Chapter 52: Attack
Shenzhong is six o'clock, and Shenzhong in June is the time when the temperature of the grassland drops. If the night is long today, it won't be dark until midnight.
In other words, the Warats prepared an hour for battle. They couldn't wipe out all the Ming troops, so they used this hour to try to kill and injure the Ming soldiers, and then fled at night.
Although the Ming side did not know the specific tactics of the Warat people, the army was powerful and could respond to changes with the same.
From the beginning of the layout of the grassland strategy, forcing Warat to have to fight, to now Hulan suddenly lost temperature and arranged all the units of the army properly, no matter how the Warat people fight, it will not exceed the judgment of the Ming Dynasty.
Although tactically it is somewhat passive, strategically, it has completely taken the initiative.
No matter how the Warat people tossed, unless they could break the Ming army of 500,000 with 30,000 people, at least it would be a lose-lose battle.
The Ming can afford to lose, but the Warat people can't afford to lose, because as soon as they lose, the tribes that have finally gathered together will be scattered.
Word by word from the scouts reached the Chinese camp, and when it was learned that the Warat army had returned, everyone knew that a great war was coming.
When the Warat army reappeared on the hill on the north side, their formation was no longer a long dragon, but arranged into three attacking battle formations, and the three 10,000 horsemen each gathered about a mile, corresponding to the three armies of the Ming Dynasty.
Even if Zhu Zhanji doesn't understand the tactics of this era, he knows that the current position will no longer be a temptation.
When Zhu Di saw the other party's formation, he immediately laughed, and the Warat people couldn't bear it anymore.
As one order after another was delivered, the big flags behind him were held up one by one. And the cavalry and infantry of the Ming Dynasty are also in a good position.
This kind of positional warfare rarely appeared in the history of the war between the Ming Dynasty and Meng Yuan.
And Da Ming has never been afraid of positional warfare.
At a distance of three miles, the confrontation of hundreds of thousands of troops formed an extremely oppressive momentum in the setting sun, and time seemed to have frozen.
The faces of all the soldiers were very serious, because no one knew if they would die in the next moment.
But on such a battlefield, no one will retreat. Because moving forward is not necessarily dead, but going backward is definitely dead and alive.
"Drum beating!"
With an order, more than a hundred large drums rang out, and the horn of the charge was heard from the opponent's formation.
The cavalry of the Ming Dynasty slowly changed from the rear to the front, directly filling nearly half of the open space on the battlefield. If the Ming army is assembled and the infantry cavalry fights together, then no matter how good the cavalry of Warat is, it will not be an opponent.
Therefore, as soon as the cavalry of the Ming Dynasty moved, the cavalry of the Warat people began to charge.
This time, the Wara army directly dispatched 20,000 horsemen, except for their left flank, the 10,000 horsemen on the right wing of the Ming Dynasty did not move, guarding against the Shenji battalion, and the remaining 20,000 horsemen rushed directly to the position of the left center wing of the Ming Dynasty.
The charge of tens of thousands of cavalry made the horses rush over like a tide.
This time, the Warats were ready to harden the steel.
The collision of the cavalry on both sides was like a huge wave rolling, quickly forming a whirlpool in the middle of the battlefield.
Like a whirlpool, like a grinding disc, a real grinding disc of flesh and blood.
This time, the Shenji Battalion was no longer passively waiting for the attack of the Warats, and the two hundred cannons mounted on the carriage were quickly pushed to the front of the formation, and in the gap between the cannons were the cavalry of the Shenji Battalion.
The military horses of the Shenji Battalion are all trained in fright, and even if the cannon goes off again, it will not startle them.
On the east side of the Shenji battalion, on the far right flank of the Ming army, 10,000 Tatar cavalry also rushed to the Mahamu camp on the hill.
Zhu Zhanji felt that his eyes were not enough, every place on the battlefield was so intense, and the scene of this kind of war made him boil.
The roar of the cannons came, and the two hundred cannons were divided into two groups and began to bombard, and the sudden loud noise also startled the horses of the Warats, and dulled their impact for a moment.
Mahamu's army, relying on its geographical advantages, also began to dive from the hills, and the first to bear the brunt was 10,000 Tatar cavalry.
They rushed down from above, and they had the advantage, but the Ming artillery fire gave them heavy losses.
However, Mahamu had long known the power of the Daming Shenji Battalion, and their charge was just to lure the artillery fire of the Shenji Battalion, and after drawing an arc, the army moved westward, avoiding the Tatars, avoiding the Shenji Battalion, and rushing towards the Chinese army.
Their left flank and the Bald Sorovan cavalry in the center formed a crossover backlash, causing the cavalry in the middle of the Ming Dynasty to suffer a double-sided impact.
All of a sudden, the three cavalry units in the middle were under tremendous pressure.
However, the superiority of the Ming Dynasty's forces could not be offset by Warat's simple tactics. The neat infantry phalanx, after a frontal collision, quickly penetrated between the Ming cavalry and the Wara cavalry.
They were a team of five people, working together to deal with the cavalry.
Of course, the cavalry of Warat did not allow themselves to be bogged down, and they concentrated their forces to form a pendulum-like attack camp.
Human lives were lost in this grinding of canine teeth, and everyone was already crazy and thoughtless to slash and kill.
