Chapter 22: Riding Camp is Better

"Generals, I summoned you here to commend General Li for killing the chief in battle, and to discuss how to fight the battle outside the city and the battle to defend the city, as well as how to quell the Jiannu rebellion in the next few years."

In the second hall of the provincial government office, the garrison troops in Ningyuan city, the generals in charge of the foreign troops, and officials from the guard office gathered together, listening to the words of the military officer.

Yuan Chonghuan called these people together naturally to discuss how to fight under the city and outside the city.

According to the Jiannu's estimated speed, the Tatar cavalry and shield carts will arrive after noon tomorrow, and will launch a large-scale attack on the city around the day after tomorrow.

Although these generals, deputy generals, lieutenant generals, and guerrillas did not have strong field combat capabilities, they still had knowledge and experience, and were able to recognize the shortcomings of the Tartar commander, Great Ming. Yuan Bingxian was afraid that some of them would be killed in battle the day after tomorrow, and there would be no time to discuss field combat matters.

Li Hao sat in the seventh seat on the west side. The first six were Man Gui, Zhu Mei, Zuo Fu, Zu Dashou, Deng Maolin and He Kegang. On Li Hao's right were Xu Fuzou, Xiao Shenggong, Zhang Bangcai, Dou Chenggong, Lu Yingjiao and other miscellaneous officers.

It was not until today that General Li Qian realized that the chariot battalion with more than 2,700 soldiers under Man Gui's command was actually the battalion with the largest number of combat soldiers in the entire Guanning Army.

The remaining messy battalions far exceeded the fifteen battalions organized by Sun Chengzong, or in other words, they were split from the fifteen battalions. A battalion of three thousand people was increased to five thousand people, and then divided into three, each under the command of a powerful general. There might be only seventeen or eight hundred soldiers in each battalion.

There is no need to talk about the old tune that the generals, deputy generals, lieutenant generals, guerrillas, and central army garrisons are not subordinate to each other. The entire military system outside the Great Wall is in chaos. There are also soldiers drawn from the Beijing camp, and soldiers from Datong, Yulin and other places were also transferred here. The reason why these Ming troops did not fight among themselves is purely because of the good coordination of the old officials in the provincial government and the governor's office.

Earlier, during the bloody battle of Hunhe River, the hatred between the Liao Army, Zhejiang Army and Sichuan Army was deeper than the hatred that the Jiannu had for the Ming Army.

The second row on the west side was occupied by the various military commanders and captains, with a total of nearly thirty people sitting there, while the civil servants on the east side only occupied twelve or thirteen seats in the first row.

Yuan Chonghuan, who was presiding over the military meeting, looked at Li Hao and said, "General Li, your family has been a military family in Liaodong for generations, and your nephew Li Rusong is especially famous for his cavalry. Now it is up to you to tell us how to fight the Jiannu in the wild."

There were several clerks holding pens beside Yuan Bingxian, and it seemed that the entire military meeting would be recorded.

"The Jiannu's strengths are nothing more than archery and horsemanship. In a field battle, to tie with or even win against the Jiannu, the best option is to charge forward with fully armored cavalry and fight the Jiannu in close combat. Or we can have chariot soldiers who can withstand the cavalry charge and intercept the Jiannu's charge. When their formation becomes unstable, our cavalry can break through their cavalry formation. The second option is to fight with our backs to the city. The Jiannu can't break through the city wall, so their charge will stop and our soldiers can engage in close combat."

Whether it is a large-scale confrontation or a small-scale encounter, disrupting the enemy's basic units by charging at multiple points is the most effective way of field combat.

What is more effective than this is to bombard the area with artillery fire.

In the era of cold weapons, most of the casualties in battle occurred when one side was defeated and the fleeing soldiers were hunted down. When the armaments and organization levels of both sides were similar, the exchange ratio in a head-on battle rarely exceeded one to two or three.

