When it was getting dawn, General Zhao Liang stood on the south bank of a stream called Dawangxi outside Xiaohongbao Village, five or six miles north of Rufen Town. After passing Dawangxi, it was Xiaohongbao Village. Last night, the "gun doctor" sent by General Zhao Liang had occupied Xiaohongbao Village and deployed defenses in the village, turning it into an extremely important support point.

Of course, there is a fort in Xiaohongbao Village. In the center of the village is a red castle with a history of more than 200 years. Several knights once lived in the castle, and the land around Xiaohongbao Village also belongs to these knights.

However, with the continuous evolution of firearms, the importance of knights has been greatly reduced. The Great Zhou Republic no longer needs to maintain a huge knight class, so most of the knights have been transformed into citizens or rich peasants. The knights in Little Red Castle Village have also disappeared. The red castle has long been abandoned, and many beautiful and comfortable courtyards have appeared around the castle, which is the residence of the residents of Little Red Castle Village.

Of course, the residents of Xiaohongbao Village were gone, and the warehouses that stored food were burned, leaving only empty courtyards. So no one resisted the occupation of the "gun doctor".

The main support point of the Great Zhou Republic Army on this battlefield was a low ridge facing Xiaohongbao Village. The name of the ridge is Jiangshan, and Jiangdian Town is at the foot of the mountain on the west side of Jiangshan. In addition, there are several low ridges on the northwest and southwest sides of Jiangdian Town, forming a basin-like terrain.

However, Zhao Liang's general would not be stupid enough to attack these mountains and Jiangdian Town. His plan was to bypass Jiangshan and then penetrate between Jiangdian Town and Xiangcheng Grand Bastion. He attacked the Zhou army guarding Jiangdian Town and Jiangshan.

"Big King," Zhao Liang's general's intelligence, Changzong Yizhi rode his horse through a bridge mounted on Dawang River, and came to Liang General, and whispered: "As you expected, the Zhou army did arrange heavy troops east of Jiangshan. At the same time, they also deployed a lot of infantry on the ridge of Jiangshan, and there should be howitzers on the other side of the ridge."

On both sides of Jiangshan, there are great plains that are not dangerous to guard, and not far from the north is Rushui. To the west of Jiangshan, there is a low hill. And Jiangshan, which is heading east and west, is like a wall, blocking the south of the Xiangcheng Bastion.

Therefore, as long as the Zhou army wanted to fight in the field south of Xiangcheng, they would inevitably rely on Jiangshan to deploy defenses.

Jiangshan itself and Jiangdian Town on the west side are easy to defend, with terrain and solid buildings to rely on.

Moreover, at this time, the Republican Army was equipped with a large number of howitzers. One army had 6 howitzers companies, with a total of 36 5-inch howitzers. If they were deployed at the foot of the northern mountain of Jiangshan, they could accurately bombard the enemies who attacked Jiangshan with flowering bullets. Considering the quality of the Zhou Dynasty's flowering bullets, Jiangshan would definitely become the enemy's sad mountain!

Since Jiangshan and Jiangdian Town beside him are easy to defend but difficult to attack, the plain east of Jiangshan is the center of gravity of both offense and defense.

Therefore, although the Song coalition and Zhou army were camped in the south-north confrontation, the battle formations of the confrontation were placed in the southwest of Jiangshan, which was the southwest-northwest layout.

The two Song coalition forces were north of Dawang River. The left wing started from Xiaohongbao Village and the right wing spread to the west bank of Rushui, setting a 15-mile-wide front.

The front line of the Zhou army was much longer. Jiangshan and Jiangdian Town were both must guard. Wuyuan Town arranged an infantry brigade in each place. Then, relying on the eastern foot of Jiangshan to launch a key defense. The two infantry divisions spread from the eastern foot of Jiangshan to the southern bank of Rushui, and opened a key defense zone of 7 miles wide.

"Let's go!" Zhao Liangjiang nodded, "Go and have a look."

As he spoke, he took his own guards and Jiyituan and ran away behind the Song army who were setting up the formation.

Some Western Song soldiers discovered their commander and immediately cheered: "King Qiansui! King Qiansui..."

The cheering sound became louder and louder, and soon it rang throughout the battlefield.

It seems that this Song prince who has been hired on the battlefield for decades has a high prestige in the army!

...

On the eastern foot of Jiangshan, Wuyuan Town placed his flag tree on an ancient castle left behind 200 years ago. The view here is very good and can overlook the entire battlefield, so it became his command center.

Song Jun's cheers also reached his ears, but he didn't understand.

Because although the three Chinese heroes are still using the same Chinese characters, they have three types of official languages.

