Chapter 590: Entangled Struggle on the Tableland

In Zhang Tianlin's eyes, Yang Zhengfang looked like a madman, rapidly assembling the largest pure-infantry square formation he had ever seen.

The shifting formations across the entire battlefield were extraordinarily grand in scale; two army formations totaling seven thousand men merged into one as they crossed over the earthen ramparts.

The outermost layer consisted of small square formations spaced seven or eight paces apart, each composed of over thirty mixed light and heavy infantry; two staggered layers of these small squares formed the outer perimeter. Protected within them, hundred-man line formations advanced steadily, carrying chevaux-de-frise over the ramparts.

This massive, slow-moving formation even gave Zhang Tianlin an illusion — as if Yang Zhengfang was deliberately turning his backside toward him, waiting for his cavalry to come kick it.

After all, those large line formations spaced ten-odd paces apart inside the great square, while effective at reducing column casualties from cannon fire, were far too easily shattered by a frontal cavalry charge — and of course, even easier to punch through from behind.

So much so that Zhang Tianlin waved off the heavy cannon crews who were preparing their final volley before packing up the carts and withdrawing north. At the enemy's current speed, never mind whether they could even reach the artillery position — their slow, steady pace alone would let the heavy cannons fire one more round.

Maybe even two.

Still, Zhang Tianlin did not act rashly. The enemy commander's movements puzzled him, and wariness rose in his heart. He merely ordered the artillery to keep firing, without even issuing commands to the flanking cavalry responsible for harassment and disruption, and carefully studied the enemy formation, trying to find the great square's true weak point.

But the true weak point was the front.

Yang Zhengfang was gambling. His objective was not to seize the cannons.

Because the moment those gun-carts started moving, his heavy infantry could not catch up.

And light infantry stripped of heavy infantry protection — even though the Miao soldiers had rarely fought on northern battlefields where cavalry was used on such a massive scale — knew full well that cavalry slaughtering light infantry was like slaughtering rabbits. They could not just chase after cannons like donkeys chasing a dangling carrot.

Moreover, the moment light and heavy infantry became separated, both would be shattered in the long pursuit.

So he had deliberately arranged this formation precisely to lure Zhang Tianlin's cavalry into a frontal charge. More than a charge, he wanted them to crash straight in, turning the front lines into a chaotic melee.

Then, with both sides intermingled, the cannons could no longer fire.

Though Yang Zhengfang did not know who commanded the Marshal's Army opposite him, he could tell this was a bold and highly skilled ruthless character — otherwise he would never dare surround him with five thousand troops when over ten thousand Ming soldiers were within a fifty-li radius.

This was certainly not the best tactic, but it was the most useful among the options currently available to him.

Yet Zhang Tianlin refused to take the bait.

It was not that he begrudged his soldiers or was unwilling to send his cavalry plunging headlong into the enemy lines. After all, any general knows that once men step onto the battlefield, whether general or soldier, they cease to be men — they are merely numbers.

Tactical choices are never about possibility, only about whether it is worth it.

Yang Zhengfang would not dwell on how many heavy infantry would die advancing against the artillery position, because on this entire battlefield, that was worth more than standing still and being shelled.

Likewise, Zhang Tianlin would not ponder whether his cavalry could plunge headlong into the enemy formation — he would only consider whether doing so was worth it.

It clearly was not.

Zhang Tianlin had already seen the enemy formation's front with perfect clarity. The thousand-plus heavy infantry the Zhen'gan troops had placed on the flanks were more than enough to keep his cavalry from daring any rash moves.

With such flank protection, plunging into the front was meaningless. Even if he broke through the front, so what?

He did not want to rout the enemy — he wanted to annihilate them.

Row upon row of large line formations — how many layers could his cavalry punch through?

Fighting outnumbered, his forces were already stretched thin to begin with, and cavalry had a far wider combat frontage than infantry. Whether in close-range shooting or hand-to-hand fighting, mounted men simply could not outperform infantry.

Without breaking through the flanks, the enemy would not collapse into a large-scale rout. The final outcome would be nothing more than a protracted melee testing endurance.

In that case, why bother staying on horseback at all?

As the Zhen'gan troops advanced, Zhang Tianlin's gaze swept past the battlefield of galloping warhorses and crisscrossing bullets, and he turned to ask Wang Huaizhong, the Vanguard Hundred-Commander at his side: "How much longer until the Grand Marshal reaches the battlefield?"

"A moment ago, the relay riders reported the main army is near twenty li away and will arrive on the battlefield in stages within one shichen, but all relay riders have been dispatched northwest to skirmish with the Liaodong cavalry's relay riders. Zu Kuan should be in the eastern outskirts of Xingping County."

