Wind Rises in North America 1625

Chapter 426 Heavy Armor?

"Do you think our Xinhua Army can defeat the elite Qing Eight Banners army?"

As dawn broke, the damp air carried the scents of earth and vegetation. A long procession marched along the winding path, heading towards Daning County (now Violroyal).

The soldiers marched in unison, carrying muskets on their shoulders. Although their faces showed signs of fatigue, their eyes were firm and their morale was high.

Several military flags fluttered in the breeze, their crimson backgrounds embroidered with golden stars and swords, symbolizing the beliefs and sharpness of this emerging force.

Behind the column, the wheels of the supply wagons and artillery vehicles left two deep ruts, and where there were occasional potholes, the soldiers shouted slogans and pushed the vehicles with all their might.

The cooks' iron pots clanged against each other as they moved along, making a crisp metallic sound.

Occasionally, the neighing of warhorses would break the solemn atmosphere of the march.

In the fields beside the road, some farmers stopped working and looked at the disciplined team with awe.

A few of the bolder children excitedly followed the group until their mothers hurriedly called them back. Only then did they reluctantly retreat to the edge of the field, their eyes still sparkling with anticipation.

As the sun rose higher, its golden rays fell upon the soldiers' shoulders, making their shadows appear long and straight.

In the distance, verdant mountains stretch endlessly, their forests ablaze with new green, as if heaven and earth themselves are witnessing the rise of this army.

Army Minister Mo Tianhai, riding a magnificent warhorse, stopped on a gentle slope, watching the endless marching troops, and felt an overwhelming surge of pride in his heart.

In ten years, the Xinhua Army has grown from less than 100 men to more than 1,400 men, and is now relatively complete in terms of infantry, cavalry, artillery, engineers, and supply troops, making it the strongest military force in the entire New Continent.

Despite having over 5,000 colonial troops in the two Viceroyalties of Spanish America, their weaponry was reportedly extremely outdated, their training was sparse, and their treatment was abysmal. They had virtually no morale and relied on their superior firearms to bully the weaker Native American tribes.

Mo Tianhai believed that once they clashed with the Spanish again, the more than 1,000 Xinhua Army soldiers would be able to easily defeat them, and even spread the war to Mexico, letting them experience what it was like to be invaded by a foreign enemy.

Putting the Spanish aside, his thoughts turned to the Ming Dynasty.

At the Founders' Conference held in January, he proposed sending a certain size of the Xinhua Army to the Ming Dynasty.

After years of dedicated development, the Liaohai and Beiying colonization areas have basically established themselves and have initially acquired the ability to intervene in the situation in the surrounding areas. However, due to the limitations of their own military strength, they can only deploy small-scale militia forces to carry out limited military offensive operations.

If they wanted to make some big moves, they could only rely on those Ming military leaders who were on good terms with them or supported them, such as Huang Long's troops in Liaonan Town and Shen Shikui's troops in Dongjiang Town.

However, these Ming Dynasty military garrisons were too self-serving, only concerned with their own interests, and would not fully implement the strategies planned by the new Chinese.

They flock to any action that benefits them.

But when faced with a life-or-death situation, or when there is absolutely no benefit to their side, they become "unmoved as a mountain" and will not budge an inch, no matter what.

For example, since Shen Shikui's troops in Dongjiang Town were located on the flank and rear of the Qing forces, the most effective military strategy would be to send out small elite units to launch frequent raids on the Qing rear, keeping the situation in the rear unstable and thus indirectly relieving the pressure on the Liaodong front.

But Shen Shikui, aside from occasionally sending naval ships to patrol the banks of the Yalu River, focused most of his energy on the Koreans.

After two heavy military blows from the Qing dynasty, the military strength of Korea was almost completely weakened. When the navy was wiped out by the Dongjiang Town and Xinhua forces, the entire coastal area was almost undefended. The Dongjiang Town troops, under the pretext of punishing the rebellious vassals, were able to land at will and plunder ports and towns.

