Listening to Chen Ce talk about the Zhejiang battalion, Li Jing suddenly fell into his heart, he couldn't help but feel a faint pain in his heart, a group of people who had fought for decades for their family and country, and finally were deceived by the civil officials of their own country for ulterior purposes, unarmed by Shangguan to receive arrears, slaughtered alive like pigs and dogs, and then stepped on 10,000 feet, killed a lifetime of thieves, and finally he was labeled a traitor, and he was never recovered.

25 years have passed, a whole generation, and today their children have grown up, but in the autumn of the country's difficulties, they abandoned their hatred and went to the battlefield again, until they fought to the last person, playing the largest casualty exchange ratio between the Ming and Qing dynasties. 6,000 foot soldiers fought 60,000 iron cavalry of 60,000 banners, killed 8,000, and killed and wounded more than 10,000. A large number of Eight Banner generals were captured successively. These skinny little southerners have been beaten with braids for a whole generation.

In fact, these 4,000 Zhejiang battalion soldiers can no longer be said to be the real Qi family army, except for Qi Jin and other generals and middle and lower-level officers, most of whom are the children of the second generation of Qi family army. Ordinary soldiers were recruited in various parts of Zhejiang in the past three years, but the spirit of governing the army, training methods, strategies and tactics, and team combat methods left by Qi Jiguang back then were all inherited in accordance with the spirit of Qi's army.

An army, or even a political group, its founder and founder will have a profound impact on the entire group, just like the Beiyang Group in modern times, Li Hongzhang laid a good foundation and a good style. The Beiyang melee never kills people, and admits defeat. There are very few traitors. Wu Peifu and others would rather die than be traitors. Even Zhang Zuolin, who defected halfway, refused to sign a traitorous treaty. In the end, he was blown up by the crazy Japanese he played.

Since Li Jing knew that they were going to the battlefield, he would never allow them to die, and he could not chill the hearts of the loyal ministers and good generals in the world, and he must leave seeds for the Qi family's army.

Li Jing asked in detail about the situation of the Qi family army this time. Chen Ce made an introduction. This time it was the car battalion of the Zhejiang battalion that came. Tong Zhonghua served as the chief soldier, and the deputy general Qi Jin (Qi Jiguang's adopted son, the deputy general is the deputy general of the army), and the staff general Zhang Ming Shitong Zhejiang soldiers 4,000 people (1,000 more than the original history).

The equipment of the car battalion is biased towards the car. The partial van car has a long wheel of one foot and three feet, a width of nine feet and a height of seven feet and five inches. Converted to the current unit, it is about five meters long, more than three meters wide, and about two meters high, the Japanese army's Type 97 medium tank during the Anti-Japanese War was 5.5 meters long, 2.3 meters wide, and 2.3 meters high, and the size of the appearance can be said to be almost the same.

The march was carried by animal power, usually with two horses or mules. Small Franc cannons and muskets, as well as armor and grain, can be transported on the cart. If there is no animal power, the partial van can also be pulled by a person in front and pushed by a person in the rear. A team of eleven people is in charge of one vehicle. All the supplies of this team are in this car. During the battle, the car was surrounded by a circle, and the end of the car was buckled with an iron hook, and the carriage board was erected to form a field city wall fortification, and the carriage board had a cannon window. It is possible to shoot outwards and fire. A soldier could also stand on the carriage and shoot with a bow and arrow from the chest wall, stabbing the spear downward, slashing with a broadsword, or shooting with a bow and arrow through the gap in the junction of the carriage.

There are more than 2,600 officers and soldiers in the battalion, 256 Fran machine guns, and 8 generals (heavy large-caliber artillery); Each battalion has 128 chariots, each chariot is equipped with 2 Franc machines, 4 bird guns, 4 rocketeers, and an average of one artillery gun for every 12 soldiers. In addition, the new unfinished half of the car battalion, about 1,300 officers and soldiers, compared with the above half of the equipment, the Chinese army directly under the 100 cavalry, as a herald, scout soldiers and so on as the direct subordinate soldiers of the Chinese army, another equipped with 60 tiger squat guns.

These Zhejiang battalions are equipped with cotton armor inlaid with iron sheets. The training is well-trained, the morale is high, and the current training methods and organization are all in accordance with the way of the Qi family's army. Now stationed next to the Shizhu Barracks in Ma'anshan, the Youyang Tusi soldiers are also temporarily camped nearby. Now Ma'anshan already has, Li Jing's Nanao Town has 3,000 people, Zhejiang soldiers 4,000 people, Youyang soldiers 4,000 people, Shizhu soldiers 10,000 people, a total of 21,000 people.

