Chapter 281 The Returned Japanese (3) Chasing the Japanese Army
It takes a lot of time to send letters to Japan during the war. During this time, other things will naturally not stop, such as the war in southeastern Korea.
When the Japanese army's plan to sneak attack Sichuan failed, and the Kuroda Army hoped to return to Japan on the condition of stopping fighting in Korea, the main force of the Japanese army led by Hidemoto Mouri and Hideie Ukita finally bypassed Mashan guarded by Liu Wei and ran eastward.
Liu Wei originally tried to stop him, but after he sent out his troops, he hesitated. It was not that he, a fierce general, suddenly became timid, but that the art of war had something to say: Therefore, when using troops, don't face high hills, don't turn against hills on your back, and don't follow from the north.
Do not attack sharp soldiers, do not feed bait soldiers, and do not contain soldiers when they return to the enemy. This is exactly the same as "Do not contain soldiers when they return to the army".
The so-called "Don't contain the army when it returns to the enemy" means that if the army is returning to its home country or main stronghold, you should not contain it. To put it simply, if the enemy army is defeated and wants to go home, you should not stop it at this time.
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Why? If you stop him on his way home from defeat and block his retreat, then the enemy who has no way to retreat will fight you desperately. At this time, the enemy is originally defeated, but you are forcing it to a life-or-death situation.
Regardless of whether you die, the momentum of fighting desperately will be very strong, but your morale will be affected, making it difficult for you to win.
The most typical example is Cao Cao's expedition against Zhang Xiu. Cao Cao led a large army to conquer Zhang Xiu, but was unsuccessful and prepared to retreat. At this time, Liu Biao sent troops to help Zhang Xiu and cut off Cao Cao's food and grass.
Suddenly, Cao Cao was attacked from both sides, so he quietly transported the baggage at night and set up an ambush, waiting for Zhang Xiu to pursue him. The next day, Zhang Xiu pursued him, and was attacked by Cao Cao's ambush. Zhang Xiu was defeated.
After the war, Cao Cao said to Xun Yu: "The thieves prevented me from returning to the army and killed me. That's why I know the victory."
However, although "Don't contain the enemy when they return to the enemy", Liu Wei did not intend to do nothing. It is also what Sun Tzu said in The Art of War: When the army returns, don't contain it; when the army is surrounded, it must be blocked; when the enemy is poor, don't force it. This is the way to use troops.
Don't chase the enemy when you are poor, this is useful here - note, it does not mean don't chase after the enemy when you are poor.
Don't push when the enemy is in dire straits, that is to say, when the enemy is in a desperate situation, don't rush to close in, and don't push the enemy into despair. The so-called "a cornered beast still fights" and "a dog jumps over the wall in a hurry", really push him and the enemy to fight to the end, and perish together. Isn't this not worth the gain?
This idea is actually consistent with "Don't stop when you return to the teacher".
Therefore, when the enemy enters a desperate situation, you don't have to force him, but you must not not chase him. The so-called "hitting him back" means chasing after the enemy when he retreats, so as to achieve greater results.
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The Mongolian cavalry has dominated the world for hundreds of years. The reason why they can achieve a small defeat when they lose and a big victory when they win. The second half of this "win is a big victory" is because they can use their unparalleled mobility to chase the defeated enemy.
The army continued to strangle and slowly but surely continued to bleed the enemy until they were completely destroyed.
However, Liu Wei's cavalry was very small, and it was difficult to chase the Japanese troops who were eager to escape back to Busan. Therefore, Liu Wei simply betrayed Li Rumei, "the Marquis's brother-in-law", and sent a messenger to urgently notify Li Rumei of the Japanese army's movements.
Li Rumei's entire cavalry army was originally chasing the Japanese army all the way south, harassing and attacking them all the way. However, due to Kuroda Rushui's plan, they accidentally let the Japanese army escape for a period of time, which led to the surprise attack on Sichuan by the Japanese army.
Come.
It turned out that Kuroda Rushui had tried so hard to plan this plan, but Li Rumei was unaware that even Gao Pragmatic could understand it. However, this incident made Li Rumei very angry.
This time he went south to fight in Korea again. It was the first time that he led an army alone outside of the command of his father and brother. He also directly took orders from Gao Pragmatic, his uncle who was known to be victorious in every battle. Naturally, he wanted to prove himself.
Who would have known that he, who had always performed well before, would actually fall off his game at the most critical moment, and almost threaten the safety of his uncle and brother-in-law. Is this something Li Ziqing could bear? So Li Rumei had been holding back her anger for a long time and had to take good care of herself.
Export bad breath.
Now that Liu Wei's information has been sent, what else can Li Rumei do to be polite? Of course, he will immediately send troops to pursue him.
He was also a general who was familiar with the art of war. He also knew that when returning to the army, do not contain the troops and do not press against the enemy. Therefore, he adopted the most common pursuit style of cavalry chasing infantry. The specific fighting method was completely based on the teachings of his father Li Chengliang.