One shichen, then?

Zhang Tianlin nodded to show he understood, then spoke to the relay riders again: "Request reinforcements from the Grand Marshal. Urge them to speed the march — our unit is about to engage the enemy."

Having said this, his resolve hardened. He waved his hand and ordered: "Send word to Zhao Zhirui: order his two flanking cavalry units to continue harassment. The Center Battalion's chiliarchs are to dismount. The Firearm Company Commander is to push the crouching-tiger cannons right into their faces — fight on foot, hand-to-hand!"

At his command, the main-force chiliarchs left guarding the central army dismounted one after another, handing their warhorses to the hundred-commander in charge of donkeys and mules. Then over a thousand soldiers donned their armor, took up tall shields and great pavises from the war carts, and formed a large line formation for foot combat in front of the position.

Meanwhile, the camp-guarding central army linked all two hundred fifty-six war carts carried by the entire encampment into a fortified camp, sheltering the baggage, warhorses, army banners, war drums, and the remaining six-hundred-odd cavalry within.

Four hundred-odd paces — for the Zhen'gan troops in formation, that would take a while to cover.

In the time it took the heavy cannons to fire two volleys, Yang Zhengfang's formation had advanced over two hundred paces, the entire army now having cleared the earthen ramparts. But Zhang Tianlin's reaction exceeded his expectations. Seeing the cavalry two hundred paces away dismount in unison and form a line formation, he knew things had gone wrong.

The enemy commander was not only bold and highly skilled — he was also extremely cool-headed.

Yang Zhengfang's main disadvantage was his lack of exposure.

Although Huguang and the southwestern regions were covered in mountains and forests and crisscrossed by rivers, warhorses and cavalry were by no means rare there — on the contrary, they were quite common.

The southwest did not lack fine horse breeds. Since the Southern Song, places like Shuixi had consistently served as sources of quality horses. During the Mongol Yuan period, horse farms were established, and stud horses were brought in from the north and the Western Regions to further improve the stock.

However, the output was insufficient to supply the entire southwestern army, so the vast majority of southwestern cavalry used Sichuan and Yunnan horses as mounts.

After all, the body weights of Sichuan and Yunnan horses spoke for themselves. Even setting aside tiny specimens like the Guoliu pony, even a normal southwestern horse weighing three to four hundred jin was still lighter than a Guanzhong donkey. Carrying a man without equipment already counted as heavy labor.

Although southwestern cavalrymen lived much the same as veterans born on the frontier — riding horses all over the mountains and hills since childhood, highly proficient in archery and horsemanship — in the final analysis, they were still light cavalry.

A lone rider with a single spear and two quivers of arrows — that was the kind of prowess impressive from a commoner's perspective, but it meant nothing before heavy infantry.

Therefore, deep in Yang Zhengfang's subconscious, he assumed that this Marshal's Army surrounding him, though horse-rich, had too few total troops and could not possibly dismount to fight him on foot.

But in the final analysis, it was the rapid river crossing that left them short of heavy equipment, and the Liaodong cavalry had run off to forage, leaving the Zhen'gan troops and Mao troops isolated and facing Zhang Tianlin's independently operating unit.

Precisely because of this, Zhang Tianlin was holding back his rockets — against an opponent like this, he could fight however he pleased. Better to save the rockets, which were one fewer with every use, for a more critical moment.

If they did not form up, he would use cavalry to ride them down. If they formed up, he would use artillery to blast them apart. If they did not break, he would keep blasting. If blasting failed, he would use infantry to charge. Once the infantry scattered them, he would use cavalry to chase.

In short... no matter what Yang Zhengfang did, it was wrong.

On the battlefront, as Zhang Tianlin's cavalry dismounted and formed an infantry battle line advancing steadily, the two armies rapidly closed the distance, soon leaving only a hundred paces between them.

Almost simultaneously, the Marshal Army's ten crouching-tiger cannons and several hundred lightning-lock arquebuses fired; the Ming army's Yongzhu cannons, crouching-tiger cannons, bird-beak arquebuses, and heavy crossbows, set behind chevaux-de-frise, also opened fire.

Dozens of small cannons erupted in flame and vast clouds of smoke before the lines. Thousands of lead balls and iron pellets tore through the smoke, punching hole after hole, then streaked like bolts of light across the battlefield with shrieking gusts, raising a patter like tearing cotton cloth along the front lines.

Thick shields and sturdy chevaux-de-frise were riddled with holes; even heavy iron armor could scarcely withstand it.