The problem is, it's not a big deal that Dongjiang Town keeps taking advantage of the North Koreans!

This has little impact on the overall situation in Liaodong.

If it weren't for Xinhua's constant encouragement of Dongjiang Town to hold Tieshan City, threatening the supply route between Korea and the Qing forces, Shen Shikui's Ming army would have been virtually unable to pose any effective deterrent to the Qing.

Of course, the incompetence and shortsightedness of the local military garrisons of the Ming Dynasty were not limited to Liaonan and Dongjiang; all nine border garrisons, including the Guan Ning garrisons, were in the same state.

Two years ago, tens of thousands of Qing troops stormed in from the north, plundering the north and even reaching northern Shandong, where the provincial capital Jinan was captured.

According to normal military counterattack strategies, the Ming army had an absolute advantage in terms of interior lines and geography. Even if it could not severely damage the Qing army that had entered the pass, it should at least try to annihilate a portion of them, making it less easy for the Qing army to plunder.

However, the result was that the hundreds of thousands of Ming troops were all passive and avoided battle. They were also scattered in various places due to the inconsistent military orders of the Ming court. None of them could form a force advantage. Instead, the Qing army seized the opportunity, joined forces at Julu, and wiped out nearly 10,000 elite border troops from Xuanda. Even the reinforcement commander Lu Xiang-sheng died in battle.

After the Battle of Julu, all Ming troops were terrified. Tens of thousands of loyalist troops from Liaodong, Xuanfu, Shanxi, Dengzhou and Laizhou fled to Linqing, daring not to leave the city again, for fear of fighting recklessly in the open and bringing about the annihilation of the entire army.

Then, they could only watch helplessly as the Qing army's left and right flanks, laden with countless looted spoils, swaggered out of the pass one after another.

When the Xinhua Army learned of this information from the returning migrant fleet last August, they were all stunned.

It should be noted that the Qing army that entered the pass was not large in scale. The "true barbarians" with the Manchu Eight Banners as the core numbered between 18,000 and 20,000, while the Mongol Eight Banners, the Han Eight Banners, and bondservants and servants numbered about 40,000, for a total force of around 60,000.

Moreover, these troops were divided into left and right wings. They only joined forces once when they annihilated the Xuanda border army. After that, they split into more than ten or even dozens of groups to plunder the capital region and Hebei, and sweep through northern Shandong.

If even one Ming garrison had fought "seriously," the Qing invaders wouldn't have been so rampant.

Even more ridiculous is that after months of looting, the Qing army, carrying hundreds of thousands of captured Ming civilians and countless livestock and wealth, stretched for dozens of miles, with a large number of carts and supplies, and had long lost its mobility. However, the various Ming armies that came to the aid of the emperor still dared not go forward to challenge them, but walked side by side at a distance of more than ten miles, and finally "respectfully escorted" the enemy out of the country.

As for providing weapons to the Ming Dynasty officials to strengthen the Ming army's military power, this has also proven to be unreliable.

Over a period of more than ten years, Xinhua sold more than 240 cannons and more than 3,500 flintlock muskets to the Ming Dynasty, but it still could not reverse the military balance between the Ming and Qing Dynasties.

Huang Long's troops in Liaonan Town were equipped with nearly 700 Xinhua muskets and more than ten light artillery pieces. However, in the Battle of Haizhou, the entire army was wiped out, and even their commander Huang Long was beheaded.

It should be noted that Huang Long's firearms battalion of over four hundred men was trained by instructors sent by Xinhua News Agency for several months, but it still failed to achieve its intended effect in the Battle of Haizhou.

This situation inevitably made the senior leadership of the Xinhua Army uneasy.

Could it be that the Jurchens are truly invincible if they number less than ten thousand, but become invincible if they number ten thousand?
Therefore, the army dispatched three infantry companies and one artillery company to the Ming Dynasty. In addition to strengthening Xinhua's influence in the Liaodong Peninsula, it was also to conduct an on-site "test" of the Qing army's true combat strength, so as to get a preliminary understanding of the future mainland conquest.

