(The new book seeks to collect, votes, and chases, and the book is accelerated to be completed today, and there will be three updates today)

An army of hundreds of thousands of people can fight at every turn, how can it be ready for a month.

Therefore, the confrontation between the Ming army and the Dzungar army was basically pulled in place from the mutual temptation in March to May.

Because the Ming army was slow to deploy troops, it was impossible to hold the grassland area that was not dangerous to defend from the beginning. Whether it is Dabansheng City (Baotou) or Guihua City (Hohhot), they both fell into the hands of Galdan at the beginning.

Some of the Khalkha Mongol tribes, who were already wavering or dissatisfied, saw that Dzungaria was powerful, and they also joined the army.

Those who are really unwilling to serve the same clan and have a heart for the Ming Dynasty cannot wait for death in the same place. Therefore, most of them fled west to the direction of the grassland where Chahar Mongolia was located, or fled directly to the southeast to the surrounding area of Datong, and attached to the actual control area of the Ming army.

As for the fact that when they first arrived at the front line, the imperial court had already lost tens of thousands of square kilometers of grasslands outside the Guanwai, and Zheng Chenggong and Li Dingguo did not feel any shame, which was normal.

The prairie, there is no danger to defend, and the gains and losses are a blink of an eye, and it is not enough to prove any problems.

Considering that the Dzungar cavalry came and went like the wind, and the composition of the whole cavalry, one person, two horses, or even three horses, they could threaten Datong in the south and Zhangjiakou in the west if they moved for two or three days, and as for Ulanqab in Chahar Mongolia, it could also be attacked and disturbed at any time.

Therefore, the front, which stretches for at least 500 miles, may become the main battlefield. This has long been proven in the hundreds of years that the Ming Dynasty has fought with the Tatars. Every time the Tatars enter the Koukou, at least two or three of the nine sides will be dragged into the battlefield, which is a normal operation.

……

After stabilizing the situation of the traditional defense line on the nine sides, Zheng Chenggong and Li Dingguo finally sorted out the enemy forces in this battle.

"Galdan claims to control 300,000 strings, 50,000 musketeers, and two or even three horses per person, and a total of more than one million horses, which should not be a lie.

He fought for thirteen years, and the territory he expanded was said to span 8,000 li from east to west, and 6,000 li from north to south, so it is not surprising that he could easily pull out 300,000 iron cavalry. ”

Zheng Chenggong looked at the information collected by the generals of the Nine Sides in the outpost contact battle before, and his face was also solemn.

After all, he is already the third assistant minister of the cabinet, and he is here to supervise the division, and he does not need to go to the front-line battlefield in the follow-up bloody battle, he is a navy, and he is not good at fighting in the grassland desert cavalry corps. In the final analysis, it depends on Li Dingguo, and he doesn't know how sure Li Dingguo is.

In contrast, Li Dingguo, who personally wants to go to the front line, is very confident in himself.

This sixty-three-year-old veteran has been carved into his head, face and skin by various meteorological disasters from south to north, as well as scars left by mosquitoes and poisonous sores.

In his fifty-two years of career, he was a thief in the first ten years and an officer and a general in the last forty-two years. There were too many fights that made him unable to distinguish the difference between trauma and disease marks.

I saw Li Ding say calmly in Chinese: "The defenders that my Daming has now raised on the three sides, not counting the auxiliaries, are enough to have 500,000 people. With the peak of my Ming Dynasty's current national strength and the strength of the armor, it is more than enough to defeat Galdan!

Those who need to worry about it are only how to fight this battle in order to annihilate the living forces of Galdan as much as possible. If we show too strong all at once, Galdan will use the rogue trick of steppe nomadism and run away, and it will be difficult for us to chase him down.

The hinterland of the Junggar Department is far away in Luntai (Urumqi), which is 4,000 miles west of Datong, and even if it is counted from Jiuquan out of Jiayuguan, it is also 2,000 miles.

