I want to be emperor

Chapter 523 The Enemy Is in the Judgment Department ([-] in [-])

The Fourth Cuirassier Regiment, which many people were looking forward to or curious about, finally arrived at the front line of Shanhaiguan on the seventh day of March.

However, they did not directly enter Shanhaiguan City, but stationed at a place about four kilometers north of Shanhaiguan, which is also the main area where other guards are stationed.

The defense zone of the Third Army was not talking about a mere Shanhaiguan City, but a long defense line extending from the Bohai Sea to Jizhen, which was several hundred kilometers long.

It's just that the troops in the Shanhaiguan area are relatively dense.

But this kind of density is only relatively speaking. In the Shanhaiguan city and the surrounding area for a few kilometers, that is, in the relatively flat terrain at the eastern end of the Liaoxi Corridor, the total deployed troops are only about 5... mainly the Ninth Army and the The troops directly under the group army.

To the north of the Ninth Army is the defense area of ​​the Guards.

To the north of the Guards is the defense area of ​​the Eighth Army.

The above-mentioned three together, spread about [-] kilometers, with Shanhaiguan City as the core, the Great Wall as the support, and many small and medium-sized cities and fortresses along the way as the support.

After the arrival of the Fourth Cuirassier Regiment, many generals from nearby friendly forces also came to look at it.

The main reason is that the name of the heavy cavalry is too bluffing...

Even if the cuirassiers are actually just a simplified version of the heavy cavalry, they are not heavy cavalry, and their assault capabilities on the battlefield are unmatched by light cavalry.

There are not too few cavalry in the Chu army, mainly traditional cavalry and archery cavalry and dragoons, and there are also hussars who have just appeared not long ago.

And these cavalry are typical light cavalry!
What is light cavalry, that is, cavalry with poor protection ability...

Although the cavalry of the Chu army paid more attention to protection and basically wore armor, their armor was very thin, even thinner than the light half armor of the musketeers!
This kind of half-body light armor is also resistant to medium and long-range bows and arrows, and even relatively close heavy arrows cannot be protected.

This kind of light cavalry is basically unreliable for battlefield assault operations.

Of course, it’s not just the Chu army. The cavalry of the Eastern Captives on the opposite side, whether it’s the cavalry of the Manchu Eight Banners, or the Liaoxi cavalry in the Han Eight Banners, or the cavalry in the Mongolian Eight Banners, are actually this kind of light cavalry. Soon, they didn't even wear fake armor like this... As for the heavy cavalry in the traditional sense, they didn't have any either!
On the one hand, the traditional oriental classical heavy cavalry is no longer suitable for the battlefield, and secondly, the cost performance is too low and the cost is too high.

The most important thing is that the horse is not good enough, which leads to a flawed mobility!
The Fourth Cuirassier Regiment of the Guards is actually a compromised unit that actively reduces protection capabilities in order to ensure mobility.

This is still in the case that the horses assigned to the Fourth Cuirassier Regiment are all excellent Central Asian horses.

The Central Asian horses assigned to the [-]th Cuirassier Regiment of the Guards are not bad. They are all excellent war horses imported directly from the Western Regions by the Great Chu Empire, and then carefully selected hundreds of war horses. Yes, but one out of ten is still no problem.

In a group of Central Asian Mali with a shoulder height of more than 1.3 meters five, this group of excellent war horses with an average shoulder height of 1.4 meters was selected.

This height at the shoulders is already comparable to the Arabian horse, which is the most suitable as a war horse among the original horse breeds.

In fact, horses bred in Central Asia are generally of Arabian blood.

These Central Asian horses have an average shoulder height of 1.4 meters, and some outstanding ones can even reach a shoulder height of 1.4 meters. They are much better than Mongolian horses in terms of load-bearing capacity.

Therefore, these war horses can actually support cavalry in heavy armor to fight.

Not to mention these excellent war horses, even the Mongolian horses used by the Dongbang people can still select a batch of excellent war horses to serve as mounts for heavy armored cavalry, but in the case of small horses and large carts, their maneuverability is very poor That's it.

Using a Mongolian horse as a heavy cavalry horse, you can hardly expect it to be able to sprint for a few hundred meters with a cavalry wearing dozens of kilograms of armor...

The batch of Central Asian horses used by the Chu army is also in a similar situation. They can barely be used as heavy cavalry, but they are very restrictive and seriously affect their mobility.

This is unacceptable to Chu Jun.

