I want to be emperor

Chapter 320 The Field Artillery Goes Northward to Resist the Captives in the East ([-]-character chapter)

The Ming court was panicked by the re-entry of the Eastern Captives. Chongzhen and several cabinet leaders ignored the situation of suppressing bandits in Shaanxi, Henan and other places, and deployed large-scale troops from the Central Plains to fight against the Eastern Captives.

Under such circumstances, Hong Chengchou was directly transferred to the northern line. Hong Chengchou did not go alone. He even took away tens of thousands of the main Ming army from Shaanxi, Henan and other places.

Among them, the main force is the Ming army in Shaanxi, and part of it is the troops in Henan, including 5000 people sent by Zuo Liangyu and nearly [-] people led by Wu Sangui.

It's just that it will take a few months for these troops to go north to the capital area to fight against Dongyao.

After all, it takes time for the army to go all the way north, even if the logistics are sufficient along the way, it will take a long time, not to mention that the court gave Hong Chengchou and the others just an order to move troops north.

As for logistical supplies...

Sorry, this has to be resolved by Hong Chengchou and his generals.

Therefore, if Hong Chengchou wants to lead his troops northward, he must first gather a large number of military supplies. At the same time, he needs to constantly contact various localities during the march to collect military supplies with the cooperation of the local government.

Under such circumstances, it will take a long time for Hong Chengchou's troops to reach the capital area smoothly.

The news of the great changes in the north did not reach the generals of the Ming army in the south, especially Shi Kefa and other core commanders. Go east!

After all, the distance is too far, and it takes almost a month just to pass the news back and forth.

If you want to make a practical response, such as mobilizing troops, it will be impossible to do it in a few months.

What's more, with the army of Chu thieves suppressing the border, the situation on the front line of Jiujiang is becoming more and more tense, and the Chu thieves can move eastward at any time, now the officials and gentry along the Yangtze River, especially in the Jiangnan area, don't care about Beizhili at all. Case.

Even if he cared, he didn't think there would be any irreversible risks in Beizhili.

After all, the Eastern captives detoured through Mongolia to enter the pass, and if they died, it was just a wave of looting. The impact was bad, but that was it.

Taking ten thousand steps back, even if the Ming court did not resist in the Northern Zhili area, but only defended the capital and allowed the Dong captives to plunder other places in Bei Zhili, these Dong captives would retreat within a few months.

If the East Captive army stays in the pass for too long, once Ji Liao, especially the Ming army in the direction of Liaodong, comes back to cut off the retreat, coupled with the cooperation of Hong Chengchou and other Central Plains troops who urgently rescued the capital, the East Captive army might not enter the pass. All will be wiped out...

Therefore, after Dongbao entered the customs, they would basically complete the looting and withdraw before the Ming court army reacted to outflank it!

As for the safety of the capital, the gentry in the south of the Yangtze River needn’t worry too much. The Eastern captives were powerful in field battles, but their ability to siege the city was still a bit weak. They couldn’t even take places like Jinzhou outside the pass, let alone storm the capital.

Well, from a normal military point of view, the capital is an extremely strong fortress.

It’s just that in many cases, the victory or defeat of a war, whether a city can be defended, or not, the military only occupies one aspect of it. Sometimes there are tens of thousands of troops stationed in space, but there will also be situations of being conquered, such as being attacked by surprise, for example. Anyway, the army opened the city gate and so on.

The Chu army conquered Xiangyang by sneak attack.

In the original time and space, Li Zicheng was able to easily win the capital because of the officers and soldiers of the Ming army who kept surrendering all the way.

In the end, even the city gate was opened by the defenders to let Li Zicheng in.

Taking a ten thousand step back, even if the capital is breached and Chongzhen is finished, most of the powerful and gentry in Jiangnan still don’t care much. They only care about the safety of this small area in Jiangnan, and they only care about when the Chu thieves will come.