Killing three more Dzungar cavalrymen outside Datong Pass is not as difficult as killing one Dzungar cavalry in Luntai County. In the past few years, I have already known that what the prince and His Majesty want is to completely annihilate the Dzungar tribe, not just to repel it, so it is very necessary to take advantage of this time to destroy more of its living forces, and even to show weakness and fight some hard battles to lure the enemy. ”

Although Zheng Chenggong is not good at grassland cavalry, he is also very knowledgeable, as soon as Li Dingguo raised the logistical difficulty of the future expedition, he immediately estimated it:

"This is very true, I can deploy 500,000 elite soldiers on Xuanda, Zhangjiakou and other three sides, but if the battlefield is moved to Wuyuan, it is estimated that only 400,000 people will be able to participate in the war.

If the battlefield moves further west to the grassland north of Lanzhou, I am afraid that 300,000 elite soldiers will be enough. Moving out of Jiayuguan, there are less than 200,000, and those who can go to Luntai to use troops will not exceed 150,000.

This is still based on the premise that the number of war horses and pack horses in my Ming Dynasty is not much less than that of the Dzungars, and it must also be equipped with some new baggage vehicles suitable for long-distance marching in the grassland desert. Otherwise, I'm afraid that 100,000 people won't be able to reach Luntai.

Therefore, we must strive to weaken the Dzungar Department as much as possible on the battlefield from Datong to Guihua City and Wuyuan, and ensure that after this battle, the strength of its remnants can not even be defeated by the 100,000 troops of the Ming Dynasty, so that we can defend and counterattack and plough the court to sweep the holes! Brother Li, how do you think we should fight now? ”

Li Dingguo has obviously thought about it these days, and Zhizhu said in his hand: "First show weakness and pretend to be unable to defend it, but then send a small force to sneak attack from other places to provoke Galdan's anger."

Then, if Galdan moves, we will also move with it, pretending to deal with the checkpoint where Kaldan's main force is facing with heavy troops.

At this point, don't be too strict against Galdan's meticulous work, and even let some of the children of the Khalkha Mongolian tribe who were already wavering go back to the enemy Galdan, so as to leak to Galdan the real-time defense strength of our Ming Dynasty at each checkpoint on the three sides.

Deliberately leaking a gap in the weakest defense of the whole way, Gardan thinks he has caught the weakness, and then seduces him to try to attack the problem. As long as he has made a lot of money, even if he finds that he can't break it after attacking for a while, and then wants to leave, it will not be so easy.

I personally led the main force of cavalry to meet the attack from the left and right passes, and tried to outflank and hold off the heavy losses. ”

Zheng Chenggong thought carefully about this line of thought for a long time, and felt that there were still flaws: "Taking the initiative to leak the military aircraft and the Great Wall to defend the virtual reality, will Galdan be tricked?" ”

Li Dingguo is very confident: "Sooner or later, we will be tricked, and if it doesn't work once, we will continue to follow him." Because we didn't lie to him, we really took the initiative to expose the flaws of the weak defensive forces, which was a real self-weakening, not acting.

So, even if he gets the information once and doesn't come, he won't find out afterwards that we are lying to him, because we haven't lied to him from beginning to end. After hearing too much true information, there will always be times when I can't help it. ”

Zheng Chenggong thought about it, Li Dingguo's weaknesses that he took the initiative to expose to the enemy are all real weaknesses, so what else is there to expose? There's no stuffing to show at all, okay.

The only confidence of the Ming army is its self-confidence in its own defensive combat strength.

It's like even if I tell you, Datong, or Xuanfu and Zhangjiakou next door, any of these points, at a certain moment, there are only a few thousand soldiers to defend.

But even if you know that there are only a few thousand people, and you pile up 300,000 people, and you still can't break through this weak point of only a few thousand people in five days and ten days, then Galdan will be finished, at least it will be sticky, and if you don't die, you will have to peel off your skin.

