Chapter 554 553 A mighty soldier and fierce general

Author: Guests in Parallel Space

The stacked formation is a new type of tactic created by Wu Lin, a famous general of Sichuan and Shaanxi in the Southern Song Dynasty during the long-term anti-Jin struggle.

A direct record of "supervised formation" was first seen in "The Year Records Since Jianyan", which records the scene of reviewing Wu Lin's troops.

Lin used the new method of fighting formation in Hechi. In every battle, he was in front of the spear and could not sit up; the strongest bow was the strongest bow, the strongest bow, and the knees were kneeling to wait; the divine arm bow was the second.

If the enemy fights within a hundred steps, the divine arm will start first; if the 70 steps are used, the strong bow will be launched simultaneously; the next formation will be like this.

In all formations, they are limited to resisting horses, and the iron hooks are connected. When they are injured, they will be replaced.

When there is a change, the drum will be used as the joint.

The cavalry takes out the two wings to cover the front, and the formation is formed and the cavalry retreats, which is called "folding formation".

The generals secretly discussed, "Did the army be wiped out here?"

Lin said: "In ancient times, the military rules were used, but you all didn't know that. If you get the chariot and fight, there is no more than this. The soldiers' minds are determined and can hold on to the fullest. Even if the enemy is sharp, they cannot be treated.

Fang Guan knew that the benefits of chariot battles could be used between plains and wildernesses, but he did not have the method of chariot battles, so his defeat was appropriate.

The enemy cavalry is good at rushing and rushing, but there is no one who can resist it!"

These two sentences, especially the latter, are quite critical, because they directly point out the motivation and purpose of Wu Lin's founding of the "Superified Array" - in the plains and wilderness, restrain the Jin cavalry who were good at rushing.

The Song army on the Western Front, represented by Wu Lin, invented the "split formation" in order to restrain the Jin cavalry in the plains and wilderness, and this tactical goal was to serve the strategic goal of counterattacking Qin Long.

The adequate supply of horses is the basis for building a strong cavalry, but in comparison, the cavalry of the Song army is very pitiful.

The Northern Song Dynasty was already seriously short of horses. After the Southern Song Dynasty lost Shaanxi, it "made the horses in Sichuan and Shaanxi" and "are very rare to find horses", which forced the generals of the Southern Song Dynasty to find ways to make up for this defect, and the stacking formation came into being.

In fact, infantry formations composed of guns, bows and crossbows have existed since ancient times.

However, although this general principle has not changed much, its specific implementation process has been very different in different historical periods.

For example, in the Tang Dynasty, the order of marching was first, second archer, second spear knife hand, and after the attack of the crossbow, the crossbow in the front row had to pick up the short weapons they carried with them and participate in hand-to-hand combat.

However, in the Song Dynasty, due to the development of the recruitment system, the degree of professionalization of soldiers became higher and higher, and the division of labor among the troops became more and more detailed and strengthened. This situation gradually changed, and there was a queue arrangement order with guns, knifes, hand-to-hand combat weapons in front, and long-distance ejected weapons such as bows and crossbows behind.

The "Four Changes of Infantry Practice" in the Northern Song Dynasty military book "The General Essence of Wu Jing" records:

One drum, straight gun, sword, two drums, and all the guns and swords are sitting. The crossbow stands, the Hou hits the wood, and each bow and crossbow is three arrows. The drum sounds are made, and the last advance is advanced. The next three arrows are finished. The Hou drum sounds are moving forward, and the gun is trolling the gun and swords and then goes to the boundary flag. When the drum hears the drum, straight guns and swords are coming. When the drum hears the drum, they are sitting, and the crossbow stands, three arrows are being shot. After that, when the drum is heard, the gun is standing again, and the head of the gun is hanging, and the gold is heard, and the retreat is to stop. One drum is straight gun, the second drum sits in the clan, the third drum is straight gun, the fourth drum flag and gun is as old as before, and the drum sounds stop.

This is actually a situation in simulation of actual combat. When the enemy is still far away, the gun sword hand sits on the ground, giving up the vision for the crossbowman, and the attack is output by the crossbowman; when the enemy is approaching, the gun sword hand stands up to fight, fight with the enemy hand and hand, and protecting the shooting troops behind him.

This arrangement is already very similar to the "supervised array".