The Great Zhou Republic is popular in Tianjin Mandarin, the popular in the Western Song Dynasty is Chang'an Mandarin, and the Eastern Song Dynasty uses Jiangning Mandarin.

Of course, the basis of the three types of official language is the Central Plains Elegant Voice. So communication between each other is not a big problem. It’s just that the battlefield is too noisy now, so Wuyuan Town didn’t understand it for a while.

"What are they shouting for?" he asked Han Shantong beside him.

Han Shantong worked as an military officer in Chang'an and could speak fluent Chang'an dialect.

"It's the king Qiansui... It seems that the enemy's coach is Zhao Liangjiang, the general of the Eternal Winning in the Western Song Dynasty."

"Zhao Liangjiang... I guess he is also! He is fighting so well in the mobile warfare, it is him!" Wu Yuanzhen nodded, "There are a lot of space in the new version of "Army Battle Command" that talks about him, right?"

"That's right," Han Shantong nodded and smiled, "so we all know him very well."

Han Shantong went to the Army Military Academy and also worked as a professor at the Military Academy. He is very familiar with several classic battles commanded by General Zhao Liang at the end of the Mongolian-Song War.

This general Zhao Liang was probably the most capable general in the history of the Zhao Song royal family. He served in the army for 50 years and has experienced more than 60 battles, including 8 battles commanded by him, all of which were won! And 6 times were defeated by the few, and severely damaged the enemy.

"Then how would he fight?" Wu Yuanzhen asked again.

"The officials don't know."

"Then you still say you know him?"

Han Shantong smiled and said, "It is precisely because of understanding that I don't know! How can Zhao Liangjiang's thoughts be so easy to guess?"

"Then how do we fight?"

Han Shantong said: "The advice of the officials is to leave enough reserve teams to see how General Zhao Liang plays... General Zhao Liang is good at using troops, and the elite soldiers of the Western Song Dynasty are also powerful, and the number seems to be twice as high as ours.

So we should adopt the tactics of delaying and consuming the enemy to avoid rapid failure.”

His suggestions sound a bit bad for morale, but they are indeed the best strategy.

It is difficult for General Zhao Liang and the elite Western Song Dynasty commanded by him to deal with it. If you don’t have an advantage in military strength, don’t think about winning the battle when you meet them.

It would be great to be able to lose better in the battle and achieve strategic victory at the same time.

At the strategic level, Zhao Liangjiang was in an unfavorable situation. The two Song alliance behind him was not as powerful as the Great Zhou Republic. Therefore, once he could not win quickly, he would inevitably fail.

"Okay!" Wu Yuanzhen nodded, "Order the troops to dig trenches and set up defenses... We are going to fight a position defense battle."

...

The plain east of Jiangshan was covered with armor on the plains, and two well-trained armies had slowly unfolded their respective arrays.

In order to cover up their own deployment, both sides sent light infantry and cavalry to start fighting for buildings and roads in the center of the battlefield.

The buildings that became the target of competition were three huge courtyards, all of which were very strong, and could be used to deploy cannons with a slight transformation. Therefore, they became a must-fight place for both sides of the war!

For the coalition forces of the two Song dynasties, if they seized three courtyards, they could use this as an artillery position and bombard the Zhou army's front.

For the Zhou army, postponing the fall of three courtyards as much as possible can win time for its infantry to dig infantry trenches.

The method of letting infantry defend based on trenches was actually the first choice taken by the Western Song Dynasty in the Mongolian and Song Dynasty war. Their gun doctors were originally scattered soldiers and did not need to form an array. They had a trench bunker or something, which was the best.

Therefore, during the century-old Mongolian and Song War, the construction technology of infantry trenches and infantry bunkers was continuously developed.

By the 14th century of the Western Paradise, engineer shovels had become important equipment for the three Chinese infantrymen, just like smoothbore guns.

In the Great Zhou and Eastern Song dynasties, engineer shovels were popularized by every infantry.

Therefore, in terms of digging pits, the army of the Great Zhou and Eastern Song dynasties came from behind.

In addition to digging holes, Zhou soldiers were also building artillery bases. Unlike the deployment method of the two Song dynasties' concentrated artillery, the Zhou army adopted the tactics of dispersed and mobile use of artillery today.

Therefore, a large number of artillery barriers need to be built in advance and roads are renovated.

In order to cover up the construction, Zhou Jun could not easily give up three courtyards.

On the three courtyards and the surrounding roads, there were bursts of gunfire and shouts of killing sounds in the wheat fields, and occasionally there were the sound of horse hooves of cavalry treading across the ground.

