I want to be emperor

Chapter 522 Shanhaiguan Front Line ([-] in [-])

Lieutenant General Song Qilin, Chief of Staff of the Third Army, pointed to the map on the wall and said:

"According to the group army reform plan at the end of last year, our Northeast Campaign Command was changed to the Third Group Army. The first-class divisions, second-class divisions, cavalry brigades, independent artillery regiments and other troops originally deployed in Shanhaiguan, Jizhen and other lines, except for three The second-class divisions with poor combat effectiveness and no mobile combat capabilities were handed over to the Hebei Garrison Command, and the rest continued to belong to our Third Army!"

"At present, these troops are organized into four armies, three cavalry divisions, one field artillery brigade, and one heavy artillery brigade."

"The four armies are the Sixth Army deployed on the front line of Jizhen, the Eighth Army and Ninth Army deployed in Shanhaiguan, and the Seventh Army deployed in the Liaodong Peninsula."

"The three cavalry divisions, the [-]st Cavalry Division, the [-]nd Cavalry Division, and the [-]rd Cavalry Division are all deployed on the front line of Shanhaiguan."

"The two independent artillery brigades are both on the front line of Shanhaiguan."

"At present, the Seventh Army in the direction of the Liaodong Peninsula has landed on the Liaodong Peninsula last fall. It is currently stationed at the Jinzhou Defense Line, the Changsheng Island Defense-Fuzhou Defense Line. It has two first-class divisions, one standing second-class division, and one The Independent Heavy Artillery Regiment held back at least 7 soldiers from the east, including at least [-] enemy cavalry and more than [-] long-barreled artillery."

"The Sixth Army deployed in the direction of Jizhen is slightly weaker. It only has one first-class division, two standing second-class divisions, and one cavalry brigade. Like the Seventh Army, it lacks enough cavalry troops. The offensive combat capabilities in the direction of the plain are greatly restricted, which is a typical case of more than enough defense and insufficient attack.”

"And the troops deployed in the direction of Shanhaiguan are the main attacking troops of our army!"

"Both the Eighth Army and the Ninth Army have three first-class divisions, including the First Division, the Tenth Division, and the No.11 Division of our army's ace troops."

"Three cavalry divisions are also deployed on this line. Each cavalry division has two cavalry brigades, and each cavalry brigade has two cavalry regiments. The number of cavalry in each cavalry division has reached more than [-] cavalry. In addition, each cavalry division also has a cavalry artillery regiment with twelve cavalry cannons of two and a half catties and twelve cavalry cannons of five catties as fire support; A cavalry and baggage regiment of more than [-] men."

"The three cavalry divisions add up, and we can pull out more than 1 cavalry for front-line combat, 72 cavalry artillery, and more than 6000 heavy soldiers to provide them with rapid supply tasks."

"The cavalry unit will cover the advance of the army after we advance eastward, intercept the enemy cavalry's attack, and ensure that the army passes through the open plains safely and directly reaches the enemy's city."

"Two artillery brigades, of which the second field artillery brigade has a nine-pound field artillery regiment with a three-battalion system and a total of 36 artillery pieces, and a 24-pound howitzer regiment with the same three-battalion system."

"The third heavy artillery brigade has a heavy howitzer regiment with 24 48-pound howitzers and a heavy artillery regiment with 24 [-]-pound cannons."

"So far, our army has concentrated two main forces, six first-class divisions, three cavalry divisions, and two heavy artillery brigades on the front line of Shanhaiguan."

"In addition, there are command forces directly under the command of the group army, including the third heavy pontoon and bridge regiment, the third heavy engineer regiment, the third military police regiment, and the third guard regiment."

"Most of the above-mentioned troops have been fully staffed, and those who have vacancies are expected to be fully replenished before the end of March."

"By April, before the planned eastward march, our army will be able to gather 13 people in Shanhaiguan."

Speaking of this, Song Qilin looked around and said: "The above is only the strength of our army, and this battle will not only involve our army, but also colleagues from the Guards. When the time comes, our two armies will fight together. Next General Qian, Chief of Operations of the Guards, please introduce the situation of the Guards!"