Therefore, the generals of the guards, that is, Lieutenant General Qian Tai and other cavalry generals, once thought about it, they simply abandoned their heavy armor.

Of course, there are several other reasons for the Guards to completely abandon the full-body heavy cavalry.

For example, even if one wears full-body heavy armor, even if this kind of heavy armor is the latest plate armor produced by the Ministry of Industry of the Great Chu Empire, it still cannot stop muskets... let alone artillery.

Because the weight of soldiers is limited, this means that the weight of the armor can only be controlled to a certain extent, and when the weight is limited, the larger the protective area, the thinner the armor can only be made.

If the plate armor is thin, it will naturally be unable to block bullets.

As for why there is no better plate armor, because the smelting strength of the Great Chu Empire is just like that, but steel plates that surpass the times cannot be produced to process plate armor. Now the Ministry of Industry has started small-scale production, and limited equipment or elite infantry are also It is the plate armor of the Grenadier, which is made of steel, which is actually average...the hardness barely reaches the level of low-carbon steel, and at the same time contains a lot of impurities. If you use modern technology to observe, you can even find Too many air bubbles.

If this kind of broken material is placed in the 21st century, no one will want it if you produce it. If developers dare to use this kind of material to build houses and bridges, they will be arrested...

But... in the middle of the seventeenth century, this kind of garbage is definitely a high-end material!

If it can still be mass-produced on a large scale and the price can be controlled, that would be even more remarkable.

In fact, even the Daye Iron Works, the most technologically advanced iron smelting plant in the Great Chu Empire, could not lower the price of this low-carbon steel in mass production.

How did the Daye Iron Works produce this kind of low-carbon steel, and still achieve a large output, and began to use it in the production of plate armor?

What else can be done, if the technology is not good, it depends on the scale!
The Daye Iron Works was based on the original small-scale manual production model, and then changed most of the repetitive and monotonous processes to machinery. Now it can expand production with limited skilled craftsmen.

As for the cost, it was much higher than handcrafted in the early days, but now it can be barely equal... As for the lower price than handcrafted, there is no need to wait.

Because the cost of labor is cheaper than machinery these days... If you use machinery to mass-produce, it is cheaper to get thousands of skilled craftsmen to forge iron.

The problem lies here, Daye Iron and Steel Works can't find it, and it can't train so many skilled blacksmiths!
As for why the Chu Army didn't use better stainless steel... It was still because of the mass production problem. If the steel with a little rubbish can barely replace manpower with mechanical equipment, it can be directly piled up with mechanical quantity for violent mass production.

But fine steel, this thing cannot be mass-produced... For details, you can refer to the various knives used in the industrial system of the Great Chu Empire. Although the materials used for these knives are the same from the perspective of later generations... But it is already this era The best steel ever.

How are these steels with the best performance produced?
They are all handcrafted by top skilled craftsmen bit by bit. The craftsmen use their rich experience to control the quality.

As for the experience, touch and even intuition of top craftsmen, you can't replace them with simple machinery, at least with the current processing level of the Great Chu Empire.

Even in the 21st century, many parts of precision machinery are handmade... For example, the lithography machine for making chips that Chinese people are very concerned about has lenses inside.

And this kind of ultra-high-precision lenses are processed by those old engineers in Zeiss who have been playing with lenses for decades, using advanced equipment bit by bit...the output is extremely low.

The same equipment is given to other ordinary engineers, and he still cannot process such top-level lenses.

Although the times are different, things are different, and even the standards are different, the essence is still figured out.

As far as the Great Chu Empire is concerned, these things that cannot be mass-produced are destined to only be used in some special industries, and cannot be used in industries that cannot be mass-produced.

National defense products are all mass-produced. If you make something that cannot be mass-produced, it doesn't make much sense to the Chu army with hundreds of thousands of troops.

And those plate armors that can barely reach the level of low-carbon steel, if they want to be fire-resistant guns, they must be very thick, at least six or seven millimeters, or even higher.

However, making a full-body armor with such a thickness would be too heavy, and neither soldiers nor horses could bear it.

Therefore, the reluctant problem for the Chu army is to either reduce the protective area or reduce the thickness of the armor.

As for these two routes, the Chu Army actually advanced...

The elite grenadiers and hussars of the army, in fact, have also begun to equip small batches of new armor, that is, plate armor.

Of course, it's not the head-to-toe iron cans that the knights in those TV movies wear, or an ordinary plate armor.

