The two cavalry armies began to charge at each other without any fancy moves.
The terrain was flat and wide, making it easy for cavalry to spread out. Since it was an excellent place for cavalry battles, it also meant that it was easy for people to die here, and the speed at which they died would be very fast.
The Qiang cavalry were the lightest of the lightest cavalry. On one hand, they were so poor that they could not be 'heavy' at all. On the other hand, their arms were long like apes, and their strength was outstanding. This made almost every one of them a master archer on horseback. The young Qiang chiliarch Ke E, who had a blood feud with the Beiliang Xu family, finally stopped purposely suppressing the charging speed of the cavalry. With a wave of his hand, he covered the eyes of his horse with a black cloth, and the speed of his steed suddenly increased. If there were spectators looking from a horizontal line, they would definitely be stunned by the muscles of these warhorses as they ran. The habit of covering the eyes of the horses during a charge had never been popular in the Central Plains, but this was an old custom that had been passed down for hundreds of years on the grasslands. At the beginning, it was to ensure that the warhorses would not be afraid when facing the infantry of the Central Plains, and at the same time, to deliberately 'startle' the warhorses. Before the fierce collision between cavalry armies, the cavalry would whip the warhorses to make them explode with greater strength, using the warhorses' speed to drive the cavalry's charge forward. However, among the elite cavalry armies in the world, perhaps only the Beiliang cavalry disdained to use this kind of 'insignificant skill'. This was attributed to the fact that every horse in Beiliang had turned from raw to mature, and the large horse farms had poured in countless efforts. Of course, there was also countless amounts of silver. In Northern Liang, every time a familiar horse stepped onto a large-scale battlefield, there would be one or even several warhorses that would die before it could do so.
On the battlefield, only the roars of the sixteen hundred or so Qiang cavalry could be heard.
In comparison, the three thousand Long Xiang Army, who were also light cavalry, seemed especially strange at this time. One reason was that they were collectively silent before the battle, but more importantly, they were practically fugitives who used light cavalry as heavy cavalry.
After the Dragon-Elephant Light Cavalry raised their spears and charged, they charged straight at the enemy, even giving up on the lethality of a wave of light crossbows!
The Beiliang cavalry was good at fighting and dared to fight to the death!
The Central Plains had always been good at a combination of riding and walking when it came to war. The infantry was in the middle, and the cavalry was on the two wings. The latter was not used to break through enemy lines head-on. Other than being limited by the natural factor of the cavalry bow being inferior to the infantry bow, especially the large crossbow, the main reason was that the cavalry's greatest advantage was its great mobility. In the long series of classic battles of the Spring and Autumn Period, this indisputable pattern of war was displayed to the fullest extent. As long as it was a general who could be crowned as a famous general, even if it was an infantry commander, he would still be able to command a cavalry army of several thousand men in an orderly manner. This was probably the so-called 'chronic illness becomes a doctor'. At that time, the large group of Li Yang's higher level generals who had been influenced by the flames of war didn't know how to ride, or rather, didn't know how to ride, so they were too embarrassed to greet their colleagues when they went out. However, this kind of combined riding and walking tactic, once they moved to a place where supplies were difficult, it was inevitable that they wouldn't be able to acclimatize. After the current Emperor ascended the throne, he took the initiative to launch several great battles against Beimang, and he suffered enough. Many situations that seemed to be in a good situation at the beginning were ruined by some battles that occurred outside the main battlefield. Take Beimang's Tuoba Bodhisattva and Dong Zhuo, two generations of famous Beimang generals, for example. These two became famous by relying on their light cavalry, which could easily be as long as a thousand li long distance raids. In one breath, they circled around to the rear of Li Yang's army and directly smashed one or even several main supply lines. The famous generals of the Liyang imperial court, especially the cavalry generals, were greatly vexed by this, but for some reason, there was never a genius general who was able to break away from the infantry and meet force with force with force against Beimang's cavalry. Even so, the signs of the cavalry having to be separated and assume independent responsibility, as well as a series of books on the art of war that were derived from it, still appeared. Lu Shengxiang, who had been recruited by Zhao Yi to go to the distant Guangling riverbank, and Xu Gong, who had never had the chance to go on an expedition beyond the Great Wall, each produced a military book. Unfortunately, it was not passed down to the generations, but it was widely praised within the military. Xu Xiao greatly admired that Dragon General Xu Gong, who came from the Gumu Xu family, and thought that this person should have been able to overshadow Lu Shengxiang, who "led the charge in the southeast." However, that group of Liyang's higher-ups all knew in their hearts that if at that time Chen Zhibao and Chu Lushan were given the opportunity, then in Beimang, this brand-new battlefield, these two would undoubtedly become meritorious figures not inferior to the Four Great Generals of the Spring and Autumn Period. However, at that time, even if the new Son of Heaven, out of selfishness, was willing to give Chen Zhibao the opportunity to display his skills, that large group of "founding" elders would not allow the Xu family to have a successor.
