While Zhang Cheng was still returning to Xuanfu from Henan, he had already sent several teams of sentry riders to go to Liaodong outside Shanhaiguan to explore the terrain and mountains, and roughly compiled a sand table map of the terrain of the western Liaoning Corridor.
After he led the Xuanbei Army through Shanhaiguan, and after more than a month of careful survey, the mountains, rivers, terrain, river valleys and streams were described in more and more detail.
The Xuanbei Army's sand table made all the officials and generals shine. Even Hong Chengchou, the governor of Jiliao, was very impressed. This sand table looked even more shocking than the topographic map of Changling that Zhang Cheng had shown!
With such a detailed topographic map of the sand table, all the officials and generals felt that it was possible to talk about war on paper. Everyone pointed at the sand table with great interest and asked questions.
Zhang Cheng smiled and personally explained the meaning of various marks to Governor Hong Chengchou, General Commander Zhang Ruoqi, Fu Chen Qiu Minyang and other officials, while generals such as Wei Zhice and Zhang Guodong of the Xuanbei Army explained to other commanders and soldiers.
On the sand table, the specific positions of the Qing army's defense lines were marked, which could be clearly displayed in front of everyone's eyes, as if they were seeing it in person.
The trend and position of the trench walls are clear, as well as the artillery positions of the Qing army's various camps. They are also marked. Some of these are the gun positions observed through telescopes, and some are the positions of those who did not close their sentries at night.
Guessed from experience
The Hongyi cannon, which can fire more than ten kilograms of gunfire, is not easy to move after all. It can only be seen in the Qing military camps around Jin, and there are also a few in the mountain passes of the East and West Shimen.
On the mountainside or on the top of the mountain, the Qing military camps were surrounded by some piers and equipped with medium-sized artillery with five- and six-pound cannons, as well as some small artillery such as Folang machine guns and tiger squat guns, which were arranged on the frontier mountain defense line.
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These artillery pieces were similar to the defense line set up by Zhang Cheng on Changling Mountain. They were coordinated with the trench walls, some Han army flagbird cannons, and Tatar bows and arrows.
According to observations, in places such as Rufeng Mountain, Shimen Mountain, and Huangtu Ridge, Han military flags and Korean soldiers holding bird cannons were found stationed on each line of defense.
The real Tatar armored soldiers hold bows and arrows, or broadswords and shields. They set up defenses behind the gun soldiers and use them in close combat. Of course, they are also meant to supervise the battle team.
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At the same time, there seemed to be some crossbows, small trebuchets, mortar cannons and other weapons on various mountains. Judging from the sand table, the Qing army used the wall as a city to defend it, which shows that its defense was not lax.
After Zhang Cheng introduced the Qing army's defense situation on the sand table, he also suggested that when attacking the mountain, it is best for the armies to spread out their formations and make the soldiers as sparse as possible.
In this way, it will not only make it difficult for the Tatar artillery to hit itself, but also prevent the ricochet from causing serious damage. The only problem is to gather the team before rushing into the wall to prevent the Tatars from forming a formation and coming from the wall.
Break out.
This issue of formation conversion is difficult to say, but it is not impossible. The key lies in how each army conducts its usual drills!
For example, according to the "Records of Military Training", when each army forms a formation, trumpets, gongs, golden drums, flag orders, etc. are used to direct each team's armor to come and go and change formations, and to gather and disperse.
If you practice well in normal times, the soldiers in each battalion will change their formations according to the orders of their own troops and follow the trumpet and golden drum and flag orders. Sometimes they are sparse, sometimes dense, and sometimes divided, and sometimes combined, it is not difficult.
Of course, how fast or slow the opening and closing speed is has a lot to do with the eliteness of each army. This depends entirely on daily drills to ensure.
Yang Guozhu, Wu Sangui and other generals naturally had no objections to Zhang Cheng's suggestion. However, Chen Jiugao's Beijing camp was only responsible for firing artillery from behind and did not involve formation changes, so they had no objections.
Furthermore, regarding trench filling and artillery teams, Zhang Cheng also suggested filling earth bags and baskets with soil in advance, and trying to prepare as many trench bridges as possible, so that a large number of civilian convoys would not have to rush ahead, but would be hidden in the trenches.
After the military formation, they suddenly rushed forward to fill trenches and build bridges.
There are also those tools for attacking fortresses, which are not suitable to be concentrated in the front army. It is not easy to make them, but these are sharp weapons for close combat. They are difficult and long-range. They are only useful when charging against the wall in the end.
For artillery such as the Folang machine in the special car camp, you can't move around and fire at the same time and still hit the target enemy, right?
If they can still hit, then it is true that the artillery god is possessed and self-propelled artillery has come to the world. Therefore, these must be hidden behind the front formation and cannot be exposed in front. Just wait until they attack the wall of the Tatar stronghold before launching bombardment.
After listening to the various suggestions put forward by Zhang Cheng, all the generals had some insights, especially the generals in the vehicle camp and artillery camp of each army were greatly relieved.
Marching under artillery fire, everyone was a little frightened.
Mr. Zhang’s proposal couldn’t be better.
After several discussions, it was finally decided that the light tanks from each troop camp would drive at the front of the army, using thickened shields as shields to cover the charge of the soldiers as much as possible.
Of course, even so, there may be heavy casualties, but there is no way. The current Ming Dynasty does not have a tank that can withstand artillery bombardment. Even if there is, it must be quite heavy, and it will be difficult to implement even on flat roads.
, not to mention the battle of attacking mountains and climbing high.
On this point, the commander-in-chief of Xuanfu Town Yang Guozhu, the commander-in-chief Li Fuming of Shanxi, the commander-in-chief Wu Sangui of Ningyuan, and the commander-in-chief Tang Tong of Jizhen all considered this. Even Cao Bianjiao and Wang Tingchen, who were responsible for the feint attack on Huangtu Ridge and Songshan Ridge,
He also nodded with a serious look on his face.
In a war, there will definitely be casualties, and there is nothing we can do about it!
However, Chen Jiugao, the commander-in-chief of the front camp of the Shenji Camp, also hesitated when Zhang Cheng made the next suggestion.
His suggestion was to ask the soldiers of the Shenji Battalion to push the artillery as close as possible, especially to the two key places of East and West Shimen, to bombard the fire road piers and enemy towers built on the mountainside and mountain passes as much as possible.
Suppressed the artillery fire of the Tatars.
In the past ten years or so, the Ming Dynasty spent huge sums of money to build a large number of piers and platforms in Liaodong, typically one pier for three miles and one pier for five miles. Especially those enemy towers, most of which were two-story hollow enemy towers covered with bricks.
The height is about three to five feet, and the surrounding width varies from twelve to seventeen to eight feet. The middle floor is empty, with arrow windows on all sides. The upper floor is built with oars, surrounded by crenels, mostly made of large stones.
Made of bricks, very strong.
Songshan Fort was originally one of the eight forts outside the pass. There were also many such piers built in the surrounding mountains. On weekdays, hundreds of towers were set up with varying heads to guard, watch and convey the enemy's situation.
However, the Qing army had besieged Jinzhou for a long time, and the fire road piers and enemy towers around Songshan Fort had long been captured and used as lines of defense for the Qing army.