More than a hundred knights swept across the land of Liaodong in Jixia like the wind.
There has been no rain for many days again, and the earth is dry. The horses' hooves trampled, only raising dust all over the sky.
This is a cavalry team of the Ming army in front of the tent. Almost one person is equipped with three horses, two of which are relatively short Mongolian horses; the other is a Turkmen horse with a thin head, tall neck, slender limbs, and thin skin.
Mongolian horses are free-range nomadic horses, the product of survival of the fittest on the grasslands, without long-term selection and breeding. Therefore, it is generally short, not very strong, and its sprinting speed is not fast, so it is not considered a high-quality war horse. And because nomadic horses raised casually will not be "stereotyped" (stereotyping is through selection and breeding, so that artificially raised or planted animals and plants have the genetic characteristics required by humans), they can be tall, short, fat or thin, and they can be used as war horses. The proportion of high-quality horses is very low. You must have a huge herd of horses to support a certain number of war horses.
However, Mongolian horses also have many advantages. For example, they are highly adaptable and have relatively strong skins. They can be ridden on long distances and are easier to serve... Moreover, they are cheap and in sufficient supply!
For Zhu Youjian, who also serves as the Great Khan of Mongolia and controls nearly 3,000 Mongolian households, it is not a problem to get a hundred and eighty thousand Mongolian horses.
And the Turkmen Marco from the Central Asian Oasis is an expensive limited edition!
That was a fine horse that the oasis tribes in Central Asia had carefully selected and bred from generation to generation starting three to four thousand years ago.
Of course, the number of oasis horses cannot be compared with the millions of grassland horses (of course there are too many to take care of, and it is impossible to carefully select and breed them), but the horses that have been carefully bred are much larger than the Mongolian horses. , both physical strength and speed are far superior to Mongolian horses. Moreover, the breed of Turkmen horses is also very stable. Almost all purebred Turkmen horses are about the same size, and all of them can be trained into excellent war horses.
Therefore, Turkmen horse stallions are quite precious strategic materials... and they are difficult to buy even with money!
If it weren't for Zhu Youjian's Western Expedition and invaded other people's territory, he would not have been able to get enough Turkmen and Persian horses (Turkmen horses and Persian horses are related, and Persian horses are more numerous in Central Asia) to arm the army. Former cavalryman.
As many as 10,000 Turkmen and Persian horses returned to Beijing with Zhu Youjian's expeditionary force. There were not only rideable war horses (usually castrated eunuch horses), but also a large number of stallions and mares, so horse farms dedicated to raising Turkmen horses and Persian horses were established.
Plus a horse farm specializing in Spanish horses (caught from the Philippines). Zhu Youjian now has three royal horse farms and raises more than 10,000 Turkmen, Persian and Spanish horses.
The Turkmen horses, Persian horses, and Spanish horses produced by these three horse farms are each equipped with three cavalry regiments of cavalry in front of the tent.
The more than a hundred cavalrymen at the forefront of the Ming army marching north to Gaizhou belonged to a cavalry unit of the third regiment of the tent cavalry equipped with Turkmen horses.
However, all the knights in this cavalry team are now marching on short Mongolian horses, and at the same time, they place their salutes on the back of another Mongolian horse, while letting the tall and slender Turkmen horses drive easily - what a horse comparison. Ma, Ma is so angry!
The purpose of doing this was to save the energy of the Turkmen horses so that when they encountered the Qing cavalry, they could mount the Turkmen horses and launch a wall charge!
The wall charge of the cavalry is not mainly used to defeat the infantry formation, but is a tactic used to crush the enemy cavalry.
This tactic requires a lot of intensive training of the knights and the quality of the war horses! The knights have not received long-term concentrated training, so of course they cannot organize a wall charge. And if the quality of the war horse is too poor... you can still charge, but the power will be much weaker, and it will be difficult to deal with the Eastern cavalry who like to ride, shoot and fight.
Therefore, these three cavalry regiments equipped with Turkmen horses, Persian horses, and Spanish horses were Zhu Youjian's trump card for daring to challenge the more than 100,000 Japanese and Qing coalition forces with more than 40,000 people!
It's still the 17th century, and flintlock muskets with bayonets haven't even appeared yet, so truly powerful cavalry can still dominate the battlefield!
