Crowd tactics is not a professional military term. In terms www.biquge.info of strategy, if you concentrate superior forces to attack the enemy, it should be called concentrating forces, which has been recorded in Sun Tzu's Art of War. The other is the dense formation of the infantry charge, which is the origin of the crowd tactic. So how did the dense infantry formation come about? This dates back to the Roman era, the Phalanx, which was a type of heavy infantry phalanx used in ancient Roman times and before Alexander the Great.

The densely lined infantry were armed with shields and spears, and short swords charged at the opposing line. At that time, the Persians, blast furnaces, and Germans were all undisciplined troops, and they were often defeated by such phalanxes. With this tactic, the Roman Empire swept across Europe and Asia, turning the Mediterranean Sea into an inland Roman lake. And in China, there are no such tactics, why? Because China's bow and crossbow manufacturing technology is very developed, such a phalanx is no different from sending death under the blow of bows and arrows, and later Roman legions also enjoyed this treatment in the Germanic forest, under effective firepower, dense formation is an effective way to increase casualties.

But to deal with cavalry, the infantry still needed to form a dense formation for a long time. With the invention of gunpowder, the application of artillery, and the development of linear infantry formations, Napoleon, a commander known for his artillery, improved the tactics of horizontal assault at that time, and changed it into a column assault, that is, to invest as many troops as possible in the front, and a single assault after artillery cover could often break through the front line of the anti-French alliance.

In the age of firearms, the crowd tactics regained his youth, and each commander thought about how to concentrate as many troops as possible in the first time to fight a decisive battle, and defeat the enemy army in one fell swoop. In the nineteenth century, the Prussian military giant Moltke formed his General Staff, and the whole territory of Prussia deployed military forces with the railway as the core, concentrated troops, and intensively attacked, and the strange changes of the war seemed to have come to an end, and all that remained was the calculation of the staff and the struggle for the transportation capacity of the railway.

But there was one craftsman who broke it all, and he was the Mark Core, and the machine gun changed everything and completely swept the cavalry into the dustbin of history. The French rooster, who had tasted the sweetness of crowd tactics in the past, simply did not want to believe that a small weapon could change the face of war. And their student Japan is even more committed to this golden rule, the Japanese Army's General Nogi Nishinori. It was he who pioneered the tactics of the Japanese army's "meat bullet attack", the Japanese attack in the Battle of Arthur was a day, with 50,000 casualties, and an average of 3,000 casualties per day during the fierce period......

Zhao Yu thought that whether it was ancient or modern, the use of crowd tactics was the choice for the development of weapons and tactics in a certain era. This tactic of exchanging numbers and enormous attrition for advantages in other areas, including time, space, offense or defense. In a sense, it can be simply understood as fighting more and fighting less, and bullying the widow with the many. It is based on the concentration of superior forces to increase the overall strength by numbers.

In the Cold Weapon Age, crowd tactics can be used to encircle and deplete the opponent's living forces. However, it also has limitations, and it is constrained by various objective conditions, and in the final analysis, what weapons are used to fight what kind of war. Think about the ancient times when a soldier had a sword and gun in his hand in addition to a piece of armor in battle, and an archer was two pots of arrows, so fighting with these simple weapons should be regarded as heavy physical work, and the result was that the ability to continue fighting was very poor.

In addition, the ancient army mainly used harsh military discipline and heavy rewards to maintain morale, while the nomadic people were mainly cavalry, but most of them were illiterate, of course, the army of the Central Plains regime also existed. Armies with a low level of education and poor training could only accept simple orders and use simple tactics, resulting in simple and rough tactics, and they were accustomed to repeatedly charging with cavalry in dense formations when attacking.

In addition, the Mongol army did not have better tactical means in the face of the Song army, which was heavily fortified and significantly stronger than its own firepower, so a sharp contradiction between the need for a large number of troops and weapons and the narrow charging road was formed. And the only way to resolve the contradiction is to take a dense stormtrooper formation. Adopt a multi-way dense formation to achieve the maximum number of assault teams and accompanying firearms into the breakthrough in the shortest possible time, and attack the depth and tear the breakthrough with enough troops and weapons.

