Chapter Eighty-Six: The Tank Forces of the Ming Dynasty

It was Zhang Chu's team that broke the blood of Houjin's cavalry.

Zhang Chu made careful preparations for this northward trip, and selected 1,000 elite infantry from the security army, plus Li Yi's 200 cavalry, to form the third regiment of the security army. The 1,000 infantry were lightly armed, armed only with helmets and chain mail, and all the muskets they wielded. Zhang Chu spent a lot of money for these thousand people, and he kept training every day, and he consumed more ammunition than he went out to attack, and even used up a batch of muskets.

The vehicles carrying these infantry were not ordinary vehicles, these vehicles could be called the tanks of the Ming Dynasty - partial vans. These partial vans are carefully built by Zhongyang's factory.

The development of the world is sometimes spiraling, with soldiers driving chariots to kill during the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, and modern warfare soldiers hiding in chariots thousands of years later. The Ming Dynasty was ahead of the world again, Qi Jiguang had formed a chariot battalion equipped with partial vans and artillery, but in the end, there were fewer and fewer car formations in the Ming army, an important reason was the lack of money, the construction of vehicles, the horses and mules that pulled the carts all needed money, and the firearms troops supporting the car array were even more expensive, and what the Ming Dynasty government lacked was money. So the car array disappeared, the quality of the firearms of the Ming army was uneven, and the soldiers who used firearms lost confidence. It's almost like seeing the enemy mess around and running away. The chariot formation also had a fatal drawback, the musketeers equipped with it did not have a range of muskets that exceeded the bow and arrows, and the bullets were not enough to block the cavalry out of range, and the cavalry could rush through the range of the muskets and rush into the chariot formation as long as they rushed desperately, and the musketeers without bayonets had only the fate of being killed.

But this time, Zhang Chu's partial van car was not only equipped with a Franco machine like Qi Jiguang, but the two cars were connected end to end to a stable combat platform, and a solid wooden carriage was erected on the side facing the enemy, and there were perforations in the carriages, through which the musketeers and artillerymen shot outward, and the car was also made of a canopy with a wooden frame, covered with a quilt during the war, and Houjin's bow and arrows could not hurt the soldiers in the car at all.

In order to make up for the lack of range of the musket, Zhang Chu let Houjin see something unprecedented—the snake's belly barbed wire. Zhongyang's factory uses stainless steel molds and powerful hydraulic wire pullers to finally dial out qualified steel wires after many tests. The workers screwed the spikes one by one on the wire according to the way Zhang Chu gave. The battle was to fix the horse on the ground, and then connect it with a barbed wire fence in the middle, and the Houjin soldiers did not see this thing before they suffered a big loss.

At this time, Zhang Chu was sitting in a side van, holding an oversized musket in his hand, ordering people to disperse the smoke in the car, and there were three soldiers next to him who were also holding the same musket.

Zhang Chu became the mascot in the previous re-battle, and he was very unwilling. He also knew that the soldiers could no longer let him rush to the front and fight. So he took advantage of his authority and ordered the factory to produce four special muskets, which were enlarged versions of the current security army muskets in the style of later generations, which were huge and heavy, and could only be used in cars, with only one advantage of a long range.

Zhang Chu ordered someone to carry the gun on the side van, plus himself in a group of four, and one person on the roof of the car looked at the command, selected a valuable target and fired at the same time. When the Houjin army attacked just now, Niu Lu Zhangjing was targeted by them, and after the gunshot, he was knocked off his horse by someone who shot the bullet. The Houjin army lost its command, and no one could order a retreat when it saw danger, increasing casualties, and even the most tenacious Houjin soldier was spotted by the observer on the roof of the car, constantly reporting directions, and the battlefield was quiet with the sound of gunfire. Zhang Chu was very satisfied, this time he finally didn't become a mascot, although he didn't know who hit it among the four, but no one would compete with him.

Yue Tuo couldn't believe that the world in front of him was real, and the two hundred warriors were gone, including the brave red armor, who didn't even see the appearance of the enemy, and the Ming people hid in the chariot formation without even showing their heads.

This revenge must be avenged, the long-term campaign made him still keep a clear head, the Ming people relied on a strong car formation and firearms, the reason why the attack just now failed was because they failed to clear the rejection in front of the car formation, the weakness of the firearms is that the loading is slow, as long as the enemy rushes up with all his strength, he has no power to fight back. The Ming people must have tied ropes and other things between the horses to knock down the advancing horses, and as long as the cavalry in front of them cut the ropes with steel swords, the enemy's horses would be useless.

