weaving

Chapter 723 talk on paper
While Zhang Cheng was still returning to Xuanfu from Henan, he had already sent several teams of cavalry who would never stop at night to explore the terrain and mountains in Liaodong outside Shanhaiguan, and roughly sorted out the topographic sand table map of the Liaoxi Corridor.

After he led the Xuanbei Army through the Shanhai Pass, and after more than a month of careful surveying, the terrain of the mountains, rivers, valleys and streams of various places were described in more detail.

The Xuanbei Army's sand table made all the officials and generals look bright, even Hong Chengchou, the governor of Jiliao, admired it very much. This sand table looks even more shocking than the topographic map of Changling that Zhang Cheng showed at the beginning!
With such a detailed topographic map of the sand table, all the officials and generals felt that talking on paper had become a possibility. Everyone was interested in pointing and asking questions on the sand table.

Smiling, Zhang Cheng personally explained the meanings of the markings to Governor Hong Chengchou, Commander Zhang Ruoqi, Fuchen Qiu Minyang and other officials, while Wei Zhice, Zhang Guodong and other generals of the Xuanbei Army explained to the other town commanders.

On the sand table, the specific positions of the Qing army's defense lines were marked, and they could be clearly displayed in front of everyone's eyes, as if they had seen it in person.

The trend and position of the walls of the ditches are clear, as well as the positions of the artillery of the various camps of the Qing army, which are also marked. Guessed from experience.

The Hongyi cannons, which weigh more than ten catties, are not easy to move, and they are only seen in the Qing army camps around Jin, and there are also a few in the mountain passes of the East and West Shimen.

On the mountainside or on the top of the mountain, in the Qing military camps, there are medium-sized artillery guns that hit five or six catties around some piers, and some small artillery guns such as Flang machine guns and tiger squatting guns are arranged on the forward mountain defense line. .

These cannons are the same as Zhang Cheng's defense line on Changling Mountain. They are all coordinated with the walls of the trenches and villages, plus some Han army's flag bird blunderbuss, and the bows and arrows of the Tartars.

According to observations, for example, in several places such as Rufeng Mountain, Shimen Mountain, and Huangtuling, Han army flags and Korean soldiers holding bird guns were found stationed on each line of defense.

The authentic Tartar armored soldiers hold bows and arrows, or swords and shields. They deploy after the blunderbuss soldiers and use them for close hand-to-hand combat. Of course, they are not without the intention of supervising the battle team .

At the same time, there seem to be some weapons such as crossbow arrows, small trebuchets, gray bottle cannons and other weapons on various mountains and ridges. According to the sand table, the Qing army guarded the wall of the village as a city, which shows that its defense is not imprecise.

After Zhang Cheng introduced the defensive situation of the Qing army in various places on the sand table, he also suggested that when the armies attacked the mountain, it is best to spread out the formation and make the soldiers as sparse as possible.

In this way, it can not only make it difficult for the Tartars to hit themselves, but also prevent the ricochets from causing serious damage. The only problem is that before rushing into the wall, the team must be gathered together to prevent the Tartars from forming an array and passing through the wall. Kill out.

This problem of formation conversion is difficult to say, but it is not impossible. The key is to see how the troops usually practice!
For example, according to the practice in "Real Records of Military Training", when each army forms an formation, they use trumpets, gongs, gongs, golden drums, and flag orders to direct each team to change formations, gathering and dispersing at times.

If you practice well at ordinary times, the soldiers in each battalion will follow the team's original armor and change formations according to the orders of the trumpet and the order of the golden drum flag.

Of course, the speed of opening and closing has a lot to do with the elite level of each army, which depends entirely on daily drills to ensure.

Regarding Zhang Cheng's suggestion, Yang Guozhu, Wu Sangui and other generals naturally had no objection, and Chen Jiugao's Beijing camp was only responsible for firing artillery from behind, not involving the change of formation, so naturally they had no objection.

Furthermore, with regard to trench filling and artillery teams, Zhang Cheng also suggested that soil bags and baskets should be filled with soil in advance, and as many trenches and bridges as possible should be prepared as much as possible. After the army formation, suddenly rushed up to fill in trenches and build bridges.

There are also those weapons for attacking fortifications, which are not suitable for gathering in the front army. Let’s not talk about the difficulty of making them, but these are sharp weapons for close combat, difficult and far away, and they are only useful when charging at the wall at the end.

In particular, you can't shoot artillery while walking around, and you can still hit the target enemy, right?
If it can still hit, it is really the possession of the gun god, the self-propelled artillery came to the world, so these should be hidden behind the front line, and they should not be exposed to the front, and just wait until they reach the front of the Tartars' wall and then launch the bombardment.

After listening to the various suggestions made by Zhang Cheng, all the generals felt something, especially the generals of the chariot battalion and artillery battalion in each army were relieved. Marching under artillery fire, everyone was a little apprehensive.

"...Zhang Zongbing's proposal couldn't be better...couldn't be better..."

After several rounds of discussions, it was finally decided that the light tanks in each battalion would go at the forefront of the army, and use the thickened shields as shield vehicles to cover the soldiers' charge as much as possible.

Of course, even so, there may be heavy casualties, but there is no way, the current Ming Dynasty does not have a tank that can withstand the bombardment of artillery, even if there is, it must be quite heavy, and it will be difficult to carry out even on flat roads , not to mention the battle of attacking mountains and climbing high.

On this point, Yang Guozhu, the commander-in-chief of Xuanfu Town, Li Fuming, the commander-in-chief of Shanxi, Wu Sangui, the commander-in-chief of Ningyuan, and Tang Tong, the commander-in-chief of Jizhen, all considered this point. He also nodded with a serious face.

In a war, there will definitely be casualties, and there is no way around this!

However, Chen Jiugao, the former commander-in-chief of the Shenji Battalion, was hesitant about Zhang Cheng's next suggestion.

His suggestion is to ask the soldiers of the Shenji Battalion to push the artillery forward as much as possible, especially the two key places of East and West Shimen, and bombard the fire piers and enemy towers built on the mountainside and mountain pass as much as possible. Suppress the artillery fire of the Tartars.

Over the past ten years of the Ming Dynasty, a large amount of money was spent in the construction of a large number of piers in Liaodong. The typical three-mile one, five-mile one, especially those enemy towers, are mostly two-story hollow enemy towers covered with bricks.

It is generally about three to five feet high, with a width of twelve, seventeen, or eight feet around. Made, very strong.

Songshan Fort was originally one of the eight great forts outside the pass, and many such piers were built in the surrounding mountains. There are hundreds of bosses and tower heads on weekdays, guarding, watching and passing on the enemy's situation.

However, the Qing army besieged Jinzhou for a long time, and the fire road piers and enemy towers around Songshan Fort had long been captured by them, and they were used as defense lines by the Qing army.

(End of this chapter)