Cavalry.

For the Han people, as an agrarian nation, it seems that they have always been out of contact with cavalry. In ancient battles between Han Chinese and nomads, infantry was the main force against the enemy's cavalry. It seems that except for the cavalry of the Han Dynasty and the Tang Dynasty, most of them were cavalry in foot. More often than not, it seems to be pressed and beaten by the nomadic cavalry.

In fact, as long as they had horses, the Han dynasty could easily develop a cavalry that far surpassed the northern nomads. Even in another time and space, the Twist Army from northern Anhui once created the last glory of the Han cavalry - relying on the collected inferior horses, the last elite Mongolian cavalry of the Manchu Qing Dynasty was annihilated. And this example also proves that as long as there are horses, the Han people can easily develop a strong cavalry force.

Like the Twisters in another time and space, the Loyal Army's military horses are mainly collected from the civilian population, except for capture. Everywhere he went, he did everything possible to collect folk mules and horses as leg power. It was also on this basis that their own cavalry was created.

However, even in the process of creating cavalry, it was not all smooth sailing, because no one in the loyal army understood the essence of cavalry, and for them, the odd soldiers were only soldiers on horseback. This is also the reason why many people take it for granted, and even Zhu Mingzhong once commented on the cavalry at that time.

"There's nothing more foreign to us than this, because we don't even know what cavalry is."

This is also reflected in the process of the establishment of the lecture hall, although Zhu Mingzhong borrowed the experience of later generations to create a Western-style modern army, but did not set up a cavalry section. One of the most fundamental reasons is that the cavalry is not understood, and the same is not understood.

The infantry is very simple, the infantry is simply a group of soldiers on foot with rifles, in a certain unit, marching and retreating together, shooting at the enemy with rifles, charging closer, and then fighting hand-to-hand with bayonets, which is very simple to say and not complicated.

The artillery is also well understood. It's the infantry who fire the artillery. There is no essential difference from infantry tactics.

So is a cavalry just a warrior on a horse?

Obviously, the cavalry is not so simple, and the cavalry is not an infantry that rushes to the battlefield on horseback. If I understand it this way, then the cavalry is just infantry on horseback

Compared with those who don't understand cavalry, restrict the development of cavalry of the Loyal Army, and war horses, after all, there are not many horses in the south. At the beginning of Jiangyin, the number of cavalry horses of the Loyal and Righteous Army was only sixteen.

"Sixteen horses!"

Even in the sixth year of Xingqian, in the cavalry section of the army school, there would still be instructors muttering. The cavalry of the Ming Dynasty began with these sixteen horses, and of course this did not include the heralds on horseback.

"16 horses! There were only 16 horses. ”

On the cavalry training ground outside Kaifeng City, Li An, who was riding on a horse, listened to the words of the battalion commander and asked rhetorically.

"Battalion commander, how many horses are there now?"

It is difficult for those who did not experience that era to believe how difficult it was for the Loyal Rebels to raise troops in that era. A lot of things are started from scratch, and there are some things that can't even describe the difficulties at the beginning.

Now no one can imagine that the loyal and righteous army, which is known for its firearms, was only transformed from a batch of captured bird guns from stockpiles.

It was almost unimaginable at that time, and even now, many people think that it was a miracle in retrospect. After all, I was poor and white, and I had almost nothing.

Even the most fundamental reason why the Loyal Rebels used the spear back then was that it was just an iron spear with an iron tip and a wooden body, and the reason for using it was because it was cheap.

And this just adds to the legend of many things in those years, and makes people fascinated by everything back then. Because of his legend.

"For the whole army, excluding the horses of artillery and baggage, there are about fifty or sixty thousand, and about thirty thousand for cavalry. At that time, no matter what, I never imagined that one day 16 cavalry would develop into the current size. If it is levied in wartime, it can also levy 60,000 horses, but those horses are not suitable for cavalry, you see our horse ......"

Pointing to the Qing hippopotamus under his crotch, Wang Huaizhi said.

