As soon as Gao Pangshi finished saying this, Cheng Wen shook his head and said: "Rixin, although I am far less knowledgeable than you about military affairs, on this matter, I feel... you may be worrying too much."
Gao Pingshi was indeed a little surprised and asked: "Why do you see it?"
Cheng Wendao: "I originally knew nothing about military affairs, but in the past few years, because the Ministry of Household Affairs has always been supervising the handling of ordnance-related matters, I have heard some methods of musket warfare from various parties. For example, Ye Bangrong of the Confederate Army once came to receive military training. Thirty thousand muskets, and I talked to him about musket battles.
According to what he said, this musket confrontation was the most clumsy. It was nothing more than the two sides setting up their fronts, constantly getting closer, and constantly shooting at each other. No matter how capable the soldiers on both sides are, they are not allowed to use them at will at this time. They can only shoot and charge with their comrades on the front.
As for the victory of this battle, it depends on which of the two sides can maintain military discipline better, withstand the firepower of the other side, withstand constant casualties, and defeat the enemy's line with rivers of blood. As long as the opponent's current situation collapses, our own side will naturally win... Is this true? "
Gao pragmatic nodded and said: "Musket formation versus musket formation, that's probably the case."
"That's right." Cheng Wen also nodded and said: "So fighting like this is based on military discipline, morale, firepower, and shooting speed. But in my opinion, if the above are similar, , then in the end it will be a competition of whoever has more guns and more people... whoever has the most guns will win."
Gao Pragmatic was startled and said in his heart: This seems to be true, but it also seems to be correct nonsense. If you want to say that both sides have similar levels in other aspects, then of course the side with more troops has a greater chance of winning. It's like we are all musketeers, arranging gun formations, and fighting a decisive battle on the plains. If I have 20,000 soldiers and you only have 10,000, then of course I will kill you.
But before Gao Pangshi had time to express his affirmation, Cheng Wen laughed and said: "Although I don't know why this musket can only be used so stupidly, but if that is the case, then the Mongols and the Ming Dynasty will have a musket fight. They will naturally I suffered a big loss."
When he said this, Gao Pragmatic immediately understood what he was going to say.
Sure enough, Cheng Wen raised his chin and said: "What was the most annoying thing about the Ming Dynasty's battles with the Mongols in the past? It's just that victory is not a big victory, and defeat is a big defeat. Why is this? Naturally, it's because I can't run on two legs. Four legs.
When our army was victorious, the Mongols turned their horses and ran away. Our army was unable to catch up and even couldn't get much of their heads. It was obvious that many were wounded and killed, but when the results were finally tallied, there were only a few with hundreds of heads.
Let alone the defeat of our army. The Mongolian army's cavalry broke through in the middle, and the cavalry on the two wings covered them up. Our defeated army scattered in all directions but could not escape. They were tortured and killed like a cat playing with mice, and they often lost thousands of troops, even more than ten thousand.
However, if Chahar changes his tactics and engages our army in dismounting and firing musketry, their cavalry advantage will be gone, and our army will no longer have the disadvantage of 'a victory without a big victory, a defeat with a big defeat'.
At the same time, since the musket battle is very stupid, then as I just said, the fight in the end is nothing more than one person with many guns and many guns... Hey, I still don't believe it, Chahar can fight in this aspect Pass me Daming! "
Gao Pragmatic was quite surprised. He really didn't know that Cheng Wen, an innocent civil servant, had become "soldier-savvy" and could actually understand the core behind the stupid tactic of "queuing up to shoot".
That's right, with the "line up to shoot" tactic, as long as the musket manufacturing technology is similar and the training level and military discipline of the two sides are not too different, then the final comparison is really about which side has "more people and more guns", because this tactic is essentially It's just a stupid tactic to waste money.
In his previous life, Gao Pragmatic had seen many war movies and TV shows from the era of queuing to be shot. For example, in a movie from the American Revolutionary War, both the Continental Army and the British Army stood neatly, shooting at each other fiercely without dodging bullets. , it seems that the tactics are extremely dull.
At that time, many people in the comment area found it unbelievable, and thus had many questions. They wondered why the tactics of both sides could not be more flexible, why they did not spread out or dodge, why they did not lie down or dig trenches, but just stood there and were beaten. Isn't this looking for death? ? How could there be such a stupid tactic? Isn't this just made up by the movie?