Zheng Chenggong finally approved the plan: "Okay, then please Brother Li do it according to the plan, since you need to lure the enemy to show weakness, I will defend, you will attack, I will play the anvil, and you will play the hammer." Anyway, I don't have to go out of the pass, the Great Wall defense line will be handed over to me, I will ensure that no matter how weak you are, the other party will not be able to break through it within ten days, and the subsequent decisive battle will be handed over to Brother Li. ”

……

Li Dingguo soon began to implement the established strategy.

On the one hand, he made the passes on all sides of the three sides appear to be stubbornly defending and unwilling to send a large corps out of the pass to fight, and on the other hand, he sent a small force of fast light cavalry to harass.

At the same time, he also deliberately and occasionally leaked the real information on the three sides of the Great Wall.

Among them, those cumbersome repeated tactics and pulls naturally do not need to be repeated, and the only thing that is remarkable is the harassment of the light cavalry deployed by Li Dingguo.

He never allowed a large-scale cavalry attack, and all of them were small units of as few as three hundred horsemen and as many as five hundred horsemen, and absolutely not as small as a thousand horsemen.

They will never attack from the checkpoints where the main force of Galdan is waiting for them, but from the checkpoints on the left and right flanks, slightly far away from the main force of Kaldan, and it would rather take dozens of miles to reach the battlefield.

Although Galdan claims to be 300,000 people, his cavalry also has to eat grass every day, and in the case of non-first-level combat readiness, it will definitely be relatively scattered, which makes it easy to catch a single small group of fighters.

The small elite cavalry sent by Li Dingguo can be regarded as a new height in the construction of the Ming cavalry unit in recent years, and the equipment used and the training they have undergone are all advancing with the times.

As early as 30 years ago, in the war of exterminating the Qing Dynasty, the Ming army already had a small number of rifled guns, which could ensure relatively accurate shooting at medium and long distances.

It's just that Daming technology and industry were still in their relative infancy, and they were much poorer than they are today, so rifled guns were only for sniper battalions, which were considered "special forces equipment".

And now, although the Ming Dynasty still has not eliminated the "Wuchang made" series of smoothbore guns (but has also made a lot of fine-tuning and improvements, improving the loading efficiency), but at least the proportion of rifled guns has been increased to about two or three percent in the army, becoming a large-scale formed force, no longer exclusive to special forces.

Therefore, the thousands of elite cavalry sent by Li Dingguo to harass were all equipped with a cuirass that was lighter and thinner than back then, but the quality was never reduced, plus two muskets.

They are a long-rod rifled gun, plus a short-barreled, double-barreled rear-loading troll, or the trolls can be replaced with a revolver.

Such a combination of firepower is enough to eliminate all long-range cold weapons such as bows and crossbows. From then on, it is ensured that the firepower of firearms can also be matched from far and near, with snipers at a distance and sprays at close range.

And the quality of these trolls is also far from being comparable to the old models of more than thirty years ago.

At least now Daming has ensured that the processing accuracy has been improved, so that the newly produced rear-loading trolls, when using low-pressure short-range ammunition, will not leak fire from the gap between the tail of the chamber, at most only a few wisps of black smoke.

In this way, musketeers do not need to wear thick leather gloves and do not have to worry about burning their hands with a fire spew from their tail, and the accuracy of their operations can be improved.

The small optimization of various filling mechanisms and airtight mechanisms allows the Ming Army's latest rear-loading double-tube spray to be loaded with about eight rounds per minute. Even in a bumpy environment on horseback, the movement movement is slowed down, at least five or six rounds per minute.

A single reload can fire two rounds of ammunition, which means that the trolls can shoot 15 shotguns per minute, and 10 rounds in the slowest and most bumpy situations. This density of firepower will definitely make Galdan drink a good pot.

As for those huge quantities of old double-barreled spray stocks, they were reequipped with second-line troops. Anyway, Li Dingguo's dispatch this time to harass the first-line elite, and priority is given to equipping the newly produced batches.