As he said that, he turned his gaze to the side of the meeting room, who was dressed in a different color from the army generals present, and nodded slightly to the middle-aged man.

Immediately, a middle-aged man in the uniform of a black general of the Guards stood up!

The color of Army officers' uniforms is mainly dark blue, while the combat uniforms of soldiers are mainly gray. Even on the cloth face armor, the exposed layer of cloth is also of the same color, so it can be worn on the battlefield. I saw a piece of Chu army in gray...and except for the trousers with military divisions, they kept it clean and tidy as a whole, so there were no messy shootings such as seams of other colors, solid color military uniforms and trousers. Color, and then add an epaulette so there is no other extra color.

The color of the military uniforms of the early guards was the army uniforms directly used, dark blue for officers and gray for soldiers.

However, since last year, in order to reflect their uniqueness and show that they and the army are not a family, the Guards have adopted new uniforms designed by the Guards themselves.

The military uniform style of the Guards has not changed much. The regular uniform is still a right lapel cross-collar top, which is different from the uniform short hem of the Army. The Guards adopt seasons and regular uniforms.

Continue to use short and long swings for summer casual clothes, and the length of the jacket only reaches the crotch;
As for the autumn and winter regular clothes, everything else is the same as the summer style, but there is an extra coat, and this coat has a long hem. To keep warm, but also to be more handsome...

Except for the long hem of many winter uniforms, the other styles have not changed much.

But the change in color is relatively large. Although the Guards continued to use the two basic colors of gray and blue, they also incorporated the red of the Ming Army, and changed the design of the army’s trousers and jackets to the same color. , to match the two colors.

The soldier's uniform is based on gray, but the jacket has a collar and cuffs with red seams.

Officers' uniforms are of various designs. The summer suit follows the dark blue design of the army's officer's uniform, but the trousers are changed to gray trousers of the same color as the soldiers, but the gray is darker.

In addition, in the winter uniforms, the officers will be allotted a pure black double-breasted coat!
This kind of coat is made of woolen material. When it first appeared, it was actually designed and worn by Luo Zhixue. For a long time, the pure black double-breasted long coat became Luo Zhixue's exclusive coat, and there were basically no courtiers. Dare to learn...

The officer's winter overcoat issued by the army is the traditional color of the army: gray!

The navy uses navy blue, but although the navy's uniform is also blue, it is lighter, which is different from the army's dark blue, so you can still see the big difference.

As for the guards, at first they wanted to use taupe coats, but when Luo Zhixue saw the color scheme of the guards' uniforms last year, he thought it was a bit ugly, so he simply asked them to use black.

The long and wide coat should be black to look better!
This is the suit that Lieutenant General Qian Tai, the Chief of Operations of the Guards, is wearing now!
Slim dark gray trousers, long riding boots, a dark blue cropped right lapel collar top, and a pure black double-breasted long hem coat on the outside.

Pinned to the neckline is a golden coat of arms with a dragon pattern wrapped around a peony flower. This is a unique coat of arms for Guards officers. The peony is the national flower, and the dragon pattern represents the emperor's guard.

After Lieutenant General Qian Tai stood up, he did not point at the map like Song Qilin, but directly said to the other army generals present: "Part of the main force of the Second Guards Division of our Guards has arrived. , the [-]th Cuirassier Regiment and the [-]th Heavy Artillery Regiment have arrived in Tianjin before, and are currently on their way, and are expected to arrive in ten days. In addition, the [-]st Guards Division of our Guards will arrive by sea soon!"

"It is estimated that before April, our guards will gather 5000 troops on the front line of Shanhaiguan, and cooperate with the army colleagues to launch the Liaoxi campaign!"

The Guards had few troops, and in this Northeast Campaign, the Army was the main character. Whether it was the Guards or the Navy, they all cooperated with the Army, so Qian Tai didn't say much.

However, several cavalry generals of the army in the arena were very interested in the Fourth Cuirassier Regiment that Qian Tai was talking about.

