I don’t know if it’s confidence or superstition, but in short, the Yingtian new standard army created by Governor Yingtian is a very bold and radical configuration of a large number of matchlock gunners and a small number of spearmen.
There is also a new standard army of several hundred people in Fujian, which is even more bizarre. They are all musketeers and not a single spearman...
Not every one of these new standard armies needs to be taken seriously by the Chu army, after all, regardless of equipment, soldier quality and organization.
Just talking about the number of troops, most of the new standard troops in the Ming court are useless, because many of them only have a few hundred people and cannot affect the overall situation.
Among the many new standard troops in the Ming Dynasty, currently, there are not many new standard troops that have really reached a large scale and can be assembled to be almost the size of a mixed regiment, that is, about two thousand people. Among those worthy of mention are the Huguang New Standard Army compiled and trained by Yang Sichang. This Huguang New Standard Army was organized into left and right armies before the Battle of Chunan. The total strength is about 8,000 people, and it is equipped with 20 or 30 two and a half kilograms. Field guns and a few five-pound field guns.
However, the elite of the unit, the left army of the Huguang New Standard Army, was completely wiped out by the Chu army in the Battle of Chunan. The right army suffered heavy casualties in the Battle of Changsha. Only a thousand people were left to break out and flee south. Finally, they fled all the way to Guangdong. It recovered to more than 3,000 people.
After Yang Sichang was arrested and imprisoned by Chongzhen, the Huguang New Standard Army was taken over by the new Southwest Governor Xiong Wencan and continued to recover to a size of four to five thousand people.
It is worth noting that in the Battle of Chunan, the Huguang New Biao Army fought life and death with the Chu Army, but they never fought a serious line battle with the Chu Army from beginning to end. They were passively defensive. Combat.
In addition to the Huguang New Standard Army, there is also the Guangdong and Guangxi New Standard Army. This New Standard Army was trained when Xiong Wencan was the governor of Guangdong and Guangxi. Before the Chunan Battle, it only had a few hundred people. After the Chunan Battle, due to the fall of Chunan, Guangdong and Guangxi The pressure was huge, so the Guangdong and Guangxi New Standard Army quickly expanded to 5,000 people.
The Huguang New Standard Army and the Guangdong and Guangxi New Standard Army each have a mixed brigade-sized force. These two New Standard Army are also an important basis for Xiong Wencan to stay in Zhaoqing and resist the Chu army from moving further south to the Guangdong and Guangxi.
Next up is the Anlu New Standard Army under Shi Kefa on the eastern front. This New Standard Army was also trained relatively early, because in the early days, the Jiujiang front line still belonged to Yang Sichang's defense zone. Yang Sichang had already ordered Jiujiang to train the New Standard Army.
Later, after Shi Kefa came to power, he expanded the Anlu New Biao Army based on the Jiujiang New Biao Army, with a strength of about 6,500.
There are two other main new standard armies on the eastern front. One is the Yingtian New Standard Army. This new standard army is a bit special. It is purely the powerful gentry in the south of the Yangtze River. They are afraid that the Chu thieves will attack, so they support Governor Yingtian. It was built with more than 5,000 troops, but the distribution of troops was rather strange, with more musketeers...
Three thousand of them have been sent to the Jiujiang front line and are currently stationed at Hukou.
Then there is the Jiangbei New Standard Army. The predecessor of this Jiangbei New Standard Army is actually the Henan New Standard Army led by Chen Biqian. However, the Henan New Standard Army had very few troops during the period, only a thousand soldiers.
After Wang Jiazhen succeeded Chen Biqian as the governor of the Eastern Front, he took over the Henan New Standard Army, and then transferred hundreds of New Standard Army under the command of Governor Fengyang and merged them into the Jiangbei New Standard Army.
After the Jiangbei New Standard Army went south with Wang Jiazhen, a group recruited and trained troops in the Jiangbei area. It is said that the number of troops has reached more than 5,000, and it is still expanding.
It's just that although this new standard army is expanding very quickly, the training time is too short and the equipment is in short supply, so it is not yet an army.
Then there are several new standard armies on the northern front. Among them, in the Central Plains direction, the Ruzhou New Standard Army under Zuo Liangyu's command has about three thousand troops.
But regardless of the small number of people, in fact the New Biao Army under Zuo Liangyu should be the best-paid and best-equipped among all the New Biao Army in the entire Ming Dynasty.
Because Zuo Liangyu was personally beaten by the Chu army, he had a deeper understanding of the sharpness of guns and artillery. Moreover, he was a military general and a self-respecting military general who supported his troops. In the past six months, he basically did not put the governors and governors above him. In the eyes.
For a general who respects his troops, everything else can be put aside, but the army is definitely the top priority, so Zuo Liangyu pays more attention to the new standard army than Yang Sichang.
In addition, Zuo Liangyu's methods of making money are not comparable to those of civil servants. If he has no money or food, he will directly dare to send troops to plunder... With a large army in hand, he is not afraid of impeachment by others.
Anyway, I have tens of thousands of troops at my disposal. If you have the ability, would you arrest me?
As for Mingting, I really don't dare. In the past year, they have been all kinds of appeasements and promotions. Those who can be given and those who cannot be given are basically thrown away without money.
