Late Yuan Dynasty: I am the true emperor

Chapter 296: Battle of Xiaomao Mountain (V)
Qiu Chuyi and Liu Liu went down the mountain together. As they walked down the mountain, Qiu Chuyi asked, "Where should we go to join the army after we go down the mountain? Should we go directly to Dangtu, or should we first go to the army at the foot of the mountain?"

Liu Liu shook his head. "I don't know either. Let's go down and see if the rebels can win."

"Shh, stop talking, there's someone over there."

As Liu Liu was speaking, he was suddenly pulled by Qiu Chuyi. Liu Liu followed his gaze and saw a group of people standing in an octagonal pavilion on a platform halfway up the mountain, looking at the battlefield. Leading the group was a man wearing a brocade robe and looking like an official. Next to him was a middle-aged Confucian scholar holding a palm-leaf fan, and around them was a group of common people dressed in various styles.

Liu Liu immediately said, "Let's go and take a look."

Qiu Chuyi took a look and whispered, "That man seems to be Mr. Shen from the next village."

"Whoever he is, if he can see it, we can see it too."

The two men moved to the front of the crowd and saw that there were also people who had gone up the mountain to avoid disaster, including some young and strong men who had the same purpose as them.

Mr. Shen turned his head to look at Qiu Chuyi and others who had just arrived. Seeing that he and Liu Liu were both wearing patched clothes and straw sandals, he just glanced at them and turned his head away without paying any attention to them. He didn't mind having peasants watching the fight with them, but was talking to the middle-aged Confucian scholar next to him.

At this moment, someone in front of the crowd suddenly pointed down the mountain and shouted, "It's time to fight, it's time to fight!"

Upon hearing this, everyone couldn't help but look down the mountain.

On the battlefield at the foot of Xiaomao Mountain, Ye Sheng led a battalion of cavalry to the side of the Yuan army's formation, lurking covetously, while the other three cavalry battalions were still fighting with the Yuan army's cavalry.

The Yuan army originally had 3,000 cavalry, but after several days of cavalry scout battles, there are only 2,000 left. These cavalrymen, who gathered together from all over, did not know each other, had never trained together, and their equipment was not as good as that of the Shengwu Army cavalry. They were no match at all and could only struggle to hold on.

The Shengwu Army and the Yuan Army were six miles apart and confronted each other from a distance. Neither could defeat the other. With the Shengwu Army's cavalry harassing them from the side, the Yuan Army did not dare to set up camp.

In order to stop the group charge of 5,000 cavalry, it is necessary to have 10,000 to 20,000 infantrymen arranged in a dense gun formation, assisted by long-range shooting troops, in order to be able to stop it.

But if the Yuan army only formed a spear formation, Ye Sheng could use the mobility of the cavalry to bypass the Yuan army in other directions for raids. Correspondingly, if the Yuan army in other directions did not want to be attacked by the cavalry, they could only form a defensive formation in the same way and would not be able to stop and set up camp.

Perhaps Chen Zhaoxian could use 80,000 people to form a huge hollow square formation on the periphery, and then leave 10,000 to 20,000 central troops to camp inside, but Lu Jin's 30,000 armored soldiers were just a few miles away, and the Shengwu Army was not there to watch the show, so how could they give him the opportunity to camp in peace.

"Put on your armor, form a formation, and march slowly!"

Lu Jin issued an order under the banner of the central army, and the messengers immediately rushed to various places. All the units quickly stopped, and the soldiers took off the sacks on their backs, took out the armor from them and put them on neatly, then rolled up the sacks and hung them behind their waists, put on helmets, fastened the buttons of their one-piece collars, and suddenly only a pair of eyes and noses were exposed on their bodies.

dong dong dong-

The drums sounded, and the entire army replenished fresh water in the village behind them, and began to move forward to the rhythm of the drums. However, this time they moved very slowly. They were not marching, but adjusting their formation while moving forward.

