Since the Northern Expedition, the military operations launched by the Chu Empire on the Western Front and in Sichuan may seem large-scale, but in fact they have not encountered stubborn resistance from the enemy. Most of the battles have taken place naturally. , when the army arrives, the opponent often collapses or simply surrenders.
The whole situation seemed like the autumn wind sweeping away the fallen leaves!
The intensity of the entire war was not even as high as the one medium-scale and several small-scale battles with Dongdu in the spring and summer.
In the spring of this year, the Chu army had a medium-sized battle in the direction of Jizhen and Dongli on the opposite side. The main reason was that a small Mongolian tribe wanted to surrender to the Great Chu Empire. The control of the Mongolian tribe, and also in order to obtain more horses, chose to accept and send troops to cover the southern dependence of this tribe.
As a result, there was a fight with the Dongluo in April. The Chu army sent about 5,000 troops out of the Great Wall to escort them, while the Dongluo side sent three to four thousand troops to pursue them.
The strength of both sides was mainly cavalry, but the Chu army had more cavalry and artillery. Therefore, although the Chu army's traditional cavalry was slightly weaker, it still successfully welcomed this small Mongolian tribe southward and fiercely attacked it. This affected the prestige of the Eastern Mongols and also obtained a large number of horses.
The intensity of this battle was relatively high. More than 400 people from the Chu army were buried in the grasslands north of the Great Wall, while more than 500 people from the Dongdu army died in the battle.
In addition to this medium-sized battle, many other battles with a scale of less than a thousand people were also fierce. These battles with a scale of less than a thousand people were either battles between cavalry, or they were fighting for small fortresses in the west of Liaoning. The battles are often very brutal.
This has nothing to do with the level of combat effectiveness. The main reason is that the morale of the armies on both sides is relatively high, the will to fight is relatively tenacious, and they will not retreat easily and admit defeat during a fight.
To be honest, fighting against an enemy with relatively high resilience, unified organizational capabilities, large numbers of cavalry, and a large number of experienced soldiers was relatively unfamiliar to the Chu Empire, and it even felt difficult for a time. .
The main reason is that the previous enemies of the Chu Empire were all the Ming army, and in the early days, they were mainly the Ming army's inland garrison soldiers. The combat effectiveness of these inland garrison soldiers was very limited, especially their morale was extremely low, and their organizational skills were even worse.
Many seemingly grand battles were actually fought with a bit of drama, and the opponent would collapse after a casual fight. Even in seemingly tragic battles, as long as the Chu army's artillery pushed up and intensively bombarded the opponent, the opponent would often collapse on its own.
After the Northern Expedition, although they encountered the main force of the Ming army's border troops, the Chu army's advantage at that time was too great. Especially in the Battle of Tianjin, the Chu army had an absolute advantage in terms of military strength, firepower, logistics, etc. At that time, Hong Chengchou The Ming army he led had little resistance.
More importantly, these frontier troops surrendered no slower than the inland garrison troops.
Under such circumstances, to a certain extent, the Chu army got used to fighting such weak people. Many frontline generals felt that as long as they pulled up the artillery and fired a few times, the opponent would often be defeated.
However, when the enemy was replaced by Dongduo, many of the past victory experiences no longer worked.
For example, in a fortified battle, after heavy armored infantry was dispatched to tear through a certain point of defense of a fortress, the Ming army would often be defeated on its own, but those Eastern captives were different. These Eastern captives would organize armored soldiers to rush forward to resist. , and then desperately drove out the Chu army's commandos.
When faced with danger, these Japanese captors would not risk their lives. They would just direct some light artillery towards the gap and conduct a covering artillery bombardment without distinguishing between friend and foe...
Another example is that although the weapons and equipment of Dongdu were not good in the eyes of the Chu army, their armor coverage rate was not good, and the quality of some armor was not good either. The number of matchlock guns was not large and the quality was not good, and the number of artillery was not large, and the quality was also not good... …
But people have it anyway.
Fewer and inferior artillery can also cause casualties to Chu soldiers.
Therefore, from last autumn to this autumn, in the past year, the Chu army and Dongji fought many battles. Fortunately, in large-scale battles, the Chu army was able to overwhelm the opponent with its absolute firepower advantage.
However, in some small and medium-sized battles, although the Chu army can still have an advantage, this advantage is not overwhelming.
Especially since this summer, some of the small-scale fighting forces outside Shanhaiguan often use the method of showing weakness to the enemy. They can't hide when the Chu army is bombarding them, and they don't even launch a counterattack. They let you use various solid weapons. The artillery or mortars slowly exploded, and they hid until the Chu army's infantry rushed up, then ran out and directly engaged in close hand-to-hand combat with the Chu army's infantry.
So even if they finally captured this small fortress and wiped out a large number of enemy troops stationed there, their own casualties would not be small. Basically, they would kill one thousand enemies and lose five hundred to themselves.
It was obvious that after several defeats in the fall and spring of last year, Dongdu had reversed some of their tactics and adopted various fighting methods that maximized their strengths and avoided their weaknesses.
