Chapter 202: Encroaching on North China, the first confrontation of detectives and cavalry
While building the castle belt on the coast, Chen Xian was not idle on land, he began to slowly advance the northern line of his castle group to the north, relying on the coastal castle belt built first, and the support of the port behind it, this castle line began to steadily encroach on the Hebei chassis to the north.
At this time, Hebei was in a period of power vacuum, the Jin State retreated south, and Mongolia could not take care of it for the time being.
At present, it is the local Han landlord Haoqiang who temporarily fills the power vacuum in Hebei.
Some of these landlords are quite good, such as Shi Bingzhi of Bazhou, Zhang Rou of Daxingfu, Wang Fu of Cangzhou, Zhending Wuxian, etc., and later the Mongolian Shihou, Hebei Jiugong of Jin, at this time most of them have stepped onto the stage of history.
These landlords were still relatively immature at this time, and their strength was relatively scattered, so they were naturally not Chen Xian's opponents, and they could only retreat in front of Chen Xian's castle advance.
Of course, Chen Xian's steady advance with the castle line so carefully was not to guard against Hebei's Haoqiang.
Sure enough, as expected, Chen Xian's actions soon alarmed a crucial figure.
Mu Huali!
This year, after King Huazim killed Mongol merchants and envoys in succession, Genghis Khan finally had enough of it and appointed Mu Huali as the king of Taishi, entrusting Mu Huali with the task of attacking the Jin Dynasty, and he himself began to gather a large army and prepare for the westward expedition.
Mu Huali, who accepted the order, changed his previous practice of wantonly killing and plundering and seizing land, and began to recruit the Han landlord Haoqiang in Hebei.
Under Chen Xian's pressure, the landlords of Hebei defected to the Mongols, and they let Mu Huali know that in Shandong, there was a force so powerful that all the powerful and powerful in North China were encroaching on the territory of North China.
Mu Huali first sent people to contact Chen Xian and lured him to defect to Mongolia with high-ranking officials Houlu.
Of course, Chen Xian could not agree.
Mu Huali, who carefully understood Chen Xian's forces, felt a great threat, and when Chen Xian refused his olive branch, Mu Huali immediately gathered more than 20,000 Mongolian iron cavalry under his command, and gathered the landlords and strong soldiers and horses from all over Hebei, almost 60,000 or 70,000 people, plus the people who were requisitioned, there were more than 100,000 people, and they killed the northern line of Chen Xian's territory.
A bitter battle is coming towards Chen Xian......
Receiving the news that Mu Huali led a large army to attack, Chen Xian did not dare to slack off, and took up two horse infantry brigades, eight assault cavalry battalions, and four light cavalry battalions stationed in Mizhou, a total of nearly 30,000 troops, and drove to the northern front.
At the same time, Yang Miaozhen's 3,000 all-round cavalry and 1,500 auxiliaries also went to the battlefield.
After Yang Miaozhen decisively dealt with the hidden dangers of the Yang family, on the one hand, in order not to chill people, on the other hand, Chen Xian also had to admit that the almighty cavalry did have his advantages, so he agreed to Yang Miaozhen's proposal to expand the almighty cavalry.
In order to avoid the recurrence of the previous defection, she stipulated that the recruits must have wives and children, and after joining the army, their families must be placed in a unified and centralized manner, so that even if there are landlords and children among the recruits, there is no need to worry.
At present, most of the Haoqiang children in Shandong gave up their land in Chen Xian's purge and fled to the county seat to survive, although they have a grudge with Chen Xian, but they are not blood feuds, and those who have blood feuds, that is, the landlords Haoqiang who fought against Chen Xian's armed forces before, have basically been purged and exterminated
So Yang Miaozhen felt that after controlling his family, these people were still available.
After two years of expansion, Yang Miaozhen's all-round cavalry has reached the scale of three thousand.
Originally, these 3,000 people were not equipped with horses, so they could only take turns to ride horses for training, but Chen Xian solved the problem of their horses after opening up the Liaodong trade route.
