Chapter 2030
Bayano received relatively high courtesy after arriving in the Qing Dynasty. On the night of landing, he was received by a certain important person who was said to be a member of the royal family, and then the next day he was arranged to demonstrate the colonial authority to a group of Qing generals. Send us the performance of this batch of weapons. It is obvious that the other party also attaches great importance to this cross-border cooperation and can't wait to confirm the effectiveness of this kind of military assistance.
The weapons brought by Bayano are naturally far superior to the current equipment level of the Qing army. In the hands of veterans like him who have been in the army for many years and have actual combat experience, the power they can exert is not even worse than the individual weapons of the Haihan Army. How many. Of course, training someone who has never used a musket to his level of proficiency will definitely not happen overnight.
However, the Qing generals who had seen Bayano's demonstration were quite optimistic about the prospects. They generally believed that as long as a large number of such weapons were installed in the army, defeating Haihan would be only a matter of time. Even if the weapon performance is still insufficient compared with that of the Haihan Army, the Qing Army can completely close this gap with its strength advantage. As for how much money it would cost to build and maintain an established musketeer force, these generals had no corresponding idea. That was Huang Taiji's concern, and they couldn't control that much.
Qing generals who were not familiar with firearms did not understand the market, but Bayano was a professional and he knew very well how much such investment would be. The Qing wanted to install new weapons on a large scale in the army, but it may not be able to afford to form a musketry unit. follow-up military spending. Moreover, he did not believe that the Philippine colonies could provide a sufficient amount of weapons and equipment to the Qing Dynasty. After all, the colonial administration's arms manufacturing capabilities had been greatly reduced after the war, and it was difficult to meet the needs of its own armed forces, let alone provide foreign aid.
The Qing Dynasty really wanted to directly obtain the technology for manufacturing muskets and artillery, and let the Spanish help build arsenals in Liaodong. But the problem is that the colonial authorities do not intend to provide these special skills to the partners. Otherwise, they will learn the skills and no longer need to rely on themselves to provide weapons in the future, and the cooperative relationship will naturally not be established.
Unable to provide a large number of weapons required by the Qing army, and unable to transfer relevant manufacturing technology to the Qing Dynasty, this attitude quickly weakened the enthusiasm of the Qing army generals for this cooperation project. So for a period of time after Bayano arrived in Liaodong, this so-called military cooperation project was actually training dozens of young men with aristocratic backgrounds to enrich their resumes. It wasn't until this musketry team participated in an operation in the name of actual combat training some time ago that it finally regained the attention of the Qing army's top brass.
During this operation, the musketeers personally commanded by Bayano successfully ambushed a Haihan Army cavalry patrol, killed and wounded double digits of the enemy during the battle, and captured more than a dozen Haihan Army standard equipment. rifles, and even captured a few alive. It was rare for the Qing army to achieve such results in a small-scale operation in the history of previous wars.
How to deal with the Haihan cavalry equipped with muskets in the wild has always been a headache for the Qing army. If you use infantry to encircle and suppress you, your opponent will use kite-flying tactics to slowly kill you without any suspense. If you use cavalry, you can keep up, but if you get closer, you will become a target for the opponent. The tactic of ambush has been used before, but the number of troops participating in the ambush was too small to defeat the opponent, and the number of troops was too large to easily reveal their whereabouts, so the effect was not ideal.
But the musketeers seemed to have solved the problems that had troubled the Qing army very well. Although they were small in number, their firepower output was far stronger than that of the archers. Moreover, the team led by Bayano was all equipped with muskets he brought from the Philippines, and their performance far exceeded the equipment level of the musketeers of the Qing Army and Han Banner. Coupled with the more advanced tactics brought by Bayano and on-the-spot command based on actual combat experience, the combat effectiveness of this team naturally impressed the Qing generals.