Among them, the grenadiers are equipped with a full-body plate armor, which is relatively thin and has a large protective area. Overall, the protection performance is much better than that of the previous wrought iron full-body armor, but it still cannot block bullets at medium and short distances.

For the hussars, a small number of units are equipped with light half-body plate armor, which is as thick as the grenadiers, but because of the smaller protective area, the weight is also lighter.

The breastplate of the Fourth Cuirassier Regiment, because it gave up more protective area and focused on the protection of the front torso, was thicker, and the thickest part in the middle reached seven millimeters.

It can effectively resist medium and long-distance bullets.

If it is a bullet at close range, many live ammunition tests have shown that most of the time it will be penetrated, even if it is not penetrated, but the huge impact of the bullet will also cause the plate armor to dent, which in turn will cause trauma to the human body.

The purpose of this kind of breastplate is very simple and pure, it is to be able to block medium and long-distance bullets.

As for the protection against cold weapons, it is actually not as good as the light half body armor of the hussars. Although the light half body armor of the hussars is as thin as paper, it is no problem to block bows and arrows at ordinary distances. And the like can also be prevented, and at the same time, the protection area is larger. In addition to the torso, it can also protect the cavalry's hands and thighs.

Unlike the breastplate, there is only a single piece of plate armor on the torso, and only the front is thick, while the breastplate on the back is very thin.

The hands and thighs are also not protected.

However, the reason why the [-]th Cuirassier Regiment is still equipped with cuirassiers is that the senior guards believe that the future... no, now it is the world of guns.

Except for some aboriginal dicks, who would be foolish to use bows and arrows, swords and spears!

Even on the opposite side of Dongyao, they used matchlock guns and artillery on a large scale.

In this case, bullet protection is even more important.

As for the protection against cold weapons, the opponents use swords, spears and bows and arrows. Are you still foolish enough to ride a horse and rush up to fight with them?

You won't be fucking the fuck with cavalry guns and cavalry flintlocks from afar?

The Ming army decades ago knew how to use firearms to deal with cold-armed troops... Qi Jiguang was pulling light artillery and three-eyed guns and other firearms to hang and beat Mongolian cavalry.

It doesn't make sense that the Chu army's cavalry units are as mentally retarded. They have to give up the advantage of firearms, and then rush forward to play hand-to-hand combat with enemies who only have cold weapons!
Especially when the firepower of the cavalry troops of the Chu army is abnormal!

Among the three cavalry divisions on the front line of Shanhaiguan, each cavalry division is assigned to a cavalry artillery regiment, equipped with 24 cavalry guns of two and a half catties and five catties. This firepower can directly hit the frontier army in Qi Jiguang's era. Fight other armies of this era, including infantry firepower and whatnot.

There are only two hundred long-barreled cannons in the 10,000+ army, but the three cavalry divisions of the Chu army can pull out dozens of cannons with [-] people.

It doesn't even compare to quality!
The Fourth Cuirassier Regiment, although it may be regarded as a regiment, as an independent cavalry regiment, it also has attached cavalry artillery and cavalry heavy soldiers.

With four cavalry guns of two and a half catties, on average, more than 100 cavalry can get fire support from one cavalry gun.

This fire support density seems to be very low, but it is actually very high.

Ordinary cavalry units can't get such a high firepower allocation, let alone infantry.

But the Fourth Cuirassier Regiment, as the first heavy cavalry unit of the Chu army, received great attention even if it was only a simple heavy cavalry.

The war horse was specially approved by Luo Zhixue, the breastplate was specially built by several defense factories organized by the Ministry of Industry, and the cavalry was selected from the Guards and had undergone nearly two years of intensive training.

Even the feed for the war horses is the best.

For this kind of troops, it is nothing to add a few extra two-and-a-half-pound field guns, and they even need rapid engineering soldiers, military bands and other auxiliary troops!
This also led to the Fourth Cuirassier Regiment, which seemed to have only more than 600 standard combat cavalry, but in fact the whole regiment had more than 1000 troops.

There are also more than 2000 horses.

Each combat cavalry, in addition to the main battle horse, will also be allocated a Mongolian horse as a service horse.

At the same time, a supply battalion with hundreds of people was allocated.

In addition, each cavalry post also has a part of ordinary hussars who assist in combat. These hussars are mainly used to provide reconnaissance, peripheral security, and provide flank maneuver support during combat.

