stubborn thief

Chapter 691: Hanging Earthly Branches

The first night of the battle between the two armies.

The Ming army's vanguard officer Xiang Xiyin fled in a panic into Zhang Yingchang's camp at Jinyintan.

After entering the tent, Xiang Xiyin prostrated himself and kowtowed, and was about to cut his own throat with a knife to atone for the defeat.

He was not pretending. Even when he was defeated, he did not want to commit suicide. He just wanted to escape back quickly.

But the longer I ran, the angrier I became, and the more I thought about it, the less I wanted to live.

His army was not spineless enough to give in at the slightest defeat. The cavalry of the marshal's army charged four formations in succession and broke into the formation three times. It can be said that the army's formation was completely broken.

But every time, the cavalry would be forced back by the Ming army's infantry who used cold weapons such as spears, waist knives, and bone swords.

On the one hand, after the main infantry formation of the Ming army was broken, they were able to form a small formation and fight very well; on the other hand, it was a bit funny because the close combat ability of the Oirats cavalry was not outstanding, so that when they were mounted, it was difficult for them to fight three or four Ming soldiers alone in close combat.

The combat width required by cavalry is much greater than that of infantry.

The advantage of the Oirats' cavalry is their strong impact force, but charging with spears does not mean close combat, and melee combat is their disadvantage.

Wen Lianggai's subordinates were cavalry equipped with the best protective armor, which was similar to the armor worn by the Ming border army infantry.

But he only equipped two selected vanguards with armor like that, while the Ming army on the opposite side was full of them.

It wasn't that Liu Chengzong was stingy and didn't want to provide his soldiers with armor. The armor of the border troops filled up the warehouse at the former site of Guanzhong Academy in Xi'an, but no one wanted them.

However, in terms of tactical positioning, the mobile battalion is a light cavalry unit.

Carrying three spears, one long and two short, and a bow and two pots of arrows, the Oirats had very limited options for protective equipment, other than the usual marching clothing and felt. They usually wore leather jackets with loose parts such as iron-studded armor and a breastplate.

According to Liu Shizi's requirements in the drill manual, those who are good at charging with spears are the Walas of the Mongolian tribe, which is the mobile battalion of the Oirats cavalry. Their responsibility is to serve as mounted archers in the guerrillas, while waiting for opportunities to trample and pursue the defeated army, and to charge at the approaching enemy cavalry with spears, so as to protect the Mo Nan Si, which is more lightly equipped than them.

What they collided with was the enemy cavalry, not the well-organized infantry formation.

After all, the cavalry's charge was brave, but in Liu Shizi's opinion, it was a completely impulsive act caused by hot-bloodedness.

But design is one thing, and improvisation during combat is another.

At least in this battle, Ma Ke, Li Fengji and Wen Lianggai cooperated very well. The cavalry's repeated attacks forced the Ming army to be unable to move, and finally allowed the dismounted infantry and musket chariots to approach and settle the battle.

Xiang Xiyin's standard battalion of 3,000 men, with their bravery and strength, repeatedly forced back the cavalry that rushed into the formation, but they were frightened by the threat of large-caliber muskets.

People fled in droves, and in the end, there were less than four hundred Ming troops who followed Xiang Xiyin into the Jinyintan position.

Faced with the tragic news of defeat and loss of troops at the front line, Zhang Yingchang did not issue any blame or ridicule as Xiang Xiyin had expected.

Are you kidding? Who is Zhang Yingchang? What kind of storms has he not seen?

He had seen an army of 10,000 soldiers being wiped out in one day without any fight.

You have 3,000 men, and you fought with Liu Chengzong's troops, but you were able to escape with more than 300 men. What do you call this? This is called a talented general! It's a great loss for General Hong not to make you a general!

Zhang Yingchang listened to the battle process and was very tolerant like an elder brother. He comforted them in a gentle voice: "It's just a loss. No one expected to meet the enemy here."

  He thought to himself that the result was already pretty good, did they really want to win?

Even if he led the troops himself and was suddenly attacked while marching, he had no guarantee that he could fight better than Xiang Xiyin.

"I am incompetent and have been defeated in the front. Should our army retreat to Lingzhou or..."

Xiang Xiyin didn't say anything because the pursuers were very close behind him and the enemy reinforcements would surely arrive soon.

