If there is a well-made bow and arrow, and it is accompanied by well-trained soldiers, the range of the bow and crossbow is naturally worthy of that of a black powder smoothbore gun.

Gunpowder eliminated the bow and crossbow, initially only because the musket greatly reduced the training requirements of the soldiers.

Of course, the aforementioned premise of "excellent bows and arrows and well-trained soldiers" must not be missing, otherwise the end will be unilaterally slaughtered like the Battle of Bali Bridge in the late Qing Dynasty-

The Battle of Bali Bridge was not only a fiasco of cavalry and archery, but also a fiasco of lax armament. By the time of the Anglo-French alliance, most of the Manchu people, whether they were bannermen or Mongols, had become waste of cages and birds, and to put it bluntly, the Qing army of the late Qing Dynasty was no better than the army of the late Ming Dynasty.

The speed of degeneration in the history of the Qing army is very alarming, so that it is basically abandoned in the twenty years after entering the customs, and those banner people who were born in the city of Beijing are almost the scum of war. Later, Wu Sangui rebelled, if he hadn't died early, relying on Wu Sangui's troops who had experienced bloody battles to counterattack, the outcome was really unknown.

In contrast, the Qing army under the command of Duoduo is definitely still one of the strongest armies in the world in terms of well-trained and strict military discipline, so even if it only relies on bows and crossbows, it will definitely have a battle with the Ming army!

In the face of the huge number of muskets, they did not show a tendency to collapse like tigers in fear of the enemy at the beginning, and they were still able to carry the fire for a while, and the screams of the robes around them could not immediately break the will of the Qing army.

The shortcomings of the Qing army are only armaments, and the serious consumption of weapons and armor makes it impossible for the hardware level to support the full combat power.

On the southern front of the battlefield, the shooting was the most dense and the most tragic, because the Hengtang River blocked the battlefield, the two sides could not fight in close combat, and at the beginning they chose to shoot directly across the river by the river, without worrying about the musketeers or archers being hand-to-hand combat.

The newly surrendered Han traitor army and the Han army flag archers, driven by the generals, numbly repeatedly pulled their bows and released arrows, missing like rain. However, most of the damaged arrows that are recycled have very low loss accuracy, and the crooked and oblique strength is also quite discounted, which further reduces the lethality.

The only intact arrow in the Qing army was missed, and most of them were equipped with cavalry full of eight banners. When the supplies were insufficient, the Han Army Banner and the newly surrendered army could only use garbage weapons, which was also helpless.

The commander of the Qing army along the way is the newly surrendered general soldier Li Chengdong, that is, the guy who caused chaos under Huaiyang Gaojie, which can be regarded as a typical example of "45 years of surrender to Japan".

Li Chengdong also knew the Ming army, and also knew the combat style of Gao Jie, Li Fuming and other friendly troops, so at the beginning he also wanted to "resist the enemy on the beachhead", relying on his troops to generally prepare wooden shields of acceptable size, feeling that they should be able to carry the musket with a distance of thirty or fifty paces and a large shield to cover them.

Bows and arrows can be thrown, but muskets cannot, and when everyone has a heavy shield in the front row, the side that approaches the throwing can attack over the top and cause serious casualties to the opponent. When the enemy is strong and I am weak, Li Chengdong once felt that this was his only chance.

This idea was not wrong at the beginning, but unfortunately the mistake was that the infantry of the Ming Army of Jiang Shoude and Lin Yangcheng that he faced were not the same as Gao Jie, Li Fuming, and Bai Guangen, who he was familiar with.

How can the Jiliao Ming Army have the sharp firearms of the Huguang Ming Army? The firearms of the Jiliao Ming Army are easy to block, which does not mean that the firearms of the Huguang Ming Army can also be blocked.

At the beginning of the firing between the two sides, Jiang Shoude's musket team, under the cover of Lin Chengcheng's spear phalanx, carefully changed their ranks in order according to the drill rules to fire and retreat to reload.

After a few rounds, as the arrows of the Qing army on the opposite side gradually intensified, although there were also Qing soldiers who fell to the ground screaming, most of the projectiles were still blocked, and the frequency of Qing army's bows and arrows did not significantly thinn, and the casualties on both sides were also rising.

Jiang Shoude quickly realized that his firepower did not seem to be able to quickly weaken the opponent's output, he quickly assessed the situation, and found that the distance between the two sides across the river was very close, and the Qing army had no intention of changing the status quo to keep their distance, so he immediately ordered the front-line musket team to switch to shotguns.