But the difference is that the arrangement of infantry queues in the Northern Song Dynasty focused on "the formation is formed between the formation, the team is formed between the lines, the song is formed between the songs, and the human world is formed. When going in and out, there is no fighting, but the long stalk is short, and the short stalk is long." The arrangement of gunmen and crossbowmen is complicated, and the queue changes are also relatively complicated.

The Southern Song army made large-scale simplifications based on actual combat requirements, and mostly used a large group of fifty or sixty people to form a "pure team", one team of guns is pure guns, and a crossbow is pure crossbow. Then several teams of the same army were gathered together to form a small array of pure guns or pure crossbows. Between the small arrays, they were arranged in the order of hand-to-hand combat troops in front and shooting troops in the back.

Regarding the record of Wu Lin's formation, the main infantry formation includes "502 gunmen in the Armies, 202 divine arm bows, and 202 flat-shooting bows", and each of the left and right wings has "217 flat-shooting bows, and 64 divine arm bows".

Judging from the number of personnel in the weapons organization, it should be a formation organized by several pure teams after they gather together, and then the spear is in front and the bow is behind.

In fact, such arrays were also referenced in the Ming Dynasty. The array of Ming army infantry was imitated by this method, but some of the crossbowmen had become musketeers.

This is also a place where the Mongolian cavalry would be helpless when facing the well-prepared Ming army infantry formation. They often could only use the speed of their war horses to raid the Ming army in the marching, and it was difficult to compete with the Ming army on the front battlefield.

After all, people cherish their lives.

Faced with the well-equipped and well-trained Ming army, they were killed in large numbers before they met, and the Mongolians would also collapse.

However, with the current conditions of the Ming army, such infantry formations are actually rare. Perhaps only the generals of each town and the main barracks of the deputy general can barely do it.

Other wards lack food and pay and neglect training, which has long been abandoned.

The reason why generals such as Ma Fang and Qi Jiguang shine in this era is that their tactics may not be the most exquisite. After all, most of them are derived from the summary of experience of previous generations, and these are also recorded in the "Ming Ming Hui Dian", and the fundamental reason is that they have made up for these shortcomings.

Although the soldiers of other guards led by Yu Dayou cannot completely solve the problems of food, pay and training, they can make up for the war to the greatest extent, so as to enhance the morale of the soldiers.

In fact, the basic qualities of the soldiers of the Ming Dynasty's garrison were still there, otherwise Yu Dayou would not have led the soldiers of the local garrison to participate in one battle after another and win.

"Ma Fang's army equipped with "three-eyed guns" and "five-eyed guns" and other continuous firearms on a large scale. In terms of combat thinking, Ma Fang even took the "fast to control fast" to the extreme.

Give full play to the advantages of the official army in firearm technology, and in combat, the musket cavalry, cavalry, and swords and weapons cooperate with each other and repeatedly charge to "make the shortcomings of cavalry and shooting."

In addition, every winter and spring, Ma Fang would send elite cavalry to form a team to launch a counterattack on the Mongolian grasslands, using the combat targets of looting horses and burning grasslands to destroy the Mongols' combat resources to the greatest extent.

When the Mongolian army goes south to invade, it is necessary to avoid being in seclusion and passive defense. Instead, it is necessary to raid long distances, cut off the Mongolian army's retreat, and gather and annihilate the Mongolian army's living forces."

"Ah, so that's it. We should promote our strengths and avoid our weaknesses and arrange troops."

After Wei Guangde introduced the Ma Fang cavalry charge formation he knew, King Yu clapped his hands and exclaimed.

"In the past, I only thought that the cavalry was just charging head-on. It was possible to defeat the enemy by the brave men. I didn't expect to be lined up.

Yes, although the formation will loosen when charging, the position of the front and back will not change after all.

With musketeers on the periphery and crossbowmen in the center, they knocked down a group of people before the cavalry and the Tartars fight to hit the morale of the enemy, no wonder Ma Fang's troops were able to win consecutive battles."

Wei Guangde said a little more carefully before, but many of them were actually something that Zhang Juzheng had never thought about.

Zhang Juzheng had read military books even though he was fine, but he had only a slight understanding of many of them, and King Yu was similar.

After all, the Ming Dynasty during this period was not a peaceful environment. The threat from Mongolia in the north was increasing day by day, and the oppression force on the Ming court was also increasing.

