After sending Zhang Yunyi away, Zhu Youzhen did not speak for a long time.

Zhang Yunyi belonged to the grassroots generals of the Ming army, and the scene he described may be a little biased. But judging from the battlefield situation he described, the gap in combat power between the Ming army and the Houjin soldiers made Zhu Youzhen shudder.

Isn't this scientific?

How could Houjin have such anti-heaven combat power, could it be that the Jurchen was invincible, didn't it blow out? It's true?

How can it be?

Zhu Youzhen frantically wanted to find a reasonable explanation, otherwise, he would definitely not be able to sleep peacefully.

No matter what time it was, at the request of Zhu Youzhen, all kinds of materials were found one after another, and they were piled up in the study of the palace. Fortunately, Xin Wangdi attaches more importance to data collection, otherwise it would not have been able to meet Zhu Youzhen's requirements.

Zhu Youzhen buried himself in the pile of information, kept looking through it, and his anxious state of mind made him forget to eat and sleep. Wang Chengen's several urgings were driven out by him.

Finally, the before and after of the battle of Salhu was pieced together by Zhu Youzhen bit by bit.

The Battle of Sarhu, the turning point of the decline of the Ming Dynasty, has countless descriptions in various books in the previous life.

In Zhu Youzhen's limited memory, everyone invariably blamed the defeat on the stupidity of the coach Yang Hao, the corruption of the Ming army, and the wisdom of Nurhachi. It seems that few people have mentioned the actual strength of the warring parties.

Zhu Youzhen felt that he had finally cleared the fog in the sky above Salhu.

According to Zhang Yunyi's description, combined with Zhu Youzhen's review of other materials, a relatively reasonable result appeared in front of Zhu Youzhen.

According to the analysis of various data, Zhu Youzhen found that the Ming army lost no matter how it fought in the Battle of Sarhu, and there was no possibility of winning at all. This outcome, long before the start of the campaign, has become a sure fact.

In terms of Houjin, Nurhachi's talent in military affairs is, undeniably, very high.

As a teenager, Nurhachi grew up under Li Chengliang, the commander-in-chief of the Ming Dynasty's Liaodong Army, an experience that laid a solid foundation for his lifelong growth.

Li Chengliang's troops in Liaodong were the most effective troops of the Ming army at that time. It is the standard field unit establishment of the Ming army, which is organized in the form of elite soldiers (elite soldiers) to control general troops (cannon fodder with little training).

Li Chengliang's combat mode on the battlefield is: first use ordinary troops to consume and exhaust the opponent, and finally let the elite soldiers make the final decision.

This tactic worked well in the face of the challenges of the indigenous tribes of Liaodong and the Mongols.

In the past few decades, Li Chengliang has relied on nearly 10,000 elite soldiers under his command as the backbone, and has the huge resources of the Ming Dynasty as the backing, so that he can crisscross Liaodong and run rampant.

As Li Chengliang grew old, his troops slowly corrupted, and the steel knives slowly became dull.

After Li Chengliang's death, the Ming Dynasty's control over Liaodong began to weaken.

Nurhachi took advantage of the situation, and while he imitated Li Chengliang's troops, he worked hard to train elite soldiers; On the one hand, he befriended the magistrates of Liaodong and used various means to win them over and corrupt them.

Elite soldiers are difficult to train, and they can't be trained overnight.

After hard work, Nurhachi finally created an elite army of soldiers, and with the help of this force, he unified the Jurchen tribes.

Over the course of more than 10 years of campaigning, Nurhachi's elite men became larger and larger.

During the Battle of Sarhu, the troops that Nurhachi invested were the elite forces he had trained in more than 10 years of campaigning.

After unifying the Jurchen tribes, Nurhachi, who had greatly increased his power in his hands, began to worry. His territory is too small to support this elite force. He had to find new nourishment for his troops. He set his sights on Da Ming.

At this time, the Ming Dynasty had just finished the three major expeditions of Wanli. Although the three battles were victorious, too many elite soldiers of the Ming Dynasty were consumed, and Liaodong was drawn into a vacuum.

The emptiness of Liaodong has further induced Nurhachi's ambitions.

Nurhachi, who has always been lurking in the Ming system, knows all kinds of news about the Ming Dynasty. After conducting an in-depth study of the Ming army, Nurhachi strengthened his determination to rebel.

After repeated temptations and careful combing of various news from the Ming Dynasty, Nurhachi determined that the Ming Dynasty was at the end of its strong crossbow, and it would not be able to support the fourth major expedition in the short term. He could have laid down a piece of land and ceded land to claim the throne before Da Ming reacted.

In the forty-sixth year of Wanli, Nurhachi attacked Fushun, and issued seven hatreds accordingly, brazenly raising the anti-flag.

Nurhachi's adventure succeeded, and successive local officials in Liaodong irresponsibly concealed the report, causing a great misjudgment by the Wanli Emperor. The Battle of Sarhu began with the ill-prepared Ming army.

At the beginning of the Battle of Sarhu, although Yang Hao claimed to have 470,000 troops, the actual total number of Ming troops was only about 100,000, and reinforcements from all over the country had not yet been assembled.

Probably because the supply pressure was too great, the Ming army rashly launched an attack under the command of Yang Hao, or attacked in four directions. At most, there are only 30,000 or 40,000 people on the way.

In terms of command, Yang Ho is not a qualified commander at all. Like Yuan Yingtai and Wang Huazhen, he was a literati who did not have the ability to command military. In his plan, the attack was divided into four routes, but there was no focus at all, and the four forces also seriously lacked contact with each other.

What made Zhu Youzhen even more angry was that Yang Ho did a very poor job of investigating Houjin. He didn't even know how many people there were in Nurhachi's main force, let alone the equipment and establishment of Nurhachi's main force. Yang Ho has no idea where Nurhachi is? He just took it for granted and set a target for the four-way troops: Hetuala.

Yang Hao, who lacks the concept of secrecy, even leaked this flawed battle plan early.

After getting accurate information, Nurhachi, who was fighting on the mainland, could calmly gather the main force of more than 60,000 people and attack each Ming army with absolute superiority.

This is Nurhachi's "Let him come as many times as he wants, and I will go all the way." "The battle plan.

What's even more terrifying is that for many years Nurhachi has used the Ming army as an imaginary enemy, and he is purposefully building his troops.

In the face of the Ming army, Nurhachi gave up the tactics of cavalry charging into battle, and he specially used the heavy armored infantry soldiers who restrained the Ming army as the main force of battle.

In response to the long-range attacks of the Ming army, which were mainly based on arquebuses, Nurhachi saw that the armor-breaking power of the Ming army's arquebuses was insufficient, and he greatly strengthened the thickness of the armor of the charging soldiers. His men, the strongest warriors, even wore three layers of heavy armor.

Nurhachi also focused on the shortcomings of the Ming army's lack of armor, focusing on the use of strong bows and heavy arrows as a long-range attack method to increase the long-range lethality of the Ming army.

Under his deliberate arrangement, when the heavily armored infantry soldiers rushed into the Ming army's formation, the Ming army could only dispatch elite soldiers (jiading) in order to maintain the formation. At this time, the sharpshooters arranged by Nurhachi will focus on sniping elite families and officers at all levels of the Ming army.

Once the Ming army's family members and officers at all levels suffered too many casualties, they could not continue to maintain the formation, and the Ming army's formation would be completely disrupted by the Houjin infantry.

When the Ming army's formation completely collapsed, Nurhachi's cavalry would be targeted into battle, and finally completely defeated the Ming army.

The Ming army, who did not know anything about Nurhachi, set off according to the flawed plan under Yang Hao's strict orders.