Does the newly modernized Chinese army possess the capability to defeat the Qing Dynasty's Eight Banners at its peak? During this spring's routine military exercises, the Army Ministry specifically conducted simulation drills simulating a large-scale attack by Eight Banners cavalry.

Beforehand, all the exercise plans were made in great detail and with great care. In order to increase the scale of the cavalry raid, a document was even sent to the Dongping County local government, requesting that more than ten villages and settlements around Xin'an send hundreds of armed militiamen to cooperate.

As a result, the exercise was a complete mess and was utterly unwatchable. Both the attackers and defenders performed amateurishly and failed to achieve their intended objectives.

Upon realizing this, Mo Tianhai's good mood from that morning vanished instantly.

He turned to look at a bearded man behind him and asked the question that had been on his mind.

"If the forces were equal, who would win between our Xinhua Army and the Qing Army?"

“Uh…” The man hesitated for a moment, then replied respectfully, “With equal numbers of troops, the Xinhua Army would naturally win.”

"Is that so?" Mo Tianhai stared intently at the other party. "Wang Chonggui, you are a Ming Dynasty soldier who personally experienced the Battle of Julu. Are you speaking from the heart when you say this?"

"..." Wang Chonggui's eyes darted around, a hint of panic showing on his face. "Reporting to Your Excellency, the Xinhua Army has sharp guns and cannons and is well-trained. If they hold their fortified positions, even if the Qing invaders attack in numbers several times greater, they will surely be defeated by the Xinhua Army."

"What if it's a field battle?"

"In open field battles, the outcome is often unpredictable..."

"The outcome is uncertain?" Mo Tianhai stared at him, remaining silent for a long time.

"Actually, you probably really want to say that in open field battles, my Xinhua Army should be no match for the Qing Eight Banners."

Just as Wang Chonggui was feeling uneasy under the watchful eye, he heard Mo Tianhai sigh and then reveal what was on his mind.

“My lord, the main problem with the Xinhua Army is that its forces are too weak and it lacks a large cavalry force. It cannot protect its flanks or scout the Qing army’s strength. Therefore, when it sets up its formation and engages in battle in the open field, it will inevitably be at a slight disadvantage.” Wang Chonggui quickly added.

"So you think that once we've made up for our shortcomings in troop strength and cavalry size, we'll be able to confront the Qing army head-on?"

"Well, if Xinhua has a strong military force, plus a considerable number of cavalry, and with its superior firearms, it should be able to defeat the Qing invaders in the field," Wang Chonggui said with a flattering tone.

Your Xinhua is tens of thousands of miles away from the Ming Dynasty by sea, so why do you always think about competing with the Qing barbarians?

"How did you lose the Battle of Julu?"

"Huh?" Wang Chonggui was clearly a little confused by Mo Tianhai's leaps in thought, and stared at him blankly.

"I mean, two years ago, when the Qing army entered the pass and plundered the northern part of the Ming Dynasty, how did your nearly 10,000 troops in Xuanfu Town get almost completely wiped out by the Qing army in a single day, with even the commander-in-chief Lu Xiang-sheng dying in battle?"

"..." Upon hearing this, Wang Chonggui's eyelids twitched uncontrollably a few times, and a look of pain appeared on his face as the long-lost sense of fear returned.

"...The most terrifying thing about the Qing army is that their tactics are ever-changing and they are not bound by conventional methods." After a long while, he calmed his emotions and slowly said, "Moreover, the Qing army is extremely mobile in the countryside and can quickly assemble and mobilize on a large scale at night."

"On December 12th, in just one night, the Qing forces gathered more than 18,000 troops at our Xuanda camp, twice the size of ours. You should know that the day before, our Xuanda scouts discovered that the main force of the Qing army was still 80 li away from our army and had been divided into more than ten groups scattered in the fields."