This time Zhu Youjian did not save his trump card until the end, but played his trump card from the very beginning. Three elite "Ocean Horse Regiments" were sent to the front line from the beginning to attack the Qing cavalry. , to seize control of the entire battlefield.
In the Yulinpu area south of Gaizhou Acropolis, across an almost dry stream, Li Dingguo, the captain of this cavalry team, had seen a group of Qing cavalry wearing red cotton armor on the other side from a distance. There were about two hundred of them, but they only guarded the north bank of the stream and did not dare to go south to fight.
Li Dingguo knew that those were slave-thief Zhenghong Banner Mongolian cavalry, and their combat effectiveness was far inferior to that of the Manchu Eight Banners cavalry.
On the way north from Yongning Fort in Fuzhou, Li Dingguo's troops had already dispersed more than 400 Mongolian cavalry. They had obtained over a hundred heads and captured over a hundred horses, so much so that they were From one person and two horses to one person and three horses.
In the confrontation between the cavalry of both sides, the advantage of the Turkmen horse can be said to be fully demonstrated!
However, the Qing cavalry who had suffered too much seemed to have learned the lesson and no longer dared to carry out activities in groups of hundreds or even dozens of cavalry. Moreover, they did not dare to actively seek battle. After encountering the Ming army's cavalry, they often chose to occupy favorable terrain and launch defenses, or simply fled.
"Dismount the Fire Gun Platoon and fire from 50 steps away!" Li Dingguo watched for a while and felt that the Mongols on the other side were unwilling to cross the stream to fight, so he ordered his two "Fire Gun Platoons" to fire. Order.
The cavalry unit commanded by Li Dingguo has four platoons. Of course, spliced plate armor (plate armor made of long iron sheets, with a low technical content), spears and sabers are standard equipment. Fireguns and bows and arrows are "optional". Two platoons are equipped with Lumi guns and are responsible for shooting black guns. The other two platoons are equipped with Kaiyuan bows, responsible for luring the enemy or firing cold arrows during pursuit.
Now the Mongols were lying on the other side of the stream and could not be shot with the Kaiyuan Bow, so Li Dingguo decided to use the Lumi Gun first to see if he could drive them away.
As long as those Mongols retreat and allow Li Dingguo's cavalry to successfully cross the creek, they can then rely on the high-speed pursuit of Turkmen horses!
...
In the south of Gaizhou City, there is a river named Qinghe that originates from the Liaodong watershed. It's not clear now, and there isn't much water - there are 120,000 Japanese and Qing coalition troops stationed along this river, and there are more than 100,000 livestock. How much sewage flows into the Qinghe River every day? Moreover, under the continuous drought, the water level of Qinghe River is very shallow and is almost drying up. If it can still be clear, it will be a ghost.
Dozens of fast horses crossed through the water again, splashing large amounts of muddy water, but they kept running straight towards a horse camp on the north bank of the Qinghe River. A group of Han troops who were digging trenches and building forts by the Qinghe River didn't know that the Korean troops saw them from a distance. They couldn't help but shake their heads, and some people started talking in low voices.
"They were running so fast, and they were riding one man per horse, and the number was less than a hundred...Needless to say, they must have been beaten by the Ming army's cavalry!"
"Hey, why did the Mongolian cavalry defeat the Ming cavalry so hard that they couldn't find their way to the north?"
"You don't know yet, right? The cavalry of the Ming Dynasty is very powerful now. They have ocean horses from the Western Regions, and they can run as fast as the wind... The Mongols are no match for horse fighting!"
"This is how to do......"
Zhang Xiaoqi, who was supervising the fortification project here, heard the discussion of the people below, and shouted with a livid face: "Humph, what are you talking about? You have the time to chew your tongue, but you still don't work cleanly? What if you can't finish it tonight? , he can’t even sleep!”
After hearing his reprimand, no one dared to say anything more. They all covered their heads and continued digging and building forts. However, Zhang Xiaoqi's brows became tighter and tighter.
He is the little leader of Zhenghuang Banner and Niulu, and he is very well informed. Of course he knows that the current war situation is a bit tight!
Zhang Xiaoqi felt a little dazed when he thought of this: The Qing Kingdom... is in danger again!
