bookcurios Chapter 206 The First Battle of the Li Family Army's New Recruits
Chapter 206 The First Battle of the Li Family Army's New Recruits
The conscription order from the Li family army swept in like a storm, and within a month, a massive new army of over 200,000 men was assembled. Fortunately, Li Zhen had brought an astonishing amount of weapons and equipment with him on his return home, which came as a timely relief. Otherwise, these enthusiastic recruits would probably have had to hone their willpower in the dust and turmoil, clutching simple wooden sticks.
The armor that Li Zhen brought was stamped by machine tools in later times. Such things would be crudely made by modern standards, but in the Song Dynasty, where mechanical processing was backward, these stamped armors were much more practical than those heavy handmade armors.
Although these suits of armor lacked a bright and colorful appearance, they were sturdy and durable. Li Zhen once had people test them with Jin army bows and arrows, and found that ordinary arrows could not penetrate modern armor at all. Even with armor-piercing arrows, which were touted as armor-piercing weapons, they could not penetrate beyond ten paces.
After a month and a half of training, Li Zhen decided to test the combat effectiveness of these new recruits. He first selected the new recruits trained by Wang Changdao. He directly ordered Wang Changdao to lead these two thousand-plus men to the north of Handan City to attack Shahe Town, which was garrisoned by the Jin army.
At this moment, Li Zhen, relying on his carefully placed spies throughout the Jin Kingdom, keenly sensed an undercurrent of tension—the Jin Kingdom, this once invincible empire, seemed to be entering a period of turmoil and chaos. Inside Zhongdu City, the Jin Emperor Wanyan Liang was heavily besieged, like a trapped beast struggling, with no time to attend to the changing winds and events around him.
Amidst this turbulent situation, the generals Wanyan Liang had once dispatched to various parts of the Jin Dynasty, like fallen leaves in the autumn wind, each chose different paths. Some harbored rebellious intentions, raising the banner of rebellion and vowing to stand shoulder to shoulder with Prince Xianping to completely overthrow Wanyan Liang's rule and rewrite the history of the Jin Dynasty; while others remained loyal and steadfast, determined to defend the dignity of imperial power to the death. They were rapidly gathering their troops, intending to brave the flames of war, reach Zhongdu, and rescue the royal family from peril with a loyalist army.
For Li Zhen, this was undoubtedly a golden opportunity. He secretly plotted to use this chaotic world to systematically expand his territory and add greater strategic depth to his power base. Every move required careful planning, avoiding the restless rebel forces while cleverly exploiting the delicate balance among the loyal generals eager to serve the emperor, allowing his power to grow quietly and imperceptibly.
Thus, on this land intertwined with war and intrigue, Li Zhen quietly wove his grand ambitions, waiting for the right moment to rewrite the trajectory of his destiny.
Wang Changdao had already found out that the Jin army stationed in Shahe Town numbered at most a thousand. If his force of over two thousand men couldn't even defeat a thousand, then he shouldn't stay in the Li family army.
A scout rode up on horseback.
"Reporting to Commander Wang, we have already investigated and found that there are 800 Jin soldiers in Shahe Town, of which only about 300 are cavalry, and 200 have gone to the surrounding villages and towns to collect military rations."
Wang Changdao waved his hand at the new recruits behind him: "Cross the river! Attack the city!"
More than two thousand people were divided into several teams to cross the shallow Ming River. Some walked across the wooden bridge, while others chose to wade across the river to cross as quickly as possible and catch the defending Jin soldiers off guard.
Less than half an hour later, Wang Changdao's new recruits launched an attack on Shahe Town.
A squad of shield-bearing scouts placed explosives at the gate of Shahe Town, lit the fuses, and began a rapid retreat to safety. They had no need to worry about the Jin soldiers on the city walls, as their brothers wielding composite bows provided cover. Countless arrows rained down from the sky as if they were free, pinning the Jin soldiers on the walls to their knees.
"boom!"
With a deafening roar, the city gate of Shahe Town was blasted into a shower of splinters. Perhaps too much explosive was used, as the blast also blew a large section of the adjacent city wall down.
A company commander in a new recruit regiment raised his semi-automatic rifle and shouted to the soldiers behind him, "Brothers, charge! Your time to make a name for yourselves has come!"
The officers in these recruit companies are all veterans who were specially transferred from other armies by Wang Changdao. Therefore, they are specially equipped with modern weapons so that if the battlefield situation changes, the weapons in the hands of these officers can form a powerful firepower network.
Upon seeing this, the Jin army commander in charge of defending Shahe Town immediately mounted his horse and prepared to flee. His Jin soldiers, seeing their commander running away, saw no point in continuing the fight. Thus, the new recruits' first charge encountered only slight resistance at the beginning, then proceeded as if entering an empty field.
The soldiers originally intended to engage in street fighting with the Jin soldiers, but after a brief charge, most of the Jin soldiers threw down their weapons and knelt down to surrender.
The Jin soldiers with horses were all pure Jurchens. They hurriedly packed their valuables into their bundles and followed their commander toward the north gate.
After observing through binoculars for a while, Wang Changdao asked a battalion commander behind him, "Where did the Third Battalion set up an ambush outside the North Gate?"
The battalion commander smiled and replied cheerfully, "Just three miles outside the north gate, there is a narrow passage, flanked by jagged rocks and steep cliffs, like a natural barrier. As long as we guard the key entrance to that passage, those Jin soldiers will be like turtles in a jar, unable to escape even if they grow wings."
Sure enough, just as the centurion led his 300-plus cavalrymen to a place three miles away, a whistling arrow shot straight into the sky.
The centurion thought to himself, "This is bad; there's an ambush."
Instantly, countless dense arrows rained down from the sky, giving the Jin soldiers and their horses a direct barrage of fire.
On the battlefield, Jin soldiers fell one after another like autumn leaves, weaving a tragic and magnificent scene. Warhorses neighed mournfully amidst the hail of arrows; some, heavily wounded and in unbearable pain, violently flung their riders into the dust. These scenes intertwined, plunging the entire battlefield into an indescribable chaos and clamor. The air was thick with the pungent stench of blood and the panting of warhorses; the intensity of the battle was chilling.
This centurion was a ruthless man. He knew that turning back would only mean certain death, so he might as well charge forward and perhaps carve out a way to survive.
Having made up his mind, the centurion shouted, "Men, these Han Chinese are all cowards! Follow me and fight your way out!"
Having said that, he squeezed the horse's belly with both legs and charged forward, spear in hand.
Upon seeing this, the battalion commander of the third battalion, who was guarding the top of the valley, sneered: "The pikemen, attack! Let these new recruits see blood!"
In the deep valley, several squads of warriors, clad in armor and wielding long spears made of spiral steel, emerged swiftly like the first rays of dawn. Their steps were firm, and they quickly coalesced into an impregnable heavy infantry square. Faced with the Jin Kingdom's light cavalry's swift and unstoppable offensive, the most reliable defense was none other than this formidable wall of heavy infantry, standing firm like a mountain.
However, although the Song state was well aware of this principle, it struggled to fully implement such a powerful defense. The reason lay in the fact that the nation's wealth slipped through its fingers like sand; vast amounts of gold and silver were squandered by pleasure-seeking officials, leaving the treasury empty and unable to support such a well-equipped, heavily armored army. On this land sculpted by the ravages of history, every penny of insufficient military spending posed a silent threat to the peace of the borders, making one worry for the future of the Song state.