This is to prevent their own cuirassiers from being slightly less maneuverable than light cavalry due to their heavy loads, resulting in being dragged by some unarmored light cavalry of the opponent to fly kites with light artillery.

Well, the hussars of the Chu army often do this... take off their armor, throw away their sabers, and then ride forward with a musket, dragging two and a half catties of cavalry guns behind them.

When you are in place, directly cover the cavalry guns behind and fire!
If there are many enemies who want to rush over, just ride away. If there are few people on the opposite side, just dismount and line up, and shoot them in a few volleys.

If the enemy wants to run away, ride after him...

In fact, this kind of tactic does not cause too many enemy casualties because of the lack of fierce combat, but it is particularly disgusting...

This disgusts others, so naturally I have to prevent others from treating me like this!
Therefore, in the Fourth Cuirassier Regiment, a large-scale hussar post was specially assigned.

It is not uncommon for the cavalry regiment to be equipped with additional auxiliary troops. This situation is actually not very rare in the Chu army. The cavalry troops of the Chu army use regiments as the basic tactical unit, so each cavalry regiment will be assigned some according to the situation. auxiliary force.

It's just that the auxiliary force of the Fourth Cuirassier Regiment is exaggerated... It's twice as many as the friendly cavalry!

After the [-]th Cuirassier Regiment arrived at the Shanhaiguan front line, it rested for several days to let the cavalry and horses recover to good physical fitness, and then conducted adaptive cooperative exercises with several friendly troops.

The focus of the exercise is that the [-]th Cuirassier Regiment intercepts the enemy's cavalry, covers the advance of the own infantry and artillery and strikes the opponent!
The imaginary enemy is the traditional cavalry cavalry of the Chu army. They are basically the former Ming army frontier cavalry. It’s hard to say how they used to be, but since they were reorganized by the Chu army, they can all eat their fill, and the military pay is also high. Enough was given, and all the equipment on his body was changed again.

The old tattered armor, swords, spears, bows and arrows, and even three-eyed blunderbuss were all thrown into the garbage dump, and then matched with the high-quality armor and swords produced by the arsenal under the Ministry of Industry of the Great Chu Empire. Weapons such as spears, bows and flintlock guns.

With the equipment looking top-notch and sufficient supplies, the morale of these traditional cavalry from the Mingbian Army is quite good, and they train very hard on weekdays.

The exercise this time also fully proved this point. A large number of cavalry originally belonging to the border army of Ji Town of the Ming Army were reorganized and incorporated into the Fourth Cavalry Brigade under the Second Cavalry Division of the Great Chu Empire Army.

The more than 1000 cavalry of the cavalry brigade, led by several veteran traditional cavalry officers, almost fully demonstrated the characteristics of cavalry and archery cavalry from entering the field to maneuvering.

From roaring in at the beginning and shooting arrows directly on horseback with a riding bow, striking simulated enemies such as outpost infantry, to retreating the entire team, and then doing it all over again.

However... when the [-]th Cuirassier Regiment entered the field, the situation changed dramatically.

Facing the active attack of the Fourth Cuirassier Regiment, the imaginary enemy retreated temporarily. However, the Fourth Cuirassier Regiment seemed to be heavy cavalry, but their maneuverability was not bad, so they even chased them directly.

Finally, a cavalry regiment of the [-]th Cavalry Brigade was forced to turn around and attack and intercept.

Ever since, the two sides had a medium-scale hedging battle.

Of course, this is just a drill, and the cavalry on both sides are just charging at targets in the air... It is impossible to directly confront them!
The result of the exercise was a big victory for the Fourth Cuirassier Regiment!

But this result made Brigadier General Qi Lianghou, the brigade commander of the Fourth Cavalry Brigade, very dissatisfied, and even murmured in front of his fellow soldiers: "In this exercise, our enemy is not the Fourth Cuirassier Regiment, but the Judgment Department!"

When he said that, several good colleagues even looked at him with sympathy!

When the 600th Cavalry Brigade dispatched a cavalry regiment of more than [-] cavalrymen for shock operations, and two forward cavalry posts in the [-]th Cuirassier Regiment, a total of about [-] cavalrymen were engaged in hedging operations. Five to one!

