Zheng Huchen's concerns Zhao Bing also considered it, but he thought it had both pros and cons. As far as he knew in his previous life and his experience in fighting the enemy over the past ten years, "urging" the Mongolian army to build a castle system was a matter of greater benefits than disadvantages.

The myth created by the Mongols that can sweep the world and be invincible invincible has always been studied by later generations. Some people think it is the hard work of Mongolian horses, the application of high bridge saddles, the power of bows and arrows, the lack of logistics supply and the possession of multiple horses and other conditions. However, Zhao Bing thought that the reason why the Mongolian army was able to achieve such a record was that its external conditions, good weapons and heroic character were indispensable, but it was not necessary.

Because at the same time, the regional countries conquered by Mongolia had more advanced weapons, excellent war horses and numerous populations, but were still defeated, so Zhao Bing thought that the Mongols' good strategy and tactics were the foundation of their victory. You should know that at that time, all Mongolian tribes combined with a population of only one million, and they could provide up to 150,000 Mongolian cavalry. How could they complete the cause of conquering the world?

The Mongolians are "people on horseback" and are the most outstanding nomadic people. The Mongolian riding skills are much better than their enemies. Mongolian horses are usually grazed under harsh conditions, which makes them not very tall. However, Mongolian horses are very hard-working and highly adaptable is also a recognized fact. Zhao Bing once conducted an experiment. At this time, any Mongolian war horse can ride for more than 300 miles in a day without long-term rest, which is stronger than the indicators of modern Mongolian horses. This may be caused by the degradation of the breed in the later stage.

In addition, the early Mongolian army had only a single cavalry, which allowed them to avoid the problem of coordinating the use of mobile troops and infantry, and this problem has plagued the armies of various countries today. The superposition of these factors, coupled with sufficient backup horses, the Mongolian army has the maneuverability that looks terrible even today, allowing them to conduct rapid mobile combat in a vast area, and can gather troops to use them in a very short time, overcoming the problem of lack of troops.

This high-speed maneuverability makes the Mongols able to implement the strategy of splitting and attacking. They dispersed their troops into several scattered columns and threatened multiple important targets at the same time. In this way, the enemy had to divide their troops to defend multiple targets and disperse their troops or concentrate their troops to protect certain targets and have to give up other targets. If the enemy dispersed their troops, the Mongolian scattered columns would suddenly gather together to launch an offensive with their superior forces; if the enemy did not disperse their troops, the Mongols could easily seize many strategic areas and make the battle situation more and more beneficial to themselves.

In addition, in Zhao Bing's view, the Mongols like to use the tactic called "Manguda". The core of this tactic is to pretend to flee and lure the enemy to pursue, and its essence is speed and suddenness. "Manguda" is a specially selected unit. They have to attack the enemy alone and quickly rush to the enemy's ranks, and shoot arrows from all directions like a storm, and then escape immediately. From beginning to end, they do not engage in close combat with the infantry that is ready for the enemy, which is similar to modern fire harassment tactics.

"Manguda" successfully combined the fast galloping of the horse, clever control and timing choice. Their fierce attacks first brought considerable losses to the enemy, and then retreated in the enemy's attempt to counterattack, pretending to be frightened and as if they were aimlessly fleeing. At this moment, only the smartest generals and opponents with strict military discipline can suppress the impulse to pursue and not pursue the Mongols who pretended to be defeated. If they fail, they will repeatedly implement this tactic until they anger the enemy.

Once the opponent follows and pursues, the Mongolian army will first lure the enemy cavalry out of the protection range of the support, and will often be annihilated by the ambush after losing the strict formation protection. At this time, the Mongolian archers will suddenly attack the opponents entering the ambush circle, annihilation of the scattered enemies one by one, and cause huge chaos to the enemies who can maintain the formation, so that the enemies who are trapped in chaos and major casualties have almost no resistance to the Mongolian heavy cavalry waiting for the battle.

In this way, with a strong castle as the support and a cavalry that travels like the wind as aid, it seems that it can really form an unbreakable line of defense to block the Song army south of the Yangtze River. However, Zhao Bing was not too worried. He thought that the vast city made it difficult for the Mongolian army to exercise its best mobile tactics, and instead gave him an opportunity to take advantage of it.