In close to twenty years of constant warfare with Beimang, the Beimang cavalry also developed a set of extremely powerful and mature tactics. For example, the Beimang cavalry lacked crossbows, but had many bows. Unless it was an elite soldier with astonishing strength, it would be difficult for an ordinary cavalry bow to break through the armor from eighty paces away. When the two armies collided and charged, under Chen Zhibao's influence, the Beimang cavalry was abnormal to the point where they directly abandoned the crossbows in the process of exchanging fire. Relying on their advantage in armor, they allowed the Mang cavalry to throw out their arrows and fire at them, while their own side only focused on charging forward. As a result, Chen Zhibao once made a presumptuous statement that made the outside world feel unimaginable: under the premise that the military strength was roughly equal, or even slightly inferior, the Beimang cavalry could only survive forty paces!
After all, outsiders were unable to witness this scene with their own eyes, and all along they held a strong skeptical attitude.
However, it was undeniable that in the entire Liyang Dynasty, perhaps only the Beimang Frontier Army had the precious experience of more than ten thousand pure cavalry fighting in pairs with cavalry. Don't look at how the Zhao imperial court acted like they didn't know anything about the northwest border. Every time the wind blew and the grass blew, the current Golden Weaving Bureau Li Xifeng would patiently and quietly send secret memorials to the capital. And the contents of these memorials were bought by Guangling Prince Zhao Yi and Yanchi Prince Zhao Bing through who knew how many favors and connections, so that the various advisors and advisors could ponder over and over again.
At the same time, the Liyang imperial court was not waiting for death. They decided to treat Beimang and Beiliang as imaginary enemies, thinking about how to truly go against the iron hooves of those warhorses. After all, the outstanding generals of the central plains who stood out from the smoke of war were not useless people. They were quite effective. The division of troops and weapon combinations of the infantry and the cooperation of the weapons could be said to be at the peak of perfection. In the imperial examinations of the Spring of Yonghui, there were even similar questions that had a deep meaning. This led to many bold and unconstrained ideas in the answers. Although most of them were seen as the nonsense of a scholar, there was an argument that suddenly shone brightly after many years of silence. That was to use extremes to fight extremes. The examinee who failed in the imperial examinations at that time proposed to invest all of his financial and material resources to develop the deformed heavy cavalry and strive to cross the threshold of ten thousand people. Even if he had to sell everything, he had to develop one or several heavy cavalry units and place them in an important town not far from the border. At that time, his answer sheet was like a clay ox in the ocean in the Liyang imperial court. However, at the same time, the Beimang Palace began to crazily use money to build heavy cavalry units. It was not until many years later that the Liyang imperial court realized that these were the two units of cavalry that Beimang named after the country's surname, the Yelu Heavy Cavalry and the Murong Heavy Cavalry! The number of people barely touched the threshold of ten thousand. However, even the layman civil official knew that to raise these two units of heavy cavalry, it was the same as cutting off the country's flesh and blood to feed these two large gluttons. This was because the true cost of the heavy cavalry was not in the establishment of the structure but in the maintenance of the soldiers. The Liyang imperial court, who was slow to realize this, was forced by public opinion from all levels of society, especially Gu Lu of the Ministry of War and the eastern border army. Only then did they bite the bullet and follow behind Beimang to create the Duo Yan Cavalry and the Yanmen Heavy Cavalry. The former had less than eight thousand cavalry and the latter had less than five thousand.
As for why the scholar who went to the capital to take the imperial examinations would mysteriously die in a nameless alley, who cared?
However, if someone knew of this secret, they would sigh. A little essay of less than a thousand words written by a nameless Jiangnan scholar had actually affected the life and death of two million soldiers in the desert frontier fortress.
The enemy was 80 paces away from us. The front line of battle spread out like a line. The surging tide of Qiang cavalry skillfully nocked their bows and shot arrows.
The violent jolting of the back of the horse during the fast charge, the armor of the enemy cavalry, and the lack of time to switch shots in a hurried battle were all important reasons why cavalry archery was only the icing on the cake.
Beimang's proper border army's spears and spears were not bad. Not to mention Dong Zhuo's Dong family army, even the generals and personal troops who held the edict had reached the level of the elite border army of Liyang. However, this Qiang cavalry was much more shabby. It was not that Beimang was so stingy that he was not willing to take out tens of thousands of refined spears and spears. However, even if he gave them to the Qiang cavalry, who had their own set of tactics, it would only be drawing legs on a snake and not sending charcoal in snowy weather. The training of warhorses was already a headache, much less the training of cavalry in horse battle. The weight of the spear and saber was related to the strength of the cavalry's arms. How many battles and how many lives would be sacrificed before an optimal answer could be found? The precise area of the spear to stab the enemy cavalry, the optimal angle of the saber, the appropriate weight of the armor were all different from person to person and required great knowledge. Therefore, if the Qiang cavalry suddenly changed their main weapons to the overly extravagant and unfamiliar spears and spears, and thus slowed down the speed of the Qiang cavalry, then once the Qiang cavalry reached Liuzhou, they would either be lucky and not run into the Long Xiang Army, or they would just treat it as a happy trip. If they were unlucky, then Generals Jin Cheng would not even need to think about it. He would just turn and run and try to sell those spears and spears for some money to escape.
Those Spring and Autumn survivors who left their homes and fled north brought along many secret and superb forging techniques to Beimang. However, Beimang lacked a large amount of iron, causing many of the craftsmen of the Southern Dynasty to become hardworking housewives who could not cook without rice.
Chen Zhibao once said, "The northern barbarians who lack spears and spears are just a group of foot soldiers on horseback, that's all!"
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