After learning about the results, Huang Taiji greatly appreciated the performance of Bayano and the Musketeers, and immediately awarded Bayano a reward. In addition to cattle, sheep, money and land, Bayano also received the official position of "Baya Lajia Lazhangjing". Of course, this official position is not a position of real power, and Huang Taiji does not intend to actually mobilize a team of Bagala soldiers to command him. After all, it is just an honorary official position.
However, Bayano was quite satisfied with this reward. These physical rewards given by the King of the Qing Dynasty already exceeded his entire income during his previous stay in the Philippines. It seems that although Liaodong is a bitterly cold place, the employer is quite generous, and this move is much more generous than Aragones.
He can make a lot of money, and he can also attack the Haihan people, the old enemies of the Spanish colonial authorities. His employer also treats him with great courtesy and almost responds to his requests. For Bayano, this current job is indeed a rare comfortable environment in recent years. As for the risks, Bayano is not too worried. He has experience fighting in the European battlefield, and it is not an exaggeration to say that he is used to life and death. Apart from being a soldier, he has no other skills, so he has long been mentally prepared to be shrouded in horse leather.
Being able to achieve results so quickly also made Bayano begin to re-evaluate the comparison of military strength in this region. He knew that the musketeers he had trained were not outstanding, but their opponents did not seem to be as strong as expected. Compared with the Haihan army attacking Manila, their combat effectiveness seemed to be much worse. This might allow him to win in the battle. A real opportunity to defeat the Haihan people was found in the fighting in this area.
Of course, if he only relies on the few troops he has now to defeat the Haihan people who are said to have thousands of armed troops stationed in the south, it will definitely be a fantasy. It is impossible for the Haihan people to send out small patrols all the time. Let the Qing army lay an ambush. Once they enter a frontal battlefield confrontation, his few men cannot fight head-on with the Haihan Army. They may be wiped out directly after a battle.
The only way to continue winning wars is to expand the army. Bayano believed that the Qing army could not defeat the Haihan army with only the cold weapons such as swords and bows currently equipped, even if it had a clear advantage in strength. Therefore, he took the initiative to make suggestions to the Qing army while the iron was hot, hoping that the Qing army would increase its efforts in building the musketeers and expand the size of the musketeers as soon as possible.
But even if the top brass of the Qing army agreed to his proposal, they were still unable to do many things, such as the supply of weapons and equipment. This was no longer a problem that the Qing army and he could solve. They could only hope that the Philippine colonial authorities could bring more weapons, so that they could arm more Qing troops.
What Bayano can do now is to arrange basic formation training for those reserve musketeers who currently have no weapons available, so that they can master the most basic combat formation switching and marching. In this way, when the Qing army obtains enough weapons one day, it will be able to have actual combat capabilities in a very short time.
At the same time, the Qing army was actually trying to solve the problem of long weapon acquisition cycles. According to the account given by the intermediary, the Spanish can provide the Qing Dynasty with at most 300 to 500 muskets and about ten large-caliber artillery pieces every year. Regardless of the price, this quantity is really difficult to meet the Qing army's combat needs. . The Spaniards were unwilling to teach weapons manufacturing techniques, so they had to rely on their own efforts. There were also gunsmiths in the Qing army who had defected to the Ming army. They disassembled the Spanish and Haihan firearms into parts one by one, and then copied them by hand, and they were able to make decent muskets. As for the cannon-casting technology involved in the artillery, it is not something that can be imitated based on samples.
But even if the appearance can be successfully imitated, the performance is unlikely to reach the same level, because the craftsmen have no way of knowing what methods have been used to process the materials of these rifles, and what processing methods are used, so they can only simply imitate the appearance. In particular, the processing process of the standard rifles equipped by the Haihan Army is far more complicated than outsiders imagine, and many mechanical processing methods have been used to achieve standardized production. However, the production efficiency of handicraftsmen cannot achieve large-scale production. Even if it is manufactured, it is difficult to pose a real threat to the Haihan Army.