Although there are more casualties at the beginning of the breakthrough, these losses are much smaller than those caused by a slow-to-swallow all-out attack, and a successful breakthrough can easily take advantage of the situation and develop victory. Therefore, in the strict sense of the human sea tactics, it is not equated with sending to death, and in nature, the release of numerical superiority in a short period of time is a survival instinct. There is a type of sea turtle that rushes into the sea from the beach in large groups at a certain time, and the seabirds can only prey on a certain number of turtles at this specific time, and in the end, in the shortest possible time, the baby turtles return to the sea with minimal loss rate.

In the face of an opponent with strong firepower, a force like the Mongols had almost no chance of winning, but in the era of cold weapons, not to mention the basic infantry tactics of modern times such as infantry and cavalry coordination, as long as they dared to charge with one head and did not retreat in hand-to-hand combat, they could already be called an 'iron army'. The Mongol army relied on this tenacious spirit and fighting style that was not afraid of death to run rampant all over the world and dealt a devastating blow to the Song army. And for the surviving defenders near the breach, the waves of attacks in dense formations of multiple echelons were undoubtedly the nightmare in their memory, which continued to torment their nerves in the years to come, and Zhao Hao was no exception......

"Your Majesty, these Tartars are crazy!" Zhang Shijie pointed to the battlefield and said angrily.

"yes, they're crazy!" Zhao Yu tried to keep his calm and said. At this time, several groups of enemy cavalry who took the lead in the attack braved the non-stop fire of ballistas and desperately moved forward, the dead and wounded fell off their horses, and the people behind filled in again, rushing to the junction of the two armies of the Song army, trying to open a breakthrough from here. And the ballista, although fired at the fastest speed, could not stop the onslaught of the cavalry at such a short distance, and the mines and obstacles laid out were smashed away by them with their lives, opening a path. And the follow-up people kept throwing firewood, grass and dirt bags into the trenches, even at the expense of filling themselves in. This kind of desperate style of play made Zhang Shijie, a veteran, feel frightened.

"Your Majesty, can the rear army hold it?" Zhang Shijie saw that the enemy cavalry continued to pour in front of the formation, and they did not go around like before, but dismounted and shot at the Song army, so as to suppress the Song army archers, and even crush the defenders in front of them.

"Hold on!" Zhao Yu nodded.

"Your Majesty, if this continues, the trench will be filled!" More enemy horsemen poured into the trench through the ballista barricade, and they gathered more and more, using their horses as cover to advance gradually, and the horses and soldiers who had been shot were pushed into the trench, so that it would not be long before they could fill a path with corpses. Although His Majesty claimed to be able to hold it, Zhang Shijie was still unreassured.

"Alas, if it weren't for the wrong tactics, it would have taken some effort for us to hold on!" Zhao Yu didn't know if he felt sorry because he had died so many people, or if he felt guilty for instigating all his efforts in vain, and sighed and said, "Instigated Du originally wanted to use the rapid maneuver of cavalry to break through the interception of ballistas, and occupy the edge of the ditch to cover the infantry crossing the trench first. But he forgot that the cavalry was fast, but he left the infantry far behind, and was intercepted by rockets, which made it even more difficult to keep up with the pace of the cavalry, and therefore could not quickly pass through the breach opened by the cavalry. By the time they arrived, they were afraid that the cavalry had already died, and the breach had already been resealed! ”

"Well, Your Majesty still understands that if it breaks through the barrier and fills the trench with the infantry first, the casualties may be greater, but once the breakthrough is opened and then the cavalry rushes into the formation and makes a detour to the rear of the formation, it will cause chaos and force our army to abandon the first line of defense!" After hearing this, Zhang Shijie stroked his beard and said, "But it's not bad to instigate like this, it's just stupid, but I didn't expect Your Majesty to hide a back hand." The minister thinks that's the case, Your Majesty has already taken a countermeasure! ”

"Hehe, instigation is not stupid, and I am not a demon. It's that he lacks effective means to break the formation, and if he has a ballista in hand, I'm afraid it won't be like this, but now he can't help but use his flesh and blood to collide with the web of death we weave, sometimes with more blood and flesh, he will also win! Zhao Hao pouted and smiled. It is precisely because he was one step ahead and was equipped with firearms first that he had more choices, but if he didn't instigate, he would have to pay some price.

"Your Majesty's words have been taught!" Zhang Shijie listened to it, but gave a salute.

"What do you mean, Lord?" He was so confused that Zhao Yu hurriedly said.