In Liaodong, the organization of the Ming army was not bad, and its equipment far surpassed that of the Jiannu and Mongolians. The armor-wearing rate of the nine borders of the Ming Dynasty reached an astonishing 40%, and the armor-wearing rate of Liaozhen was more than 60%.

Every garrison troop in Liaodong is equipped with a mandarin duck battle jacket, and every camp soldier, servant, etc. has a full set of cloth armor, and the iron arm can cover most of the camp soldiers.

However, the enemy Jian Nu had a top tactical master Nurhaci, who used only one move: the armored cavalry immediately charged into the battle array after shooting, then cut off most of the Ming army and attacked them separately. With this one move, he was able to win the battle from outside the Great Wall to the north of the Yangtze River.

If the Ming army could also implement the Jiannu's tactics, they would most likely be able to tie with the Jiannu in a cavalry battle involving more than a thousand people, or even win the battle.

But if you imitate me, you will die.

Firstly, a Ming army general had at most one or two hundred cavalrymen under his command, plus several hundred or thousands of chariot soldiers who were purely a burden. They could not compare with one Jiala and five hundred cavalrymen of the Jiannu army.

Secondly, the Ming soldiers themselves were not good at archery. If they wanted to equip the Qing bow on a large scale, it would take several years to train the soldiers. Without horse archery, the Ming soldiers could only suppress the Tatars in this aspect of close combat.

However, the only Ming troops who could survive a close combat were the retainers. They were elite soldiers who were paid double wages, and no general would be willing to exchange them one for one with the Tartars.

"The three methods of field warfare I mentioned are all based on having enough cavalry battalions. Without cavalry, we can't fight the Jiannu. Marshal Sun's thinking in recent years has been wrong. When fighting the Jiannu, the three-eyed musket cavalry can't gain the upper hand. What's the use of the chariot battalion organized by Qi Jiguang sixty years ago? We still have to fully reorganize more than a dozen cavalry battalions to have the strength to fight the Jiannu in the field."

Li Hao concluded.

Many generals and captains agreed. This was basically the consensus of the military commanders of the Nine Frontiers. But how could a teacher like Sun Chengzong listen to the ideas of the military commanders? The chariot camp was quick to set up and cost less money than the cavalry camp, which could make the strength on the books look good. It was a way to save money and trouble.

It just made the people of Ming Dynasty suffer and wasted the Liao salary they paid. Over 10 million taels of silver were spent in these three years, but the Liaozhen's field combat capability may not be as good as it was three or four years ago.

Yuan Chonghuan nodded in agreement. "Today, I heard someone tell me about General Li's heroic deeds in killing the great Tartar Daishan. I realized that the Ming Dynasty has many brave generals and soldiers, but we just lack horses. If I can be the governor of Liaodong, I must purchase 40,000 to 50,000 horses from Mongolia, and then spend two to three years to reorganize 13 to 15 full cavalry battalions. Then, I will coordinate the three-way deployment strategy in Liaonan, Denglai, Dongjiang and other places. Only in this way can we talk about defeating the Jiannu in the wild within a few years and have the strength to recover Liaozhen."

The former Governor of Liaodong retired with Sun Chengzong. From October last year to now, the post of Governor of Liaodong has been vacant for three months.

If Ningyuan City could be defended, Yuan Bingxian believed that he would be promoted to Governor and then coordinate military affairs outside the Great Wall.

"It would be best to completely overturn the chariot camp organization." Li Hao added again.

The bad thing about this old guy Sun Chengzong is that he has nothing real, but he likes to show off his skills.

During the four years that he was in charge of Liaodong, a lot of money was spent, but the number of registered war horses and mules outside the Great Wall did not increase from the 22,840 when he took office. He only built more than 90 tortoise-shell castles and settled tens of thousands of refugees from Liaodong.

There are still tens of thousands of refugees at Guanmen and no one is taking care of them.

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(End of this chapter)