On the northern front, in addition to the 3,000 Ruzhou New Standard Army under Zuo Liangyu, there was also the relatively large Shaanxi New Standard Army under Sun Chuanting.
As for the remaining New Standard Army units, most of them are too small in number, with hundreds or thousands of troops. Or they have empty numbers, but they are actually just randomly bringing in a group of farmers, without providing food or professional training. No guns.
It is purely in the name of being a new standard-bearer.
Even now, there are new standard-setting troops in the Beijing camp, but if they want money and no people, there is no one to ask for. Apart from Chongzhen, there is probably no other person who cares about this new standard-setting army in the Beijing camp.
In addition, another very important point is that although many Ming army governors and generals did not build a new standard army, it does not mean that they cannot see the benefits of guns and artillery.
The most typical one is Hong Chengchou!
He is not interested in the pure new standard army, and believes that even if he wants to engage in guns and artillery, there is no need to imitate the Chu thieves...
Hong Chengchou directly cast guns, especially artillery, based on the original elites of the old army, so that he could effectively utilize the original elites and save costs.
Simply abandon the original elite of the old army, then grab a group of farmers, and then spend a huge price to train them into the new standard army.
In Hong Chengchou's opinion, this kind of thing was just a matter of brain damage.
Given the current situation, how can you have so much time and so much money and food to train a new standard-setting army worth 100,000 to 80,000 yuan? But getting tens of millions of people is of no use...
It would be better to build more field artillery and then cooperate with the original elite in combat.
As long as there are enough field artillery, no matter whether it is the old army or the new standard army, the war will not be the same.
From this perspective, Hong Chengchou actually emphasized the role of artillery more than other governors.
Hong Chengchou always believed that the reason why the Chu thieves were able to win consecutive battles was not the Chu thieves' infantry, but the Chu thieves' artillery.
The Chu thieves' field artillery is so cruel!
Later, when Hong Chengchou, like others, discovered that the so-called field cannons of the Chu thieves were actually Hongyi cannons with different mounts and shorter barrels, Hong Chengchou also organized manpower to build a batch of small Hongyi cannons that could be used in field battles. .
Instead of creating any new standard troops, an artillery team was directly formed to cooperate with the original elite in combat.
To say how effective it is, I'm afraid Dongji will have to verify this.
Because Hong Chengchou has already arrived in Beizhili with his elite troops, if there can be a large-scale battle with Dongqi later, it is estimated that he can almost verify whether this model is effective.
When Hong Chengchou led his army to North Zhili, Shi Kefa was already in trouble in Jiujiang, Jiangxi.
On August 7, the Chu army officially launched an attack on Jiujiang.
On August 8, the Chu army successively captured the No. 3 large fortress and the No. 9 large fortress outside the West City Gate, leaving the area to the north of Jiujiang's west city wall directly exposed to the Chu army's front.
On August 9, the Chu army began to attack the West City Gate area. However, it was naturally impossible to attack the city directly from the beginning. Instead, they continued the bombardment, filled in the moat, and gradually eliminated other remnants of the Ming army in this direction. fortifications.
At the same time, the Chu army continued to dig trenches in this direction, trying to deploy more eighteen-pound mortars closer, and at the same time, it also tried to allow the elite heavy armored infantry used in siege to obtain a closer starting position.
When the Chu army launched a continuous attack on the West City Gate area, Shi Kefa had no choice but to start deploying Ming troops from other directions to strengthen the defense of the West City Gate.
However, the Chu army in other directions was not a vegetarian.
The First Division responsible for the battle on the south city wall also increased its attack intensity at this time.
In the first two ends, because the southern city wall was not the main attack direction, the first division's attack was more focused on containing the enemy's forces and clearing some small fortresses.
When the Sixth Division captured the No. 3 large fortress and the No. 9 large fortress and began to directly attack the west city wall, in order to prevent the Ming army from deploying more troops to reinforce the west city wall, the first division also launched a fierce attack in time.
Although most of the artillery was concentrated at the West Gate and the lack of artillery in the South Gate area, the First Division did not attack those large fortresses in order to avoid excessive casualties, but it still created great pressure on the Ming army, forcing the Ming Dynasty to The army did not dare to deploy more troops to reinforce the west city wall.
On August 12, after several days of fighting, the Chu army initially filled in the moat outside the west city gate, and also dug underground passages and buried gunpowder.
In the morning of that day, with a huge and dull explosion, when a section of the Jiujiang West City Wall collapsed, the Chu Army's final general attack on Jiujiang City also began.
A large number of heavily armored soldiers from the commando team rushed forward to fight the Ming army, and finally relied on their superior armor and firepower to successfully seize the ruins and nearby city walls.
In this process, grenades once again played an important tactical role, making the Chu army's siege operation smoother.
When the west city wall is captured by the Chu army, it is only a matter of time before Jiujiang City falls, and this time will be very short!
Facing the fall of the west city wall, Shi Kefa was so desperate that he could only lead his remaining soldiers to break out from the east city gate and escape to the mouth of the lake.
However, although the Chu army deliberately left the east city gate unattacked and tried to surround three enemies, it did not mean that they did not deploy troops to ambush them far away from the city gate!