Immediately, someone asked, "Brother Qian, is your fourth cuirassier regiment the heavy cavalry regiment you mentioned last time?"

"Didn't you say that the war horse is not easy to solve? How did you get it out?"

"And what about this breastplate?"

Hearing people's inquiries, Qian Tai immediately said: "Well, it's the heavy cavalry regiment I mentioned before, but it's not considered heavy cavalry, they are equipped with breastplates that only cover driving, so we took Called Cuirassiers!"

"The year before last, our guards were ordered to build a heavy cavalry unit, but you all know that because of the lack of good horses, our heavy cavalry unit has never been able to build up. Later, after we took Shaanxi and Gansu, we did not I got excellent war horses from Yarkand!"

"These war horses from the Western Regions are in much better conditions than Mongolian horses. The shoulder height can generally reach about 1.3 meters five, and some of the excellent war horses can reach more than 1.4 meters!"

"His Majesty specially ordered that more than 600 of the excellent war horses were allocated to us for the formation of the heavy cavalry unit!"

"However, after some experiments, we found that the traditional full-body heavy armored cavalry, coupled with horse armor, is still too burdensome for these war horses, and if there is no horse armor, only soldiers with full-body heavy armor will not work. .”

"Just at the end of last year, the Ministry of Industry produced a batch of steel plate armor, and we made them into breastplate armor. Although the protective area is small, the protection of the torso is still quite good. In the There is no problem blocking bullets at a relatively long distance."

"And the weight is not too big, it won't affect the mobility too much!"

"This kind of cuirassiers still use the three-year-style cavalry flintlock, and they can dismount and use muskets in infantry. However, their main task is still for shock combat, because they are the first in our army to use cavalry as their main weapon. cavalry!"

"When charging in formation, the impact ability of these cuirassiers is very powerful!"

When Lieutenant General Qian Tai said about the Fourth Cuirassier Regiment of the Guards, the corners of his mouth could not help but curl up into a smile.

Because this cavalry unit was formed by him in charge, it has been tossing around for more than a year, but because there has been a lack of suitable horses, it can only use Mongolian horses for training in the past.

It was not until the end of last year that the Fourth Cuirassier Regiment formally switched to better Central Asian horses and began to be equipped with breastplates with better protection.

The impact ability of this kind of cuirassier is quite good, and more importantly, under the premise of ensuring a certain protection ability, it also guarantees excellent maneuverability.

According to Qian Tai's idea, when this kind of cavalry meets the armored cavalry of the Dongyao people, um, those cavalry wearing armor on Mongolian horses, they can take advantage of their own mobility to wear down the physical strength of the enemy's horses, and then Then dismounted and fought on foot, the formation fired with flintlock guns, and bombarded his mother with the light cavalry carried with the army.

If it is not easy to fight, just get on the horse and leave. Anyway, those Dongyao cavalry who are riding Mongolian horses and are still in armor will not be able to catch up.

If you encounter those unarmored light cavalry, it is riding and shooting in the traditional sense.

So what else is there to say, directly list the dense formation and rush over, directly use the lance to solve the opponent, and it is strictly forbidden to use the pistol!
The cavalry in the entire cavalry regiment had no cavalry attached to them at all, so they fired pistols.

Now the top cavalry generals of the Chu army, including Qian Tai, don't have a good impression of cavalry pistols!
A few years ago, when the Suifa pistol first came out, the cavalry of the Chu Army were quite excited, thinking that they had found a weapon that could resist cavalry and shooting, but later found that this thing was unreliable...

If you play semi-circular tactics, you can only fire one shot, and the volley from the opposite side can shoot out several arrows in one breath. At this distance of 30 meters, muskets and bows are actually similar in lethality, so the power of pistols It's not bad, but the armor-piercing heavy arrows in Dongyaoren are equally powerful, and the pistols with extremely low firepower projection are not as good as bows and arrows.

The most important thing is that when the cavalry of the Eastern Captives saw that you were playing Suifa, they even wanted to engage in some kind of semi-circular tactics. They would basically charge forward with their sabers or spears, and they would not play semi-circular combat for you at all. Chance to shoot...