Many men let out muffled grunts the instant they were hit. The thick padded cotton coats and iron armor made it impossible to tell whether the projectiles had penetrated, and only the immense pain sapped their strength, causing them to slump sideways and collapse to the ground.

Some could endure it, but more could not. Before the wind sweeping across the open field could carry away the gunsmoke, wails of agony had seized the sky above the entire great tableland.

But the advance did not stop.

More lead bullets and arrows flew between the two armies. The advancing formations were like flowing water, the soldiers' slow and steady strides stepping over the bodies of their own wounded as they continued pushing steadily forward.

Behind the formation, within the central army where Zhang Tianlin had formed the wagon array, a centurion wearing a bowl helmet with a white tassel and red cloth-faced armor skirt whose lower hem was all plain-colored streamers strode out swiftly; behind him followed two squad leaders in identical attire but with small white flags stuck in their bowl helmets.

Behind the officers, soldiers worked in pairs, wearing no armor — at most a few of the burliest men wore mail shirts — each one hunched over as they shuttled behind the battlefield, carrying stretchers improvised from long poles and coarse cloth sacks as they dashed toward the wounded, their feet flying.

They were the Medical Corps under the main camp.

These men, however, were all regular soldiers, not military physicians.

Subordinate to the main camp, the Medical Corps, with an authorized strength of one hundred and twenty-three men, functioned more like an army field school.

An entire camp had only one or two experienced general-practice medical officers, two to four medical specialists proficient in surgery and bone-setting, and three to five physicians experienced in surgery, bone-setting, and smallpox and measles.

Physician and medical specialist were both professional rank titles; a medical officer was a medical specialist who drew a salary from the Imperial Medical Academy.

Watching the Medical Corps sprint past his side, Zhang Tianlin stood on horseback, his hand gripping the telescope growing ever tenser: the front line was about to engage the enemy.

It was not a case of two battle formations crashing together across their entire front; both sides were of Ming army origin, and though from different regions, their drill manuals differed little — both used large formations that nested sub-formations within formations and sub-units within units, and the process of engaging the enemy was the same.

In broad terms, the two battalion-commander companies under the front-line brigade commander were arrayed in overlapping formations, one behind the other; in narrow terms, the squad-level sub-units under each centurion's company were also arrayed in overlapping formations, one behind the other.

Then, as both sides advanced in overlapping waves, the forward squads, when only twenty or thirty paces apart, one after another quickened to a rapid march, each weathering arrows and lead balls, leveling their long spears and wolf-bristle spears, and crashed together.

The wolf-bristle spear was not Qi Jiguang's invention, but the invention of Ye Zongliu, a miner-soldier leader who rose in revolt in Zhejiang during the Zhengtong era; a single wolf-bristle spear could shield half a squad of soldiers in formation, and the Gourd Troops, skilled in short weapons, had also been transferred to the coast to fight the Japanese pirates, so the army was equipped with a small number of wolf-bristle spears.

Though this contraption looked a bit farcical, it was extremely practical.

At fifteen or sixteen feet, the wolf-bristle spear was longer than the ordinary fifteen-foot infantry great-spear, and its countless small branches all bore sharp branch-blades, both blocking the enemy's field of vision and concealing the attack paths of one's own long spears, making it an exceptionally troublesome weapon in formation combat.

But Zhang Tianlin's camp soldiers were all cavalrymen who had dismounted, and the long spears they were equipped with, limited as they were, were all cavalry spears.

A cavalry spear was three feet longer than an infantry spear.

The squads that collided with each other countered move for move — your wolf-bristle spear was long, but my cavalry spear was no short either; for a time countless long spears struck against each other, forming a wall of spearheads, every soldier on both sides forced under the threat of several spearpoints while simultaneously searching for a target to stab through the narrow gaps.

In reality, however, the mission of a soldier wielding a long spear in a dense formation was not to do his utmost to stab one or two enemies, but to advance.

Meanwhile, the squads advancing in overlapping waves on the flanks did not press forward, merely aiming powerful bows, heavy crossbows, and firearms at the enemy soldiers' faces and shooting, attempting to open a breach with projectile weapons.

It was not that only the Later Jin army in the whole world excelled at shooting faces with strong bows; rather, in this era, whenever regular armies with anything like normal equipment levels fought, if you shot your bow and didn't aim for the face, it was as good as useless.

What, were you going to shoot for the armor gaps?

Never mind shooting at armor gaps with a bow — even thrusting with a long spear you couldn't hit an armor gap; from fifteen or twenty feet away, who could see clearly where the armor gaps were?

Even if a man wore only a suit of hard leather armor, or even silk-paper armor or thick paper armor, an arrow hitting the body would cause only a flesh wound; only an arrow loosed at the unprotected face was a one-shot kill.