When Li Chengliang was engaged in pursuit battles, especially when cavalry was chasing infantry, he usually used fine cavalry to quickly approach, shoot arrows at a distance first, and then forcefully rush to kill after approaching, and then quickly divide into two wings to maneuver, that is, return to the main formation.
At the same time, another group of fine cavalry from behind came forward again, and continued to fight according to this pattern. After fighting the two wings, they circled back to the main formation. This cycle continued, and the number of cavalry was divided into several groups to execute this process according to the number of cavalry on the side.
tactical actions.
There is no doubt that this is a pursuit wheel battle. The purpose is not only to kill the enemy's effective forces, but also to cause panic to the enemy - the rear army is constantly harvested by the enemy's cavalry, round after round, the front army and the middle army are
No matter how determined you are, sooner or later your morale will collapse.
This style of play can be regarded as the Liaodong version of the Mongolian cavalry pursuit battle. It mainly adds the element of forcible charging into the formation, because the Mongolian cavalry will not charge into the formation until the end of the stranglehold, and often just shoot arrows in the countless previous waves.
The reason why the Liaodong cavalry chose to join the charge is naturally because the Li family's cavalry is well-equipped. The opponents they faced in the past, whether they were Jurchen tribes or Mongolian cavalry, were inferior to them in terms of defensive equipment.
The advantages are very obvious.
What about facing the Japanese army now? In fact, it's almost the same. They also have the advantage.
Except for samurai, the Japanese soldiers often have no armor. Even if they do have it, they are mostly bamboo armor or even armless bamboo armor. They are not worthy of being killed by Liaodong cavalry. However, the Japanese army is quite different from the Jurchens and Mongolians. The main difference is that the Japanese army
It has an iron artillery team, also known as an arquebus team.
This chapter is not finished yet, please click on the next page to continue reading the exciting content! This kind of army with muskets can pose a threat to the Liaodong cavalry. Although the shooting and reloading speed of the Japanese iron cannon has lagged far behind the Ming army, but again
In any case, at least one volley can be fired before the Liaodong cavalry rushes forward.
A round of salvo can also cause some damage. If you are facing the Mongolian cavalry that has been unwilling to kill more people because of its huge population disadvantage in the past many years, in fact, such a threat of damage may make the Mongolian cavalry voluntarily give up the front.
Charge into battle.
However, for the Ming Army cavalry, especially the elite Li Jiajun cavalry, this was not a problem.
First of all, here are the advantages of defensive equipment. The half-armored cavalry still has good protection against the lead bullets at this time. If the hit part is relatively "positive", it may even only cause impact damage instead of penetration damage.
Most of them are not fatal. Occasionally, if the attack is not so "positive", and because the location is most likely not a critical point, it is also not fatal.
Of course, if you are very unlucky and hit the eyeball, throat, etc., you will probably not survive, but... the probability is obviously very low.
The second is the advantage of pensions. Since the beginning of the Ming Dynasty's military system, servants have acted as the actual main force. Not only is the phenomenon of military pay and benefits very serious, but there is also a huge disparity in pensions.
Unlike the guardsmen who want to run away when faced with a slight disadvantage in the battlefield situation due to low pay and pensions, the servants' will to fight is still relatively firm.
They were rewarded heavily for their meritorious service, and generous benefits were given to those who died or were disabled in battle. This is equivalent to when gambling, if you win, it goes to you, but if you lose, the banker gets away with it. This obviously makes many people not afraid of sacrifice.
After all, this is the era of feudal monarchy. Human life has a price. When the price is high enough, some people are willing to sell their lives and safety in exchange for something they think is more important, such as decades of comfort for a family of young and old. What’s more, as mentioned above
Well, when the equipment advantage is great, it is actually quite difficult for a well-trained sergeant to die in battle.
Precisely because he knew his own advantage, Li Rumei moved very quickly and caught up with the main force of the Japanese army the next day.
In fact, to be honest, when Li Rumei had just received the order to go south to pursue the Japanese army, he was not worried about a decisive battle with the Japanese army. He believed that there were two situations in this matter, one was whether he was willing to fight to the death, and the other was whether he could win the decisive battle.
Whether they are willing to fight a decisive battle or not, the initiative does not lie in the hands of the Japanese army. The composition of the Japanese army is complicated. Generally speaking, its mobility is relatively average. The only advantage is that Japanese soldiers in this era are more able to endure hardships and can grit their teeth and persist in emergency marches for a long time.
However, even so, the Japanese army could not force Li Rumei and nearly 30,000 cavalry to fight in a decisive battle. If Li Rumei was willing, the decisive battle could be fought, but if Li Rumei was not willing, the decisive battle would definitely not happen.
Whether he could win or not was the main reason why Li Rumei was unwilling to fight a decisive battle with the Japanese army. He felt that it would be difficult to decide the outcome with only about 30,000 cavalrymen in a decisive battle with the Japanese army.
The reason is not complicated. This cavalry has no artillery. The cavalry alone may not be enough to form an advantage like "30,000 can kill 90,000".
Originally, the two magic weapons for the Ming army to defeat the Japanese army were artillery and cavalry. Although muskets also had advantages, at least they were not to the extent that "no one has it but I have it." Now that I am lame, thinking about it, one versus three is obviously not that big.