When the Chu army fought in the Jiangbei and Central Plains in the early days, the pistol cavalry they created suffered a lot!

In the end, the embarrassing unit of pistol cavalry had to be abandoned, and instead the three-year cavalry flintlock was shortened from the two-year flintlock.

This time, the Chu army directly used their half-baked cavalry as horse-riding musketeers on the spot, and His Majesty even appointed this kind of cavalry as dragoons.

Not to mention, the dragoons are pretty easy to use. On the surface, these are cavalry... But when fighting, people dismount and fight, and then form a tight line formation, often with several doors behind them The two and a half catty cavalry guns.

The traditional cavalry and archery cavalry of the Ming army on the opposite side will feel very awkward when encountering this kind of dragoon cavalry...

If you use a bow and arrow to shoot at these dragoons, they can shoot from a hundred meters away, which is very powerful.

However, the armor-piercing ability of bows and arrows at a longer distance is not enough. However, the dragoons of the Chu army basically wear light armor all over the body. There is no problem with bows and arrows at medium and long distances.

And if you want to get closer, when you come up to a distance of 30 meters, there will be a lot of casualties, and when you finally come up to a distance of 30 meters to shoot arrows, people have already charged with bayonets!
Can't shoot at each other, just rush over?

With your toes, you know that the cavalry can't directly attack the dense array of infantry... When the dragoons dismounted and fought on foot, they were all elite musketeers, attacking their lines, and the elite grenadiers of the assault infantry. Lines are no different.

It's not easy to charge into the formation, and it's not easy to shoot at each other, so the Ming cavalry at that time had a hard time fighting.

Of course, this kind of discomfort is only limited to the Chu army's dragoons dismounting in advance to fight on foot... If the Ming army or the Dongyao cavalry find an opportunity to charge directly while the dragoons are still on their horses, the Chu army's dragoons will be killed immediately. Fight one and lose... because they are half-baked cavalry, and fighting on horseback is not their strong point.

In addition, this limitation is also based on the fact that the cavalry of the Ming army had to take the initiative to attack the dragoons who dismounted and lined up in advance.

If the cavalry of the Ming army did not take the initiative to attack, then the dragoon cavalry could do nothing but wait passively or retreat on horseback, or engage in long-distance pursuit.

The pursuit distance is getting closer, and you still have to worry about someone killing a carbine!

But in any case, mounted infantry such as dragoons was already the best solution that the Great Chu Empire Army could find in the early days.

But as time passed, especially after more and more cavalry were trained, the regular cavalry of the Chu army gradually increased.

In addition to the traditional salvo cavalry that directly accepted various surrenders in the early days, a number of hussar brigades trained by themselves were also formed. These hussar brigades are to some extent an enhanced version of the dragoons and are also equipped with three-year cavalry Shotguns, sabers, pistols, and light bust armor.

They can dismount and use the three-year-style cavalry flintlock guns to fight on foot, and at the same time they can mount their horses and charge directly with sabers!

This kind of hussars is actually the cavalry unit of the Chu Army and the Guards, a cavalry unit that has been painstakingly built in the past two years!

After that, the army and the Guards also want to engage in heavy cavalry!
This kind of heavy cavalry does not refer to the existing hussars of the Chu army, or the armored cavalry in Dongyaoli, or the original Liaoxi iron cavalry in the Eight Banners of the Han Dynasty. These cavalry seem to be armored, but in fact they are limited by the load-bearing capacity of the horses. , all wearing light armor.

The definition of heavy cavalry by the upper echelons of the Chu army is the kind of full-body heavy armor similar to heavy-armored spearmen and sword-shieldmen, the kind of armor that weighs dozens of catties.

They even prepared the style of the armor in advance, that is, steel plate armor, a big iron can, and by the way, put horse armor on the horse, and let the heavy cavalry take a cavalry spear three to four meters long, List a dense formation and rush forward, the impact must be very powerful!