First of all, after years of war, the Mongolian army was no longer just a cavalry in order to adapt to the changes in the war situation, but formed an army with combined arms such as naval army, infantry, artillery army, cavalry army, and craftsman army. The mobility has been greatly reduced. In addition, the Mongolian army is now stationed in various places in the form of wartime and military farming on weekdays. Once there is something, it must be organized first before it can be put into combat, and the reaction time must be extended accordingly.

In addition, the Mongolian army is fighting locally, and cannot go anywhere to grab the logistics supply like before. This also limits their mobility range, making it difficult for them to launch large-scale detour combat, and the usual tactics are difficult to use. After all, every step they take will cause them economic losses. Therefore, their tactics will be formed similar to those of the Song army in the northwest when they were in the Western Xia Dynasty. When the enemy attacked, they retreated into the fortress to protect themselves, and then asked the surrounding garrisons for help, and then counterattacked after the troops arrived.

In addition, the dense water network in the two Huaihe River areas and limited mobility is still a hurdle that the Mongolian army cannot avoid. Once the marching road is cut off, it will be difficult to implement rapid maneuver. All strategies and tactics are zero, and they can only rely on the city to defend. If you have good luck, you can persist until reinforcements arrive. If you have poor luck, you can only wait for friendly forces to collect the body. Therefore, it is difficult for the enemy to build a city to change the reality that they lose their advantage in rapid maneuvering combat, and cannot fundamentally reverse the passive situation.

In fact, although some famous battles are often seen in wars, the siege often has to pay a huge price. After cruel siege battles, they can only win a strong city. Many battles cannot be won even if they sacrifice a lot, resulting in a defeat. However, Zhao Bing found that in fact, there is no need to fight the city step by step in the war. Most cities are not necessary, and it is impossible to go around.

Military strategy emphasizes the right combination and odd victory. Although Zhao Bing also carried out several siege battles in the battle to recover Jiangnan, the intensity was not as fierce as the battles outside. In addition, the siege battles were all for the purpose of capturing central cities such as Lin'an, Jiankang and Ezhou. Of course, this was also related to the Mongolian army's massive demolition of cities, leaving him without a city to attack, but this was also one of the reasons why the Mongolian army had its vital forces annihilated and Jiangnan was quickly recovered. However, Zhao Bing also knew that no matter how the battle was fought, several types of cities could not be avoided:

First of all, there are politically central cities. Most of these cities are capitals and deputy capitals, such as Chang'an, Luoyang, Jiankang, Kaifeng, Beijing, etc. No matter what the circumstances, the capital must be captured to win a full victory in the war. However, such cities are facing attacks, or the war has come to an end, or the enemy's long-range attacks and beheading actions, of course, the significance of attacking the capital is not to be unchanged and only for the destruction of the country.

During the Jingkang period, the Jurchens came to the city of Bianliang for the first time. They faced resolute resistance and did not capture the city, but they extorted countless property and signed a city alliance with the Northern Song Dynasty. The greatest significance was to understand the combat effectiveness of the Song army, which made them determined to destroy the Song Dynasty. When they came the second time, they captured the city, abducted the two emperors, and destroyed the Northern Song Dynasty regime.

As far as Zhao Bing knows, another similar battle was done by the Jurchens. In the late Ming Dynasty, Huang Taiji led his troops to attack Beijing. In his opinion, the military strength of the Eight Banners soldiers was not strong enough to directly attack Beijing. Instead, it was more economical to attack Shandong across the border wall. However, Huang Taiji still organized a surprise attack on Beijing regardless of the risk of being cut off by the Ming army on the Ningjin line. However, the result of this battle was that Emperor Chongzhen of Ming killed the Qing army's old opponent Yuan Chonghuan, making "the border affairs were no better, and the Ming Dynasty was defeated and the conquest was decided."

For example, although Luoyang was not always the capital during the Sui and Tang Dynasties, its traditional political status was very important, it was always a place for military strategists to compete for. The Western Wei and Northern Zhou dynasties organized five tragic attacks on Luoyang, only one success was achieved; the Sui Yang Xuangan Rebellion, the Wagang Army Li Mi attacked Wang Shichong, Emperor Taizong of Tang besieged Wang Shichong, and the Anshi Rebellion went south, all attacking Luoyang.