He felt that with only three battalions left fighting outside the city, they had little chance of winning.

“It’s too late to get into the city.”

Zhang Yingchang understood the hidden meaning in his words, but did not agree. He only said, "The bandits have more men and horses, and they can run faster than us. Moreover, our army has just been defeated. If we are intercepted at night, our army will be caught up and destroyed."

"I have already passed the intelligence to Ningxia, but I can't count on them. I can ask for help from the rear guard. Maybe they can come to rescue me tomorrow."

Just then, a wailing horn sound was faintly heard from the south.

Under the cover of night, among the bonfires set up by the Ming army on the Qinqu mudflats, the shadows of the cavalry stretched and twisted under the swaying flames in the wind.

Gunfire flickered from time to time in the distant darkness, rang out a few times, and then returned to silence, until it suddenly sounded again, sometimes far away, sometimes near.

It is not difficult to imagine that there are some terrible things hidden in the darkness. You hit me and I retreat, you chase me and I surround you, step by step, fighting for life.

The Marshal’s army’s pursuers are coming.

Until the sound of gongs and bells in the camp could be heard far away in the cold wilderness at night.

Zhang Yingchang said: "No need to chase."

The family knows their own affairs.

His soldiers were not as skilled as others, nor were they as numerous as others. They could hardly cover the battlefield during the day, and fighting in the dark at night would only result in the loss of their lives.

Ever since Ningxia General He Huchen was defeated at Huanglong Mountain, he suffered one defeat after another. Where are the regular Tang cavalry left in the Northwest Ming army?

Zhang Yingchang only had some scouts and reconnaissance cavalry who were hastily gathered together. Some of them didn't even have the Tang soldiers' flags, and those who were issued with Tang flags didn't know how to use them, so the flags were purely decorative.

The scattered regular cavalry were no match for the well-coordinated Tang cavalry in a pursuit battle; if the cavalry gathered together, they could not block the battlefield, not to mention that they could not catch up with the Tang cavalry.

If they were really caught up, they would either be surrounded by the Tang soldiers or led into an ambush.

no point.

Not far away, under the night sky, on a temporary hill of earth made of grain bags filled with sand and gravel, Marco was looking at the Ming army camp through a telescope with a worried look on his face.

"How lucky they are!"

After chasing all the way here, Marco saw the advantageous terrain and the huge camp. He knew that he could not capture Zhang Yingchang's camp.

The reason why he pursued slowly was that there were many surrendered soldiers.

Not counting those who died in battle or fled, there were more than 900 surrendered soldiers left behind by Xiang Xiyin's camp on the battlefield, of which more than 800 were wounded.

More than 300 people who were fine or had minor injuries were organized on the spot by Marco and forced to march, leaving more than 500 wounded soldiers on the battlefield, and sending a message to Lieutenant General A Liu of the reinforcement camp in the rear to take them in.

The Marshal's Office's method of distinguishing between minor and serious injuries originated from the battlefield, so the judgment method is relatively rough, with only two standards.

The first is to look at the treatment. Injuries like being hit by a horse's hoof that causes broken limbs, or having large wounds that bleed from several cuts are called minor injuries. If you can heal yourself and not die, or if you can still fight after recovery, these are called minor injuries.

If left alone, the person will die soon, or if after the best treatment, the person still has irreversible disability or sequelae and loses the ability to participate in combat, this is called serious injury.

It wasn't that Marco was greedy and reckless and ignored the wounded soldiers, but that the military surgeons under his command simply did not have the ability to treat a large number of seriously injured soldiers.

The Marshal's Office was originally short of military doctors and medicines. Their army expanded too quickly, and originally there was only one battalion of military doctors in the main camp. After the garrison brigades were reorganized, each brigade had a battalion of military doctors in the general's camp.

During wartime, a mobile battalion like the Mako was only assigned two medical officers, two physicians and twelve military doctors, half of whom were veterinarians.

In the Marshal's Office where there were a large number of horses and livestock, in addition to a fixed smallpox doctor and internal medicine physician, the remaining doctors who only studied surgery also had to learn veterinary medicine, so they generally did not have very sophisticated skills but were experienced.