Since fighting with the main force of the Qing army, Zhu Shuren instructed his subordinates to use double-shot single-headed bullets at a long distance, installed front and rear, and when encountering elite dead soldiers with double heavy armor, they can only use single-shot large-sized single-headed bullets to ensure armor-piercing kinetic energy.

And shotguns were not the first choice of the Ming army, because they no longer had to fight the lightly armored or even non-armored units of the peasant army. The Qing army that used shotgun to hit the iron cotton armor had no armor-piercing ability twenty or thirty paces away.

Today's situation is very special, because of the existence of the Hengtang River, the two sides just stood still in the southern section of the battlefield after a few dozen steps apart, and they did not go to the river, and they did not try to fight hand-to-hand, which was just like the Western queue to shoot the war a hundred years later.

If it were another battlefield environment, if there was no river, it would definitely not have been possible to have such a long-term shooting situation, and they would have rushed through these last dozens of steps to fight together.

Since there is this special environment, it would be too sorry for God not to take advantage of it, under the command of Jiang Shoude, the musketeers of the southern front of the Ming army quickly reused the shotguns they were used to, and in a moment, the number of firepower density projectiles suddenly increased by as much as seven or eight times!

Although the projectiles and iron slag blocked by the thick wooden shield still could not pierce the armor, the clumsy wooden shield could not block in all directions after all, and the number of shotguns was so large that it was easy to penetrate through the gaps in the defense, which immediately aroused bursts of blood and screams.

Li Chengdong's department did not have a lot of heavy armor at all, and the heavy armor that was lost in the two battles of Nanjing and Jiangyin caused the iron armor of the newly surrendered army to be stripped off by the Manchurian masters, so they were specially equipped with thick solid wooden shields to defend, and at this moment they were instantly miserable, with heavy casualties.

After only carrying it for a short while, Li Chengdong paid thousands of casualties, and then retreated 100 steps, and in the process of retreating, there was inevitably a little confusion and even trampling on each other.

If it weren't for the fact that the Hengtang River was difficult to cross directly and in an orderly manner, I am afraid that Jiang Shoude would immediately ask Lin Chengcheng to cross the river with a melee spear phalanx to pursue.

Even now, he didn't try, but as soon as he proposed it, Lin Chengcheng expressed his opposition:

"Vice General Jiang, don't rush in! Although the Hengtang River is shallow in the cold winter and seems to be waist-high, it is very muddy, and our army will inevitably mess up the formation, and will be hit by Li Chengdong's return half-crossing!

】

Only forced Li Chengdong back more than 100 steps on the riverbank, this distance is not enough for our army to cross the river, it is better not to seek merit but to seek no fault, just count on the Chinese army and the northern army to break the enemy.

You have to cross the river, unless you can force Li Chengdong back more than a mile, and you have to first severely damage the morale of Li Chengdong's troops so that he does not have the courage to organize a return to rush and kill, this is somewhat possible! ”

Jiang Shoude knew that what Lin Yangcheng said was true, and he really wanted to attack, it seemed that both sides of the Ming and Qing dynasties could only be conservative across the river on the battlefield on the southern front.

However, Lin Chengcheng's words also reminded him and made him feel a move in his heart: it seemed not completely impossible to further break Li Chengdong's morale, or force the enemy back more than a mile or two......

In today's field battlefield, both sides did not use artillery at the beginning, because it was a movement war, and the deployment of Hongyi artillery in this era was too difficult, and the old-fashioned artillery must have a fixed battery.

The most that can be dragged and run with the army is a light Franc machine, or an old-fashioned tiger squat cannon, and the tiger squat cannon is too old, so it is better to directly change the turtledove gun or carry the gun.

However, this situation, in the Huguang Ming Army, is already in the past tense, Zhu Shuren let Song Yingxing and Fang Yizhi improve and invent the first generation of "Receded Hongyi Cannon", which can almost reach the level of the Seven Years' War in the West and before the Napoleonic War.

The two-wheeled gun carriage plus some cushioning and unloading mechanisms already ensured that the gun would fire on the wheel carriage without collapsing the wheels.

It's just that after this new and improved artillery equipment, it has not yet seized the opportunity for a decisive battle in the field, so it can't be used. In the battle to defend the city, it is better to continue to use the battery guns to unload, and the mobile "cavalry run" has no use.