Yue Tuo took out his saber in his hand and urged the horse to the front row of the line, and the white-armored warriors around him understood what he meant, and they all followed closely behind, and the entire Houjin army became very solemn. All the cavalry followed behind Yue Tuo and slowly approached the Ming people's chariot formation, and as the speed of the horses increased, the shouts of killing became louder, and no one could defeat Dajin's warriors in the field.

The white-armored warriors on both sides of Yue Tuo deliberately accelerated their speed to stop him behind, and then lowered their speed, and the whole army surpassed Yue Tuo and rushed towards the Ming man's car formation, the Ming man's cannon sounded again, but it would not stop the warrior's iron hooves, the knight in front of him was prepared this time, and drew his saber to cut the wire between the horses, but the wire was paralyzed on the ground like a dead snake, and the saber was cut without force, and it was not one in front of him. Some soldiers hooked the horses with iron hooks tied to ropes and tried to pull them away, but the horses were firmly fixed to the ground, and it took a lot of strength to pull the horses, but the horses rolled in front of the battle with wires, still blocking the way of the cavalry's advance, and the guns of the security army focused on taking care of the Houjin soldiers who came to clear the obstacles, and the layers of soldiers fell on the barbed wire. After paying a lot of casualties, a few passages were finally cleared, and the Houjin soldiers rushed towards the car formation from the passage, the narrow passage slowed down the cavalry, and the security forces concentrated all the guns and ammunition in the passage, and a soldier in the side car was responsible for shooting. Three other soldiers were responsible for delivering the loaded muskets to him, taking the used muskets and continuing to reload, everything was carried out according to the usual training machinery, the guns kept ringing, the loaded soldiers were concentrating on loading the bullets, and no one even glanced at the Houjin soldiers who were attacking outside the side car.

Yue Tuo, who was covered by the guards, did not escape the eyes of Zhang Chu's four-person team observer, he loudly reported the direction, and Zhang Chu, the commander of the security army, obeyed the soldier's order in a regular manner, turned the direction of the muzzle, locked on to the target, and followed Zhang Chu's voice "Release!" The four of them pulled the trigger, and four huge buckshot bullets flew towards Yue Tuo.

Yue Tuo witnessed a white-armored warrior in front of him being shot in the face with a lead bullet, the bullet passed through his brain and opened a fist-sized hole in the back of his head, and blood and brains splattered out of the hole. At the same time, there was also a huge blood hole in the neck of Yue Tuo's mount, the bullet pierced the horse's neck with unabated momentum, and hit Yue Tuo's breastplate, and the huge inertia lifted Yue Tuo off the horse, but fortunately, the guards next to him found it quickly, rushed over and bent down to lift Yue Tuo from the ground, urging the horse to run backwards.

A large mouthful of blood spurted out of Yue Tuo's mouth, the guard put him on the ground for a long time before he woke up, looked down, a huge lead bullet was flattened on the breastplate, the guard took the spare horse, Yue Tuo endured the pain in his chest and rode on the war horse, seeing that the cavalry of Houjin on the battlefield was still blocked out of the car formation, Yue Tuo knew that the big thing was not good, and immediately ordered to retreat, it was not so easy to retreat, there were few Houjin soldiers who really withdrew from the range of guns and cannons, Yue Tuo could only order the withdrawal of the army, but the security army did not relent, The chariot formation opened the gap, the cavalry of the security army rushed out of the gap, and rushed out of pursuit along the barbed wire gap that was opened by the Houjin soldiers, Yue Tuo ordered the division of troops to break off, a group of Houjin soldiers turned their horses' heads and rushed backwards, they firmly believed that they would win in the hedging of the horse team, but the security army did not give them a chance to approach, pulled out the short musket inserted in the saddle and beat it indiscriminately, and knocked the Houjin soldiers who rushed in front of the horse. The other Houjin soldiers still rushed forward firmly, and the next thing should be hand-to-hand combat, the previous Ming army was also like this, ping pong put a burst of firearms and then came up to fight hand-to-hand, and was finally killed by the heroic Houjin soldiers, but the cavalry of the security army did not think so, and two short muskets were drawn out, closer distance, stronger lethality, and some security guards were almost using muskets against the chest of Houjin soldiers in the fire. The broken soldiers were swept away in a blink of an eye, and the security forces chased after the defeated Houjin cavalry and beat them fiercely.

The horsemanship of the Houjin people played a role, and they quickly distanced themselves from the cavalry of the security army, and dozens of horsemen escorted Yue Tuo to flee to the place where he had previously camped.