In a battlefield environment with limited resources, although it is not written in the military medical manual, they usually do not give medication to seriously injured surrendered soldiers unless there are special cases. If there is surgical value, they will perform surgery, if not, forget it, and if it is too painful, they will just cut it off and send it away.

Even when it came to bandaging, the military doctors provided guidance, allowing the lightly wounded soldiers to tear off their own clothes, boil water to disinfect them, and bandage other wounded soldiers.

The battlefield is just a makeshift one. There are too many medicines and medical supplies in normal times and nowhere to use them, but there is always a shortage when a big war breaks out.

In the face of war, one can never be prepared enough.

After dealing with the surrendered soldiers, Marco learned about the enemy's main general, generals at all levels, and the situation of the troops. While passing the news to the rear, he continued to pursue with the Tang soldiers.

He knew that there were still 10,000 enemy troops ahead, and he also knew that if a fight really broke out, each of these 10,000 people could punch him and crush his mobile battalion of less than 2,000 people.

But Mako wasn't afraid.

This fearlessness is not based on courage.

When you are a private, a captain or even a captain, courage and force are very important.

But at the level of commander or above, military problems require management, technology, intuition, experience, collaboration, decision-making and execution to solve.

It was the intelligence from the rear that let Marco know that friendly troops had been deployed after leaving the pass, the plains in the south of Lingzhou had been occupied, his flanks were very safe, and he could lead his troops forward with confidence.

They controlled the battlefield, which gave them a lot of tactical options.

However, during the armed reconnaissance again, Marco had to admit that his actions were still a little slow. He was not lucky enough to get the unprecedented merit of defeating the four battalions of Zhang Yingchang's Right Town with one battalion.

Although the visibility was poor at night, Marco could still roughly see the deployment of the Ming army. This was because in order to guard against attacks, the Ming army lit bonfires every few dozen steps on the mudflats outside the camp.

Jinyintan is a triangular river beach divided by two Qinqu channels flowing north and south. It is five or six miles wide from east to west, eight or nine miles long from north to south, and wider in the south and narrower in the north.

The riverbank is covered with fertile irrigated fields and several villages.

Based on the location of the campfire on the mudflat, Marco was basically able to determine that the Ming army had set up camp right in the middle of the mudflat.

Because there are fixed methods to guard against night attacks, the Ming army has learned them, and Ma Ke is no exception.

Inside those bonfires are sentry towers, on which are stationed scouts called "Wangzi", all of whom are soldiers with excellent eyesight. There is a tower every hundred steps.

A bed was set up downstairs, and a few soldiers called "listeners" were specially selected. They were required to be soldiers with restless sleep, which actually meant they had neurasthenia. They were gathered in the tent and equipped with hollow gourd pillows made of wild boar skin. They could detect the sounds of large groups of people and horses moving in the distance.

The location of the camp was chosen cunningly. Zhang Yingchang left two to three miles of open space around the mudflats, which was obviously a preparation for guarding against the artillery of the Marshal's Army.

This distance meant that all field artillery had to cross the river if they wanted to fire directly at his camp.

But heavy artillery and chariots would be at risk of being attacked once they crossed the river.

This kind of terrain that is easy to enter but difficult to exit is called hanging land in military strategy.

Sun Wu's suggestion was that in such terrain, one should take advantage of the enemy's unpreparedness and attack to win; if the enemy was already prepared and the attack could not lead to victory, it would be difficult to return, which would be disadvantageous.

The terrain that is not favorable for the enemy's attack and also not favorable for the enemy's attack becomes a supporting terrain. Sun Wu suggested that the army pretend to retreat, lure the enemy halfway through their attack, and then return to counterattack, so as to turn a disadvantage into an advantage.

Therefore, Ma Ke did not act rashly, but ordered the cavalry to go north along the east and west Qin canals to completely cut off the connection between the Ming army camp and the outside world.

It was almost midnight at this time. Li Fengji, a captain under Marco, wanted to set up camp nearby, but Marco induced his troops to march five miles southwest at night, on the pretext that it was warm to sleep in the courtyards of civilian houses, and stationed in the hundred-household residences and civilian houses abandoned by the Ming army.

As a result, the yard was not big enough to live in, and the walls of the hundred-household residence were mostly collapsed and leaky. Many people ended up setting up tents in the wild to spend the difficult night.