The four chariot camps of the Imperial Guard were in the front, with more than 250 large four-wheeled carriages lined up in a row. The entire formation moved forward about one kilometer, and then the chariot camp turned around on the spot, with the rear of the carriages facing outwards and the horses facing inwards. A gap of more than six meters wide was left in the middle of each carriage. One was to facilitate the vehicles to turn around later and leave room for turning, and the other was to leave a firing position for the artillery camp.

Next came two artillery battalions, four eight-jin field artillery companies, two 23-jin heavy howitzer companies, and two 14-jin light howitzer companies, a total of 128 artillery pieces. They entered the gaps left by the chariot camp one by one, untied the gun covers, adjusted the direction of the muzzles, and aimed at the Yuan army formation ahead.

There were four 32-jin cannon companies at both ends of the horizontal formation, followed by the heavy howitzer company, and light howitzers were placed in the middle. They would attack with the central assault group later.

The chariot battalion and the artillery battalion formed the first battle line. Behind them were the eight guards musket battalions lined up in sequence, forming the second battle line.

Behind them were Yang Jing's three spear infantry regiments, with two black heavy armor trap camps of the Imperial Guards sandwiched between the three regiments, separating the three regiments. Behind them was also a Imperial Guard cavalry battalion, temporarily led by Bian Yuanheng. These melee units together formed the third battle line.

At the end of the team, there were three auxiliary vehicle battalions from Yang Jing's three regiments. These three auxiliary vehicle battalions had nearly 200 carts in total, which were placed at the back as cover to prevent the enemy from making a surprise attack from behind.

Nearly 30,000 soldiers, not counting Ye Sheng's cavalry, more than 20,000 people formed a horizontal formation nearly two kilometers wide. They advanced slowly while adjusting their formation. When they were still four miles away from the Yuan army, they finally formed their formation and stopped.

After the battle lines were set up, Lu Jin's command position was also settled. He was placed between the second row of musketeers and the third row of melee soldiers, in the center of the army. His personal soldiers pushed several carts and took out the materials that had been prepared long ago. Soon, a three-story watchtower was built in the center of the army. Lu Jin's central army flag was also erected on the watchtower, and golden drums and flags were also erected around the watchtower.

Lu Jin climbed onto the three-story watchtower, set up a telescope and observed the Yuan army on the opposite side, which was also organizing its formation.

Under the continuous harassment of the cavalry of the opposing Yuan army and the slow approach of Lu Jin's army, seeing that the two sides were less than four miles apart, Yuru Timur completely gave up the idea of ​​setting up camp and could only order his army to adjust to a formation to meet the enemy and press towards Lu Jin.

Lu Jin observed with a telescope for a while and found that the Yuan army had indeed deployed a conservative formation of five armies in front, middle, back, left and right, and he immediately felt relieved.

"Beat the drum to signal the change of direction, and all troops shall recognize their flags!"

dong dong dong-

A huge command drum was struck rhythmically, and the generals in various positions of the formation all looked sideways towards the central army watchtower.

Lu Jin ordered his personal soldiers to wave the signal flags and began to contact the various tribes.

The first flag waved was the blue square flag with a yellow heart, representing the chariot camp. When the officers of the four chariot camps in front saw it, they all responded by waving their respective green triangular camp flags. The central army then waved the red five-colored flag in response, indicating that they had seen the signal.

This back and forth is equivalent to a walkie-talkie test, indicating that the command system is smooth and the communication is good.

Another round of drums sounded, and the central army waved the yellow and red fang flag. The two artillery battalions also waved their flags in response. The central army waved the colorful fang flag in response, followed by the yellow double-gun flag, representing the musketeers, the red and yellow fang flag, representing Yang Jing's melee soldiers, the black and white axe flag, representing the trap camp, and the white and yellow fang flag, representing the imperial cavalry battalion.

After all the units had recognized their flags and the command system was in good working order, Lu Jin took another look at the movements of the Yuan army on the opposite side, measured the distance between the two sides through a telescope, and ordered the artillery battalion to begin preparations.

