Chapter 283 Zheng Guoben (Twenty-six) 'Knowing the Soldiers'
As soon as Gao Pangshi finished saying this, Cheng Wen shook his head and said: "Rixin, although I am far less knowledgeable than you about military affairs, on this matter, I feel... you may be worrying too much."
Gao pragmatic was indeed a little surprised and asked: "How can you see it?"
Cheng Wendao: "I didn't know anything about military affairs at first, but in recent years, because the Ministry of Household Affairs has always been supervising the handling of ordnance-related matters, I have heard some methods of musket warfare from various parties. For example, Ye Bangrong of the Confederate Army once came to receive military training.
Thirty thousand muskets, and I discussed the musket battle with him.
According to what he said, this musket confrontation was the most clumsy. It was just that the two sides set up their fronts, kept getting closer, and kept shooting at each other. No matter how capable the soldiers on both sides were, they were not allowed to use it at will at this time, and could only forcefully fight on the front line.
The comrades fired the gun together and loaded the gun together.
As for the success of this battle, it depends on which of the two sides can maintain military discipline better, withstand the opponent's firepower, withstand the constant casualties, and defeat the enemy's front line with a river of blood. As long as the opponent collapses, our own side will naturally collapse.
It’s a victory...is that so?”
Gao pragmatic nodded and said: "Musket formation versus musket formation, that's probably it."
"That's right." Cheng Wen also nodded and said: "So in this kind of fighting, the comparison is military discipline, morale, firepower, and shooting speed. But in my opinion, if the above are similar,
, then in the end it will be a competition of whoever has more guns and more people... whoever has the most guns will win."
Gao Pragmatic was startled, and said to himself: This seems to be true, but it also seems to be correct nonsense. If you want to say that both sides have similar levels in other aspects, then of course the side with more troops has a greater chance of winning. Just like everyone has
They are musketeers, they are all in arson, fighting a decisive battle on the plains. If I have 20,000 soldiers and you only have 10,000 soldiers, then of course I will kill you.
But before Gao Pangshi had time to express his affirmation, Cheng Wen laughed and said: "Although I don't know why this musket can only be used so stupidly, but if that is the case, then the Mongols and the Ming Dynasty will have a musket fight. They will naturally
I suffered a big loss."
When he said this, Gao Pragmatic immediately understood what he was going to say.
Sure enough, Cheng Wen raised his chin and said: "What was the most annoying thing about the Ming Dynasty's battles with the Mongols in the past? It was just that victory was not a big victory, and defeat was a big defeat. Why is this? Naturally, it's because I can't run on two legs.
four legs.
Our army was victorious, but the Mongols turned their horses and ran away. Our army could not catch up, and could not even grab many heads. It was obvious that many were wounded and killed, but in the end, when the results were counted, there were more than a hundred heads.
Not many games.
Our army was defeated, let alone that. The Mongolian army's cavalry broke through in the middle, and the cavalry on both wings covered them up. Our defeated army scattered in all directions but could not escape. They were tortured and killed like cats playing with mice, and thousands of troops were lost at every turn, even more than ten thousand.
few.
However, if Chahar changes his tactics and dismounts his horse to fight with muskets, their cavalry advantage will be gone, and our army will no longer have the disadvantage of "a victory without a big victory, a defeat with a big defeat".
At the same time, since the musket battle is very stupid, then as I just said, the fight in the end is nothing more than one person with many guns and many guns... Hey, I still don't believe it, Chahar can fight in this aspect
Exceed my Ming Dynasty!"
Gao Pragmatic was quite surprised. He really didn't know that Cheng Wen, an innocent civil servant, had become "soldier-savvy" and could actually understand the core behind the stupid tactic of "queuing up to shoot".
That's right, with the "line up to shoot" tactic, as long as the musket manufacturing technology is similar and the training level and military discipline of the two sides are not too different, then the final comparison is really about which side has "more people and more guns", because this tactic is essentially
It's just a stupid tactic to waste money.
In his previous life, Gao Pragmatic had seen many war movies and TV shows from the Queue to Kill era. For example, in a movie from the American Revolutionary War, both the Continental Army and the British Army stood neatly and fired fiercely at each other without dodging bullets.
It seems that the tactics are extremely dull.
At that time, many people in the comment area found it unbelievable, and thus had many questions. They wondered why the tactics of both sides could not be more flexible, why they did not spread out or dodge, why they did not lie down or dig trenches, but just stood there and were beaten. Isn't this looking for death?
?How come there is such a stupid tactic? Isn’t this just made up by the movie?
