I am the prince of the Ming Dynasty, I don't give up

Chapter 630: Battle of the Three Kings (Part )

Compared with the Northern Army, the Southern Army did not have so many tricks. In the end, Guo Xun used his methods to barely train about 400,000 elite soldiers. These 400,000 elite soldiers were the core force of the Nanjing government's army, and now they were arranged in the most standard line.

The Wuchang government's army was not as elite, but after such a long period of training, their formation was still quite decent.
The black uniforms of the Southern Army were connected together, looking very solemn, like a dark cloud.
Although the morale of the Confederate Army was not high, it was still able to maintain its morale because it had a considerable advantage in military strength. The Union Army's final number of participating troops was around 1.1 million, while the number of participating troops of the Confederate Army was as high as around 1.8 million.

There were many hot air balloons floating in the sky. On such a vast battlefield, ordinary watchtowers could no longer meet the needs of observation. Both sides released many hot air balloons for observation.
However, the Northern Army's hot air balloons were obviously larger, with better design and craftsmanship, more flexible in flying, and had a great advantage in numbers. The Confederate Army's hot air balloons were only tied to the ground with ropes, floating only one or two hundred meters above the ground.

It was not that the Confederate Army's hot air balloons did not want to fly high, but they would be easily attacked by the Union Army's hot air balloons if they flew beyond this distance. This distance was the shooting range of ground muskets, and the Union Army's hot air balloons did not dare to rashly reach this height.

So in order to protect the limited number of hot air balloons, the Confederate Army had to use this method.

Some of the Union Army's hot air balloons were used for lookout, while the remaining hot air balloons had their own mission, which was to drop psychologically-stimulating leaflets. The leaflets contained information about the Union Army's landing in the South, as well as some surrender policies and standard actions, with rich graphics.

In fact, these leaflets were not dropped today. It took the Confederate Army of 1.8 million troops five or six days to fully assemble and advance here. During this period, the Union Army's hot air balloons have been carrying out psychological warfare missions. Although the Confederate officers continued to collect these leaflets, the Confederate soldiers basically knew the contents of the leaflets.
The officers of the Southern Army also repeatedly explained to the soldiers that the contents of the leaflets were all false, thus maintaining morale.
The two sides deployed their troops, and the two army formations were 4 kilometers apart. At this distance, the artillery of both sides had no accuracy. Although both sides had a large number of troops, there were many layers and a lot of gaps between the army formations. Firing at this distance would have very poor results.

During this period, both sides continued to send out small troops to conduct small-scale probing and did not launch large-scale attacks.

Zhu Houcong stood on a watchtower, observing the small-scale probing of the two armies. He was very anxious and asked, "How long will this probing last?"

"Your Highness, we must be cautious in such a war! And I feel that the Northern Army still has some cards up its sleeve." Guo Xun said.

"But time is not on our side!" Zhu Houcong said anxiously.

Zhu Houcong was anxious about the morale of the army. The psychological warfare tactics of the Northern Army were still effective. Although the morale of the Southern Army could be maintained, it was also declining. The second was the problem of logistics supply. This place was not close to the several material storage centers of the Southern Army, and the Southern Army did not have a complete railway network to rely on. It could only rely on two or three million civilians to continuously transport supplies to this place. These civilians were obviously more aware of the situation in Nanzhili. Some civilians had already begun to flee. The supply of so many troops would soon become a problem.
There was a sudden silence on the watchtower. Everyone understood that the longer it dragged on, the more disadvantageous it would be for them. Perhaps the way to break the impasse was to take advantage of the morale while the entire army could still be maintained and use the advantage in troop strength to defeat the enemy's opponent with force. However, facing the Northern Army's complete and strict formation, no one was sure.

"No more waiting! Send the entire army forward!" Zhu Houcong said gritting his teeth. After making this decision, he felt a lot more relaxed.

When the people around heard the order, they all breathed a sigh of relief, as they had been through too much pain before.

The news was quickly sent to King Ning, and it was agreed to launch a full-scale attack at noon. King Ning soon sent someone back to express his agreement.

Just after noon, the Southern Army started to move. The Northern Army immediately discovered the Southern Army's unusual movement, and the entire battle line quickly recovered.
The three million troops on both sides began to move.
The Southern Army had a great advantage in terms of manpower. Their front line was more than 20 kilometers long, while the Northern Army's front line was much shorter. Therefore, the left and right wings of the Southern Army began to outflank the left and right wings of the Northern Army, while the central army began to advance rapidly.
The Union Army also began to respond quickly. The moment the Confederate Army started to move, countless stragglers appeared on the Union Army's front line. Their mission was to harass the enemy's advancing line.
In fact, whether it was the Confederate Army or the Union Army, the headquarters could only do very limited command in a battle of this scale, because the communication technology was too backward, there was no radio or telephone, and they could only rely on flag signals and messengers for command, but flag signals were unreliable, and messengers were very slow in such a wide battlefield, because the battlefield was too large and there were too many troops.
Therefore, Zhu Houxuan's headquarters delegated the command power to the left, center and right armies early on, and asked them to act according to the previously formulated plan.
Liu Di followed the drumbeats and walked mechanically in the ranks of the Southern Army. He successfully escaped from the battle in Xiaoshi Village. After successfully running back, he was completely tired of the war and wanted to escape from the army, but he never found a chance. Then he came to this battlefield.
He was actually in a heavy mood as he followed his comrades in the attack, because he knew too well how terrifying the Northern Army was. However, he had to move forward under the pressure of the crowd. However, he was still looking for a way to escape at this time, secretly observing the escape route. When he glanced at the soldiers behind him wearing white hats and holding swords and pistols, he felt a chill in his heart.
He knew that those were the supervisory teams. They were ruthless in killing people. They were the biggest obstacle to his escape.
It's not that he didn't think about surrendering to the Northern Army, but he wanted to take his fate into his own hands. After all, on the battlefield, everyone's mental state is extremely tense, and it is not uncommon for accidental killings to occur.
Liu Di was in the central army. He was an elite soldier of the Southern Army. His line was soon attacked by the Northern Army's scattered soldiers. Casualties began to appear in their ranks, but they did not stop. This level of attack was not enough to make them collapse.
The Southern Army also sent out skirmishers to fight against the Northern Army's skirmishers, but they were quickly suppressed by the Northern Army's skirmishers.
(End of this chapter)