In fact, the war scenes of musket shooting in that era were real, so it was nicknamed "queuing to be shot." In the era when muskets were lined up to kill, due to the low hit rate of front-loaded muskets, you had to aim at a certain person at a distance of 100 meters. Whether you hit or not depends entirely on luck. Even at 50 meters, accurate shooting cannot be achieved. Even if it reaches thirty meters, it may not be a sure hit.
Therefore, the tactic at that time was to arrange the infantry into the tightest line formation, striving to achieve maximum firepower density. In this way, according to the probability, even if you miss the original target, you may still hit an unlucky person next to the target.
In this way, a volley fired from too far away is meaningless. The probability of it flying or hitting the ground is too high, so whoever fires first will suffer. An experienced commander will definitely ask his troops to get as close as possible to the enemy before firing the first round of volley, wishing they could put their muskets in the enemy's face and fire a volley.
And this is because the rate of fire of the musket is very low, and it takes a very long time for soldiers to fire again after firing once. At the beginning, it took one or two minutes for each shot to be fired again. Later, after many improvements and upgrades, the charging and reloading time was gradually reduced step by step.
Of course, from another aspect, because the smoke generated after the black powder is fired is too strong, the party that shoots first will be basically shrouded in smoke after several rounds of shooting, and the target will not be visible at all. Therefore, the most critical thing to do during the battle is to grasp the key points. , can clearly see several rounds of enemy volleys.
Therefore, the tactics usually adopted by a well-trained side are to advance in a neat line while enduring a large number of casualties, get as close as possible to the enemy's line, fire at the closest distance, and strive to use three to four rounds of relatively accurate shooting. The victory of a battle can be determined by defeating the enemy's military formation and then carrying out a bayonet charge depending on the situation.
Some people say, why don't you get a shield in the front row? This is because even the smallest projectile of the less powerful Chinese matchlock gun (bird gun) is a 14 mm caliber lead bullet, while the flintlock gun is much larger.
The two more famous ones are the Lobster Soldier's Brown Bass flintlock gun, with a caliber of 19 mm, and the French's Type 1777 flintlock gun, with a caliber of 17.5 mm. Within fifty or sixty meters, the huge kinetic energy is enough to break all shields used by individual soldiers, even the shields of heavy shield vehicles like the Eight Banners of the Qing Dynasty.
If there is something that cannot be broken... maybe it is feasible to thicken the shield shield of the sidecar made by Qi Jiguang, but this will put forward high requirements on the production of fine iron and steel. Moreover, the requirements for such a heavy-duty sidecar in terms of marching and selecting combat locations are bound to be much stricter, its combat adaptability will definitely be greatly reduced, and its maneuverability is really not good.
Some people also say, why not equip soldiers with plate armor?
First, a suit of plate armor was very expensive, more expensive than recruiting, training, and arming several musketeers. Someone has calculated that the weight of plate armor that can block flintlock guns cannot be endured by the human body.
Secondly, the penetrating power of a flintlock gun within tens of meters can shatter any plate armor suitable for human wear. Moreover, if you are hit by a lead bullet from a flintlock gun while wearing plate armor, the damage caused will be much more serious than if you were not wearing armor. .
Iron armor torn by bullets will aggravate the severity of gunshot wounds, so after the popularity of muskets, armor was quickly eliminated. Correspondingly, the elimination of armor has also given the infantry the ability to maneuver. After the infantry has intensive and sustained firepower, it is not afraid of the frontal charge of the cavalry and can calmly stand in formation.
It is also because of this that in the cold weapon era, cavalry that required the coordination of arms to restrain them can now be defeated by infantry with flintlock guns and bayonets. A great advantage of the flintlock is that it is a unified tactical weapon.
Then some people say, can’t soldiers lie down on the ground?
The answer is indeed no. We are still in the age of muzzleloaders. If a soldier lies on the ground, he generally cannot reload. Therefore, large-scale light infantry in dispersed formations did not make sense until the invention of the Mini bomb. In other words, it was only after the invention of rear-mounted fixed-loading ammunition that lying down became a meaningful tactical action.
Of course, the standard musket Wanli II currently used by the Ming army is more advanced than the Lumi gun sent by Jinyiwei this time. The most obvious advantage is that the Wanli II specifically made adaptive improvements to the paper shell fixed charge.
This allowed the Ming Army musketeers not only to charge faster and more accurately, but also to use a kneeling position to charge, thus forming a "double-three-stage" shooting with two levels of high and low, alternating advance on the battlefield. Simply put, the firepower density is doubled.