Got it.
Having said that, Li Rumei's biggest worry before was not whether he could beat me, because he was a cavalry. If the battle situation was not good, he could withdraw from the battle at any time and just run away. Can the Japanese army still chase me?
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Gao Pragmatic has calculated before that the most elite infantry can actually catch up with the cavalry within a certain period of time, but there is a big problem here, that is, the cavalry can turn back and attack at any time. But as an infantryman, you have to wait until the cavalry turns back.
Whether you can complete the formation during a wave becomes the biggest problem.
In this era when musketeers can only perform line-up and kill tactics, there is a high probability that they will not be able to complete line tactics. Therefore, generally speaking, infantry is still inconvenient to forcefully chase cavalry. I am afraid that we can only wait for the era of machine guns to completely change this situation.
The arrival of the machine gun cannot even be an early machine gun - it is too heavy. It has to be a large-scale installation of machine gun units that can be decentralized to squad tactics after the weight is reduced.
So, what was Li Rumei worried about before that made him just harass and attack along the way? What he was worried about was battle damage.
Cavalry is inherently expensive, and servant cavalry is especially ridiculously expensive: a war horse originally cost more than twenty taels of silver, but now the price has dropped a bit in recent years (because Eastern Mongolia was directly recovered and Mongolia essentially became an economic colony).
Still need sixteen to eighteen taels.
Personnel training is also expensive. The cost for the Mongols to train cavalry can be regarded as zero, but the final cost of a qualified Han cavalry is thirty or forty taels of silver. This does not include the time cost, otherwise it would be a few
In terms of food and drink during the annual training, the cost of training this cavalryman may be fifty taels.
How should I put it? The Han cavalry of this era is like the air force pilots of later generations. It is really not just someone who can be found to serve as a pilot. They must spend a lot of money to train them.
Last but not least, Li Rumei did not dare to let the Li Jiajun's cavalry suffer any big losses again. Needless to say, Li Rusong's losses in the battle at Bi Tie Pavilion did not seem to be large, but they almost shook the foundation of the Li Jiajun.
Of course, most of the Li family troops under Li Rumei's command are not direct descendants of the Li family, but there are still a thousand direct descendants among them, and these thousand cavalry are still direct descendants of Li Rumei himself.
This is not all, the remaining thousands of Li family collateral cavalry cannot suffer serious losses easily, otherwise it may cause a crisis of trust and make various collateral generals (Li Cheng, Liang Jiading or subordinates with other surnames) suspect that the main family is "cutting down the vassal".
This further alienated the Li family, affecting the internal unity of the Li Jiajun and weakening the overall strength.
As for the Xuanda Cavalry under his command, it is certainly impossible for Li Rumei to regard them as more important than his direct lineage or collateral lineage. However, after all, Ma Gui is a highly pragmatic direct line general, and he cannot be unreasonable when people trust the Xuanda Cavalry to him.
The matter was lost in vain, otherwise it would obviously be impossible to explain.
This chapter is not over yet, please click on the next page to continue reading! Therefore, Li Rumei knew that although he was unlikely to defeat this battle, there were still many things to pay attention to. Of course, as long as he did not fight the Japanese army forcefully,
In a decisive battle, it doesn't matter no matter how ferocious the pursuit is.
Since the Japanese army is "returning", as long as you don't pretend to annihilate them all, you can't force them to fight to the death. What's more, the composition of the Japanese army is complex, and they all have their own plans when facing pursuit, and they often can't make full use of it.
The strength he deserves - this he has already proven in previous pursuits.
After catching up with the Japanese army, the situation turned out to be as Li Rumei expected. During the first pursuit, the Japanese army used Nabeshima Naomobu to block the rear. As a result, the Ming army was in the stage of "gathering in one go" and the fight was not "complete" in the first place.
Naoshima Naoshima's Fourth Army suffered heavy losses (his son Nabeshima Naoshima had not yet returned to the organization) and almost collapsed on the spot.
As a last resort, the Japanese army quickly sent Konishi Governor's Second Corps to fight in place of the Fourth Corps. However, the Ming army seemed to be fighting vigorously, so the Liaodong cavalry retreated and was replaced by the Xuanda cavalry.
There is already a competitive relationship between the Xuanda Cavalry and the Liaodong Cavalry, but this will not be significantly improved because of the upper-level alliance. Therefore, when the Xuanda Cavalry saw that the Liaodong Cavalry was performing well, they naturally refused to be outdone and charged forward.
Hit hard.
This is really hard on Commander Konishi. He and his regiment were originally the regiment of the Japanese army that was most feared by the Ming army. When they saw the Ming army cavalry, they lost courage, and now they are angered by the Xuan Da Jingqi.
The fierce attack in this style soon became unsustainable. Not only was it retreating steadily, but it was even on the verge of collapse.
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ps: I remember I posted it last night, but it wasn’t until I turned on my phone at noon that I realized I hadn’t posted it. It was embarrassing. This chapter was from yesterday, yesterday…