"In the past, the minister thought that His Majesty would be easy to bully when he was young, but he always miscalculated, but he humiliated himself." Zhang Shijie gave another salute and said with shame on his face, "I heard what His Majesty said today, but I didn't despise it because of repeated defeats at the instigation, and I still treated it with a fierce general, not insulting or scolding, nor treating it as a thief, this is what a minister can't do!" ”

"Oh...... I see! Zhao Yu listened and suddenly said, "It's good that the cardinal has this understanding, the Tartars can crisscross thousands of miles, and it is not as simple as brute force to destroy countless countries." Needless to say, their ancestor Temujin's martial arts are also outstanding in governing the country and the army, and none of the brothers who created the foundation with him, or the generals and heroes selected by him, are not loyal for life. None of the people whom he reused betrayed him. And among the owners of entrepreneurship, there is no one who has not killed heroes. In this respect, Temujin did have a superior position over other Central Plains holy monarchs. ”

In addition, Temujin has always rewarded and punished clearly, and has constantly rewarded all meritorious heroes, and has never killed or cut power, but handed over the power to his ministers with confidence. And his fierce generals have never had the concern of high merit and shocking the master, rabbit and dead dog. Its accuracy of knowing people, the greatness of his spirit, and the sincerity of his belief in people are really beyond the reach of the emperors of all dynasties from ancient times to the present. But such a person, in our eyes, is still regarded as a barbarian, treated like a savage, let it grow, and think that he can subdue it with a little trickery, but in the end he lost the country! ”

"What Your Majesty said is extremely true, it is precisely because those scholars are blind and ignore the ambitions of the Mongols, but instead help the abuse, only thinking of using them to destroy the Jurchens, but the result is to drive the tiger at the front door and enter the wolf at the back door. After they captured the Central Plains, they coveted Jiangnan. If the Jurchen is immortal, how can there be today's disaster! Zhang Shijie seemed to be oppressed by those scholars, and couldn't help complaining, but he also felt that the little emperor had more appetite for himself.

"Hehe, those traitors deceived the first emperor, they really deserve to die!" Of course, Zhao Yu understood that there were not no people of insight among the scholars, and they could not all be killed with a stick, so he could only say perfunctorily, "Although this Kublai Khan is not as good as his ancestors, he can be regarded as a generation of heroes, and his subordinates not only have fierce generals such as Boyan, Instigation, and Ali Hague, but also boldly use Dong Wenbing, Liu Quan, these Han people, it is with their help that they can break through Jiangnan." And only when we face up to the strength of the enemy, can we have a target, instead of being arrogant or afraid of the enemy like a tiger! ”

"Thank you, Your Majesty!" Zhang Shijie said.

"It's time for them to be awesome!" Zhao Yu spoke, but his eyes did not leave the battlefield, because all the forces were pressed on the left flank, the feint attack on the right flank became more and more weak, and it was finally difficult to organize an attack and retreat. The enemy cavalry on the left flank continued to fight hard, although they advanced to the edge of the trench and crossed the trench with great courage, but they also suffered heavy casualties, and in the absence of infantry reinforcements, those who crossed the trench were also killed by the rear army, and they were never able to open the breakthrough. After the enemy infantry was bombarded by a burst of rockets, half of them still rushed through the blockade and continued to advance forward, but they had already lost the best opportunity, and Zhao Hao didn't want to let them go like this.

"Prepare the large ballista for fire, target the front of the left flank, reload the shotshot, four hundred paces away!" Zhao Hao ordered. In fact, this kind of large ballista is more appropriately called a stone thrower, but it is different from the traditional lever or counterweight stone thrower, but uses the same principle as the ballista, relying on torsion to throw objects. Previously, after he built it, it was used as a 'fortress cannon', fixed on the batteries of various ports in Qiongzhou, used to attack the enemy ships that came to attack, and to protect the military port.

"Your Majesty, all artillery positions are ready!" Guantong hand reported.

"Launch!" Zhao Hao said loudly with a telescope. His eyes wanted to trace the trajectory of a large ballista in front of him to fire stone projectiles, and test the effect, but he was disappointed, only to see a fist-sized pile of stones whistling over the Song army's position like a flock of mourning crows, and then swooping down like a group of vultures that had found their prey, and smashed into the group of enemy infantry advancing with shields and arrows...... (To be continued.) )