It's a pity that they couldn't do it because of the limitation of war horses. Even after getting this batch of Central Asian horses, they still couldn't do it...

In the end, I could only make a simplified version of the Cuirassier Lancer!

Qian Tai is looking forward to the fourth cuirassier regiment being able to unleash the power of cuirassiers plus lances, so that he will have enough reasons to convince others, His Majesty, and expand the scale of cuirassiers.

In his opinion, cuirassiers are the future!
Those hussars wearing light busts that look like paper are useless at all.

And the heavy cavalry that many high-level people in the army dream of, that is, the heavy cavalry dressed like iron cans, and the horses are also covered with horse armor, is even less egg-like. It was almost the same before it appeared, but now...wearing so heavily and walking slowly, it is a live target for shells!
Maybe other riflemen can run after you, and then give you a few rounds of volleys!
In the future, there must be cavalry wearing breastplates!
With moderate protection and sufficient mobility, it is simply the cavalry with the best combination of protection and mobility in the gun era.

With the cavalry gun, although the impact force is not as good as the traditional heavy cavalry, it is not comparable to the light cavalry like the hussars.

But, the Fourth Cuirassier Regiment is the first cuirassier in the Great Chu Empire, and even the first Lancer, and this cavalry was first established in Jiangbei before, and later it was brought to Xi'an for training and changing clothes The Central Asian horse, after changing clothes and undergoing adaptive training, ran to Tianjin and prepared to fight in Shanhaiguan.

This cavalry unit has never been on the battlefield, and even because of time constraints, they have not even conducted a coordinated exercise.

Therefore, most of the others are still skeptical about the actual combat effectiveness of this cuirassier.

Even Qian Tai himself, although he was full of confidence, was actually in a quandary.

-

Others in the Army were also interested in the [-]th Cuirassiers of the Guards.

Just like the guards have been groping for cavalry, the army has also been constantly thinking about improving the combat effectiveness of cavalry, in order to be able to fight against the large number of cavalry under the control of the Dongbang people.

Even if there are no Dongren, there will be Mongols, and all kinds of people from the Western Regions, they basically have no shortage of cavalry!
But for the Huaxia Dynasty in the Central Plains, the cavalry is a relatively embarrassing unit. It knows that it is very important, but it cannot train a large number of excellent cavalry due to the lack of a large number of qualified war horses!

Therefore, I can only find a way in other aspects.

For example, the Song Dynasty used heavy armored infantry, powerful crossbows and even the earliest firearms, etc., all of which appeared to fight against the northern cavalry.

The Ming Dynasty was an extreme... They inherited a large number of horses left by the Yuan Dynasty, so their cavalry in the early and middle stages were very powerful, and they could directly beat the Mongolian cavalry...

There is actually only one kind of arms against cavalry since ancient times, and that is cavalry!
The cavalry in the early Ming Dynasty fully reflected this point!
But after being weak, the Ming army could only think of other ways to fight against the cavalry, and they really found it, that is the car artillery array created by Qi Jiguang...

This set of things is quite useful against the nomadic cavalry in the cold weapon era. It can be attacked and defended, and it once suppressed these nomadic cavalry.

It wasn't until the Dongyao people came out with armored heavy infantry... I didn't play tricks with you, I just rushed up and chopped...

Then...then the Mingbian army's car artillery array knelt down!
Later, the Dongyao people had heavy armored infantry with one hand and Mongolian cavalry with the other hand. They beat the Ming army so hard that they didn't even dare to leave the city.

But these changes were all in the era of cold weapons and the era of primitive combination of cold and heat.

And now...whether the Chu army or the Dongyao people have mounted the long-barreled artillery on wheels and directly dragged it to the battlefield as a field artillery.

Therefore, whether it is cavalry, the tactics against cavalry have also undergone tremendous changes!

But no matter how it changes, there is one core point that will not change. Well, at least it will not change until the tank comes out, and that is the best unit to fight against cavalry, and it will always be cavalry!

Not infantry, not machine guns, always cavalry!

The core here is not something like impact, but mobility!

Mobility is the core element of cavalry!

(End of this chapter)