In fact, the war scenes of musket shooting in that era were real, so it was nicknamed "queuing to kill". In the era of musket shooting in line, due to the low hit rate of front-loading muskets, you have to shoot at a distance of 100 meters.
When aiming at a certain person, whether or not you hit a target depends completely on luck. Even at 50 meters, you cannot achieve accurate shooting. Even at 30 meters, you may not be sure of hitting the target.
Therefore, the tactic at that time was to arrange the infantry into the tightest line formation and strive to achieve the maximum firepower density. In this way, according to the probability, even if you miss the original target, you may still hit the target next to it.
Some unlucky guy.
In this way, a volley fired from too far away is meaningless. The probability of it flying or hitting the ground is too high, so whoever fires first will suffer. An experienced commander will definitely ask his troops to get as close as possible to the enemy before launching the first attack.
They fired volleys in rounds, wishing they could put their muskets in the enemy's face and fire volleys.
And this is because the rate of fire of the musket is very low, and it takes a very long time for soldiers to fire again after firing once. At the beginning, it took one or two minutes to fire again after each shot. Later, after many improvements and upgrades,
Then the time for loading and reloading was gradually reduced step by step.
Of course, from another aspect, because the smoke generated after the black powder is fired is too strong, the party that shoots first will be basically shrouded in smoke after several rounds of shooting, and the target will not be visible at all. Therefore, it is crucial to grasp the key points during the battle.
Yes, you can clearly see several rounds of enemy volleys.
Therefore, the tactics usually adopted by a well-trained side are to advance in a neat line while enduring a large number of casualties, get as close as possible to the enemy's line, fire at the closest distance, and strive to use three to four rounds of relatively accurate shooting.
The victory of a battle can be determined by defeating the enemy's military formation and then carrying out a bayonet charge depending on the situation.
This chapter is not over, please click on the next page to continue reading! Some people say, why not get a shield in the front row? This is because even the smallest projectile of the less powerful Chinese matchlock gun (bird gun) is 14 mm in diameter
lead bullets, while flintlock muskets were much larger.
The two more famous ones are the Lobster Soldier's Brown Bess flintlock gun, with a caliber of 19 mm, and the French 1777 flintlock gun, with a caliber of 17.5 mm. Within fifty or sixty meters, the huge kinetic energy is enough to hit a target.
It can break all shields used by individual soldiers, even the shields of heavy shield vehicles like the Eight Banners of the Qing Dynasty.
If there is something that cannot be broken... maybe it is feasible to thicken the shield shield of the sidecar made by Qi Jiguang, but this puts forward high requirements on the production of fine iron and steel. Moreover, in this way
The requirements for the heavy-duty side-van truck in terms of marching and selecting combat locations are bound to be much stricter, its combat adaptability will definitely be greatly reduced, and its operability is really not good.
Some people also say, why not equip soldiers with plate armor?
First of all, a set of plate armor is very expensive, more expensive than recruiting, training and arming several musketeers. Some people have calculated that the weight of plate armor that can block flintlock rifles cannot be endured by the human body.
Secondly, the penetrating power of a flintlock gun within tens of meters can shatter any plate armor suitable for human beings. Moreover, if you are hit by a lead bullet from a flintlock gun while wearing plate armor, the damage caused will be much more serious than if you were not wearing armor.
.
Iron armor torn by bullets will aggravate the severity of gunshot wounds, so after the popularity of muskets, armor was quickly eliminated. Correspondingly, the elimination of armor also gave infantry the ability to maneuver. After the infantry gained intensive and sustained firepower, they
You are not afraid of the frontal charge of the cavalry and can stand calmly in formation.
It is also because of this that in the cold weapon era, the cavalry that needed the coordination of arms to be restrained can now be defeated by infantry with flintlocks and bayonets. A great advantage of the flintlock is that it is a unified tactical weapon.
Then some people say, can't soldiers lie down on the ground?
The answer is indeed not possible. We are still in the era of muzzleloaders. If soldiers lie on the ground, generally speaking, they cannot reload. Therefore, large-scale light infantry in dispersed formations did not make sense until the invention of the Mini bomb. That is
It is said that after the invention of fixed-loading ammunition, lying down became a meaningful tactical action.
Of course, the standard musket Wanli II currently used by the Ming army is more advanced than the Lumi gun sent by Jinyiwei this time. The most obvious advantage is that the Wanli II specifically made adaptive improvements to the paper shell fixed charge.
This allowed the Ming Army musketeers not only to charge faster and more accurately, but also to use a kneeling posture to charge, thus forming a "double-three-stage" shooting with two levels of high and low on the battlefield, alternating forward. Simply put,
That means the firepower density is doubled.
