At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, the great powers of various countries broke out a world-class imperialist war to redivide the world and compete for global hegemony, which was later called "The First World War". In World War I, the Allies and the Allies invested a total of 65 million troops, and more than 10 million people were killed and 20 million wounded on both sides of the war, and the number of civilian casualties reached more than 6 million. This war, which affected hundreds of millions of people, has been shrouded in the history of modern human civilization, like a lingering haze, its claws destroyed four empires, severely damaged European civilization, and brought indelible disasters to mankind. War and technology are like twins, technology can induce war, and war is also promoting technology, the two can be said to complement each other. In World War I, a variety of new weapons were successively put into war, such as aircraft, poison gas, tanks, long-range artillery, etc., of which tanks, as army combat weapons, played an extremely important role in World War I and even modern army operations.
▲ 99 modified tanks in the colonels of our army
In fact, as early as the Ming Dynasty, tanks had a prototype, that is, the "car camp" used by "Yu Long Qihu" to resist the enemy during the Ming Dynasty. Of course, the Ming Dynasty car battalion was not really composed of modern armored vehicles similar to tanks, but a name that is being forgotten by history - "chariots".
When it comes to chariots, perhaps everyone's impression is still stuck in the war scene of Wu Ge xi wearing rhinoceros armor, and the car is wrong and short-term, but the Ming Dynasty chariots can be different from the chariots that relied on manpower to fight in the past, under the level of daming's science and technology, they have powerful firepower, equipped with guns and firearms that are called advanced in the world at that time, not only that, but also in the battle front, they can also cooperate with infantry, cavalry, water troops and other arms to cooperate with the battle, retreating to resist the enemy, entering and breaking the front, it is really a generation of sharp weapons that have both offensive and defensive weapons. If we look at the basic characteristics of the Ming Dynasty tanks from a modern perspective, it can be found that it even has the three elements necessary for modern tanks, one is good mobility, the other is solid protective armor, and finally, the most indispensable is to suppress the enemy's powerful firepower. Although the Ming Dynasty tanks did not reach the level of modern tanks, from the sense of war at that time, the Ming Dynasty tanks and vehicle battalions were not far from modern tanks and armored corps.
▲ The chariot troops of the Warring States, car warfare can be described as a popular special war at that time.
The earliest Ming Dynasty to propose the cheying tactics and make it truly subsumed into the Ming Dynasty's military system and began to form was the Shanxi trilateral general system Zeng Milling. In the twenty-fifth year of Jiajing, due to the shrinking of the defensive line by the Ming army, the Hetao area was occupied by Mongol tribes and reduced to Mongolian pastures, called "Taoyu". In order to regain the lost territory, Zeng Milling, who was the trilateral commander of Shanxi at the time, proposed a decisive battle with Mongolia to relieve the problem, and designed the famous "Zeng Milling Proposed to Set Up a Set of Capture Arrays" to deal with the Mongolian Iron Horse according to the "Car Victory Riding, Riding Victory Step" in the Art of War. This set of formation maps, a total of eight pairs, described in great detail, from the establishment of the camp to the collection of troops, has become the blueprint and foundation of the construction and tactics of the later generations of vehicle battalions, and is a milestone in the Ming Dynasty's chariot system. Since then, the new chariot equipped with firearms has been officially included in the armament of the Ming Dynasty army, and then improved and developed by subsequent generals, such as Qi Jiguang and Yu Dayu.
▲ The Ming Dynasty "once milled and planned to go from set to set" car camp
In the thirty-seventh year of Jiajing, the Mongol departments harassed the northern region for a long time, and the situation on the northern border of Daming became more and more critical, and at this time, a person who changed the situation in the northern region of the Ming Dynasty appeared, that is, "Yu Long" Yu Dayu in "Yu Long QiHu".
Yu Dayu knew that in order to completely defeat the Mongol iron horse in the field battle, the original ming army's original method of warfare was very hopeless, so after a detailed understanding of the situation of the Daming Border Army and the Mongol army, based on Zeng Mill's chariot camp tactics and local conditions, he created an effective combat vehicle tactic against the Mongol cavalry - datong town military vehicle operation method. In the same year, the title of the car camp officially appeared, and the Ming Shi recorded that "the military vehicle battalion was placed, and the Beijing camp had a military vehicle, and since then it has also been".
▲ The drawing of the Ming Dynasty flat carriage is a chariot that can block the charge of the enemy cavalry, and it is said that the earliest to implement this tactic was Zhuge Liang of the Shu State in the Three Kingdoms period.
The Art of War Cloud: Whoever fights, with the right combination, with the odd victory. Yu Dayu's chariot array was exactly what was also a righteous qi, with ten horse infantry, twenty cavalry, ten infantry, and then a chariot, a total of forty people in a team. When encountering the enemy, the chariots are lined up in front, firing crossbow guns, taking advantage of the enemy's confusion to make the horse infantry come out of the line, shooting and disturbing the enemy when they intersect with the enemy, and then the cavalry takes advantage of the enemy's lack of preparation to drive straight into the enemy position to charge, and the remaining ten infantry are tasked with assisting the parties and cutting the first rank. Yu Dayu used this method of warfare to defeat tens of thousands of Mongol troops at Angenbourg with 5,000 men and horses, and chased the Mongolian army for hundreds of miles. He Liangchen, a military scholar of the Ming Dynasty, summed up the method of car warfare in the "Records of the Front", saying: "If you want to block the rush of the horses, you must not be on the wall; if you want to frustrate the sharpness of the horses, you must not be struck by the car." ”
▲ Yu Dayu unicycle chariot, the vehicle type is a unicycle, the front of the car is equipped with a spear, easy to transport, in the pit of several people can be lifted.
Qi Jiguang, who was juxtaposed with Yu Dayu, carefully studied Yu Dayu's chariot camp tactics when he was transferred to Jizhen, and praised that "where the sanitation used for attack and warfare, one can bundle the troops, one can be the camp wall, and the other can be the armor." The horse rushed, and there was no way to force it, and I was able to show its strengths, which was really the best strategy of the imperial prisoner, and this car could be used. If the line is the end of the line, it is the battalion, the car is the positive, the horse is the odd, the advance can be fought, the retreat can be defended, and this car can be used for two. The car does not cost grain, the soldiers do not use armor, the provincial fee is not expensive, the horse in the car is walking, and the car is covered, and this car can be used for three times. To the inland, scattered and plundered, no one, now the car soldiers and soldiers and the war, the prisoners do not dare to divide the plunder, do not dare to stay for a long time, this car can be used for four also. The terrain of Ji and Chang is dangerous and obstructive, and the car is choked and intercepted, so that the captives lose, and when there is a lifelong wound, this car can be used for five times. After that, Qi Jiguang developed and improved on the basis of his predecessors, set up the Jizhen Che Battalion, and became the master of the Che Camp's tactics, defeating the Mongol army in succession during the Wanli Years, capturing the leaders of the enemy army many times, and achieving brilliant results.
▲The light vehicle style in the chariot