If the Chu thief killed by the sky came here, he would be taxed, and this is much more terrifying than Dongbao!
After all, even if Dongyao came in, most of the policies he followed were still the same as the Ming court, and the gentry would still be treated preferentially. Well, at least this is how Dongyao is publicizing it to the outside world.

The Eastern captives engaged in the integration of gentry and gentry, which was done during the Yongzheng period. Today's gentry in the south of the Yangtze River would not have imagined that such a set of things would appear decades later.

That is to say, among the gentry in the south of the Yangtze River, in the cognition of all gentry, although the Dong captives are aliens, as long as they respect Confucianism and treat the gentry well, then it is not unacceptable for foreigners to live in the Central Plains.

But Chu thief...

Those goddamn Chu thieves dare to ask Lao Tzu to collect taxes, they are even more hateful than Li Zicheng and those thieves...

The Chu thief must be killed, otherwise the country will be ruined, the people will lament, the bones will be everywhere, there will be no grass in the wild, and ten rooms will be empty...

Orient exile problem?That's a matter of name, and it's fine to talk about it on weekdays, and whether to do it or not is another matter.

Rogue problem?This is a small problem, and if it can be suppressed, it will be eliminated. If it is impossible, it is not impossible to let Li Zicheng and the others become emperors. As long as Li Zicheng does not ask them to collect taxes and continues to let them be officials, then everything will not be a problem.

Chu thief problem?This is a matter of principle, and there is no possibility of any compromise, unless...

Put knives on their necks.

Well, most of the Huguang gentry have set an example in the past year.

Before the Chu thief killed him, all kinds of extermination of the Chu thief, killing the gray thief, chanted Luo Ni's slogan loudly, the Chu thief really killed him, and they ran faster than anyone else. It's time to pay taxes, and paying taxes one by one is more active than ordinary people.

Chen Xingkai, Minister of the Taxation Department, commented on these people: They are all fucking bastards!

On the contrary, the chieftains in Yunnan and Guizhou in eastern Sichuan are much better. They don’t care if you are a Ming army, a Chu thief, or a rogue thief, if you want to enter their territory, they will fight with you...

Before Zhang Xianzhong wanted to enter Sichuan, he was beaten up by the chieftain soldiers headed by Qin Liangyu in Sichuan. The Chu army entered Sichuan, and these chieftain soldiers also stubbornly refused to retreat. The Chu army entered Eastern Sichuan last year, but they still haven’t Can take Wushan County.

Among them, although the Chu thieves did not invest heavily in the front line of eastern Sichuan, it still proved that the determination of these chieftain soldiers to resist far surpassed that of the Ming army.

After all, the strength of the Chu thieves on the front line in eastern Sichuan, even though the fourth garrison division is the main garrison force, the treatment and equipment of the garrison troops in the Chu army are not bad. Most of the soldiers were sentinels of the main field battalion, and most of the soldiers were professional soldiers, and they were successively equipped with several two-and-a-half catty field guns, eighteen catty mortars and other artillery.

In terms of combat effectiveness, it is estimated that the Ming army can only be compared with the jade fingers if the frontier army is pulled out.

But such a fourth garrison division was stuck in eastern Sichuan and couldn't get in.

-

The detour of the Eastern captives to enter the customs through Mongolia can affect the active preparations of the officials in the south of the Yangtze River led by Shi Kefa to fight against the eastward advance of the Chu thieves.

On the fourth day of July, a group of Ming troops arrived at Hukou!
This batch of Ming troops was not ordinary Ming troops, but [-] new standard troops, and they were accompanied by more than ten Hongyi cannons.

Shi Kefa personally took the wharf at Hukou to welcome this group of Ming troops.

It is worth noting that these [-] new standard troops and more than a dozen Hongyi artillery do not belong to Shi Kefa, the governor of Anlu.

It belongs to Governor Yingtian!

And this new standard army is more extreme than the Chu army. Among the 2000 infantry, there are about [-] infantry in addition to gunners and other auxiliary troops.

