The birth of artillery, a high-power weapon, has had a profound impact on warfare in the contemporary era of cold weapons.

In the past, in the east, more attention was paid to the coordination of military formations and columns, as well as attack and defense, but with the birth and development and improvement of artillery, muskets and other weapons, the so-called crowd tactics gradually became unable to become a difference in strength between the enemy and us.

Just like the Qing army under Chen Bingcheng now, the Prince of Rui Dolgon, who had more than 200,000 troops under his command and went south, attacked Liaoyang City several times, but he often returned in an instant, and he couldn't even touch the wall of Liaoyang City, so he was demoralized by the fierce artillery fire and gunfire on the city like a mountain fire, and he was defeated and fled back.

The more dense the formation, the more the artillery force and other great opportunities, often dozens of pounds of shells fall down, no one survives within a few zhang around Luodian, even if there are two lucky ones who still have a few breaths left, they are not as good as those soldiers who died on the spot, the fragmented stumps do not know where to go, and only rely on the body of the main body to gasp, a little more painful torment.

Unable to pose a threat to Liaoyang City for several days, Prince Dolgon simply left an army of 50,000 to surround Liaoyang City, and the remaining 100,000 troops bypassed Liaoyang City and headed south, forcing Hongtang, a vast area south of Liaoyang, to occupy the territory.

The Qing army went all the way south, and the Hongtang army, under the leadership of Wu Jie, An Xianguo and other generals, resolutely resisted the Qing army, making the advance of the Qing people extremely slow.

At the same time, the dock forts built for the people of Liuzhi also played a great role, and the Jurchens wanted to attack these dock forts, and their losses far exceeded the value they could gain; However, if these dock forts are not eradicated, there is no guarantee that there will be no traces of Hongtang's small army in these dock forts, and whether they will support the Hongtang guerrilla army that is fighting on the move.

Until now, although the Qing people have been gradually learning the siege tactics of the Han people, they think that they are well prepared to go south to recover the country, and they have brought a lot of heavy siege equipment along the way, but in the face of the strong dock fort built by the Hongmen army using cement and stone at any cost, they also need to pay a heavy price to break through the small dock fort, and at the same time, they may also damage the heavy siege equipment in the counterattack of the other party.

On the other hand, the Hongtang army organized a large army to slow down the pace of the Qing army, and on the other hand, sent scattered guerrilla troops to harass the enemy's rear troops, so that their baggage grain and grass troops were threatened, forcing the Qing army to send more troops to guard the rear troops, thus weakening their army strength in disguise.

Among the seemingly powerful armies of the Qing people, the soldiers who really belong to the elite of the Eight Banners are actually only 50,000 in number, and in the past few years, the children of the Eight Banners have been lost in the territory of the Ming Dynasty in the south, staying in the country and the Hongtang army, so that they now have only such a small number of first-class soldiers.

Coupled with its already weak population, it is not possible to recover its lost strength in a few years.

Fortunately, in these years, Huang Taiji took the Mongols on the Horqin steppe under his command with great foresight, and cooperated with the Jurchen barbarian tribe warriors recruited in the mountains and wilderness, and the strength of the army formed was slightly inferior to the elite of the Eight Banners, but it was much stronger than the border army of the Ming Dynasty, and now it also has a scale of forty or fifty thousand.

And the largest number of the Qing army is not their Jurchens, but the Han army that they regard as the strongest opponent, from the defeated border army to absorb the surrender army, win over the Ming generals of the real power faction, etc., so that the number of the Han Eight Banner army formed by the Qing people has skyrocketed to more than 100,000, plus the Korean soldiers absorbed after making neighboring Korea bow down to the courtesy, this is the huge capital of the Qing Dynasty that dares to covet the vast land of the Ming Dynasty in the south.

In addition to leaving behind the army necessary to defend the capital of the Qing Dynasty and the rest of the territory, Dolgon went south to attack the Ming army that had occupied the territory, which can be said to be their most powerful strength today.

The 30,000 most powerful Jurchen Iron Cavalry was the killer weapon in the hands of Dolgon, but this powerful army played a role in this battle and was the smallest of the troops under his command.

Dolgon, they didn't even understand how these Han people could build towering fortresses out of thin air when the northeast was frozen and the ground was as hard as steel.

What's even more amazing is that the building materials of these fortresses can be as hard as stone, or even a few points harder, so that people can't find the cracks to destroy, even if they have siege equipment and other assistance, the cost of destroying a fortress in the end is not small.

What's even more odious is the news of the help brought by the rear baggage team, the Ming Dynasty army didn't know how to train and train cavalry, and instead of facing off with them on the frontal battlefield, they actually ran into the hinterland of their Qing rear, and did nothing else, just to find the Qing people's baggage team to attack, so that the Qing Dynasty was not a surplus of grain and grass baggage losses.

For this reason, the Qing people had to send a cavalry of the same size of 10,000 people back to fortify the defense, as an important defense force to protect the baggage army.

Before the Qing people guarded the baggage team, it was 20,000 Han soldiers, but they didn't want to be killed under the strong impact of the Ming cavalry, and the people turned over on their backs, and then fell into the hands of the Ming army.

Because of the detour, returning to the Qing Dynasty, the materials, grain and grass looted in the Ming Dynasty, Dolgon left most of them among the Shuntianfu Jingshi, and only brought a small part back. In addition, the road to return to the northeast was unsuccessful, and in the end, he could only travel for two more months, which not only consumed a lot of grain and grass, but also lost a lot of materials due to the bad weather and marching accidents.

Therefore, at this time, the Qing kingdom itself was not rich in supplies, and if the Ming army continued to destroy its supply lines, the burden on the hundreds of thousands of troops of the Qing Dynasty would be very heavy in the future.

Unlike in the kingdom of the Ming people, who can wantonly destroy, the Qing people are on the land of their own kingdom, but they care about their land, pasture and population as much as the Ming people, so they will naturally have too many constraints, and they will not be able to do the cruel means of looting the township.

Because of this, the Qing people were forced to send their ace team back to the defense and parade when the infantry could not guarantee the safety of the logistics supply team, so that the logistics of their army could be guaranteed, which invisibly weakened a lot of their own strength.

In fact, this trick is not the first time that the Hongtang army has used it, but even if it is as strong as the Qing army, it can only be passively defended under this shameless tactic.

(End of chapter)