"The Ming army is waiting for infantry and artillery." Fan Wencheng looked ahead expressionlessly.
Yue Tuo narrowed his eyes and said after a long while: "As expected, an attack requires infantry."
Fan Wencheng stopped talking, but he knew very well in his mind that using trenches and wooden fences to resist the Ming army would only delay it and would not be able to completely stop it.
The Ming army was in high spirits, with a strong army and powerful cavalry. Their steady advance was like a mountain pressing down on them. The Later Jin, already short of troops and supplies, found it difficult to resist.
Originally, Fan Wencheng and Li Yongfang still had a lucky mentality, thinking that as winter approached, the Ming army would stop its actions and wait for the Later Jin to become even weaker due to the lack of food and supplies.
But the full-scale launch of the Ming army shattered their illusions. The main force pressed forward from the front, and Liaobei, Liaoxi, and Liaodong also launched attacks, forming a joint attack on Liaoshen.
The high-ranking officials of the Later Jin Dynasty had also considered concentrating their forces to defeat the enemy once again as they did in the Battle of Sarhu.
However, each group of the Ming army was not easily defeated, and the tight pressure also made the Later Jin lose the time needed for mobile warfare.
If you attack Dongjiang Town in Liaodong, what will happen to the main force of the Ming army? If you travel hundreds of miles and defeat Dongjiang Town and return, will the main force of the Ming army remain idle and wait foolishly?
What's more, the probability of defeating Dongjiang Town is not high. If we get into a tough battle, it will be an unbearable consumption.
The Ming army relied on force to overwhelm the enemy. They had the upper hand in terms of manpower, firepower, material resources, financial resources, mobilization capabilities... They used the simplest and most brutal tactics to push forward. How do you think they fought this battle?
The gap is too big! Fan Wencheng couldn't help but sigh in his heart. What strategies and tactics are useless under the muskets and artillery of the Ming army!
The gap of hundreds of years, the gap of a new era, of course Fan Wencheng and others would not understand, let alone comprehend. In the face of absolute strength, the Houjin's stubborn resistance was futile.
Not only them, but even Ming generals such as Xiong Tingbi had not truly realized how huge the gap had become. But after continuous fighting, especially the decisive battle of Haicheng, their confidence and understanding suddenly increased.
Although they were relatively calm when advancing, the Ming army already had the belief that they would win when facing the enemy.
……………………
Hetuala City.
Faced with Mao Chenglu's mixed brigade, Liu Xingzuo and Kong Youde's mixed cavalry, and the Ming army that infiltrated in small groups and then gathered together, Ajige and Dudu took the initiative to launch an attack despite their inferior troop strength.
This was a choice he was forced to make. Ajige left a small number of troops at Yagu Pass to raise the flag, and led 5,000 troops back to Hetuala in a hurry, ready to join forces with Dudu, first defeat the advancing Ming army, and then turn back to deal with the enemies outside Yagu Pass.
To put it bluntly, Ajige wanted to create a time difference. It can also be said that this is a kind of tactic of defeating each other one by one.
The Ming army had 14,000 to 15,000 soldiers, while the Jiannu army, after several battles, was reduced to only 6,000 to 7,000 soldiers, a disadvantage of almost one to two.
But under the current circumstances, Ajige had no other choice. Either the entire army defended Hetuala to the death and sent an urgent letter to Liaochen for help; or he fought to the death, or he abandoned the city and fled.
Obviously, holding on and waiting for help was too passive. The news of Haicheng's disastrous defeat had already arrived, and they expected that the Liaoshen reinforcements might not arrive soon.
Abandoning the city would have been a relief and would have preserved the manpower, but Ajige did not want to bring disgrace to his brother just as he inherited the throne.
So, he chose to fight for his life, which was in line with his character, which was violent but reckless.
Du Du also lacked confidence in defending the city. The two hit it off and decided to leave only a small number of troops in the city while the main force went out to engage in a field battle with the Ming army outside the city.
Over the past few years, Ajige and Dudu, the Jiannu generals who had fought the Ming army less frequently, were among the most successful. It was precisely because of this that they believed that they could defeat the enemy with fewer troops in a field battle.
Ajige had suffered a defeat, but that was during the siege of Weizi Valley; Dudu had also been defeated by the Ming army, but he was ambushed and his forces were weakened because they were divided.
Therefore, according to Ajige and Dudu's battle plan, taking advantage of the mobility of the cavalry, they each led their troops to make detours and took the lead in launching an attack on the Ming army.
"Kill, kill!" Du Du led 3,000 cavalrymen to attack the Ming army's right-wing infantry. If they could break the flank, they could join forces with Ajige's troops to attack the central Ming army.
Three thousand Ming army infantrymen formed a battle formation. The first three rows aimed their guns in squatting, kneeling, and standing positions, while the back rows were armed with live ammunition and ready for a volley of fire.
Ajige led the main force to hold the position, and the city of Hetuala was a few miles behind them.
He sent out a thousand cavalrymen, who galloped diagonally past the front of the Ming army and fired a hail of arrows, trying to disrupt the Ming army's formation and lure the Ming army to open fire.
"Boom!" Facing the Jiannu army charging into the battle formation, the first three rows of Ming army musketeers obeyed the order and fired a round of volleys.
Three rows of volleys, with lead bullets as dense as rain, were several times more powerful than a single row of fire, and their lethality was also greatly increased.
The Jiannu soldiers galloping in front fell off their horses and collapsed in large numbers. Screams, wails, and neighing of horses were heard in a mixed sound.
After the three rows of Ming soldiers finished shooting, they did not reload their ammunition. Instead, they took a few steps forward, knelt down and raised their bayonets, forming a dense forest of gun tips in front of the formation.
"Fire!" The comrades in front moved out of range, the musketeers behind raised their guns and aimed, the officer swung his sword, white smoke rose, and another volley was fired.
"Fire!" Another row of musketeers stepped out from the crowd, raised their guns and fired lead bullets at the enemy.
The Jiannu suffered heavy losses, but they still acted bravely. Those who fell off their horses but were not killed raised their weapons and continued to charge while howling. The cavalry who were not hit shot arrows when they approached the Ming army's battle formation, then drew their weapons and charged on horseback.
War horses are intelligent animals. Faced with the forest of knife-point trees ahead, they instinctively stop, jump, and change direction, refusing to be controlled by their riders.
The war horses that rushed forward and had no time to stop would either let out a long neigh, lift their front hooves into the air, and suddenly stop and stand up; or they would not be able to stop in time and would run into the forest of bayonets.
The impact of the war horses caused damage to the Ming army who were using bayonets to block the enemy, but only a small gap appeared in the bayonet forest and was not broken through by the cavalry.
Ming soldiers stepped forward with guns, filling the gaps and thrusting their bayonets forward to keep the bayonet forest intact. Ming soldiers wounded by arrows were quickly replaced.
The muskets fired volley after volley at an astonishing speed. The battle formations, rather than line tactics, were heavy and difficult to move, but their firepower was the most sustained.
The firing rate of the flintlock muskets, coupled with the wheel-like firing of several rows of Ming troops, the gunfire roared as if there was no pause in between.
Both sides suffered casualties, but cavalry charging infantry formations was neither the Jiannu's forte nor could they withstand the fierce fire of flintlock muskets.
The Ming army infantry formation in the middle advanced and charged forward under the command of flags and drums. Its purpose was obvious: it was preparing to attack Du Du's cavalry from the flank.
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