Among the more than 2000 infantry, about 500 were musketeers, and the number of spearmen was only a mere [-] or so.

Such a troop ratio made Shi Kefa speechless...

Although the new standard army pays attention to guns, you can't have so many musketeers. Half of the musketeers in the infantry are about half.

Looking at these musketeers, Shi Kefa didn't have the idea of ​​arguing with others, but silently transferred thousands of spearmen from other troops.

Since Yang Sichang started last year, coupled with the strong record of the Chu army, and more importantly, the model of the main force of the Chu army, many governors of the Ming court saw the possibility that they could easily follow suit.

So now many governors of the Ming court are engaged in the new standard army, and some people honestly follow the standard of the Chu army, such as Yang Sichang, Shi Kefa, and even Hong Chengchou and Zuo Liangyu basically follow the same way.

And some people don't know if they have a big brain or they really trust the musketeers, or they are reluctant to spend money, and the proportion of musketeers in the new standard army produced is very large.

I even heard that there are new standard troops in Jiangnan who are all musketeers, not even a spearman...

Shi Kefa's jaw dropped in shock!

To be honest, Shi Kefa can more or less guess what they are thinking: save money!
New standard army, this thing is easy to say and easy to practice, but also difficult to say.

It's easy to say... Isn't it just to get a bunch of red barbarian artillery and muskets, and recruit some young men to train for a few months, it's not too difficult, it's even easier than the traditional old army before , and save money.

It is not easy for the traditional old army to develop combat effectiveness. The sword, shield, spear, and archer all need long-term training, and it is difficult to quickly achieve it in a short period of time.

It's hard to say, but if you want to train your new standard army to the level of the main force of the Chu army, then the training intensity must be very high, the food required is also large, and the requirements for equipment are also high.

In this way, the cost is higher than the traditional army, and it is much higher!

The main force of the Chu army, the new standard army of the Ming army, this new type of army, the upper limit is very high, but the lower limit is also very low...

You can find a group of farmers at random, give half of them a spear and half of them a musket, and you can pull them out after a month of random training.

According to the equipment cost and food cost of the Ming army, the per capita cost of this kind of troops is estimated to be about five or six taels of silver.

But if you want to reach the level of the main force of the Chu army, then the cost will be high.

Even the seemingly simple spearman is not easy to train.

In the Chu army, the equipment for the heavy armored spearmen alone cost tens of taels of silver per capita!
Not to mention that heavy armored spearmen have high physical requirements, and they eat more than ordinary soldiers every day.

It costs more to train a group of good spearmen than to train a group of musketeers, and this is why many governors tend to train more musketeers and reduce the number of spearmen when they start new standard troops. for the sake.

Save money without him!
In the Chu army, the training of a heavy spearman wearing armor is very troublesome, and there are many tactical moves. At the same time, the physical fitness, courage, and discipline of the soldiers are not low.

Among the ordinary soldiers in the Chu army, the cavalry has the highest salary and the best treatment; the second is the gunner (specifically refers to the members of the artillery crew, excluding the auxiliary troops in the artillery unit), and the heavy armored spearman is next.

After that, there are ordinary infantry units such as Musketeers and Light Armored Spearmen.

As for the sword-and-shield fighters, this type of unit has become less and less in the Chu army. When there were not many half-baked cavalry in the early days, the Chu army would still use sword-shield fighters as scouting troops, but as the number of half-baked cavalry increased After that, the general scouting tasks were carried out by these half-baked cavalry.

It is worth mentioning that many half-baked scouts are basically former sword and shield players who changed their careers...

When the Chu army was fighting in formation, um, including the Ming army on the opposite side!
When the infantry are fighting in formation, the musketeers, no matter whether you use the birdcrack or the first-year matchlock, they are all used as auxiliary firepower.

When fighting hand to hand, the spearman is the absolute core of close combat.