Thinking of this, Jiang Shoude immediately asked for reinforcements from the Chinese artillery team, and asked to pull some cavalry guns towed by carriages, these artillery pieces are generally more than half smaller than the Hongyi artillery defending the city, and it weighs more than 1,000 catties, which is about equivalent to the 6-pounder cavalry cannon of Frederick the Great a hundred years later in the West.

Applying for artillery reinforcements and deployment naturally takes time, so the battlefield on the southern front will maintain this kind of engagement situation in which Li Chengdong temporarily retreats, both sides shoot conservatively, and the defensive position is mainly on the defensive.

……

While Li Chengdong's side continued to add fuel tactics and consume and fill in the line, the center of the battlefield, with the Hengtang River turning in this area, no longer lies between the Qing army and the Ming army, and the fight between the two sides on this main battlefield will naturally be more tragic.

Here, Zhu Shuren also concentrated all 5,000 new "Wuchang-made" rifles, and he knew very well that this section of the front would face the main heavy armor of the Qing army, so he had to use the new rifle with the strongest armor-piercing ability.

The improved firearms of the older generation, which used to shine in the fight against the thieves' light armor units, may not be able to exert the greatest effect here.

And at the beginning of the war, Duoduo tentatively sent cavalry to harass and charge the battle before the whole army pressed down.

The vanguard he sent was all elite cavalrymen with complete armor and stomachs, and even horse armor was not missing, all of them were excellent in martial arts, and they were skilled in saber and spear fighting and archery and horse shooting.

The specific front-line command, Duoduo will not interfere, and directly hand over to Bei Zi Shangshan, who leads the front-line troops, to deal with it, whether it should be directly aimed at the weak gap of the Ming army, or swept across the array to harass with cavalry, it is up to Shang Shan to improvise.

Shang Shan relied on the excellent armor of his troops, and the experience of fighting with the Ming army in the past swept the battle and harassed, and soon paid a heavy price.

Zuo Zixiong's phalanx of Chinese riflemen, directly separated by 135 paces, began to fire in turns. The Wuchang-made rifle is far superior to the accuracy and range of the previous generation of firearms, and it is still easy to tear through the iron cotton armor of the Zhengbai Flag Iron Cavalry with the front and rear double-shot single-headed bullets at a distance of 100 paces, or make bloody holes in the heavy horse armor.

The roaring gunfire deterrence, such as rolling thunder, made every white flag iron cavalry soldier have more than one season, watching his comrades next to him being shot by the Ming army, seeing that there was no space, after dropping a hundred corpses, he could only temporarily retreat and distance.

The generals of the Qing army in the distance also gasped slightly, knowing that they could no longer charge directly with cavalry, the firearms of the Ming army were really sharp, and they had never seen a firearm that broke the iron armor a hundred steps away, and the rate of fire could be so fast.

"How could the Southern Barbarians have such sharp muskets? Why haven't you seen Nanjing and Jiangyin when they defended the city? When Duoduo saw this scene, he felt a cold feeling of falling into the trap.

How did he know that there were really no defenders in Nanjing and Jiangyin, and the defenders of Jinshan Temple were too close to defend the city. Zhu Shuren has been holding back, just waiting for this field decisive battle to come out.

Fortunately, Duoduo was also decisive, knowing that he was being put on the table again, and quickly regained his composure:

"Let the Han army flag infantry of the Chinese army press up first! The cavalry made a detour, and waited for the infantry to entangle the enemy before going up! Ye Chen, you personally lead all the cavalry inlaid with blue flags, reinforce the white flag, and the front-line cavalry charge is under your unified command, with only one goal, to insert Zhu Shuren's new musket array from the flank at any cost! ”

Wanyan Yechen also knew that the whole army had reached a life-and-death juncture, so he did not shirk the authorization of the prince, and directly took the order in a deep voice.

Subsequently, Duoduo also put the Chinese Han military flag on the task of fighting to the death, and directly handed it over to his most trusted Han subordinate Zhang Cunren, so that Zhang Cunren could directly command the Chinese infantry with full authority.

Wanyan Yechen, Shang Shan, Zhang Cunren, and several generals under Duoduo who were most trusted and had the highest status, were all pressed to the task. This means that all the capital has been pressed on the table, and the chips are directly pushed.

——

ps: Let's finish writing Armageddie tomorrow, it's a bit stuck, and I don't think I can write anything new.