After receiving the signal, Yang Huan immediately organized the artillery battalion staff to formulate shooting parameters, and then asked the messengers to distribute them to each company for execution.

A moment later, several messengers carrying three artillery camp signal flags rode out on horseback and arrived in front of the formation. Each of them carried a two-foot-wide wooden sign with a large white paper on it with shooting parameters written on it with a brush.

The sign states the target distance, type of shell, charge, launch angle, and firing mode.

The messenger blew the horn urgently as he passed by each gun position. The gunners who saw the firing parameters raised their yellow pennants to indicate that they had received the instructions. Those who did not see clearly waited for the messenger to come back and look again.

Before long, a string of small yellow flags were raised at each gun position, and the command for each gun to load ammunition and adjust the firing angle began.

Four 1500-jin field artillery companies, the first round target is meters, solid iron bullets, No. propellant, firing angle of five degrees, one test shot will turn into ten effective shots.

The two heavy howitzers also have a range of 1500 meters, but they fire grenades with No. propellant, which is reduced propellant. The firing angle is ten degrees, and they fire one test shot to warm up the gun.

When an artillery piece is fired, the temperature of the barrel is an important parameter for shooting. The first shot is a cold shot, and large charges cannot be used, otherwise it will easily explode. You must first fire a shot with reduced charge or standard charge to warm up the barrel, and then you can load large charges.

This theory has not changed even in modern times. When firing a cold cannon, the first shot must be pulled with a traction rope to maintain a distance from the cannon to prevent the barrel from exploding. Only then can the second shot be fired by standing next to the cannon and manually pulling the trigger.

The two light howitzer companies in the middle did not participate in the first round of shooting. Their range was not enough. Even with the maximum charge, the firing angle of ten degrees could not reach 1500 meters. However, Yang Jing still asked them to load a grenade and wait for orders.

After each gun was loaded, the gunners raised the green flag to indicate that they were ready and could fire at any time.

In the opposite Yuan army formation, Yue Lu stood on horseback under the central army's banner, standing upright in the stirrups. It was almost noon, and the Yuan army stood with their backs to the east and facing west. The sun was shining in the west at around 1:00 p.m., and the scorching sunlight made it difficult for them to open their eyes.

On a sunny afternoon, the temperature of more than 20 degrees made the large number of Yuan troops more anxious. Yulu Timur stood on the stirrups, leaning on the awning with his hands and squinting his eyes to look across, but he still looked strange. He asked Chen Zhaoxian, who was wearing a white cloth tied around his waist and mourning for the expedition.

"What are the movements of the rebel army?"

"They have stopped advancing just now. They seemed to be lining up to recognize the flag, but now they are not moving."

Chen Zhaoxian remembered his father's last words and thought that Lu Jin was up to some tricks, so he was determined not to be the leader. He stayed in the central army and handed the vanguard army over to Bao Qi, the governor of Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces brought by Yue Lu.

Yue Lu frowned deeply, feeling that something was not right. He glanced around and saw a small mound not far ahead. He quickly rode his horse over and stood on the mound to look around.

Soon he discovered something was wrong. Looking at the opposite side from a distance, Yue Lu felt that Lu Jin's formation was very strange. The first row was chariot soldiers, the second row was yellow-armored soldiers, who according to intelligence should be Lu Jin's royal guards musketeers, and the third row was all red, who should be long-lance melee infantry, and the last row was also chariot soldiers.

Tens of thousands of troops formed a horizontal formation nearly four miles wide, with chariot soldiers in front and behind and infantry in the middle.

Placing chariots in the front is an obvious defensive formation. As long as there are enough chariots and they are supplemented by a large number of archers, even armored heavy cavalry will find it difficult to break through.

The Song Dynasty loved to use this tactic. With heavy armor, chariot formations, and crossbows, they made the Iron Pagodas of the Jin soldiers and the Iron Harriers of the Western Xia Dynasty helpless. They could resist, but they were like iron turtles, completely losing their mobility. Even if the enemy wanted to run, they could not catch up.