However, due to the loose formation of the musketeers (arquebuses cannot be lined up closely), it is basically impossible for the musketeers to maintain the formation if they line up alone in hand-to-hand combat, and it is easy to be divided by the enemy, resulting in melee.

But the spearmen are different. The spearmen can be closely arrayed and rely on the formation to fight.

In the formation battle between infantry these days, it often depends on how well the spearmen of both sides perform, and whoever the spearman persuades first will collapse first.

The tactical role of the musketeers is to keep firing to kill the opponent's formation and persecute the enemy's formation as much as possible when the two sides are engaged in hand-to-hand combat, and often fight against the enemy's front row heavy armored spearmen...

At close range, musketeers without bayonets or bayonets generally backed off, relying on pikemen for cover and continuing to fire.

The Chu army is special. The musketeers of the Chu army are all equipped with bayonets. Sometimes they will not shoot at all after shooting at close range. Fight with spearmen.

But this is all based on the fact that the enemy's formation has collapsed and beat the dog in the water.

If the opponent's formation is still stable, then the musketeers of the Chu army will also retreat, relying on the protection of the spearmen to continue to output firepower, until the opponent's formation collapses, and then follow the spearmen to launch a counterattack.

If you look at the tactics of the contemporary Ming army and even the Chu army, you will find that the core of melee combat is still spearmen, and the training of spearmen is not easy.

It's not like pulling a civilian man casually, and then sending out a long bamboo pole can be pulled out to fight.

Without sufficient physical strength, it is impossible for you to hold a spear that is generally [-] meters or even longer for a long time, let alone perform stabbing combat.

The spearmen in the front row are often armored, mostly heavy armor.

Putting on this armor weighing tens of kilograms, and paired with a four-meter-five-meter-long spear, this suit is not light.

And formation battles are not something that can be resolved in a short while, unless it is an emergency encounter, or if it is a regular formation battle, it is normal to dawdle for several hours in the early stage.

If it's a hot day, wearing dozens of kilograms of thick armor and carrying a [-]-meter-long spear, you don't have to do anything else, just standing there for a few hours is not easy.

Not to mention, during these hours in actual combat, the formation will continue to change, trying to gain an advantage through the change of formation, such as forcing the enemy to change formation accordingly. Once the opponent makes a mistake when changing formation, then it will Formation loopholes are caused, and that time is often the time when the battle really breaks out.

This puts very high physical demands on the soldiers, especially those in heavy armor.

Without good physical fitness, just wearing armor and forming an array can exhaust you to death.

Physical fitness is based on training, and training is based on food supply.

If you want to train a group of spearmen with excellent performance and excellent tactical quality, you have to prepare a large amount of food.

And the Chu army can do this, on the one hand, it is not short of money and food, on the other hand, the Great Chu Empire is relatively special, which means that a country has been established, but this country is built on the basis of the army, and the military expenditure of the army can be guaranteed. , no civil servant dares to embezzle military expenditures.

There was the Great Chu Empire before the Township Protection Army!

This relationship cannot be messed up, otherwise, it is very difficult to understand the many seemingly weird policies of the Great Chu Empire.

If the civil servants dare to stretch out their hands for the military expenditure, those violent generals will really stuff the civil servants into the barrel and shoot them out...

In the Chu army, it's not just that the spearmen have good physical fitness and cost a lot of money. In fact, the musketeers also cost a lot.

Because musketeers also need live ammunition training and physical training.

At the same time, in addition to musket shooting training, the musketeers of the Chu army will also conduct melee training.

After all, musketeers can easily fall into melee, so musketeers will specialize in gun stabbing training, especially in melee.

Using spears to fight in melee is a compulsory course for musketeers in the Chu army, and this is also a major feature that is different from musketeers in other armies.

Because the musketeers of other armies basically do not have mature and usable spears or bayonets, the musketeers either directly use the butt of the gun for close combat, or simply use the knife or sword.

No, there is still an army whose musketeers are equipped with spears.

