the pragmatic people. However, this place still has a serious name in later generations of Korea, called Yining County.
In other words, Li Rumei's tribe was actually between Jinzhou and Changning, a little southwest of Sanjia where Liu Wei's tribe had been waiting. He came here to some extent because the defense on the northern line of Lianhua Mountain was empty after Liu Wei's troops went to block the Japanese army's retreat, so he came to supplement the defense.
But this means that the Japanese army made the right bet, that is, if the Japanese army really attacks Jinzhou, it will definitely be discovered by Li Rumei. Considering the difference in marching speed between the two sides, there is a high probability that Japan will be flanked by Li Rumei's troops before they reach Jinju.
At first glance, the current situation is that the Ming army has blocked the Japanese army on three fronts, but a closer look reveals that the strength of this encirclement circle is actually seriously insufficient: 16,000 soldiers under Gao Pangjing's direct command on the western front, and 15,000 soldiers under Liu Wei on the eastern front. Thousands, Li Rumei has the strongest force on the northern front, with 23,000.
However, even if the three groups were added together, the total strength of the Ming army was only 54,000. So, how many Japanese troops are there?
Not counting Kato Kiyomasa and Shimazu Yoshihiro who stayed in Hanyang at that time, the total strength of the Japanese army when the main force moved south from Hanyang was 95,000. Due to Li Rumei's harassment and attacks, the total strength of the Japanese army before launching the Battle of Lianhua Mountain was slightly reduced, but it was still around 90,000.
If we look at previous experience, who is stronger, the 54,000 Ming army or the 90,000 Japanese army? Of course, the Ming army is stronger. After all, based on the results of the Battle of Bi Tie Pavilion, the Japanese army was unable to defeat a single Ming army with a seven-fold advantage in strength. This gap in strength was at least "huge" if not "huge."
But the problem is that the two sides are currently changing offensive and defensive positions. It is the Ming army that is surrounding the Japanese army. This means that the Ming army is a scattered force. The Japanese army is now gathering troops together, and since there is no way to survive, there may be a fight between trapped beasts, and it may even have the effect of a desperate and desperate fight, but the situation is different.
Assuming that the Japanese army attacks all the way alone, except for Li Rumei's troops on the northern line, which the Japanese army may not know about for the time being, it should not be regarded as a target. Then, whether the Japanese army is advancing westward or withdrawing eastward, when facing the Gao Pragmatic Headquarters and Liu Wei's troops, they will have about six times the strength Strength advantage.
Because Liu Wei's tribe has been listed by Gao Pragmatic as one of the main forces of the Southern Army over the years, its equipment level and training intensity are very good, and they have been further tempered in the Battle of Yunnan and Burma and the Battle of Pingbo. Gao Pragmatic believes that they are good at defensive operations. It is still unlikely that China will be defeated by the Japanese army, at least it should be able to hold on until Li Rumei's reinforcements arrive.
However, Gao Pragmatic himself is not necessarily so. The real core force on his side is currently 3,000 Xuanda Jingqi and 3,000 white pole soldiers, and the remaining 10,000 are Sichuan chieftain soldiers.
There is a saying that the combat effectiveness of the Sichuan chieftain soldiers is not weak, but their equipment system is still not strong even after Gao Pragmatic temporarily strengthened them and gave them some artillery.
First of all, artillery is a technical branch in this era. Not just anyone can use a cannon. The chieftains themselves will not use these artillery at all. If they were allowed to operate the artillery by themselves, they would be fine if they didn't blow themselves up. The best they could do would be to hear the sound, and there would be no need to have any hope of accuracy.
The high-pragmatic reinforcement is actually to temporarily dispatch the Marine artillery (not naval gunners) on the Sea Trade Alliance fleet to the chieftain army. When they need to fight, they will carry out the battle on their own and alone. The chieftains only need to tell them the combat mission. But, the rest is useless. As for whether the task is reasonable, the Marine Artillery Battalion Commander will consult with the chieftain.
Secondly, the chieftain soldiers themselves have almost no hot weapons, they are all old-fashioned cold weapon troops. Although they are generally more daring to fight than the non-servant troops of the Ming army, facing the Japanese iron artillery team with the nature of a volley, this kind of daring means that they have to endure two or three rounds of salvos before a close combat occurs. He was at a disadvantage from the beginning.
In addition, the Japanese army's close combat capabilities are not weak, so assuming that the battle is just chieftain soldiers versus the Japanese army, it is actually difficult to explain how much advantage the army can take.
In the final analysis, the main reasons why the Ming army was stronger than the Japanese army were two points: the advantage of firearms and the advantage of cavalry. Because the Japanese army could not find a way to solve these two points, there was a situation where "field combat was impossible". This situation is fundamentally different from the historical defeats of the Ming army in most field battles against the Jin army.
