Chapter 014 The difference between severity and severity
Gao Pragmatic's plan for the reform of the Ming Army was "step-by-step" like other reform plans. The main idea was to first ensure the advantage of light weapons firepower, and then consider heavy firepower.
Of course, this idea is not a decision made on the head, but based on the problems that have arisen in history.
The power of heavy artillery such as the Hongyi Cannon was indeed huge in this era, but in the historical Ming-Jin wars, their effect on the Ming side was actually very limited.
If the Hongyi cannon is used in field battles, it is heavy and heavy, inconvenient to transport, and the damage is concentrated in a small area. It cannot play a big role in the face of flexible cavalry; if it is used to defend a city, its real effect is not actually
The killing efficiency lies in boosting morale. If the morale of the Ming army did not collapse as it did in history and had been beaten to the point where they did not dare to take the lead, then even without this cannon, they could actually hold on.
And if Houjin adopts a long-term siege strategy, then even the Hongyi cannons will be useless. Although in this case, it will actually return to the ultra-low efficiency of sieges in the cold weapon era, but as long as it can be won, it can still be proved
The Hongyi cannon itself is of little significance in defending the city.
Historically, Zu Dashou defended the Daling River and Jinzhou, besieged the city twice, and finally surrendered. He only gave a large number of well-made Hongyi cannons to Hou Jin in vain.
There is a record of this in the history of Chinese firearms: “The heavily-armed Ming army from Zu Dashou’s tribe, which had been besieged in the Daling River for nearly a hundred days, surrendered in Kaicheng in October of the fourth year of Chongzhen (1631) because the food in the city was exhausted.
Dashou was defeated and fled to Jinzhou. According to a report from the Ministry of War of the Ming Dynasty on November 19th of that year, there were 3,500 artillery pieces of various types such as red barbarian artillery, prisoner-killing artillery, and general artillery in the city, as well as various military guns and miscellaneous firearms.
A large amount of gunpowder and projectiles were all owned by the Hou Jin Army."
Yes, you read that right, that’s 3,500 artillery pieces of various types!
Even for modern warfare, this is a very large number. As a result, due to the idea of containing an isolated city implemented by Yuan Chonghuan, Sun Chengzong and others, which is the so-called stupid suicide strategy of "relying on a strong city and using cannons", such a huge scale
The artillery cluster was given to Hou Jin for nothing!
These cannons were of little significance for defending the city, but once they fell into the hands of Hou Jin, they became the most powerful helper in breaking the city. The Ming Dynasty was equivalent to spending a lot of money to manufacture and give them to Hou Jin.
The sharpest weapon in your city.
Well, it is true that there is Kaishen Logistics behind us and Yuan Da Yuan before us.
During the Battle of Songjin during the Chongzhen period, Jinzhou was besieged. The Ming Dynasty had to let Hong Chengchou take all his belongings: an army of 130,000 to aid Jinzhou, but was besieged by Hou Jin to rescue Jinzhou. The siege of Jinzhou was not solved, and these ten
The final mobile force of tens of thousands, a field group, was actually besieged in Songshan itself.
When attacking Tashan in the final stage of the Battle of Songjin, the Qing Dynasty Heshuo Prince Zheng Jierharang and Dorobele Duduo ordered the Qing army to line up red barbarian cannons on the west side of Tashan City. On April 8th, they used red barbarian cannons to bombard the city walls.
, the next day the city wall was blasted open by more than 20 feet, and the Qing army's infantry and cavalry swarmed in and wiped out more than 7,000 Ming troops in the three battalions in the city. At dawn on April 21, the Qing army bombarded Xingshan City with red barrage artillery, destroying it.
The city wall was 25 feet long, and the Ming army opened the city and surrendered.
So you see, facts have proven that heavy artillery is so unreliable in doing these things. The so-called cannons fight mosquitoes, and that's nothing more than that.
Therefore, Gao Pragmatic always insisted that the most needed weapons for the Ming Dynasty to fight the northern cavalry were not the Hongyi cannons, which were heavy and difficult to transport, but mines, grenades, and various types of infantry muskets with fast firing rates and large areas of damage.
, there are also single-stage multi-shot rockets with Ming characteristics and various flexible and mobile light artillery.
These firearms have always been the strengths of the Ming Dynasty's firearms, and some are even far ahead of the West at the same time. If the Ming Dynasty, with limited financial resources, made full use of the power of these local firearms and continuously improved and innovated, it would be of great help to the later Jin Dynasty.
That's the biggest threat.
Even if we do not improve the advanced muskets that we are pragmatically striving for, we will only further improve mines, thief-killing grenades, and various flamethrowers to increase their power and ease of use, equip troops on a large scale, and strengthen border defense.
, strengthening the individual combat capability is enough to make the Houjin Cavalry unable to survive, but it is much more practical than heavy artillery.
Under difficult conditions and crude equipment, Mao Wenlong was good at using landmines, which already caused heavy damage to Hou Jin and caused him to complain endlessly. If this type of weapon is fully strengthened and widely used, it is conceivable that Hou Jin will not be able to do anything at all.
No chance to jump around.
What artillery piece did Qi Jiguang equip most to the Qi Army in history? The Tiger Crouching Artillery was a light artillery, not a heavy artillery piece like the Hongyi Cannon.
Therefore, only what suits you is the best. Greedy for bigness and fierceness, that is the guiding ideology of naval artillery. How can the army copy this operation?
Having said that, we have to improve the second stage of pragmatic development of artillery: Army heavy artillery and Navy heavy artillery.
Of course, high pragmatism for things like heavy artillery does not mean that they will not be developed, but that they will only become the main development direction after light artillery is enough to form a crushing advantage in at least the Greater East Asia (which can also be called the Greater China sphere of influence).
And even so, the highly pragmatic heavy artillery development plan did not allocate too much weight to the army's heavy artillery, because there was not much demand in this area - he could not think of any strong city fortress within the Greater China sphere of influence that contained Hongyi artillery.
It can't be taken down, let alone the improved Hongyi cannon of the Ming Dynasty.
In his plan, heavy artillery was mainly deployed in two directions:
The first is naval ship-borne heavy artillery, which is the only way for naval development. Especially in a few years, Western colonists will set off a craze for Eastern colonization. At that time, once the two navies come into battle, they will not only compete with ships, sailors, and commanders
, is even more powerful and efficient than heavy artillery. Therefore, the development of naval ship-borne heavy artillery must keep up and must not fall behind, otherwise it will suffer big losses.
The second is the coastal defense fortress heavy artillery, which is one of the key weapons for the development of coastal defense. Historically, why has Lushun Military Port been hailed as a natural naval "holy port" by some military fans? The reason is that the terrain advantage of Laohuwei in Lushunkou is too great.
After the fortress guns are built in Laohwei and Huangjinshan, the fortress artillery firepower on the east and west sides can completely block the entry and exit of Lushun Military Port. Even if the own fleet is at a disadvantage and cannot leave the port to fight, as long as the two sides of Laohwei are blocked, the enemy ships in the outer sea can only be dumbfounded.
, just looking at the harbor and sighing.
The performance of the Japanese army in history also proves this point, especially during the Russo-Japanese War. Under the premise that the Russian army was unlucky and unlucky, the Japanese army fought around a Lushun military port that was cut off from foreign aid for nearly a whole year.
The premise for all this is the fortress artillery position.