Bayano also personally tried the musket imitated by the craftsman. After all, the performance of this counterfeit product was still far behind, and the killing distance was far inferior to his own musket. If you want to use this kind of musket to fight the Haihan army on the battlefield, it is actually not much better than fighting with a sword and bow.
Of course, these low-quality knockoffs are not completely useless. They are also suitable for allowing newly selected reserve musketeers to become familiar with the operation of weapons. In fact, Sun Bing observed that among the musketeers training at the foot of the mountain these days, some of them were using this kind of imitation muskets for training, and from a distance it was impossible to tell the difference between local and Spanish-made muskets, so it had a lot of significance. Strong deception, Sun Bing was completely unaware of this.
Another thing that made Sun Bing's judgment wrong was that Bayano was so active in arranging the winter training of the Musketeers, not because he would arrange for this team to go out to perform combat missions again in the future, but because he hoped to do everything possible in a short time. Reserve teams are trained in multiple places, and then some soldiers with outstanding qualities are selected from the reserve teams to replace the idiots in this team who do not distinguish between left and right.
But this kind of survival of the fittest is not so easy. Since almost all the first batch of soldiers selected into this musketry team have a certain background, they are all trained by the Qing officials as future commanders who know how to fight with firearms. This involves With the interests of many dignitaries and even the royal family in mind, it is not easy for Bayano to replace people without obviously violating military discipline and military regulations. It requires facing great external resistance.
Bayano's replacement plan did not go smoothly. As an outsider who had no knowledge of the Qing Dynasty, he did not know the specific origins of these soldiers and their powerful backgrounds. However, after he proposed this plan, he suffered overcame everyone's opposition. Including the Qing generals who once treated him as a guest, they flatly rejected his plan. Later, he learned that the general had a son and a nephew who were among the first batch of people selected to join the team, but they did not usually show this relationship.
"Our warriors should die on the battlefield, not be eliminated because of insufficient training. If their abilities are not enough, then you should try your best to teach them how to fight and how to defeat the Haihan people. This is We spent a lot of money to bring you here from a distant place. Please remember this and don’t mention any plans to replace us!”
The response of the Qing general was still clearly recorded in Bayano's mind. After thinking about it carefully, aside from considerations of personal interests, he had to admit that the other party's statement actually made some sense. The purpose of coming to this cold place thousands of miles away is to teach these barbarians how to fight the Haihan people. As for defeating the Haihan people, he really couldn't teach him this. After all, in the past history of fighting against the Haihan people, Spain had never achieved a true victory.
Stubborn savage! Every time Bayano thought about this section, he couldn't help but curse secretly in his heart. He admitted that what the other party said made sense, but he really didn't want those incompetent rats in the team to continue hanging around here. All he can do now is arrange more intensive training to slowly increase the lower limit of the team's combat effectiveness.
But these days, Bayano feels that the state of command training is not ideal, and he always feels like someone is watching his every move. He thought that this might be some Qing generals secretly observing the training of the Musketeers. Although this was a reasonable move, it made him feel a little uncomfortable. So Bayano is planning to take the team a little further away from the main camp for a marching practice that is close to actual combat.
But Bayano never imagined that although his intuition was right, the people observing in secret were not the Qing generals, but his enemies. Moreover, this opponent's patience was so frightening that he actually stayed in the ice and snow for almost a month, just waiting for an opportunity to take action.
Sun Bing could not predict when a suitable opportunity would appear. Maybe there would be no such opportunity throughout the winter, but he still arranged preparations for the war every day as always, and stayed at the observation point for at least half a day. But he hasn't figured out how to capture the foreign instructor alive yet.
One morning in mid-January, Sun Bing arrived at the observation point at dawn as usual. He knew that he would have to wait about two hours before seeing the musketry team leaving the camp for training, so he still had enough time to take a nap and let his men keep an eye on the Qing army camp down the mountain.
But today the Musketeers appeared earlier than usual, and it was rare for all members to travel on horseback. After Sun Bing noticed this, he immediately realized that this might be the arrival of a fighter plane.
(End of chapter)