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Chapter 1406 Everyone is here

The Cossack cavalry retreated 10 kilometers, and the Ming army did not take the opportunity to leave the city. The two sides remained facing each other across the distance for two days, and then another cavalry force rolled in from the west, kicking up dust everywhere.

"Commander, the Tsar's army has arrived, and their numbers are currently around 1."

The Cossack cavalry played a crucial role, driving away the Kazakh herder cavalry from west to east near the Syr Darya Valley and eliminating the Ming army's spies. It was only because hot air balloons were available that the origins of the enemy remained unclear.

"Which teams are they?" But Huang Taiji was not satisfied with the general numbers and wanted to know more details.

In fact, he didn't need to ask; the lookouts would call out names one by one. Utilizing over a decade of trade exchanges and the dispatch of envoys, the Imperial intelligence system diligently collected political, military, and economic intelligence on all countries and regions in the world, much like a sponge. The Russian Tsarist Empire was one of the most heavily infiltrated.

It is no exaggeration to say that the people in the advisory office and the football team who were specifically responsible for analyzing Russian intelligence knew more about every corner of the country than the Tsar himself, and could even recite the full names of more than 160 counties and more than 20 governors.

To help more professionals quickly grasp these details, the advisory office, together with the General Staff, drew on the Navy's warship atlas system and also created a set of atlases of various national branches of service for the army. At this moment, the lookout was using a large telescope to look at the atlases and identify them.

"Moscow Rangers...Smolensk Rangers...Vladimir Carbines...Tula Heavy Cavalry...Ryazan Rangers...Astrakhan Dragoons...Kazan Light Cavalry...with artillery wagons, number unknown!"

Before long, a series of shouts came from the direction of the hot air balloon, which eventually reached the ears of the chief commander's staff, and were then relayed to Huang Taiji and the two commanders.

In fact, Huang Taiji could roughly understand the series of voices relayed over without needing his advisors to relay them. Why not use flag signals for long-distance communication? The content was too complex to be suitable. The flag signal system that Hong Tao developed was borrowed from Morse code and combined with Chinese Pinyin letters, which could express relatively complex sentences.

However, this only applies to commonly used combat vocabulary. Due to the characteristics of Chinese, where one sound can have multiple characters and one character can have multiple sounds, it becomes particularly troublesome when expressing less commonly used words, especially transliterated words. For example, Smolensk is not difficult to pronounce when reading the text, but it is very easy to confuse when expressed using pinyin.

"...Commander Ma, when do you think His Majesty, with his cultivation level, will be able to create a magical artifact capable of transmitting sound over a thousand miles?"

Huang Taiji was also speaking from the heart. He felt that with the emperor's supernatural powers, even his physical body had ascended to heaven. He could easily take mortals to heaven with him. It didn't seem like a difficult thing to use a little magic to make communication farther and clearer.

"Commander Huang, you guessed right! My nephew told me that the professors at the Royal Academy are helping His Majesty with this thing, but instead of calling it 'Thousand-Mile Transmission,' they call it 'Telephone.'"

It seems like things are starting to look promising. They can communicate with the palace from the Royal Academy laboratory, and every word can be heard clearly!
"If we could put this on the battlefield, it would be amazing to use it in conjunction with hot air balloons. If either side gets desperate, just give the call, and troops can be deployed at any time. I'd dare split a thousand-household commander into twenty parts, and it would be flawless!"

As the saying goes, experts see the details, while laymen only see the spectacle. To Ma Lan, Huang Taiji's description of communication methods sounded like a military marvel, no less powerful than a new type of field artillery that could fire shells from the rear and be fired in an instant. It could increase combat effectiveness several times over without increasing troop numbers.

And it wasn't just idle talk; there was evidence to back it up. A younger member of the Ma family was studying at the Royal Academy and participating in related research. They had chatted briefly during a visit to Beijing for the Spring Festival, and the Ma family spoke with absolute certainty. "Shop dialect? You're not talking about the official gazette, are you? What's the use of that? It's not even as good as a newspaper!" Huang Taiji had no idea what electricity was and had never even heard of it, so he naturally misunderstood.

"Hey, Commander Huang, you should learn more new things. This electricity is not that kind of shop, it's... I really can't explain it, but it's invisible and intangible yet very useful." Ma Lan was a bit better than Huang Taiji, and probably had heard about the concept of electricity from her nephew, but she wasn't yet at the level to explain it clearly to others.

"If you say it's useful, then it's useful... Have you noticed that the Russian soldiers are a bit strange?" Huang Taiji didn't really care whether the phone could transmit sound over long distances; he was pondering a rather peculiar phenomenon.

"Strange...carrying cannons? That's not unusual. I heard from the General Staff that they've sold them a lot of muskets and cannons over the years, supposedly to fight the Swedes and Poles, and they seemed to be quite effective. Who would have thought that one day they'd end up getting themselves into trouble!"

Ma Lan raised her binoculars to take a closer look, only to find that the distance was too great to see anything clearly. All the intelligence she had gathered so far came from what the lookout had just told her; aside from the unit flags, the most valuable piece of information was the discovery of artillery.

"We anticipated this without the General Staff reminding us. Did you listen carefully just now? Did you notice where these flags came from?"

Huang Taiji shook his head, not thinking that the enemy possessing some artillery was a big problem; that was something he had considered before making the plan. But there was one situation he hadn't considered, yet it happened.

"Where are you from? Commander, are you testing my geography?"

Ma Lan still didn't perceive any difference. The Russian Tsarist army was in a period of transition, with a rather chaotic military system. It included old-school aristocratic private armies, new-school state standing armies, tribal militias, and foreign mercenaries. Flags and names only represented their origins and a portion of their combat capabilities.

“You would fail the test anyway! If I remember correctly, apart from the Smolensk Shooting Corps, all the other corps are from the east and south, right?” Hearing Ma Lan going further and further into the past, Huang Taiji got tired of playing riddles and directly voiced his question.

"...You guys can't just be advisors for nothing. Give me your opinion on whether Commander Huang is right or wrong!"

This really hit Ma Lan where it hurts. He was the worst at geography in school, and almost failed. Even now, this deficiency hasn't been corrected. Without a map, he can't even figure out the location of many places in the Ming Dynasty, let alone Europe.

However, being thick-skinned has its advantages. Instead of admitting his poor geography skills, he turned his attention to the several chief staff officers standing to the side, insisting that they hadn't done their jobs properly.

"Forget it, don't bother asking them. I'm pretty sure these flags are from the right place. Let me ask you another question: who are the best fighters in the Russian army?"

The staff officers, clearly unfamiliar with Russia and not even carrying any maps, exchanged bewildered glances. Then Huang Taiji spoke again, this time asking a question.

(End of this chapter)