Chapter 343: Firepower
The Qinglong silver dollar is a kind of silver dollar minted by the trading company, which was jointly minted by the Guangdong Commercial Bank and the trading company, and its weight is one or two of the Ming Dynasty, that is, a little more than 37 grams, which contains 34 grams of silver, and the rest is copper.
This batch of minted silver dollars was used to pay all the soldiers who participated in the expedition, so this type of silver dollar was very common in the Eastern Brigade.
On the front is a tael of traditional characters, and on the reverse is a dragon head pattern.
"I want words." Zhao Dahe said with a smile.
As the silver dollar was thrown up and fell into Li Zhaoji's hands, Li Zhaoji opened it and saw that it was a dragon head pattern. He said to Yang Yandi: "Yandi, it's up to you." ”
"This is the opportunity I dreamed of, and today, I will be a nightmare for the Qing army." Yang Yandi said excitedly.
One large and one small two phalanxes, the big phalanx is the array, the small phalanx is the guerrilla array, if the defense is heavy, the array is important, if you want to make meritorious contributions and defeat the enemy, it is the guerrilla first. Judging from Li Zhaoji's selection of elites to join the tour formation, what Li Zhaoji wants is to be enterprising and win.
Most of the Qing troops completed the river crossing, and when they saw that the Eastern Brigade was in the midst of changing formations, they also began to stop and observe, and when the formation changed, it was easy to have flaws, and it was easy to seize the opportunity. Zilharang knew this, and Li Zhaoji knew better that under the noses of the Qing army, the two formations of the Eastern Brigade had completed the formation, maneuvering, and formation, and did not find any opportunity.
Lee Siu-kee is a man with a strong enterprising spirit and an offensive spirit, but he has always been conservative in training soldiers and arranging tactics.
The reason is very simple, now the vast majority of the army is equipped with arquebuses, and there are relatively few spearmen, and there are no ready-made examples in history to prove that the almost pure arquebus phalanx can block the attack of the cavalry brigade, and even though the Eastern Brigade is trained very hard, it is too late to become an army, and in just half a year, the quality of the army is not completely trustworthy.
Therefore, in dealing with cavalry, Li Zhaoji chose the method of Prussia in later times, that is, when encountering cavalry, it immediately turned into a solid phalanx.
This is the simplest phalanx, the soldiers only need to follow their own battalion company flags, of course, there are many drawbacks, the soldiers in the center cannot exert firepower, it is almost useless.
Therefore, the tactical operation of the Eastern Brigade is to first change the solid phalanx, and then change it to a hollow or semi-solid phalanx after ensuring safety, and how to choose depends on the combat quality of the infantry under the department, and for the new army, the semi-solid phalanx is better, and even it does not hurt to maintain a solid phalanx from beginning to end.
Because the Qing army did not attack, the changes in the main formation and the tour formation went smoothly.
The formation formed a large square facing the northeast in the almost central position of the flat land on the south bank of the Qing River, and Yang Yandi formed a solid phalanx of the battalions subordinate to him and moved them, and at a distance of about 50 meters from the northwest of the formation, he set up a phalanx also facing the northeast.
Yang Yandi commanded three infantry battalions, an artillery company and a selection battalion, which is equivalent to four battalions and one company.
At the beginning, the establishment of the Xuanfeng Battalion was because Li Zhaoji and other high-level trading companies were worried about whether the arquebus troops would be unable to cope with the cavalry charge due to the insufficient rate of fire, so they formed a separate Xuanfeng Battalion, and the armored spearmen would be assigned to each infantry battalion in a company unit during the war, but after landing in Liaodong and fighting with the Qing army, the Eastern Brigade thought that it was not necessary, not to mention the lead bullets fired by the horizontal team, just the sound of guns and gunsmoke could make the Qing cavalry drink a pot.
Therefore, Yang Yandi did not split the selection of the front battalion, but the four battalions of each defensive side, he arranged the two most elite battalions of the Tamsui regiment in the northwest and northeast directions, while the Ferreira battalion was in the southeast direction, and the selection of the front battalion was in the southwest direction.