The Chu thief on the other side is doing this, and there is no reason for their new standard army not to do it.

With the spear stabbing, the generals of the new standard army of the Ming army discovered that the melee ability of the musketeers has improved a lot, and they can even be used as short spearmen.

That being the case, those expensive heavy armored spearmen can also reduce some of them as appropriate...

As for their own spearmen being killed by the enemy's heavy armored spearmen, will they be beaten and unable to live independently? Many governors and generals think that this is not possible!

As long as there are guns, the enemy can be killed before the enemy comes. At that time, what the musketeers have to do is to hit the remnants of the enemy who have already finished their queues, and clean up the mess. Stabbing is enough!
Anyway, that's what the Chu thief on the opposite side did. In the many battles between the officers and soldiers and the Chu thief, most of them couldn't rush through, and they were knocked down by the Chu thief's guns.

It doesn't make sense to change to your own new standard army and you can't do it.

We have muskets, which are more than ten and a half long spears of good quality, and they are cheaper...

There are even more musketeers. There are a lot of farmers outside, just grab a batch of them and train for a month, and they will be a group of pink and tender musketeers.

Artillery, although this is a bit difficult, but the Hongyi artillery is not a big problem for the Ming court. After all, the Ming court has been playing with the Hongyi artillery for decades, no matter whether it is a few thousand catties of Hongyi artillery, or a few big The Ming court can imitate the small Hongyi cannon of a hundred catties. As long as money is not a problem, I dare not say more, but it can still be produced if it is less.

Yang Sichang had built thirty or forty field guns weighing two and a half catties or even five catties in Changsha before.
The mobility problem of the artillery has been solved by Chu Bandit for us, just get a two-wheeled gun mount.

As for the funding from Ming Tingqiong's jingle... You can't really count on the imperial court for this!

Yang Sichang Lian Huguang Xinbiaojun did not want a big son from the Ming court... Shi Kefa trained the Anlu Xinbiao Army, and the treatment was better, but he only took more than 3 taels of funds from the imperial court. Zuo Liangyu trained the Xinbiao Army , didn't even bother to ask Chongzhen for funds.

Even if it is not the new standard army, those old soldiers of the traditional Ming army did not rely on the court to live.

For example, the Guanning Army that Wu Sangui belongs to, the money allocated by the court is only a small amount, which is not enough at all. How do they support the army?Cultivate land by yourself, earn some by smuggling and doing business, and grab some when fighting.

Especially when there is an opportunity to enter the customs to fight, it is basically to eat for three years at a time, and it is absolutely impossible to return to Liaodong without earning enough money and food.

This year, Wu Sangui led troops into the customs. For several months, he said he was attacking the Chu thieves, but in fact the Chu thieves didn't even see Mao, and they were only busy grabbing money and food and sending them back to Liaodong.

Nowadays, all the armies of the Ming court, no matter whether they are the new standard army led by civilian officials or the traditional old army commanded by Zuo Liangyu, Wu Sangui and others, they all raise their military supplies by themselves, or ask the gentry to allocate them, or ask the local government to ask for them. Or privately set up a card to collect money, or even do business.

In the end, it is inevitable that the soldiers will take their own money, and even this method is their main source of income.

You see, if we do this, we will have the funds to train the new standard army.

It's just that there is not much money, so we have to save money.

At the same time, part of the money and food will be lost in accordance with the rules, and it will just enter the pockets of officials and generals at all levels.

But money, how much is still a little bit.

And many governors and generals felt that training more musketeers could save money, so they increased the proportion of musketeers without asking children.

Even if they are spearmen, many of them are light armored or even without armor. As for the heavy armored spearmen, they are too expensive, and there are only a few less...

In this way, such a wonderful thing as Governor Yingtian's new standard army and former army came out!
Three thousand new standard troops, in addition to gunners and other troops, among the more than 2000 infantry, almost one thousand are musketeers, and there are only five or six hundred spearmen, and they are still light armored spearmen...

