11-43 The Iron Rider Era

The combat effectiveness of the Western Xia cavalry is indeed stronger than that of the Qing army, if the opponent is replaced by the Eight Banners, I am afraid that such a fierce artillery fire will have been defeated, but the heroic cowardly Xue army did not be frightened by the sacrifice of their comrades, but aroused their fighting spirit even more, and the cavalry composed of Tieliu quickly rushed to the place where there was no artillery and infantry support on both wings of Hui'an Fort.

There are only some poplar trees sparsely growing in a radius of more than ten miles near Hui'an Fort, all of which are suitable for the flat land of the cavalry's ability to swing maneuver, but it is also suitable for the terrain of artillery firepower, the Western Xia army has also encountered a similar situation in the offensive war in the past, in the face of the enemy's trebuchet and the city defense crossbow, they can avoid the opponent's blow as long as they have the advantage of lifting, because the change direction of the trebuchet is very troublesome, and the city defense crossbow is even more troublesome to install, the firing angle is very small, and it is completely impossible to do 360 degrees of free fire.

The Western Xia cavalry decisively and wisely chose to outflank in a roundabout way, but their actions all fell into the eyes of the artillery observers on the airship, and one after another instructions were conveyed through the flag, and the artillery positions were immediately busy.

After the Western Xia army suddenly changed direction, the shelling stopped abruptly, and the cavalry was no longer suppressed by artillery fire, and the suppressed anger burst out, and they rushed forward one by one, almost standing on their horses, and eager to rush into the camp of Hui'anbao at once and cut off the heads of these despicable and cowardly Han people.

But only a moment later, the shelling began again, the impact point fell exactly in the direction of the cavalry, a cannonball down is dozens of horses were blown away, even if the cavalry of thousands of people encountered such an unprecedented artillery bombardment, the whole earth was trembling, the dry desert was soaked with the blood of the Mongolian athletes, but they still rushed forward, the red-shirted soldiers on the flank defense line of Hui'an Fort watched these Mongolian cavalry rushing out of the smoke and yellow sand in the sky, and some of them had broken arms, Some people were covered in blood, and even some people's heads were missing, and they still maintained a charging posture, tightly clamping their horses and rushing forward. The last remaining warriors did not get close to the defensive line, and those who were far away were killed and wounded by grenades fired from wire crossbow beds.

The defense system of the Red Shirts was very tight, the farthest range was the five-inch heavy artillery, and then the sixteen-pound and eight-pound sober field artillery and mountain artillery were responsible for the suppression of medium-range fire, the surface lethal fire at close range was the grenades thrown by the wire crossbow bed and the infantry's bazookas, the point kill fire was the infantry guns and the 32-tube flywheel platoon, in addition to the air support firepower was not counted.

The Western Xia army is a tendon, and the scimitar will never retract the knife if it can't cut the enemy's head, so despite the fierce artillery fire, rushing forward is equivalent to going directly to see Changshengtian, they still attack continuously, Gu Lunmu saw this situation and hurriedly sent a herald to order the troops to retreat, and the airship of the Red Shirt Army saw a lot of heralds with command flags on their backs running out of the small sand dune, so they passed the coordinates to the artillery, and the artillery divided two heavy guns, raised the angle to the highest, and the two shells hit directly.

When he heard a strange howl in the air, he was keenly aware of the danger that was coming, and immediately threw himself to the ground, two shells exploded a huge crater on the ground, and anyone who stood was torn into a rain of blood by shrapnel, and only Gu Lunmu was spared.

Gu Lunmu got up from the ground in a daze, his eyes were full of small stars, he shook off the dust on his body and looked around, his own soldiers were blown away, and the cavalry of other troops who witnessed all this in the distance hurriedly rushed over to rescue the head of the ten thousand households, and quickly retreated out of the range of Han fire.

No matter how the Western Xia cavalry maneuvered, they could not get rid of the bombardment of heavy artillery, because the airships in the sky were always paying attention to their movements, under the clear and clear sky, the cavalry brigade mainly moved up to a monstrous cloud of smoke and dust, and it was not possible to expose the target.

A battle ended hastily, with only a few feathered arrows inserted in the earthen wall of Hui'an Fort, and the cavalry who rushed over to shoot arrows at the risk of death had all been killed, their bodies were full of bullet holes, and there was a mess in the distance, dead bodies everywhere, and huge craters curling with green smoke. The Western Xia army did not know how many people died, while only a few people in the Ming army were slightly injured by arrows.

The people who returned to the department were shocked, the giant cannon had been hidden in the carriage of the mechanical mule and did not let them see it, no one expected that the Ming army still had such a powerful weapon, in fact, even most of the red shirts did not know the power of the giant cannon, they were just told by their superiors that they had a big killing weapon, but these young men have long been used to this kind of unilateral slaughter, so they did not think so.

The command tower ordered the flag to be unfurled, and the Hui people had also undergone some training in military coordination, and knew that this was an order to pursue, but the order was not given to them but to other cavalry units.

Huo Lingyao was anxious on the spot, not because they were not allowed to pursue, but because at this time the pursuit happened to hit the full set of the Western Xia army, what the Mongols were best at was to disguise themselves as fleeing to attract the enemy to chase after them, and use the method of turning back and shooting arrows to kill and drag down the enemy, don't look at the red shirt army to fight positional warfare, it is not good to fight sports warfare, even if the cavalry is equipped with advanced firearms, it is in vain, because the quantity and quality of the cavalry of the Ming army are much worse than those of the Western Xia army, don't look at the iron curtain of heavy artillery, But packing up a thousand cavalry in the sports station is still like playing.