Although Luoyang is only the deputy capital, Luoyang occupies a nearby geographical location to control the Central Plains, and secondly, as the economic center moves eastward, Luoyang's political status gradually becomes equal to Chang'an. Therefore, Luoyang's gains and losses largely determine the good or bad situation in the Central Plains, so when the war comes, Luoyang quickly becomes the focus of the offensive.

Next is the battle command center city. Due to the low communication and transportation conditions in ancient times, the central government's control over the vast territory mainly relies on administrative centers in various places. If a war breaks out, these administrative centers will immediately be transformed into regional combat command centers. This type of city is represented by Taiyuan, Hejian, Zhongshan, Jinan, Shouyang, Jingzhou, etc., and this is why Zhao Bing has always coveted Shouzhou.

Therefore, although most of these cities are in plains with flat terrain and developed transportation, they can easily bypass and not fight, but the party that launched the attack will never let go of it for the purpose of destroying the enemy's command center. Even if the city defense facilities are extremely strong, they must be taken down at any cost. During the Northern Dynasties, the Northern Wei attacked Zhongshan in the Later Yan, the Western Wei destroyed Liang and first attacked Jiangling in Jingzhou, Yang Zhong of the Northern Zhou Dynasty, and the Jin army besieged Taiyuan, Hejian and Zhongshan towns, and the Ming Dynasty Zhu Di besieged Dezhou and the Jinan line. All of this is the reason.

However, the situation of military use is not static. When a higher value attack target appears, such cities will be quickly abandoned. During the Jingnan Campaign, Tie Xuan held Jinan, and Zhu Di repeatedly attacked unsuccessfully. Later, after being reminded by people, he found that the attack method of one city and one place could not win, so he changed his strategy and abandoned Dezhou and Jinan and other big cities, and went south along the canal to take straight to Nanjing, defeated Emperor Jianwen with the strategy of capturing the thieves and kings, and then reversed to solve the Jinan problem. This is a strategy that must be adopted for the transformation of the strategic battle situation, but the value of Jinan's own regional command center remains unchanged.

The other is a traffic channel-type city. The so-called traffic channel is roughly divided into two categories: one is a traffic channel on land, and the other is a traffic channel on water. This type of city either depends on high risk or force water to make a city, which is a real city that is easy to defend and difficult to attack. Just like a Xiangyang city, the city of Meng Yuan returned several times, allowing the Song Dynasty to survive for decades.

But the traffic roads that a city can control are very limited, at most dozens of miles. Even if the surrounding roads are difficult to walk, can't we avoid it completely? Judging from Zhao Bing, sometimes it really doesn't work.

In this era of lack of transportation vehicles, the army carried out wars, especially the Central Plains army, which was mainly composed of infantry, mainly relied on soldiers to walk on foot, and long journeys had a great impact on the physical strength of soldiers. What was even more terrible is that long-distance transfers would greatly consume logistics supplies. The combat effectiveness of a unit is often related to logistics support and the physical strength of soldiers. To avoid the strong city on the channel, it means taking a long way, which will inevitably greatly damage the combat effectiveness of the troops.

At the same time, the defending city has a good location, and can follow and pursue, or defend the dangerous rear, which will cause great damage to the enemy army. Therefore, the strategy for this kind of strong city is that if you don’t want to fight, choose another attack direction before the war begins. Once you take on the battle, you either attack hard or retreat the same way.

Therefore, to solve the problem of traffic tunnels for a long time, we must completely take down such cities for ourselves. Just like Zhao Bing personally conquers Ezhou, taking down the key point of controlling the entrances of the Yangtze River and Han River, and deploying heavy troops to guard the main ferries along the river at the moment, because in the long run, the price they paid is completely insignificant compared to the later strategic interests.

In addition, the "gateway"-type cities must be attacked. From a military geography perspective, due to the barriers and divisions of mountains and rivers, China is roughly divided into strategic blocks such as Central Plains, Guanzhong, Hebei, Hedong, Hanzhong, Shuzhong, Lianghuai, Jiangdong, Jingxiang, Liaodong, and Longyou. Some strategic blocks therefore have one or two barrier-type cities.
Chapter completed!