In the words of Brigadier General Qi Lianghou, commander of the [-]th Cavalry Brigade: Ghost knows how they decided!
Then it's hand-to-hand combat, their breastplates are not full-body heavy armor, and the protective area is not as large as our half-body light armor. Why is the battle damage so much less than ours?Could it be that their lances are lances, but Lao Tzu's sabers are not knives?
Also, who the hell stipulated that I have to hedge against them... I am a light cavalry, or a light cavalry that focuses on cavalry and shooting. The eyes are not blind, and I saw them appearing from a long distance. I can definitely pull out the cavalry and bombard the mother.

We are not allowed to use cavalry artillery, and we are not allowed to leave. We must be forced to fight hand-to-hand, and hand-to-hand combat is fine. We must have a five-to-one battle loss!
This is shameless!
It's a pity that complaining can't change anything. After all, this is just a drill, and the drill process is directly finalized by the superior. It doesn't matter whether he is beaten or not, and how he is beaten, but it is made by the superior.

Brigadier General Qi Lianghou was even skeptical, but it was probably finalized from the very beginning...

He felt that this exercise was just a show made by the high-level military to show how awesome the cuirassiers were and to promote the cuirassiers.

He estimated that after the exercise was over, the report would probably be sent to Jinling City, and then he would ask for something to expand the size of the cuirassiers.

This made Qi Lianghou very upset... If he hadn't been directly ordered by his superiors, he wouldn't have played house with a group of young master cavalry.

Damn, I didn't expect that the top leaders of the Chu army were the same as those big bosses of the Ming army before, all of them were drama masters.

Depressed, the Fourth Cavalry Brigade left, and Brigadier General Qi Lianghou still had a dark face before he left.

He is an old cavalry soldier who has been in Ji Town all his life. He fought against Mongols and Dongren when he was still in the Ming army in his early years.

It's a pity that he has fought all his life, beheaded hundreds of enemies with his own hands, and led his cavalry squad to defeat the enemy many times. No one was protecting him, so when Chongzhen hanged himself, he was still just a hundred households!

When the Chu army came, he followed Daliu like everyone else and brought the cavalry under his command to voluntarily surrender. Because he was a cavalry officer, he was not slandered during the review, and his attitude was very correct during the political study, so After finishing his studies, he was awarded the rank of captain and continued to serve in the cavalry.

However, serving in the Chu Army didn't make much difference to him. Apart from eating better and using better equipment, there wasn't much change.

He is still stationed at the border to kill the Dong captives!

Just killing and killing, he found that he seemed to have changed his luck. After only one month of defecting to the Chu army, he was promoted to major because he led a team to kill many shareholders and captive scouts.

Then he was sent to Jinling City Army Officer Academy after he left the pass to attack the Dongcap people, and entered the advanced training class. After graduation, he was promoted to lieutenant colonel in situ.

After returning to the Jiliao front line again, he served as the combat staff officer under the cavalry chief of staff of the Northeast Campaign Command, and was soon transferred to the head of the cavalry regiment and promoted to colonel.

Last winter, when the [-]nd Cavalry Division was established, he was promoted to commander of the [-]th Cavalry Brigade and awarded the rank of Brigadier General.

He...was also the one who was promoted the fastest among the large number of Jiliao soldiers who surrendered to Chengming Army back then!
But to be honest, he couldn't figure out why he was promoted so fast, and he didn't do much, and from time to time, he would talk to his boss and complain a few words... Of course, he would still do the work ordered by his superiors, and then he would fight. At that time, they killed a few more Dongbang people than the friendly army.

He used to be like this too, but after more than [-] years, he was only a hundred households.

Now...he is still him, he has never changed, but he was promoted to brigadier general inexplicably after being mixed with the Chu army.

In this case, even Qi Lianghou, who is actually not well-educated, knows that it's not just that his luck has improved, but that the Chu army is different from the Ming army.

It's just that his education level is low, and he can't tell the specific difference for a while, it's better anyway.

But there is one thing he is very dissatisfied with, that is, the top generals are all fucking bastards!
He even played house in the exercise, he wanted to see, those young cuirass soldiers actually went to the battlefield, to see if those Dongyao cavalry would rush up foolishly, and if the real fight was really five to one Battle loss ratio.

He is looking forward to the expressions of those high-ranking generals when they see the cunning cavalry coming and going like the wind, and they will not take the initiative to fight as they expected!

This is war, not a game!

No enemy will fight according to the routine you imagined!
And when the time comes, it's time for these traditional cavalry to come out and make waves!

The war will tell those whimsical guys that bows and arrows plus cavalry artillery are the kingly way, and any dragoons and cuirassiers are heresies!

(End of this chapter)