Huo Lingyao just wanted to gallop to the conning tower and tell Liu Ziguang to take back the order, when he suddenly heard a piercing chirp, which they were all familiar with, it was the whistle of a mechanical mule, only to see a stream of white steam spewing out from under the vehicle, the red iron wheels and the black crankshaft began to turn, it turned out that the pursuing cavalry was them.

The mechanical mule is not only a transport vehicle, but also a combat vehicle, after removing the trailer behind, it is a steam ironclad car, this kind of vehicle itself is very large, if it is not for the Ningxia wasteland soil is as hard as iron, replaced by the Jiangnan water network area, I am afraid that the Erli Road can not go out and fall into the quagmire. The mechanical mule is equipped with an eight-inch infantry cannon and a rocket launcher, as well as a wire bed crossbow that shoots grenades, which is murderous and majestic, and it rumbles out and sets off a puff of smoke and dust, and the momentum is magnificent and shocking, and even the athletes in the Hui Department can't help but secretly exclaim: This is the real iron horse.

The boiler on the steam chariot has already begun to make a fire, waiting for the order to attack, the driver pulls the damper, the locomotive slowly begins to move, and then goes faster and faster, the stoker exposes his tendons and meat and shovels the charcoal into the furnace, the driver holds the joystick to control the direction of the vehicle to avoid the craters on the ground, the gunners load the eight-pound gun with shotguns in the iron turret on the roof of the car, and dozens of mechanical mules break into the vast desert like ten tigers.

The Western Xia army really wanted to lure out the cavalry of the Ming army to gather and annihilate it, in fact, their tactical goal had been achieved, but it was not ordinary cavalry that chased them, but hard bones that could not be gnawed, real iron cavalry.

The Western Xia army ran away on horseback, while turning back to shoot arrows, but the feather arrows fell on the smooth body of the car and could only slide down in vain, unable to cause any damage, although the degree of the steam locomotive was not as fast as the war horse, but the victory was not to rest, it could be kept even, so it didn't take long for the Western Xia army to be caught up, seeing the huge chariot, some of the cavalry scattered in a hurry, some of the horses rushed over, those who scattered opened their bows and arrows in vain to shoot the people in the chariot, and those who rushed over were even more arrogant, He actually smashed the chariot with a mace and a sabre.

The ironclad chariots were rampage, driving frantically on the saline-alkali land of the desert, some of the Western Xia infantry had no time to dodge, and were swept under the wheels and crushed into flesh, and some cavalry swung their swords and slashed the ironclad chariots, except for cutting some gaps in inconsequential places, they were red-eyed, and jumped on the chariot desperately, but the mechanical mules had been modified before the expedition, and there was nothing to climb on the outside, and these brave knights could control the most violent wild horses, but they had nothing to do with the coal-burning iron horses, As soon as he climbed up, he slid down and was crushed, and those who were lucky enough to climb up were also beaten into a sieve by the firecracker.

However, the elite cowardly Xue army also caused some damage to the ironclad car, and some people with excellent archery skills shot arrows into the firing port of the chariot from a long distance, killing and wounding the shirtless redshirt soldiers inside, but these people did not get a good end, and were immediately bombarded into scum by the rapidly turning turret.

The Western Xia army was completely scattered, and the slightest gathering of troops would be bombarded by heavy artillery and the impact of ironclad vehicles, and the red-shirted army drove them thirty miles away before stopping, and Gu Lunmu, who was running wildly with his subordinates, sighed after hearing the report: "This battle has been lost." ”

The subordinates said unwillingly: "Master Wanhu, let's gather and there are still tens of thousands of people available, how can we say defeated?" ”

Gu Lunmu said: "The Han people just occupied the water source and no longer pursued, it can be seen that their purpose is this, although our army has not been destroyed, and the morale is still some, but how to fight without the water source, just thirst can kill us to death." Alas, the Han people were so cunning in their use of soldiers, presumably the other three groups of men and horses had also been defeated. ”

Gu Lunmu divided three cavalry in advance to carry out a wide range of maneuvers, in order to outflank the back road and cut off the grain road of the Han people, but Liu Ziguang's grain road is not so easy to intercept, it is all armed to the teeth of the ironclad steam car, there is a hot air balloon on the head to reconnoiter the enemy situation of dozens of miles away, the Western Xia army at the beginning of the unscrupulous direct pounce, after being beaten up, learn to be honest, want to take advantage of the night to sneak attack, but at night the ironclad car will be surrounded by a circle to defend on the spot, The hot air balloons also shoot flares to illuminate the ground at night, making it impossible for them to hide.

The grain road was intercepted for several days, and a lot of lives were lost before an inch of success, and the people and horses on this road were defeated.

As for the other two groups of people and horses did not catch good fruits to eat, originally their task was to search for the Ming army that slipped through the net after the victory of the Battle of Hui'anbao, or did not wait for the search for people, they themselves became the target of the search, dozens of power parachutes composed of bombing teams dropped countless drop-shaped bombs on their heads, so that they were all red-eyed, but there was no way at all, there was no place to hide in the vast desert, in the face of the bombardment, they could only be defeated, and they didn't even dare to go together, and they had to break into pieces and flee for their lives. Otherwise, it will be smashed down by a strange bird in the sky, and it will be smashed down by a burst of iron bumps, who can eat this thing.

This battle was later written into the history of the war, and was called a representative battle in which mechanized cavalry replaced traditional cavalry, and it was this large-scale use of ironclad steam chariots that announced the official retirement of traditional cavalry from the stage of history.