The first batch of seaborne departures included 4,000 Shizhu soldiers, 4,000 Youyang soldiers, and 4,000 Zhejiang soldiers, totaling 12,000 people. In the past few days, the ship boarded the ship after the last enough supplies in Nanjing, and at present, the sea ship Li Jing is ready and is moored at the pier. The remaining 6,000 Shizhu soldiers were ordered to wait for Kaihai to go ashore from Tianjin to Tongzhou later. As a backup.

Li Jing invited the two chief military officers, the main generals of the Qi family's army, and the generals Youyang and Shizhu to Li Jing's school early the next morning, and he wanted to show the eight banners of the shield chariot to the army.

Early the next morning, Chen Ce, Dong Zhongkui and others came to Li Jing's schoolyard, and after everyone greeted for a while, Li Jing ordered to push six temporary Eight Banner Shield Cars.

The shield car is about the same size as the bias car, but the shield car is thicker, and the inner and outer two layers of wooden planks are three inches thick Northeast hardwood ash, forming a box, and two layers of quilts are supported by a wooden frame in the middle, and the intervals are filled with sand. The outermost side is wrapped with a layer of raw cowhide and a layer of quilt. The whole car is very heavy, pushed by human power, and the driving is slow.

Thousands of miles of ice and snow in Liaodong in winter, turning into mud in spring, everyone present can see that this kind of heavy and abnormal shield car has extremely poor mobility. They were all a little confused.

Li Jing said, "Your Excellency can try it with all kinds of bird guns and cannons you carry to see how long you can penetrate it." Forget the bow and arrow, there is no need to try, and some shield carts can be roofed, ash-framed, and three-layer raw cowhide covered with roofs, which are used to tear down the city walls and excavate the city walls, and it is useless to roll wood and stones. Not to mention bow and arrow throwing. ”

The results of the experiment made the generals very frustrated, no matter how far the musket was, it was useless, and it could not be pierced by a hit. The Franco cannons equipped by the car battalion are all small cannons of more than 100 catties, and the shells weigh more than one catty and five taels, and they cannot penetrate 10 meters. At a distance of more than ten meters, the first layer of cotton cover and wooden planks of the shield car were pierced, and a large amount of sand flowed out. The shells were wrapped in a quilt in the back. Only the twelve medium iron cannons were able to penetrate the shield car at a distance of 150 meters, which was equivalent to a three-pounder gun. This gun had separate gun carriage wheels. The van could not carry too heavy artillery, the soldiers could not push it, and the recoil could not withstand it. As soon as the cannon is fired, the axle hub will be shattered.

"Guys, think about it, if the Eight Banners pushed down the shield cart and shot at you within fifty meters, would you be able to fight? Bows and arrows you will definitely not be able to shoot others, muskets, what is the situation in the workshop of the Ming Dynasty, you also know, the drift is over, the remaining money is not enough to make a qualified musket, can only reduce the technological process, reduce the difficulty of processing, and even use worse iron, it is very easy to blow up, and it is estimated that there is no reliability of others. Not to mention training. ”

"Needless to say, the Eight Banners shoot in the eyes and cheeks, and the middle one will die, they use heavy arrows, and their armor-piercing ability is very strong." Qi Jin said with some frustration.

"Then what to do, we don't have cavalry, and our shooting skills are not as good as others." Chen Ce also had a headache.

"Then just continue to push the cart forward, we are not as accurate as them at fifty meters, is there a gap between ten meters, their car is heavy, and the mobility is not as good as ours, we will go up and change one by one" Bai Zaiyun said.

"If it doesn't work, they will attack with fire, prepare fire oil, push the side van and rush up, pour fire oil on them, and set them on fire. Quilts and planks are flammable. Ma Xianglin also said.

"It's a good idea, and we won't lose a lot. It's also a hard move," Qin Liangyu muttered.

Li Jing looked at everyone and said: "The only way is to cast cannons, use light field guns, and penetrate the shield car from a long distance." However, time is running out. You are going to leave in a few days, and I have the ability to cast cannons here, but it is too late, and the price is expensive, and the allocation from the military department is not enough. ”