However, Lu Jin's formation did not seem to be purely defensive. There was no front, back, left, right or center military deployment. The entire army was lined up in a horizontal line, which looked like a thin line from a distance. There was no depth at all. If an elite force was sent to attack head-on, it would very likely break through Lu Jin's line.

But Lu Jin's front was filled with chariots and long-range troops, which were actually very difficult to break through. Yue Lu also knew that he simply did not have such elite heavy armor at his disposal.

What if there is an elite cavalry unit going around the rear? It doesn't seem to work either. Lu Jin's rear formation also has chariots, plus more than 10,000 spearmen. Even with elite cavalry, it would be difficult to break through.

Moreover, Yue Lu had heard from the prisoners that the Shengwu Army had a kind of iron bomb that could be thrown by hand, which could explode when thrown out after being lit. Yue Lu did not believe that Lu Jin did not bring that thing, so he was prepared to be lenient with the enemy. Therefore, even if there were cavalrymen going around, the chariot formation would be blocked, the long spears would be like a forest, and the hand-thrown bombs would be used to attack the cavalrymen. Besides, he did not have such strong cavalrymen.
What if we let the infantry phalanx go around to the rear?

Modern students have to run 1,000 meters in four or five minutes for physical fitness test. You ask 20,000 people to run three or four miles to go around the rear. By the time they get there and are ready to attack, it will be almost half an hour. Are the enemy troops dead, waiting for you to go around?
Lu Jinlie's horizontal formation is really fucking wide, wide and shallow. The line is wide and the depth is shallow. The line is nearly two kilometers long, so it is difficult to go around it from the side.

"This formation is a bit weird. I wonder if this thief Lu knows how to fight. He doesn't attack according to common sense." Yue Lu frowned and muttered.

He just couldn't hear Lu Jin talking, otherwise Lu Jin would definitely tell him, "Sir, times have changed, learn about the battle line, learn about the T-head."

Chen Zhaoxian also rode over and asked, "Lord Pingzhang, what should we do now?"

"Cough, cough, cough—"

Yue Lu's face turned red with rage, and he coughed violently for a while before saying, "Since this bandit Lu is so impatient, let's press on as planned. Let the artillery carts follow the archers and prepare to smash the bandit's chariot formation. Beat the drums and march forward!"

"Yes!" Chen Zhaoxian immediately returned to the central army's banner and began to give orders to various units.

It was obvious that Yulectemür had not been completely unprepared in the past few days.

On the day he came back from Huizhou, he listened to the detailed battle report of the Shengwu Army. He learned that the Shengwu Army used a large number of firearms, and there were two types. The large one was shaped like the bowl-mouthed gun of the Yuan Army, and the small one could be held by one person, shaped like the matchlock gun of the Yuan Army. It could break iron armor and had an exaggeratedly long range.

The reason for the small musket was easy to understand. The rebels lacked long-range weapons, and the materials for making bows were something that could not be bought even with money. Moreover, making a bow took a very long time. At this time, it would be better to directly cast a musket. Anyway, Lu Jin had opened an iron mine in Luzhou, so he was not short of that iron.

As for the range of the musket, the Yuan army prisoners released by Lu Jin said that it could fire two miles away. Yue Lu did not quite believe it. He felt that the prisoners were deliberately exaggerating the power of the rebels' musket to cover up their defeat.

Among the heavy long-range weapons of this era, the trebuchet is the most powerful! And how far can a large trebuchet shoot? The farthest is generally about 280 to steps ( meters). No matter how sophisticated the rebels' muskets are, how much farther can they shoot than the fennel cannon?

In addition, Chen Zhaoxian and the prisoners who were released had said before that the large muskets used by the enemy army were all installed on the tower ships, and they had never seen the enemy army that came ashore use such things.

But how much effort would it take to move the muskets on the ship to the shore? Yue Lu didn't believe that Lu Jin would not do it.

