479 Battle of Mexico City (Part I)
A military transport plane landed smoothly at a makeshift military airfield dozens of kilometers outside Mexico City?.?. After the cabin door opened, the commander-in-chief of the West Coast Theater and the main commander of this Tangxi War, Xu Daorun, got off the plane. Boeing built a large passenger and cargo aircraft, which was adopted by the military and directly gave the Y-1 transport aircraft a military number. Although its range can only fly three or four thousand kilometers at a time, after the transition, it has only become a matter of one day to travel from Los Angeles in Jiazhou to Mexico City.
Xu Daorun personally arrived in Mexico City, which shows how much importance the Tang Army attached to this battle. The people who came to pick up the plane were basically senior generals in the army, including Major General Ju Guochong and Xie Jinwu, who had been active on the front line for Datang, as well as several colonels and brigade commanders.
"Welcome to Mexico, Commander Xu!" Ju Guo rushed to Xu Daorun and saluted.
Xu Daorun greeted everyone with a gentle smile and said, "It's finally here, but it's tiring to sit on a plane for a few hours, and it's tiring to change three times in between." ”
There's a smile on everyone's face, but it's not really funny??.? Most of them had already flown in the Y-1, and even later generations of transport planes had terrible noises and didn't have much comfort to speak of. Fortunately, the Tang people have long studied the air conditioning technology used in airplanes, so the Tang people will not experience the fledgling aviation industry in another plane, wearing coats and holding thermos to keep warm.
For all the senior officers of the Don Army present, there was optimism about the battle. For from the beginning of the two months until now, they have encountered no obvious obstacles, have suffered almost no losses, and now they have a great advantage over the Spanish defenders.
The sequence of the Five Route Tang Army, which was gathered outside the Spanish city, was the majority of the 2nd and 3rd Brigades of the West Coast Theater, and a regiment of the 7th Brigade, which prepared the main forces of the 12th, 14th, and 15th Brigades; The main forces of the 8th and 9th Brigades of the Southeast Theater of Operations, as well as the main corps of the mixed foreign brigades. The total number of troops of the Don army encircling Mexico City has reached 3. 50,000 people. Since the founding of the Tang Dynasty, there has never been such a large-scale army on a battlefield at the same time, and even the Tang army feels jubilant and very excited.
More than ten years of growth has made Datang Xun a powerful country, and the strength of 35,000 people is not all the troops that Datang can take out, but it is terrifying enough.? Datang's war potential is also amazing, and the scale of this war to seize the colony is not enough for Datang to take out seventy or eighty percent of its own military strength.
On the Spanish side, it was much more miserable, and Governor Flores now had only about 10,000 defenders in his hands, although in order to defend Mexico City, he took great pains, not only to build two lines of defense around the city, but also to use the city fortress for defense, and he was also preparing to build barricades in the streets against the Tang army.
To add insult to injury, before the Don Army reached the outskirts of Mexico City, the Mexican rebels had already staged several riots in an attempt to dismantle the colonial government of New Spain. Flores had to order a raid of the city in an attempt to find every rebel who was in rebellion. As a result, many of the Kuomintang were arrested by the colonial government, and many of them were killed without trial. Even a large number of people who would otherwise be innocent have suffered, being arrested and killed indiscriminately. The whole of Mexico City has been plunged into an atmosphere of terror in the midst of internal and external troubles.
In the base camp of the Tang Army, Xu Daorun and other senior officers gathered around the sand table and had a discussion. Ju Guochong briefed him on the situation and said: "Our mixed foreign brigade is now around Cuautra, and the Spanish are stationed in the mountain pass area, where the foreign brigade needs to break through the enemy's defenses in order to approach Mexico City. The same is true for our troops attacking from the west, where the Spaniards have built fortifications in the hills west of Mexico City, and we must be able to capture the fortress of the valley. However, once the fortress of the valley was lost, our troops reached Mexico City along the way. The main forces of our 2nd and 3rd Brigades from the north, plus a regiment of the 7th Brigade, were relatively unimpeded, and they broke through from the northwest, still the Spanish line. The 8th and 9th Brigades, attacking to the northeast, were defensive lines in the mountainous area north of Texcoco by the Spaniards. On the whole, the Spaniards were more effective in Li Yongle's topographical advantage, trying to borrow the terrain to keep us out of Mexico City. ”
Xu Daorun nodded and said: "The same situation has been encountered by our troops before, and the Third Brigade also broke through many steep fortresses of the Spaniards before they came here, so even if the Spaniards have the terrain as an advantage, we also have a way to deal with them!" ”
Mexico City's is actually located in a narrow basin on the plateau, and the peaks around this basin are not particularly steep, but more like a few peaks jutting out of the Great Plains. The Spanish set up fortifications in the valley, in fact, more to block the road than to really precipitate the terrain. It may be a little more difficult to enter Mexico City from the west through the mountains, but the other three lines, whether northeast, northwest, and southeast, are actually lines on the flat ground between the peaks, and if the gap is opened, the Tang army can rush in.
The best reliance of the Tang army was their artillery. Although the Tang Army, whether from the east or from the west, was limited by the logistical capabilities of the two columns of Mount Madre, the Tang Army used its own soldiers, as well as Mexicans and Indians organized on the spot, to help them carry one cannon after another from one end of the mountain to the other.
When Bai Nan heard that the Tang Army had recruited thousands of Indian laborers to help them transport logistics materials and carry artillery, he couldn't help but sigh with a wry smile that the Tang Army, as an aggressor to some extent, had been treated by the People's Liberation Army in the Huaihai Campaign, and the Spaniards had also done too much by themselves. This was not a surprising situation, the Indians hoped that the Tang would bring them freedom, free them from slavery, and at the same time were conscripted by the Tang Army as laborers, and they had food and money, which was far better than they were doing hard labor for the Spaniards, so many Indians rushed out to help the Tang Army carry supplies. Most of them were familiar with the local terrain and road conditions, and led the Don army all the way from the coast to the hinterland of the Mexican plateau.
After the Don Army was ready, they set up artillery positions five or six kilometers away from the Spanish army, and at the same moment, the Don Army in four directions simultaneously attacked the Spanish defenders