……

The progress of the initial harassment war was indeed as Li Dingguo expected.

A small group of cavalry of the Ming army with hundreds of horsemen, all of whom were well-equipped and equipped with three horses, came and went like the wind. Because they only wore a steel cuirass, the weight of the horses was not too heavy, and the ironclad heavy cavalry of the Dzungar Department could not catch up at all, and those who could catch up were light archers and rangers.

However, the Dzungar rangers were not at all the opponents of the Da Ming Yuan sniper and close-range spray spear cavalry, and they were beaten all over the ground in small-scale encounters and scout battles, leaving hundreds of corpses in ambush at every turn, which was unbearable to see.

Although the frequency of such a knife and eye-opening battle was not high, it dragged back and forth, and a total of thousands of Dzungar cavalry were killed and wounded, and a considerable part of them were still the cannon fodder of the Khalkha Department that they had just coerced. But these results have already greatly damaged the morale of the Dzungar Ministry.

Galdan, who was incompetent and furious, had no choice but to use his killer weapon - let the 50,000 musketeers under his command, holding the original imported flintlock pistols of the Rakshasa Kingdom, also devote themselves to the scout war patrol battle.

Since the archers can't beat the musketeers of the Ming army, then use the musketeers to fight fairly!

It's a pity that another half a month passed, and several skirmishes in a row once again proved that the musketeers of the Dzungars were not good.

There is also a difference between the musketeers and the musketeers!

The Ming army used snipers, and the Dzungars used smoothbore guns, and long-range snipers must suffer a big loss. wanted to rush up and put it on his face, but he was sprayed by a continuous troll and couldn't take care of himself.

Galdan suffered setbacks again and again, but he couldn't seize the opportunity to fight the main force of the Ming army. This made Galdan firmly believe that "there should only be a few elites in the Ming army who can have such good equipment, so the Ming army does not dare to fight with me, and only wants to rely on the Great Wall to consume me with elite soldiers."

The small troops of the Ming army were very aware of advance and retreat, and each time they attacked with three horses, once the ammunition and materials on the back of the other two horses were exhausted, they immediately retreated without hesitation, and made a detour back to the pass.

After a month or two of teasing and pulling like this, in the midsummer and May of the twenty-second year of Xiaokang, Galdan finally couldn't help it, and finally believed the Ming army defense information he got from the Khalkha traitors.

He caught a gap and realized that the Ming army's defense at the right guard of Datong was very weak.

It is said that the Ming army was previously flicked by his maneuver to the east, and a considerable part of the original defenders of Datong were transferred to Zhangjiakou to fill the position, and I heard that there are less than 4,000 people in the right guard of Datong to kill the tiger's mouth.

He decided to concentrate his muskets and artillery and make a strong attack, forcing the Ming army to fight his main force in a decisive battle - he was not a traditional Mongol army anyway, he was a combination of Mongol and Rakshasa who had bought enough muskets and cannons since he had allied with Rakshasa thirteen years ago.

Therefore, in dealing with the traditional Great Wall passes and the old city walls, Galdan had the confidence to rely on artillery to blast out the gaps and quickly break through the city.

Now, of course, he knows that Daming is also good at building fortresses, and he knows that Daming has a new anti-artillery fortress. But the problem is that the fortress can only be used to upgrade the cities in key areas, and it can't upgrade the Great Wall.

Because the amount of work is too large, even if some sections of the Great Wall are upgraded to anti-artillery performance, there will always be places that have not been upgraded, and the grassland nomads can pick those places that have not been upgraded to fight, bypassing the places you have upgraded.

At this moment, the right guard of Datong who was selected by Galdan to kill the tiger's mouth is a typical old-style pass of the Great Wall outside the Ming Dynasty that has not yet been upgraded.

This is it! Blasted away first, and then forced the main force of the Ming army to fight a decisive battle!

(End of chapter)