Chapter 250: Battle of Xi'an 6
Zhao Xiaofei's chariot regiment destroyed the Jianlu central army camp, then turned around and attacked back.
The Jianlu soldiers were no fools; they knew the power of this thing the moment they saw it. The next time they saw this iron chariot, the cavalry immediately ran away! It was just one Don Quixote joke.
The Kenan Army cavalry, following behind, fared much worse. Despite training under General Wanshan Zhou and Fang Xinyu, all three of them had learned large-scale combat and small-scale infiltration, not cavalry tactics. They could only ride horses, and their cavalry were trained by Mongolians.
What a pity! Including Zhao Xiaofei, Wanshan Zhou Shuai and Fang Xinyu are all amateurs. Apart from good equipment and a good compound bow, the rest depends entirely on the luck of these cavalrymen.
As soon as the Jianlu cavalry dispersed and were not killed by the men on the chariots, they immediately turned their horses and rushed towards the Ming cavalry behind them, shooting arrows as they ran. Many Kenan cavalry fell off their horses, many not killed by arrows, but by being trampled to death by the horses behind them.
Except for a few Jianlu who were particularly skilled in archery and shot the Kenan Army cavalrymen in the neck and killed them on the spot, the rest were shot in non-vital places and fell off their horses.
Wanshan's theory was that cavalry didn't need full body armor, as it was a waste of materials. Now I realize that's not true. They might survive being shot by an arrow, but they forgot they could fall off their horses and be trampled to death.
Besides, the composite bows in the hands of these cavalrymen were powerful, but they were not suitable for fighting on horseback. If it weren't for the crossbows and carbines in the hands of the group of cavalrymen behind them, the losses would have been even more severe.
Zhao Xiaofei and General Zhou of Wanshan watched helplessly as thousands of cavalrymen fell to the ground. Their hearts ached. Training cavalry took far more time and money than infantry! They had no choice but to send in the mule- and horse-based firearms battalion to assist the cavalry. Only then did they disperse the Jianlu cavalry. The cavalry losses totaled over 5,000 men.
Zhao Xiaofei called Wanshan and Zhou Shuai and said to them, "Are these the 20,000 cavalry you two trained? 5,000 of them are gone so quickly? How did you fight the battles before?"
Wan Shan said a little embarrassedly, "Boss! None of us have ever been cavalrymen! The cavalrymen are all in Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang! We only heard about cavalrymen in Inner Mongolia from other comrades who enlisted for the second time. We just followed their example and trained accordingly! Besides, cavalrymen are not that easy to train. It takes three to five years to train them. Do you think army soldiers are that easy to train?"
"I thought, as long as our firearms were sharp, we'd be able to defeat these people. I didn't expect reality to slap us in the face like this. Our training methods are a bit out of touch. We'll make improvements based on the actual situation!" General Zhou said. Previously, we'd only fought city defenses or infantry battles. Only in the Battle of Chengdu did the cavalry perform well. The rest were just weak fighters! We'd never fought the Jianlu head-on. The tactic of firing squads was basically a joke in the late Ming Dynasty. Coordination between the various arms was king!
What made them even more dumbfounded was what happened next. The musketeers behind were following at the end, just to prevent the Jianlu cavalry from getting close to the cavalry in front!
The musket, once invincible on the battlefield, proved much less effective against the Jianlu. The Jianlu had a shield cart, normally used for attack. But today, the Jianlu were clever enough to use it as a defensive weapon. They filled the cart with earth, and the soldiers followed behind. The musket balls hit the earth, leaving them harmless.
This reminded Zhao Xiaofei and Wanshan of the movie "Little Soldier Zhang Ga" they watched when they were young. The Eighth Route Army used this method to prevent the enemy from machine gun fire.
These earthen tanks couldn't even handle machine guns, let alone the Wanshan-made muskets. So the first battle wasn't a good one. While the tanks tore the Jianlu like rabbits, sending them running everywhere, the performance of the Kenan Army behind them was truly mediocre.
Zhao Xiaofei said to Zhou Shuai: "Sound the retreat!"
Li Sihong didn't stop them, but later asked, "Why did my husband ask them to withdraw? The Jianlu cavalry were scattered by the chariots. We should have let the other soldiers cooperate and annihilate them now!"
Zhao Xiaofei put down the telescope, sighed, and said, "Our cavalry is no good! Look through the telescope, the coordination between the cavalry and infantry is too poor! They are either too far away, or too close together. Look at the Jianlu soldiers. Although the cavalry was overwhelmed, when they had the chance, the infantry and cavalry coordinated and killed our army, making it impossible for them to gain a foothold."
Li Sihong observed carefully and found that there was indeed a problem. She stopped talking. Although she had led troops before, she was still an inexperienced Ming Dynasty girl. She had no problem suppressing the civil unrest. But she would be much less capable of suppressing the Jianlu. This also included Zhao Xiaofei herself.
As the saying goes, there's no harm without comparison. Zhao Xiaofei's trained soldiers were more than capable of defending the city, but less so in the field. Their capture of Haoge was a testament to their ability to defend the city. As for the rebels like Zuo Liangyu and Zhu Guobi, they were nothing but utter scum. Therefore, Zhao Xiaofei's Ke Nan Army easily dispatched them.
Now Zhao Xiaofei understood why Zuo Liangyu, with hundreds of thousands of troops, did not fight against the Jianlu in the original history, but instead engaged in internal fighting in the name of clearing the court. It turned out that he knew the combat effectiveness of his own soldiers, so he simply found an excuse to fight among himself first, and did not dare to confront the Jianlu head-on.
Only now did Zhao Xiaofei truly realize how ridiculous his original idea of mixing the Eight Banners and the Chuang Army was. The coordination of the arms, especially the cavalry charge, required hard training.
The Jianlu were astonished by the Kenan Army's prowess. Putting aside the chariots, they hadn't expected the Ming cavalry to be able to fire their weapons so far. Even after firing several times, the musketeers didn't panic and abandon their weapons.
While their riding and coordination weren't as good as their own, they could still be considered elite troops. Their firearms were also incredibly accurate, and three layers of armor were a joke to the Ming army's musketeers. A single bullet shattered the three layers of heavy armor, leaving them completely defenseless.
Seeing how badly the battle was going, General Zhou and Wan Shan decided to go down in person, each driving a chariot straight off the battlefield. Each of them also brought with them two thousand personally trained musketeers, two thousand spearmen, and two thousand sword and shield soldiers.
After all, he had been a soldier, and personally went to the battlefield, so his command was much smoother. The coordination between the infantry, cavalry, and chariots was much more effective.
The chariots were in front and the infantry were behind, with sword and shield soldiers protecting the infantry, showing amazing combat effectiveness in front of the Jianlu.
However, it was already dark at this time, so Zhao Xiaofei asked the two men to withdraw their troops and return to the camp.
Fang Xinyu and his white-pole soldiers also arrived near the west gate of Xi'an. After dealing with the prisoners, Fang Xinyu galloped and finally caught up. He also saw the performance of the Kenan Army and was shocked.
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