But Zhu Di, who was standing on the earthen city wall, remained calm, observing the situation on the battlefield while beginning to deploy troops.
"The Shenji battalion, the right flank attacks the hill and occupies the hill. Guanshanwei, Quanningwei, and Laohahewei, the cavalry attacked the center, and the infantry circled the rear and went around the left flank. Wu Xiang and Teng Xiang assisted the five military battalions in the middle of the attack. ”
With the waving of the flag, the phalanx of the rear army was transferred to the front army and participated in the battle.
Mahamu, who was still standing on the hill, noticed the change in formation, fearing that his cavalry would fall into an encirclement, and began to order the two 10,000 cavalry to retreat to the west, away from the battlefield.
At the same time, the 5,000 reserve battalions left behind in the hill also set up a posture and prepared to meet the attack of the Shenji battalion.
It was difficult for the artillery to go up the mountain, and the effect of shooting from the bottom of the mountain to the mountain was not good, and Liu Sheng personally led the cavalry of the Shenji battalion and began to attack the mountain.
But by this time, Mahamu had begun to move westward, abandoning the hill and moving his entire army to another hillside two miles away from the battlefield.
With their transfer, the Ming army also began to pursue, and Zhu Di couldn't sit still on the city wall, leading eight new forces such as Jin Wuwei and Hu Benwei, who had not yet fought in the battle, to personally pursue from the middle road.
And Zhu Zhanji also led his own Yulin Left Guard, and followed Zhu Di's side.
Although it was only half an hour of fighting, this time there were more people killed than in the two battles in the morning, and the battlefield in the middle had been soaked in blood and muddy sand.
Countless soldiers were howling, the military doctors were busy rescuing the wounded one by one, and the overseers were stabbing the enemies who had not yet lost their breath.
Zhu Di saw that Zhu Zhanji's face did not change and his heart did not beat, and he nodded with satisfaction.
The fighting in the front gradually decreased, and the Warats left behind a full 3,000 soldiers, and those military horses that had lost their masters were also led by the soldiers of the Ming Dynasty to the riverbank, making room for the middle road.
The casualties of the Ming Dynasty were not small, even the commander of the 3,000 battalions of Mandu was martyred, and he was also the highest official in the Ming army.
The retreat of the Warats was not to flee directly reflexively, but to use two cavalry to fight the forward battalion of the Ming Dynasty, leaving more time for the army to rest.
They retreated westward, more to avoid the artillery positions of the Ming Dynasty, because the artillery bombardment was something they could not resist.
When Zhu Di led the Chinese army to the new battlefield, the remaining 20,000 Warat soldiers had also rearranged their battle formations, looking down on the dense Ming army under the hillside.
Although the soldiers of the Ming Dynasty died more, the Ming Dynasty had an army of 350,000 in Hulan, and there were hundreds of thousands of people, even if it was a casualty rate of two to one, the Warat people with only more than 30,000 people could not afford to lose.
However, Mahamu knew that he could not retreat now, and if he retreated now, not to mention that the tribe had returned to his heart, even his own life could not be saved.
This time, they decided not to disperse their forces anymore, and used the remaining more than 20,000 soldiers to attack a point of the Ming army, which must cause great trauma to the Ming army, and then fled at night.
Before Zhu Di arrived, they also tentatively attacked several times, hindering the speed of the Ming army's assembly. But when Zhu Di's banner came directly to the bottom of the hillside, and the two armies gathered less than a mile together, all the small movements disappeared.
Both armies fell silent, awaiting the final decisive battle.
The artillery of the Shenji Battalion could not be mobilized to the front of the battlefield for a while, but the 6,000 gunners were divided into two armies and stood at the forefront of the battlefield.
Behind them were the cavalry ready to attack.
Ariba looked at the imposing Ming army below, and was a little afraid. "Taishi, the Ming army is strong, we might as well evacuate first, and then use harassment tactics to control the enemy!"
He was a puppet erected by Mahamu and was never respected by others. Mahamu's eldest son, Tuhuan, sneered and said, "The Great Khan is not afraid!" Although the Ming army is powerful, we only attack one point, and it is not necessarily us who suffers. If you withdraw now, how can you guarantee that other tribes will not turn around and join the Ming Dynasty? ”
"I've made up my mind, and I don't need to persuade again. The eagles of the steppe will not surrender to the cowardly Han sheep, and if they want to defeat us, they will have to pay with blood. Taiping, Bald Solo, are you afraid? ”
"Don't be afraid!"
But Mahamu said: "But I am afraid, not of these Han sheep, but of the rise of my Warat will be replaced by Tatars." You remember, the grassland belongs to us after all, and the army of the Ming Dynasty will leave sooner or later. Therefore, our real opponents are only the Tatars, Arutai. In this all-army attack, not only could we not avoid the Shenji Battalion, but also used the Shenji Battalion as a breakthrough to avoid their artillery, and now the initiative is on our side, striving to kill more Tatars. ”
"Understood!"
Mahamu drew his scimitar, raised it high, and shouted loudly: "Immortal Heaven will bless every grassland eagle, attack!" ”
Behind him were a dozen of his sons, leading their own tribe in a brave downstream.
This is the last impact, so all the Warat people have no idea of preserving their strength, and everyone has only one purpose, that is, to kill and injure the Ming people more.