First of all, make it clear that the so-called Ming army could not defeat the Eight Banners in the field is actually a false proposition. Because the Ming army won or lost many battles in the field.
For example, in the Battle of Ningjin, Mangui fought against the Eight Banners in a field battle on the way to aid Ningyuan, and the Eight Banners did not lose in the field battle against the Eight Banners under Ningyuan City.
During the Battle of Daling River, a Ming army even knocked off the leader of the Eight Banners, Duduo. If Duduo had not been desperately rescued by his subordinates, history might have changed.
There was also the Battle of Hunhe River. The white-pole soldiers once defeated the Eight Banners and Hong Baya La, and captured two generals of the Eight Banners. In the Battle of Songjin, the Ming army took the initiative to attack in the Battle of Rufeng Mountain, and the victory and defeat were evenly matched by both sides.
The "Ming and Qing Historical Materials" compiled by the Ming Dynasty Archives Collection and Taiwan retains a lot of original archives and newspapers. If you look closely, you will find that many battles are not as described in "Qing Shilu" and "Manchu Old Archives". As boasted, the Eight Banners are invincible.
In fact, on the eve of the fall of the Ming Dynasty in the 16th year of Chongzhen, the Eight Banners attacked Ningyuan, but Wu Sangui even used the cannons hidden in the formation to blur the shells in his face, and finally suffered a huge defeat.
To be honest, most of the Eight Banners' victories in previous wars have gone through a very difficult process. For example, in the Songjin War, it was precisely because the Qing army was in an unfavorable situation that Dorgon and other banner leaders even proposed to withdraw, which forced Huang Taiji to drag his sick body and shed blood. Rushing to the Songjin battlefield with a nosebleed.
A careful study of the previous battles of the Ming and Qing Dynasties will reveal that in these battles, especially in many local field battles, the Ming army fought very well and did not show obvious invincibility. However, in the end, except for Ningyuan and Ningjin, the Ming army basically lost all the major battles.
This seems weird, but if you really want to explore, you have to think deeply about why this is the case. As a fan, Gao Pragmatic had seen some forum discussions before, and even participated in them himself, remembering some interesting things.
For example, in the Battle of Hunhe River, the Liao army sat back and did not save the Baigan soldiers and Zhejiang soldiers. Why not save? In fact, it was not that the Liao army on one side was greedy for life and afraid of death, but that the Liao army and the Southern army had conflicts to begin with (there were conflicts when aiding Korea, as mentioned above). What's worse is that the Southern Army not only had conflicts with the Liao Army, but also with the Jizhen border army at that time.
Why were the Nan soldiers and Baizhan soldiers deployed across the river? This is not a tactical plan at all, but a complete distrust between the two armies, because before the aid to Liao, the two armies had already had a group fight in Jizhen. Not only did each have casualties, but even the artillery was used. Such How can we talk about trust and cooperation in a tense relationship? To put it bluntly, if the enemies are not stumbling upon each other, their consciences will not be broken.
Furthermore, some generals often choose to escape in order to preserve their strength. For example, in the Battle of Changshan in the Daling River, Wu Xiang led his cavalry and two Yi cavalry troops to flee directly, leaving Song Wei's chariot camp and infantry to Huang Taiji. When he returned to Jinzhou for an inventory, he found that the troops he led had not suffered much losses.
What does this situation mean? This means that the court's control has further declined at this time, the military has become increasingly privatized, and warlordism has begun to officially appear.
There are also some people who use war to make money from the country's difficulties. In the late Ming Dynasty, grain transported from the Bohai Bay to the Liaodong Sea often drifted, and often at a fixed rate. This is the Bohai Bay. If sailing on the Bohai Sea is so dangerous, how can we sail to the Western Ocean? At that level of drifting, no one would be able to come back from the voyage.
To give another example, during the Songjin War, many people said that Huang Taiji raided Hong Chengchou's granary, which was the key to the defeat of the Ming army. But in fact, the prince of Joseon, who was sent by the Qing army to transport grain, discovered that the so-called grain in that granary was all rancid. Can't smell it and can't eat it at all.
What is the actual situation? In fact, the grain stored in various warehouses shipped to Liaodong has been "mixed with sand and chaff" by officials. The prince of Joseon was shocked by this and made a fuss.
In addition to the above accidents, the Western French Party, which was highly praised by later generations, once proposed to train 20,000 elite soldiers in the 47th year of Wanli. The price quoted was 400,000 yuan for various ordnance barracks and 500,000 yuan for food and salary. That is to say, you dare to ask the court for 900,000 taels after training 20,000 troops. This price made the later governors of Jiliao cry and complain that the Liao pay was too little!
The reason for such a high price is "to make extremely sophisticated equipment, and one person can eat several people's wages." Then a funny thing happened: During the Chongzhen period, the Western French Party finally started training troops in Shandong. The soldiers they trained were for a chicken, and they finally rebelled. Voted the Eight Flags.