Therefore, in line with the principle of giving the enemy a heads-up, Yuru Timur was prepared for the enemy army to move their naval guns ashore.

In order to deal with Lu Jin's large fire gun, Yue Lu asked craftsmen to build dozens of catapults and prepare to use cannons to make artillery. Even if they could not suppress the rebels, at least they could not be beaten unilaterally.

In order to deal with Lu Jin's thousands of musketeers, he also asked people to prepare a large number of shields to serve as the first line to guard against muskets.

So when the Yuan army formed a large battle array and pressed towards the Shengwu Army's line, Lu Jin immediately saw the opposite side's arrangement through the telescope.

Although Yue Lu deployed the five armies of front, center, back, left and right, a conservative formation that could attack or defend, he was generally inclined to attack because the Yuan army's front line was unusually strong.

The first row was full of swordsmen and shieldmen. Some used regular round shields, while others used large rectangular shields. However, it was obvious that the Yuan army was very hastily prepared. There were also many makeshift shields made of thick bamboo strips and wooden boards, and even things shaped like door panels. God knows where they got them from.

But no matter what the quality of the shields was, there were still quite a lot of them, covering the first row tightly.

The second row was the Yuan army's musketeers and archers. It was impossible to tell exactly how many there were, but there should be about two to three thousand. The third row was all spearmen, and behind them were dozens of catapults in the fourth row. Each catapult had hundreds of people pulling and pushing it forward.

Then the fifth row was made up of spearmen, who kept some distance from the catapults and looked like they were ready to support the front row at any time.

Lu Jin made a rough count and found that there were nearly 25,000 people in the front army alone, which was almost the same number as the entire Shengwu Army.

The Yuan army's central army had about 15,000 troops, the rear army had about 10,000 troops, and the left and right armies had about 20,000 troops each. The total strength of the entire formation should be around 90,000.

There were still two thousand cavalrymen wandering around the periphery, but even with the cavalrymen, there were still less than 100,000 people. Lu Jin suspected that the missing six or seven thousand Yuan soldiers might have been left behind by Yue Lu to guard Lishui City.

He stood on the watchtower and used a telescope to see the formation of the Yuan army clearly. He sneered at the shield formation of the first row of the Yuan army. And Yulectemur's troop deployment with heavy forces in the front and light forces in the back was simply the most cooperative opponent.

Lu Jin was afraid that the enemy would deploy its troops to the rear, because that would greatly weaken the killing effect of the artillery. On the contrary, the more people the enemy had in the front line, the more conducive it would be for the artillery to be effective.

Boom boom boom boom boom boom————

The war drums of the Yuan army shook the whole area, and the soldiers followed the drum beats and pressed towards the horizontal formation of the Shengwu Army with slow but unstoppable momentum.

Lu Jin was not panicked but happy. He used a telescope to carefully calculate the distance between the two armies. When the front line of the Yuan army reached 1,800 meters, about three miles away, he immediately gave the order to the artillery to prepare for firing.

In the first row of the Shengwu Army's line, Yang Huan also received the signal, and then gave orders to each artillery company to prepare for firing. The gunners behind each cannon raised small red triangular flags. As soon as the flag was waved, the ignition hand next to them would immediately ignite the primer at the firing port.

The sun was shining brightly in the sky, and the autumn heat was showing its might. The Yuan army marched slowly forward under the glaring afternoon sun. The Shengwu Army's formation was silent, with only the gunners in the first row tilting their heads to look carefully at the flags of their superiors.

On the hillside of Xiaomao Mountain, a group of people with different purposes were watching the battle, and the battle at the foot of the mountain was about to break out.

The outcome of this battle will determine the fate of many of them, as well as the fate of the entire Jiangnan region and even the world.

Lu Jin lay behind the telescope with his right hand raised high.

Yuerlutemur also held his breath, suppressed his fatigue and illness, and focused on the battlefield ahead, preparing to have a fair fight with this opponent, whom he regarded as stronger than Xu Shouhui, to decide the outcome of Jiangnan!
(End of this chapter)