The reason for this arrangement is to deploy the most elite troops in the most dangerous places, and the most dangerous places in the whole army are in the northeast, northwest, and northwest directions, because of the shelter of the southeast and southwest directions, there is no complete fire cover from the formation, so it is a place controlled by two elite infantry battalions together, and Yang Yandi also deployed half of the artillery company, that is, three six-pounder field guns, in this corner, and let the artillery company commander personally command, and the remaining three artillery pieces were arranged in the west corner and one in the east corner.
With the exception of the Selector Battalion, the remaining three infantry battalions were six companies, one company of chasseurs armed with rifled guns or heavy arquebuses, one company of grenadiers with the whole battalion of tall menadiers, and four companies of line infantry.
The infantry battalions in all directions were lined up in six rows of thick hollow phalanxes, the frontal width equal to a company.
If all the men were flintlock muskets, then the phalanx would be a square about fifty meters wide, but most of the Eastern Brigade was equipped with arquebuses, and the arquebusiers could not be like the flintlock musketeers, shoulder to shoulder, elbow to elbow, as flintlock muskeers did, and the distance between each arquebusier should be one meter, plus the artillery deployed between the battalions and the battalions to avoid collisions between battalions, a square with a width of one hundred and fifty meters was actually formed.
Lee Siu-kee's own front also adopted a similar principle of troop allocation.
There is no doubt that between the two phalanxes, one large and one small, the Qing army may have invested its main forces in attacking the small phalanx, so the small phalanx commanded by Yang Yandi should be mainly defensive.
Although the large phalanx will also be attacked, it will definitely face secondary forces, so the large phalanx should focus on developing firepower, especially the firepower to support the small phalanx.
At this time, Li Zhaoji had seven infantry battalions and one jumping battalion, equivalent to the strength of eight battalions, and he did not arrange them into a square phalanx, but a rectangular phalanx facing northwest.
This rectangular hollow phalanx, with a length of three infantry battalions and a width of one infantry battalion, is about four hundred and fifty meters long and one hundred and fifty meters wide, taking into account the fact that each company occupies a width of one hundred and fifty meters.
This rectangular formation is arranged parallel to the parade formation, and the two sides connect the flags in a line, almost in the shape of a 'Lu' facing northwest.
Although Li Zhaoji has eight infantry battalions, the only remaining standing battalions and one reserve battalion of the Dongfang Brigade are truly trustworthy.
Different from the firearms unit of the Eastern Brigade, whether the Guangdong Army is newly organized or newly trained, each infantry battalion is equipped with armored spearmen and bird gunners on a one-to-one basis, that is, there are 250 armored spearmen and 250 bird gunners, that is to say, the firepower of an infantry battalion of the Guangdong Army is not as good as half of that of an infantry battalion of the Eastern Brigade, and more importantly, the power of the bird guns it uses is not good.
The arquebuses of the Eastern Brigade were produced by the trading company itself, with a caliber of 19 millimeters, a projectile weighing 28 grams, and 10 grams of gunpowder for firing. The caliber is large, the charge is more, in order to break through the armor of the Qing army at a long distance, this Chongzhen seventeen-year arquebus, the armor-breaking standard is 250 meters, can penetrate 2.5 centimeters of oak plank, considering the gap between oak and iron armor 9 to 1 protection, at 250 meters, has almost absolute lethality to the Qing army.
The rifled guns used by the hunters are more lethal at long range because they are more airtight.
Li Zhaoji once provided the Guangdong army with a batch of Chongzhen's 17-year-style bird guns, but the Guangdong army was still equipped with carefully selected bird guns from the Ming army's equipment arsenal as a whole.
The Ming Army's bird guns were copied from Japan, and the Japanese bird guns were copied from the Portuguese's light arquebuses, resulting in the small caliber of these bird guns, the projectiles were light, and the lead bullet weighed only three coins, that is, about 11 grams, which was only more than one-third of the arquebuses of the trading company.