In short, no matter what, in the flintlock era, what was most needed in queuing to be shot was discipline. All other clever and whimsical ideas were basically seeking death.
This tactic requires considerable military organizational ability, individual soldier quality, and willpower, otherwise the team may collapse after the first salvo. The old army often emphasizes personal bravery and despises discipline, and basically cannot meet this requirement.
, to the point where he doesn’t even have basic laning abilities.
Therefore, the cruel tactic of "queuing up to kill", which has a very high battle loss rate, requires very high discipline and morale of the entire army. The British Red Shirts who did this better were nicknamed "Red Shirts" in later generations because of their red uniforms.
For the "Lobster Army".
Although the name is a bit funny, during the war at that time, the "Lobster Army" at its peak was often confident that the opponent would shoot first, or get into a very close range and then shoot.
At that time, the British army's requirement for its own army was that it must not retreat until the battle loss rate exceeded 50%, because the collapse of one row of lines could easily lead to the collapse of the entire rear row of lines. To meet such a standard, the army's
The degree of training can be imagined.
People in later generations often say that only countries with established national ideas and soldiers who know who to fight for can achieve such military discipline. In fact, this is only half right at best.
An army that knows who it is fighting for can certainly achieve such military discipline, but who can say that everyone in the European army during the colonialist era had the consciousness to fight for the country and the people? Isn't this nonsense?
In fact, most of the time, as long as the money is in place - at most, the future is in place, and coupled with strict and even strict military discipline, most armies can do this.
The only question is, how much money is enough to be called "money in place".
According to Gao's pragmatic experience, the answer is: when a soldier's income can be twice or more than that of ordinary people, and the pension and pension benefits are so generous that even if he is disabled or even killed in combat, his family members, especially
If the children can reach adulthood with sufficient food and clothing, then in this era it can be said that "the money is in place".
However, in fact, for now, only the Southern Xinjiang Garrison and its elite armed servants in the Ming Dynasty can be said to have patted their chests and said that their army has "money in place". The officers and soldiers of the Ming Dynasty cannot generally do this.
At this point, only the direct lineage troops of individual generals and a very small number of special armies - such as the Imperial Guard - can achieve this.
"If we only talk about the decisive battle between the Chinese army, it is indeed true, but this is not how it is calculated." Gao pragmatically smiled, but shook his head and said: "The Chinese army fights on foot with muskets, so it does not necessarily mean that the two wings must be defeated.
The same method was followed. The Mongols were famous for their cavalry and archery, so these two wings could continue to use cavalry. In this way, if the Chinese army won, their cavalry could still kill them from both sides, but they were more vicious than before.
If the central army is defeated, these two wings of cavalry can also be used to cover the pursuit of our army. Whether they charge at the two wings of our central army's formation, or attack from the side, or bite the tail, they will all cause serious harassment to our army's pursuit.
.So, how can we assume that they will give up the use of cavalry?"
After hearing this, Cheng Wen couldn't help but look bright, realizing that he still "didn't know how to fight" compared to Gao Pragmatic. According to his guess just now, it was just a subtraction, thinking that the Chahar tribe had used the cavalry in order to use firearms.
The advantage was simply thrown away, and instead it moved closer to the Ming army model. In this way, it was natural to use one's own shortcomings to attack the enemy's strong points.
According to what Gao Pragmatic said, Burihatu would only choose to make additions, that is, while maintaining the advantage of the cavalry, he would create an additional Chinese army musketry infantry formation to face the Ming army's musket and bayonet formation head-on.
.
After all, the Chahar tribe has tried it several times. Even if they use the most elite heavy cavalry to attack the bayonet array of the Ming army, they will only die. Since all the original tactics have failed, of course they have to
Come up with new tactics to deal with the bayonet array of the Ming army's central army. Otherwise, would you retreat when you see the Ming army?
Now that Cheng Wen was enlightened by Gao Pragmatic, he thought about it, thought of a question, and quickly asked: "If this is the case, how much advantage does our Chinese Army have compared to the Mongolian Chinese Army? And what about the two wings? How many advantages does our Chinese Army have over the Mongolian Chinese Army?"
We spent millions of dollars on cavalry in 2006, how does it compare to the Mongolian cavalry now?"
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PS: The holiday ended yesterday and work started today, so I started coding a bit late. This chapter is not as early as the first chapter yesterday. Correspondingly, it seems impossible to code the second chapter before 0 o'clock.
I'll try my best to work the late shift to get out, but the time may vary, so please forgive me.