After arriving on the northern front, Chen Xian joined forces with Li Shi's 1st Infantry Brigade and Zhang Bai's 2nd Infantry Brigade.
After the merger, Chen Xian transferred four elite horse infantry battalions from the horse infantry he brought with him and the four light cavalry battalions he brought with him.
The horse infantry was organized according to the infantry, a battalion had nearly 1,000 people, while the cavalry battalion had only 400 people, Chen Xian asked a horse infantry platoon (more than 50 people) and a light cavalry platoon (about 25 people) to form a reconnaissance squad (this number was in an absolute numerical advantage in the face of the Mongol reconnaissance team. )。
Four squads (i.e., a horse infantry company plus a cavalry company) make up a squadron.
Because of the small number of light cavalry in his hands, Chen Xian was worried that his light cavalry would be suppressed by the Mongolian light cavalry and turn himself into a blind man on the battlefield, so he carried out joint reconnaissance training of horse infantry and light cavalry very early, for which he specially maintained several horse infantry battalions with all horses among the horse infantry.
For the tactics of this kind of joint reconnaissance team, Chen Xian has also carried out repeated experiments and deductions for a long time.
When the joint reconnaissance team is reconnoitring, the light cavalry is in front of the reconnaissance, and the horse infantry is ambushing behind, and if the light cavalry finds the enemy's reconnaissance cavalry, they will fight if they can beat it, and if they can't beat it, they will retreat, luring the opponent into the ambush circle of the mounted infantry in the rear.
Facts have proved that Chen Xian's strategy is quite successful, and in the early days of the encounter between the two sides, many Mongolian scouts were trapped.
The Mongol reconnaissance cavalry was carried out in units of 100 households, with the head of the brand (10 household chiefs) as a detachment.
Most of the twenty-five light cavalry who began to meet Chen Xian's reconnaissance cavalry squad were Mongolian brand head squads.
When the Mongols' brand head reconnaissance cavalry team met Chen Jun's reconnaissance detachment for the first time, ten Mongolian cavalrymen, facing twenty-five Chen Jun scout cavalry, were not afraid at all, and rushed up almost without hesitation.
According to their usual training, the light cavalry did not flee when facing the Mongol cavalry, which was smaller than their own number, and they lined up the horizontal formation facing the direction of the Mongol cavalry, drew their flintlock pistols inserted in their horses, and raised their guns to aim.
The charge of the Mongol light cavalry was very erratic, and they flickered left and right, and when they were about sixty or seventy meters away from the horizontal line of the reconnaissance cavalry, they suddenly turned around.
In the direction of their gallop, they would cross about forty or fifty meters in front of the reconnaissance team.
This distance is exactly the best position for the Mongols to use armor-piercing heavy arrows.
Most of the Mongol cavalry in Genghis Khan's time used stiff bows of more than 120 pounds.
This tensile strong bow, the heavy arrow shot at a position of fifty meters, the light armor on Chen Xian's light cavalry could not stop it at all.
But just before the Mongol cavalry was about to pass the best cavalry position, the flintlock pistols of the twenty-five light cavalry let out a deafening roar at the same time.
At a distance of forty or fifty meters, 25 flintlock muskets aimed at 10 enemy platoons of guns, firing stationary on horseback, with a single hit rate of absolutely more than 30 percent, six of the ten Mongolian scouts fell from their horses, and of the four who did not fall, three were injured and only one was unscathed.
Even the brave and disciplined Mongol cavalry could not withstand such a blow, and the remaining four turned their horses and left, and after a short run, one of them fell off his horse with serious injuries.
Finding that the enemy had retreated, Chen Xian's light cavalry left five people to watch the horses, and the remaining twenty people quickly changed the war horses that had been following with empty loads, drew their sabers, and chased after them!
In the end, only the one with the best luck and no injuries escaped among the ten Mongolian cavalrymen, while Chen Xian's side only wounded one person and two horses when he was shot by the opponent's arrows in the final pursuit.
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