But amid a forest of spears and lances, accurately hitting the face was no easy task either.

Firearms, by contrast, had an immense superiority in this kind of melee — as long as they hit, no matter which part of the body they struck, they could rapidly render a man combat-incapable.

During the frontal engagement, the Marshal's Army skirmishers positioned on the Ming army's flanks and rear were not idle either, repeatedly harassing with firearm cavalry, even forming squads and companies to charge the formation's corners, but with little success.

After all, heavy infantry, that breed, was inherently resistant to charges.

At the very start of battle, when you charged, they were full of stamina and high in fighting spirit — impossible to budge, and they'd even dare to shoot at you with bows and crossbows.

After the battle had gone on for a while, they were short on stamina and their fighting spirit was scattered — even if psychologically they could be budged, physically they couldn't run anymore, which meant you still hadn't budged them.

So in fact, for heavy-armored infantry locked in hand-to-hand combat, even if they weren't hit by projectile weapons, they would still rapidly lose combat effectiveness… anyone who could wear heavy armor and hold the line in hand-to-hand combat for a quarter of an hour was already considered a man of superhuman stamina.

In this respect, Zhang Tianlin's dismounted infantry clearly had the advantage; their stamina at the start of the engagement was more abundant, and soon the heavy infantry on the Zhen'gan Army's front line were flagging from exhaustion, squad after squad wavering and slowly falling back.

Zhang Tianlin's infantry naturally pursued the victory, but after advancing only a dozen or so paces, the battle line was swiftly filled by the rearward squads from the overlapping formation, and a new round of slaughter unfolded.

The two sides fought back and forth twice, the battle line returning to its starting point amid the tug-of-war, the troops also rotating in the advance and retreat, and the officers, having now gauged the opponent's combat capability, it was time for the cannons carried with the army to take the stage.

Along the interlocking, jagged battle line, great bursts of gunpowder smoke erupted from time to time, and soldiers, treading upon the corpses of enemy wounded and fallen, charged into the battle line, swinging sabers and mace-headed clubs to send flesh and blood flying in every direction.

At the same moment, from the locust-tree woods on the western side of the battlefield, over ten Liaodong cavalrymen carrying banners burst forth; Zhao Zhirui, positioned on the battlefield's flank, soon heard the scout cavalry's warning relay: "Liaodong troops!"

Then more Liaodong cavalry poured out of the woods, leveling their cavalry spears and forming a broad front, company after company advancing abreast, charging straight at Zhang Tianlin's central army; behind them came another battle line of cavalry, the Liaodong troops gripping bows and three-eyed guns, their gleaming sabers flashing in the sunlight, their speed growing faster and faster.

Farther away, on the southwestern riverbank, unit after unit of troops under Huguang Vice Regional Commander Lei Shisheng crossed the Wei River, formed up and readied, and set off for the killing fields to the northeast.

Zhao Zhirui, positioned on the Zhen'gan Army's left flank, awaited them in strict formation; the skirmishers under his command, scattered across the battlefield, broke away from the Zhen'gan Army's flank and, to the pounding of the cavalry waist drums, formed into cavalry companies one after another.

He drew the general's battle sword at his waist and pointed it at the middle of the Liaodong cavalry's line of advance on the western side of the battlefield, preparing to launch an oblique intercept against this force of over a thousand Liaodong cavalry that had appeared on the battle line's flank.

Just then, out of the corner of his eye, Zhao Zhirui saw something flash in the distant sky.

He raised his head — first, black specks spiraled in from the high northern sky, then hundreds of vultures spread their wings in the air, and in the instant they blotted out the sunlight, they cast an immense shadow over the earth, sweeping across the battlefield with dry, rasping, piercing cries.

Zhao Zhirui, poised to intercept, broke into a look of delight; his battle sword and his horse's head turned in unison, now pointing at Lei Shisheng's troops crossing the river: "Cavalry, hear my command — follow me and charge the Ming army crossing the river!"

Thundering hooves swept dust across the open battlefield, cutting through the smoke; on the horizon behind Zhang Tianlin's central army, a vast cloud of dust rose from the flat ground, and before the dust, a great red command banner bearing the character 'Marshal' revealed its true form.

Beneath the banner, a lone scout rider was laboring along a ditch on horseback, a three-eyed gun clamped under his arm and the battle flag hoisted on his shoulder, until he finally found a field ridge he could cross and planted the battle flag atop the ridge.

In the next moment, column after column of Marshal's Army soldiers, leading their horses at a run, reached the battlefield under the urging of officers wearing shoulder-baring battle robes.