Shi Kefa is planning to temporarily dispatch a group of spearmen from other places to cooperate with them. Otherwise, Shi Kefa is worried that the performance of this new standard army on the battlefield will be worse than that of the traditional old army...

Although the former army of Yingtian Xinbiao Army was a bit weird, Shi Kefa didn't blame him at all, and even hosted a banquet in honor of the generals of Yingtian Xinbiao Army that night.

After all, this is a new standard army anyway. After adding more than 1000 spearmen, about 3000 infantry can be gathered, which is enough to serve as the main force on the battlefield.

More importantly, they also brought more than a dozen Hongyi cannons.

Among the more than ten Hongyi cannons, there are all two-and-a-half-pound field cannons. Well, this thing is currently the most popular artillery in the Ming court. The artillery workshops in the country are currently imitating this thing.

Because this kind of artillery is easier to imitate than they make Hongyi cannons!
The two-and-a-half catty field cannon itself was simplified by Song Blacksmith from the Hongyi Cannon. The overall structure is actually not much different from the barrel of the traditional Hongyi Cannon. It is even easier to cast because the barrel is shorter.

If it is not simple enough, the Great Chu Empire, which was still in the period of the Township Protection Army, only had a few craftsmen, and the skills were too high to make it.

Two and a half catties of iron cast artillery, the technical difficulty of this thing is not any technical difficulty for the Ming court's artillery craftsmen.

In addition to the core barrel, another core component is the gun mount.

As for the gun mount, it is a matter of creativity and a way of thinking.

As for the technical problem, there is a fart technical problem... just a steel shelf.

If it doesn't work, you can use thick wood to make the gun mount instead of casting it with iron. Well, that's what people do in Dongyao.

You can find any carpenter who knows how to build a carriage. As for the carpenter who knows how to build a carriage, it is to make a wooden wheel...

The most critical of these is that the artillery is in the marching state, which is a four-wheeled carriage structure with a steering structure inside.If you let them do this by themselves, you will definitely be caught blind, but the thieves have already done it for you, and you can’t copy it even if you don’t know how to copy it.

The technology is simple, the power is not small, the cost of iron cast artillery is not expensive, and the most important thing is that it can be pulled around.

Ever since, this two-and-a-half catty field artillery was quickly valued by the central plains and southern governors of the Ming court. As for why the governor didn't mean Chongzhen...

Chongzhen didn't know the army under his empire, many of them had already used this kind of field weapon.

The war between the Ming court and the Chu thieves has nothing to do with Chongzhen at this point!
It is worth mentioning that when Hong Chengchou led his army northward this time, his army also brought more than ten field artillery northward!

Although Hong Chengchou looked down on many of Yang Sichang's policies and scoffed at Yang Sichang's behavior of creating a new standard army, he was still very sure of Yang Sichang's imitation of the Chu thief's guns.

Because he did it himself!
In Hong Chengchou's view, the infantry of the Chu thieves was just like that. It was the powerful artillery that really made the Chu thieves invincible.

Especially those portable field artillery can be called field artifacts.

So when he was in Shaanxi, he fought against the Chu thieves' invasion of Shaanxi while suppressing thieves. At the same time, he was also collecting craftsmen's guns imitating the Chu thieves, especially the lightweight two-and-a-half-pound and five-pound field guns that were very suitable for field use.

This time going north, he also brought twelve field artillery, and Zuo Liangyu's troops also brought four two and a half catties field artillery north.

This adds up to a total of sixteen units, just enough to make up an early Chu system, and it is also a field artillery battalion in the current Ming army's new standard army establishment.

In today's southern battlefield, facing the Chu thieves with ninety or even hundreds of cannons at every turn, the Ming army's sixteen two-and-a-half catty field cannons are not enough.

But in the face of the Eastern captivity, Hong Chengchou is confident to teach them a lesson they will never forget!
(End of this chapter)