In fact, Marco knew that there were not enough houses here, and his purpose was not to prevent the soldiers from freezing while sleeping in the wild.

The Marshal's Army has a strong ability to keep warm. They set up tents in the wild, which may be warmer than the Ming Army who set up camp on Jinyintan.

After all, the campsite is also drafty.

He was afraid that the Ming army would attack at night. After a day and night of running and fighting, many horses were so tired that they lay down instead of standing to sleep, let alone the people.

Marco felt that he could no longer force his soldiers to march at night, so he allowed the troops to move another five miles on the pretext that the fortress walls would provide shelter from the wind.

After all, if he said he was worried about a night attack, not to mention the soldiers, even his two captains, Li Fengji and Wen Lianggai, would be so tired that they just wanted to sleep.

Those two guys just wanted to sleep for an hour. After sleeping for an hour, they could mount their horses and fight the enemy.

But everyone can brag, and given their situation where they can fall asleep as soon as they touch the ground, if the Ming army really comes out and cuts their necks with knives, I'm afraid they won't be able to get up.

In fact, Zhang Yingchang did send troops out at night.

However, because they had no control over the battlefield, they did not dare to run around. They only sent cavalry to run six or seven miles in the four directions of southeast, northwest, northeast and southwest. After looking around and finding no one there, they returned.

The order was to run ten miles, but no one dared to run the full distance. They would just go back and report once they had walked enough to fool people.

Until the next morning.

First, the cavalry of the special forces battalion led by Ouyang Gun, deputy general of the Second Brigade, arrived at the outskirts of Jinyintan on their horses, breathing heavily.

At the same time, Zhang Yingchang's army began to dig trenches in the southern part of Jinyintan, trying to connect the two Qinqu channels that were separated in the south and use them as a moat.

During this process, a unit of Western musketeers under the command of Lieutenant General A Liu of the reinforcement battalion also arrived at the battlefield. These more than a thousand people did two things throughout the morning, which greatly reduced the morale of Zhang Yingchang's Right Town Ningxia Army.

The first was to bury gunpowder to blow up the stone bridges on both sides of the Qinqu Canal. The second was to start building a wall against the Ming army who were digging trenches one mile south of Jinyintan.

The idea was proposed by Zhang Xianzhong.

Regarding Ma Ke's suggestion of luring the enemy, the Minister of Rites said that this deceptive trick was too rude.

They, the outstanding generals of the Marshal's Office, should learn from the Marshal's fine style and noble character and respect the enemy's choice.

If someone doesn't want to come out, why do you have to lure them out?

The Marshal is a man of great ability. Let's first blow up the bridge and then build a wall to seal it off.

Not only will a wall be built on the plain in the south, but five-foot-high and five-foot-thick sheep and horse earth walls will also be built along the river banks on the east, west and north sides of the Qin Canal. Anyone who comes out will be a bastard.

The Ningxia rear guard did not disappoint Zhang Yingchang's earnest expectations. Zhao Huaizheng, the military farming general appointed earlier by Hong Chengchou, led his troops westward to provide assistance.

However, they were intercepted by the troops led by Ding Guodong, deputy general of the Yanqing Brigade who was sent out from Qingtongxia in Huan County when they were halfway through their journey. The two sides started fighting on the same day.

On the other side, Liu Chengzong, who was stationed in Hongsibao, also received intelligence from the front line. After reading Marco's report, he learned that Ningxia had sent out three generals from the towns, and one third of the troops were surrounded by Ren Quaner in Jinyintan.

Similar to Zhang Xianzhong's reaction, when faced with Marco's description of the terrain of Jinyintan, the defense layout of Zhang Yingchang's camp, and his attack suggestions, he also did not choose to lure the enemy.

"Go back and tell General Ren and General Ma that there is nothing to lure them with. Don't repair Zhang Butang's broken wall. Zhang Yingchang has no connections and doesn't even know Bai Guangen."

The times have changed.

Liu Chengzong waved his hand and handed the command arrow to the Yulin Cavalry: "Tell Zhang Butang to send people to persuade them to surrender. If they surrender, they will surrender. If they don't surrender, wait for rockets to be sent to blow them up... How many lives do you have to spare if you dare to set up camp like this?"

good morning!