That is to say, strategically, the Chu Empire Army has an absolute strategic defense advantage on the Jiliao front, and the Eastern Capture cannot invade. However, if the Chu Army wants to launch a counterattack and compete with the Eastern Capture for important territory, it will face a relatively difficult situation. Big difficulty.
This difficulty does not mean that it cannot be defeated, but it means that the casualties will be relatively high.
This may not feel good to the traditional army, and they may even feel that it is good to win steadily like this, but for many generals of the Chu army, this does not feel good.
Many of the Chu army's past battles were conducted in a low-casualty mode. A battle involving tens of thousands of people would be fine with a few hundred casualties.
If you let them lose hundreds of people in a battle of several thousand people, the Chu army felt that the casualties were too great, and even reported it to Luo Zhixue, saying that there were heavy casualties on the front line, and he hoped to give up the continued oppression and advancement. strategy.
These situations gradually gathered from the front line to Jinling City, and finally reached the ears of Luo Zhixue.
Immediately afterwards, Luo Zhixue emphatically criticized the army's underestimation of the enemy and arrogance in several imperial military meetings. At the same time, he emphasized that the army, as the sword of the emperor and the pillar of the country, must not be afraid of difficulties and sacrifices to unify China and the world. The fighting spirit of the people fighting for their living space.
No one can die in a war, let alone a life-and-death national war. If hundreds of people die, they will scream, and then ask for strategic contraction and give up continued oppression.
This is simply making fun of the empire’s tens of millions of military expenditures a year and China’s national unification policy.
It is the established national policy of the Great Chu Empire to send troops to conquer the East and finally regain Liaodong, and Luo Zhixue does not intend to postpone this matter for too long. He needs to deal with the biggest external threat of the Eastern captives as soon as possible, and then Reduce today's extremely high military expenditures to normal levels and free up resources for domestic restoration of people's livelihood and economic development.
In Luo Zhixue's plan, this year we will resolve internal wars, that is, the war on the Western Front and Sichuan and the southwest. Now that the Western Front and Sichuan have been settled, the Yunnan-Guizhou Campaign has been officially launched in September. It is expected that it will be completed within a few months. The war on the front line of Yunnan and Guizhou.
Wait until next year, the Chu Empire should gather its main forces and send its troops to the northeast, engage in a battle to destroy the country, and crush the people in the east into ashes!
Before launching a comprehensive strategic offensive next year, the Dongji forces in the Jiliao direction need to be further tested and capture many peripheral fortresses to prepare for the large-scale advance of the army.
At the same time, through this kind of continuous attrition operations, we can train the troops and further understand the actual situation on the opposite side, which can also further consume the enemy's manpower and material resources.
Because the Chu army's death of hundreds of people was very heartbreaking, and the East captive's death of hundreds of people was even more heartbreaking. The Military Intelligence Department had obtained the exact information. Facing the Chu army's continuous attrition operations, the East captive had to take many measures to deal with the headache. In response, even some of the troops maintaining order in the rear had to be transferred to the front one after another.
After all, only 40,000 to 50,000 Eight Banners soldiers who captured people from the East were killed.
In addition, the Mengba Banner, which is directly under the jurisdiction of Dongduo, also has a strength of 20,000 to 30,000 troops.
The Eight Banners of the Han Dynasty were more numerous, and the total number should be about 100,000. A considerable part of them were the former Ming and Liao Western Frontier Army, namely the troops of Zu Dashou and Wu Sangui.
In addition, the Dongjiu people can mobilize tens of thousands of other Mongolian tribes who have surrendered to them but have not yet been directly integrated into the Mongolian Eight Banners.
And these are the total troops, about 170,000 to 80,000.
And don't think that all Dongjiu's troops are capable of fighting. This is impossible. Even the Chu army has low-cost troops such as second-class divisions.
Let’s not talk about the Eight Banners of Mongolia and the Eight Banners of Han. Let’s just talk about their Eight Banners. Their internal soldiers are also of several levels. Among them, there are not so many elite armored soldiers, that is, those white-armored soldiers.
The above mentioned is still about military strength, and although they seem to have a lot of troops, this scale is already the result of their general mobilization, that is, all the young and strong men under their rule have been incorporated into the army.
Except for these young and strong people, the rest are almost all old, young, women and children.
In other words, if they suffer too many casualties on the front line in a short period of time, it will be almost impossible to replenish their troops.
Even if they have a warehouse full of money and food, and guns everywhere, it won't work because there are not enough young people left.
What's more, the continuous oppressive warfare has resulted in a large number of young men on the East Side being dragged to the front line, and farming has been greatly troubled.
This continued consumption, coupled with the fact that the Chu Empire forcefully blocked all border towns, prohibited civilians from entering and exiting, and completely canceled the trade in border towns, causing Dongdu to lose its external source of food.
It is estimated that there may be a large-scale famine in Dongdu next year.
Under such circumstances, it will naturally be easier for the Chu army to conquer the East next year.
As for the continuous casualties caused by the war of attrition...
War is a very cruel thing!