"Unexpectedly, when the Qing scouts learned of our Xuanda camp, they quickly surrounded it in less than a day and night, forcing our army to fight a decisive battle with them at Jiazhuang."

"On that day, the Qing forces deployed several thousand Western barbarians (Mongolians) on both flanks, constantly harassing and attacking our Xuanda formation, while the central main force used light infantry and firearms, including bows and muskets, to continuously wear down our Xuanda army's fighting strength, fighting with extreme patience."

"At the second quarter of the hour of Wei, the battle line of our Xuanda army finally showed signs of loosening. The Qing enemy then deployed a large formation, advancing with heavily armored infantry like a wall. Their momentum was astonishing, and there was no way to resist them. In just a few breaths, the battle line of our Xuanda army completely collapsed. Even though Lu Dutang's central army sounded drums and horns and waved flags continuously, it could not stop the spread of chaos in the slightest."

"...When the Qing army slowly advanced to the location of the central army's banner, the entire Xuanda army immediately collapsed. No one turned back to fight back; they all fled for their lives."

"..." Mo Tianhai listened, remained silent for a moment, and then asked again: "So, your Xuanda army was defeated by the Qing heavy infantry, and then pursued by the Qing cavalry, and was almost completely wiped out?"

"Your Excellency is wise," Wang Chonggui replied softly, wiping his eyes.

"Your Xuanda army has a lot of firearms, yet you haven't posed any threat to the Qing invaders?"

"Firearms?" Wang Chonggui's lips curled into a sneer. "Not to mention that those muskets are completely inaccurate, they would explode after firing only a few shots. How could they pose a threat to the Qing invaders? In addition, firearms are too slow to reload. Once the Qing soldiers get close, they will immediately scatter and flee, which will only affect the entire formation."

"Oh, but your Xinhua Army's muskets are incredibly sharp, with almost no instances of barrel explosions, and your training is quite proficient. If you were to engage the Qing invaders in open field combat, you would surely inflict heavy casualties on them."

"However, in order to ensure the stability of their own formation, in addition to accumulating more troops and expanding the size of the cavalry, the Xinhua Army also needs to establish a heavy infantry force to be deployed in a timely manner when the battle lines are stalemated or when the Qing infantry charge into the lines, so as to prevent the Qing from shaking the lines."

"Heavy infantry?" Mo Tianhai couldn't help but chuckle. "Even with the thickest armor, infantry can't withstand musket fire, can they?"

"My lord, you must not underestimate the heavy armor!" Wang Chonggui said urgently. "Within the Ming Dynasty, every strong military town has hundreds or even thousands of armored guards. Otherwise, it would be impossible to stabilize the morale of the troops, let alone rally their troops."

"Haha..." Mo Tianhai couldn't help but laugh, which attracted the attention of the passing soldiers. "Armored soldiers have been eliminated by this era."

"My lord, your vision is far beyond the reach of a lowly person!" Wang Chonggui praised him, then carefully reminded him, "However, at present, both the Ming Dynasty and the Qing invaders have a large number of heavily armored infantry, which play a decisive role in the outcome of battles."

"As long as our firepower is dense enough, let alone heavy infantry, even if more than 10,000 Manchu cavalry come, we can still wipe them out!" Mo Tianhai said confidently.

"My lord..." Wang Chonggui hesitated, wanting to speak but stopping himself.

It should be noted that the three-eyed muskets carried by the Ming Dynasty's various garrisons had limited power and were difficult to penetrate the Qing army's heavy armor in battle, which allowed the heavily armored infantry to still effectively dominate the battlefield.

How can these Xinhua soldiers be so arrogant?

Based on their relatively powerful firearms?
The problem is, you don't have many troops in the whole country, so how dare you make such a boast?

Alas, when you face the Qing army head-on one day, you'll know your own limitations.
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(End of this chapter)