In short, no matter what, in the flintlock era, the most important thing needed for queuing to be shot was discipline. All other clever and whimsical ideas were basically seeking death.
This tactic requires considerable military organizational ability, individual soldier quality, and willpower, otherwise the team may collapse after the first salvo. The old-style army often emphasized personal bravery and despised discipline. It basically failed to meet this requirement and even lacked basic line-up capabilities.
Therefore, the cruel tactic of "queuing to kill", which has a very high battle loss rate, requires very high discipline and morale of the entire army. The ones who did this better were the British Red Shirts. Because of their red military uniforms, they were nicknamed the "Lobster Army" in later generations.
Although the name is a bit funny, during the war at that time, the "Lobster Army" at its peak was often confident that the opponent would shoot first, or get into a very close range and then shoot.
At that time, the British army's requirement for its army was that it could never retreat until the battle damage rate exceeded 50%, because the collapse of one row of lines could easily lead to the collapse of the entire rear row of lines. To meet such a standard, the army's The degree of training can be imagined.
People in later generations often say that only countries with established national ideas and soldiers who know who to fight for can achieve such military discipline. In fact, this is only half right at best.
An army that knows who it is fighting for can certainly achieve such military discipline, but who can say that everyone in the European army during the colonialist era had the consciousness to fight for the country and the people? Isn't this nonsense?
In fact, most of the time, as long as the money is in place - at most, the future is in place, and coupled with strict and even harsh military discipline, most armies can do this.
The only question is how much money is needed to be called "money in place".
According to high pragmatic experience, the answer is: when a soldier's income can reach twice or more than that of ordinary people, and the pension and pension benefits are so generous that even if he is disabled or even killed in combat, his family will Especially if the children can reach adulthood with sufficient food and clothing, then in this era it can be said that "the money is in place".
However, in fact, for now, the only ones who can pat their chests and say that their army is "funded" are the Southern Xinjiang Guard Army and its elite armed servants in the Ming Dynasty. The officers and soldiers of the Ming Dynasty could not generally do this. Only the direct descendants of individual generals and a very small number of special armies - such as the Imperial Guard - could do this.
"If we only talk about the decisive battle between the Chinese army, it is true, but this is not how it is calculated." Gao pragmatically smiled, but shook his head and said: "The Chinese army fights on foot with muskets, so it does not necessarily mean that the two wings must be defeated. The same goes for the same method. The Mongols are famous for their cavalry and archery, so these two wings can continue to use cavalry. In this way, if the Chinese army wins, their cavalry can still cover up and kill them, but they are more vicious than before.
If the central army is defeated, these two wings of cavalry can also be used to cover the pursuit of our army. Whether they charge at the two wings of our central army's formation, or attack from the side, or bite the tail, they will all cause serious harassment to our army's pursuit. . So, how can we assume that they will give up the use of cavalry? "
After hearing this, Cheng Wen couldn't help but look bright, realizing that he was still "ignorant of soldiers" compared to Gao Pragmatic. According to his previous guess, it was a subtraction, thinking that the Chahar tribe simply threw away the advantage of the cavalry in order to use firearms, and instead moved closer to the Ming army model. In this way, it is natural to use one's own shortcomings to attack the enemy's strong points.
According to what Gao Pragmatic said, Burihatu would only choose to make additions, that is, while maintaining the advantage of the cavalry, he would create an additional Chinese army musketry infantry formation to face the Ming army's musket and bayonet formation head-on. .
After all, the Chahar tribe has tried several times. Even if they use the most elite heavy cavalry to attack the Ming army's bayonet array, they will only die. Since all the original tactics have failed, of course, we have to come up with new tactics to deal with the Ming army's bayonet array. Otherwise, would they retreat when they see the Ming army?
Now that Cheng Wen was enlightened by Gao Pragmatic, he thought about it and thought of a question, and quickly asked: "If this is the case, how much advantage does our Chinese Army have compared to the Mongolian Chinese Army? And what about the two wings? How many advantages does our Chinese Army have over the Mongolian Chinese Army?" We spent millions of dollars on cavalry last year, how does it compare to the Mongolian cavalry now?"
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ps: The holiday ended yesterday and work has started today, so I started typing a bit late. This chapter is not as early as the first chapter yesterday. Accordingly, it seems impossible to finish the second chapter before 0 o'clock. I will try my best to work the late shift, but the time may not be correct, so please forgive me.