When he was in Guangdong, the Cantonese army also imitated the Chongzhen 17-year-old arquebus, changed the butt of the bird gun, and got a straight-plug bayonet, but it was not completely improved.
Because the Ming army's bird gun caliber is small, with less medicine, and the recoil of the reed wheel pistol used by the heavy cavalry is about the same, so there is no need to have a butt on the shoulder, and it can be shot with a grip or with an armpit, so only a part of it has been improved, and several battalions are equipped.
Of course, Chen Ping also envied the rifled guns of the hunters of the Eastern Brigade, but Li Zhaoji did not use them, so Chen Ping followed the example of the Ferreira battalion and selected some large-caliber Lumi guns for the soldiers with good archery skills, which were counted as chasseurs.
However, the large-caliber arquebuses of the two sides were also different, and the hunters of the Ferreira battalion were mostly directly recruited mercenaries, and the people used traditional Mushkert arquebuses, that is, eight lead diameters, that is, eight bullets cast in one pound of lead, and the projectile weighed fifty-six grams.
The Rumi gun is copied from the Turkish version of the large-caliber arquebus, which is a product after entering the seventeenth century, with the increase in firepower, the number of armor units in various countries is decreasing, and the large-caliber arquebus is also becoming lighter, and the projectile of the seventeenth-century version of the Mushkert arquebus has become a twelve-lead diameter, that is, thirty-seven grams.
The Guangdong army is a similar version, with a small caliber, 323 grams, and a large caliber of 40 grams.
Because there were not enough Lu Mi guns, the battalions of the Guangdong Army did not have such an establishment as a chaser company, and there were only twenty or thirty Lu Mi guns in each battalion, or even fewer Lu Mi guns, so to speak, only these people reached the firepower standard of the Eastern Brigade.
It is for this reason that the three infantry battalions of the Eastern Brigade must be in key positions when arranging the troops, so the north corner of the phalanx is formed, and the two infantry battalions connected are standing battalions, and in the west corner of the phalanx, the battalion facing northwest is the reserve battalion.
Located between the reserve battalion and the standing battalion is the jumping battalion, and they and the Xuanfeng battalion are basically in an embarrassing situation of staring at each other in the whole battle, except for a small number of unlucky people who broke into the middle of the two phalanxes because of mistakes and were packed up by them, and did not get meat to eat.
In the remaining directions were the four infantry battalions of the attached Cantonese army, which formed five platoons, and since there were at least two platoons of spearmen, there was no need to worry about defense.
More importantly, the side composed entirely of the Cantonese army was facing the direction of Yulinpu, and the more than 800 cavalry were hiding in that direction, and if the Qing army attacked in that place, it would inevitably encounter a flanking attack by infantry and cavalry.
In the phalanx, artillery remained the main firepower, and there were two artillery batteries and twelve guns in this formation.
At the most important North Point, Li Zhaoji deployed four artillery pieces and placed them in charge of his most trusted artillery chief, Zhou Shu, while Zhao Dahe was also in charge of the two standing battalions on both flanks of North Point.
Of the remaining eight guns, three were deployed in the east and west, and only two in the south corner. The six four-pounder field guns belonging to the Cantonese army were all equipped in unimportant directions.
The formation of the Eastern Brigade was very complicated, but it had been rehearsed many times before the war, and the battlefield was flat, the terrain was simple, and it was all wheat fields or abandoned land, so it only took 15 minutes for the whole army to complete the change of formation, waiting for the Qing army to attack
Zilharang looked at the change of formation, only felt dazzled, he had fought an old battle, and always knew that the most difficult army to fight was not an army equipped with any special equipment, but an army with strict discipline and a strict formation, seeing the formation completed by the army in front of him, Jierharang thought for a moment that more than 20 years ago, the Ming army that fought a bloody battle with the Eight Banners by the Hunhe River.
The white pole soldiers and the Zhejiang army, with their strict formation, inflicted huge damage on the Eight Banners, and it would be difficult to break through if it were not for artillery bombardment.
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