A little beyond Zhao Liang's expectations, the Zhou army's scattered soldiers (infantry using rifled rifles) did not perform worse than the Western Song Dynasty's rifles. Their rifles were obviously better than the rifled rifles used by Western Song Dynasty, with a longer effective range and a faster firing rate. Moreover, their gunshot skills were also very good, and they were not at all inferior to the gun doctors!

In addition, the light cavalry of the Zhou army was not easy to deal with. They were all equipped with rifled rifles, which could open fire and shoot at a long distance, causing considerable losses to the Song army's cavalry.

Moreover, their horses are faster and can avoid close combat when they are not at the upper hand.

Zhao Liang, who found it difficult to rely on the gun doctor and the light cavalry to win quickly, immediately adjusted his tactics and invested 6 teams of flintlock spearmen. These infantry advanced rapidly in columns, and then quickly turned into square formations after approaching the target courtyard. Then they directly launched a bayonet charge.

Two of the three courtyards were soon lost, leaving only an abandoned barn in the middle still under the control of Zhou Jun.

It turned out that Zhou Jun ambushed a team of hand artillery in the barn, and used hand cannons and bayonets to repel the attacks of the two teams of Song army infantry. The barn was temporarily saved.

However, the barn they held on to quickly became the target of the Song army's artillery attacks, withstood rounds of solid bombardment.

However, the solidity of this barn was beyond Zhao Liangjiang's expectations. The barn was built ten years ago. It used a large amount of cement and bricks to build a warehouse and a small building next to the warehouse. There was also a circle of low walls on the outside.

In addition, thousands of bags of wheat were stored in the warehouse and they had no time to transport it away. It was just used by Zhou army artillery ambushed in the yard to strengthen the low walls so that they could resist the direct aiming shooting of long cannons.

However, there are 10 howitzer companies in the coalition of the two Song dynasties, equipped with 60 5-inch howitzers.

Under the command of Zhu Xinglong, these cannons were pushed to a place less than 1,000 steps away from the grain warehouse compound, and concentrated their firepower to bombard them.

The grenade was thrown out like raindrops, drawing beautiful parabolas in the air, and then smashing heavily.

But 80% to 90% of the grenades did not explode!

Among the remaining grenades at most half, half of them exploded in the air without approaching the Zhou army's position.

In other words, it is more threatening to have less than one out of ten grenades.

Such artillery effect, coupled with the huge smoke and dust on the Song army's artillery positions, all show a problem. The Western Song Dynasty's preparation for the war was as hasty as the Great Zhou Dynasty, and did not even replace their bad artillery and gunpowder with products from the Eastern Song Dynasty.

"Let our hand artillery retreat and give up the grain warehouse!" Wuyuan Town ordered, "order all howitzers remain mobile and standby!"

The purpose of the grain warehouse battle is nothing more than to test the reality and to buy time for the rest of the troops to deploy.

Now that this goal has been achieved, there is no need to waste time on a grain warehouse that is destined to be unable to defend.

In addition, the performance of the Song army's howitzer also gave Wuyuan Town a hope of winning, at least tied.

After the infantry of the Western Song Dynasty occupied the grain depot, General Zhao Liang immediately issued an order to suppress the entire army.

The two Song coalition forces that went to fight today had a total of 10 infantry divisions, and another cavalry division served as a warning on the periphery.

Among the 10 infantry divisions that fought, except for one deployed near Xiaohongbao Village to attract the attention of the Zhou army. The other nine divisions were divided into two lines. The first line was the five infantry divisions of the Western Song Dynasty. From Xiaohongbao Village to the northeast, they were the first, third, seventh, tenth and thirteenth infantry divisions in turn.

They are all famous ace masters on the battlefield of Mongolian and Song dynasties!

The second line consists of three Western Song infantry divisions and one Eastern Song infantry division. They are also elites with strong combat power.

The five divisions in the front row were all carried out in battalions, each battalion was a large square formation, composed of four companies. Each company was a three-row array that could be split into action. One battalion was four companies, which means 12 combat formations were arranged. In addition, a command lineup was followed by a total of 13 lines.

The first three rows are rifled guns, all of which are rifled guns. The middle six rows are ordinary infantry, equipped with ordinary smoothbore guns. The last three rows are hand artillery soldiers who are pressing the formation.

This way of placing troops and deploying troops was also summarized in the Western Song Dynasty during the 100-year Mongolian and Song Dynasty war, and was then copied by the Great Zhou and Eastern Song Dynasty.

The battle process has almost formed a fixed pattern, usually starting with the violent bombardment of artillery, followed by the long-range shooting of scattered soldiers. After the enemy is weakened by the cannon and scattered soldiers, the privates will come on the field to queule and shoot, and finally it will be a white assault or a cavalry assault!
Chapter completed!