In this environment, court officials also forced them to read two more military books involuntarily.

After Tumu Fort, in these two times, the Mongolian cavalry was only a hundred miles away from the capital. Who knew that one day the troops of the people really hit the walls of the capital.

"It seems that Ma Fang's tribe was really trapped in the trap of luring the tiger away from the mountain. Altan Khan avoided Ma Fang's tribe's sneak attack on Xuanfu."

Yin Shidan's words finally brought back the focus of everyone's discussion.

The army was outside. In fact, although Wei Guangde didn't think that Ma Fang's troops would encounter at the beginning, he was also nervous when he had no news.

Wei Guangde's words made King Yu, Zhang Juzheng and others seem to understand the real power comparison between the Ming army and the cavalry, and it seems that the Ming official army is not really useless.

As long as the generals were well led, the Ming army would have the ability to defeat the Mongolian Tartars head-on.

The situation often occurs in border forts is that the enemy cavalry invades the besieged city, and the surrounding Ming troops go to fight for rescue. The enemy cavalry often sneaks into ambush the Ming army during the march, and then takes advantage of the situation to attack the city.

A well-trained soldier can naturally adjust the formation quickly after the scouts warn and complete the battle preparations. When the Tatars saw that the Ming army was in complete formation and had no chance of winning, they immediately drove the horse away.

More things are the fact that when the Tartars charge in front of them, the queue is still scattered and directly scattered and collapsed.

If this continues, the fear of the enemy cavalry by the Ming soldiers will be infinitely amplified, thinking that infantry really cannot compete with the cavalry.

After searching through the Ming Dynasty, there will be many written records of the scenes of the enemy cavalry retreating voluntarily due to the Ming army's formation.

If this kind of war report is brought up, it will only be scoffed by the civil servants, thinking that it is a false report on military achievements.

As the saying goes, "A good fighter has no great achievements." This is the truth. If you train your soldiers too well, you will lose the opportunity to make achievements if you don't meet an opponent who is not afraid of death.

"How long will the Xuanfu be difficult last?"

Zhang Juzheng asked.

"If I expected it was right, Ma Fang's troops would rush to the North Beach and march for more than ten days. It would take three or five days to quickly return to the army if they were not right.

It has been half a month since Ma Fang's troops left the customs. At this time, they should have arrived near the North Beach. Including the return journey, the time for the enemy cavalry to rage was only two or three days. I think the Tartars will withdraw from Xuanfu tomorrow at the latest.

We urgently dispatched the Shanxi Town Army to this move, and it seems that we have calculated it wrong."

Wei Guangde replied.

"This time, it's a game difference. If Ma Fang's troops cannot encounter the Tartars when they return to the journey, they have to find ways to reduce the punishment for him this time."

Zhang Juzheng said with a wry smile.

"Escape is almost impossible."

Wei Guangde also said with a wry smile.

At this time, in a valley near the North Beach, Ma Fang was also knowing the situation outside from the mouth of the siege.

"Altan Khan moved west three days ago, why didn't he inform him in time?"

Ma Fang said furiously at this time.

Altan ran away, and this time it was a waste of time.

It is not easy to get out for 20,000 people. Now there is only one small tribe nomad in the North Beach, and even if you kill them all, you won’t have much military achievements.

"Master, the main force of the Tartars moved west a few days ago, and Altan Khan left, among them."

Liu Han, the general under Ma Fang's tent, hurriedly reminded him.

Liu Han was naturally the former general officer of Datong. He was punished for his failure in attack and was deprived of his position as general officer of Datong.

However, Yang Bo, the Ministry of War, finally cherished his talents and tried to protect such a general who dared to take the initiative, so that he did not return home by being unemployed, but was transferred to Xuanfu as a general, and has been with Ma Fang for the past two years.

"Where do you think they will go to fight?"

In recent years, Ma Fang has been stationed in Xuanfu, and the Tartars' invasion targets had to move westward to Yansui, Ningxia and other towns.

This time, Ma Fang still didn't expect Altan Khan would dare to attack Xuanfu, but still thought about attacking the military town in the west.

However, even if we know the target, Ma Fang would not be able to lead his troops westwards without military orders and pursue Altan Khan's army.

"Ge Jin, you will take people to destroy the enemy in the North Beach, and the army will prepare to return."
To be continued...