No, how could you, an elite soldier like "one man eats several men's pay", be so hungry that he robbed a chicken? Is this salary unable to buy anything or is it going to places it shouldn't go?
In the early days of Chongzhen, the soldiers in the Beijing camp were paid one, two, four, and one hu of rice per month, but they had no combat effectiveness. They ate 978,000 shi of food a year, but only fewer than 10,000 soldiers were selected.
The monthly salary of Guan Ning Army is 1.4 taels plus 1 hu of rice; the monthly salary of Nanbing is 1.5 to 1.7 taels; the monthly salary of Dongjiang Army is 7 liang plus 1 hu of rice; the other Jiubian Army towns are even worse, ranging from 2 to 8 liang. For example, in Ji Town, there are 4.5 yuan and 7.5 yuan shops. They are all soldiers, but the gap is so big.
Yongping City originally had 1,000 model soldiers, and Minzhuang had more than 2,000 soldiers. After the outbreak of the Liao Dynasty, an additional 3,000 Zhongwu Camps were established. However, Chongzhen began to eliminate troops, and suddenly the strength of the camp was reduced by two-thirds, and the number of troops was reduced by sixty-seven tenths. So when the Jisi Revolution came, they were easily defeated by the Qing army.
Qi Jiguang once customized the rockets used for the Ji Guard Tower. It cost 5 cents of silver each to produce a qualified product, and the stock had to be eliminated and replaced with new ones every year. By the end of the Ming Dynasty, during the Chongzhen period, the number of rockets became 8 cents, but only 4 cents of silver was actually given to the craftsmen to make them, and they were never replaced.
Not to mention what other uses this kind of rocket has besides being set off as fireworks, we need to ask whose pocket the other 4 cents ended up in.
For another example, in the 19th year of Wanli, the imperial court assigned 80,000 troops to the town of Datong, responsible for guarding 600 miles. However, when they arrived at Chongzhen, there were only more than 10,000 soldiers left in the important town of Datong. For such an important matter as raising horses, you only need to provide some bean grass in spring and autumn. In summer and autumn... let them graze and raise them by yourself.
"The lack of soldiers in Liao Dynasty means that there are no soldiers, and the generals' family members are numerous." A family in western Liaoning eats the pay of five or six soldiers, and half of the family members' pay goes into the general's pocket.
It was mentioned earlier that Guan Ning's monthly salary was 1.4 taels, but in reality most of it was deducted to the servants, and only 4 taels was actually paid to ordinary soldiers. Zu's family has many servants, and Wu Xiang raises three thousand Yi people, all of which are done as a good business.
When the Liao Dynasty first broke out, the imperial court mobilized troops from Sichuan, Hu, and Guizhou provinces. This was originally a routine operation of the Ming Dynasty, but when you mobilized troops, you also mobilized chieftain troops. As a result, in order to make up the numbers and reduce expenditures, the Ministry of War recruited the ownerless Miao people to join these reinforcements. However, many of these Miao people had feuds with each other, so "people who killed each other because of feuds rushed in together." Who knows what kind of magic operation this was.
In short, in the original history, the Ming army could not defeat the Jin army. The main reason may not be that the "Ming army" was not good, but that the "Ming system" was not good - those old bad systems were collapsing faster and faster. Everyone just wanted to make money from it, so they finally played GG.
The current military reform of the Ming Dynasty has not actually touched the reform of the servant system. Gao Pragmatic has only separated out equipment manufacturing, and at the same time greatly strengthened financial supervision and transparency. In essence, the military system of the Ming Dynasty still has the tendency of warlordism.
It's just...how to put it, if the Ming Dynasty's army has become a warlord, then Gao Pragmatic himself is now the largest warlord under the imperial power. When will he slash himself with a knife? no one knows.
However, the good news is that for the time being, this kind of warlordization also means that the Ming army on the Korean battlefield currently does not dare to just protect itself - the big warlord leader personally sits in charge, and the little leaders all rely on him to feed themselves, and they dare not not fight attentively.
On the other hand, the Japanese military's military discussions were controversial because of its warlordization. Everyone is a big name, and Toyotomi Hideyoshi is a great "martial arts leader". If the leader leads him to grab the benefits, then everyone will naturally compete for the first place. But now he suddenly realizes that the benefits are not available, and he may also fold all his old capital into it. Then All kinds of thoughts are there.
However, except for Ukita Hideie, no one really regarded loyalty to Taiko as their highest purpose. Unless you have to.
Under what circumstances will it be necessary? Naturally, there is no way out.
Therefore, when Gao Jingshi learned that the Japanese vanguard's attack had been frustrated, he temporarily stopped the offensive and retreated, and then suddenly ordered that the troops on the Lianhua Mountain front line should immediately withdraw to Sichuan. At the same time, the latest instructions were also issued to Li Rumei and Liu Wei.
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