"This horse is a third-generation hybrid of Arabian horses and Mongolian horses, more than half a foot taller than Mongolian horses, and beautiful posture, fast speed, this kind of horse has more advantages in training, its temper is very good, adaptable, even if the cannon is fired in the ear, it is not in a hurry, only such a horse is suitable for military horses, as for Mongolian horses......"

Shaking his head, Wang Huaizhi said with a smile.

"It's not enough to be used as a horse."

Mongolian horses are too short and too small, and the performance is dry, but also because of the deep knowledge of the Mongolian horse all kinds of shortcomings, as early as the Jiangbei time, invested a lot of money to improve the military horse, and in the country to establish a number of military horse farms, for breeding and improving horses, now the improvement work is only the initial results.

And the Qing hippopotamus is the result of horse breeding, and now this kind of horse fart has not yet been finalized, but for the cavalry troops, this is already a very good war horse, of course. They also aspire to get better horses.

It will take time, though. After all, breeding horses is not an overnight thing, and it takes at least twenty or thirty years from the cultivation of a horse breed to the harvest.

But even so, it's better than those stubborn and rough Mongolian horses.

Staring at the training ground, those subordinates who were waving their swords and charging and slashing, Wang Huaizhi's brows furrowed slightly, and he pointed to one of the cavalry and said.

"What's going on with the Third Brigade? How do you not know how to keep the queue, the queue is very important in the initial charge, if you can't maintain the queue, it is easy to be broken by the enemy cavalry individually, go, tell him, regroup ......"

Wang Huaizhi, as the commander of the cavalry battalion, is more often at the edge of the training ground commanding the troops, rarely charging into battle as in the past, and the cavalry of the Ming Dynasty has been doing everything possible to improve the combat effectiveness of the cavalry in the past few years, not only introducing Mongolian instructors to teach horsemanship, and even sparing a lot of money to hire cavalry instructors from Europe, in the hope of being able to learn from each other's strengths, and finally train a cavalry unit with good quality.

Of course, in the end, the Ming Dynasty still developed its own cavalry tactics, and the real magic weapon of the Ming cavalry was the fire gun in his hand, and this tactic borrowed from the European "semi-roundabout" cavalry tactics, which was a kind of formation that could be broken up without direct contact with the infantry. In Europe, this "semi-maneuver" was a form of light cavalry warfare in which light cavalry armed with handcuffs gradually broke up the infantry formation through continuous firing, and then the hoplites using cavalry spears charged the faltering infantry formation. To perform this tactic, lightly armed cavalrymen armed with handcuffs would march in the direction of the enemy in small steps in a formation of at least six rows in depth and each column with a width of 6 to 20 men. When the cavalry in the front row is about 30 meters away from the enemy infantry, turn their horse's head to the left, draw their handcuffs and open fire on the enemy infantry; Then run to the end of the queue to reload the ammunition, and the next platoon of cavalry continues to shoot, and so on. This process of firing will continue continuously, depending on whether the enemy infantry will collapse or continue to hold their ground; If the enemy infantry showed signs of retreating under the blow of the "semi-roundabout", the hoplites would immediately launch a charge to annihilate them.

However, this tactic is never smooth sailing, it is simply too cumbersome and slow; In many cases, the cavalry's firepower was often insufficient to inflict sufficient damage on the enemy infantry array, while the infantry armament's firearms had a much longer range than the cavalry's handguns, a tactic that meant exposing the cavalry to the enemy's much more ferocious firepower.

And this kind of "semi-maneuver" tactics, which have declined in Europe, have been re-improved and re-evoked in the Ming Dynasty, and this vitality has a lot to do with the innovation of weapons.

When the third brigade was regrouped, another group of cavalry in the distance kept sounding the short guns in their hands when they were charging, and in the continuous sound of guns, the cavalry in the front row just fired their guns and flashed to the two wings, while the cavalry that followed behind continued to release their guns, and the cavalry that retreated to the two wings drew out their spare guns again and attacked again, so after several rounds of gunfire, at this time the sword-wielding cavalry that followed behind rushed to the "enemy army". Chopping the "target" with a riding knife is a scarecrow,

"The second brigade pays attention to coordination and pays attention to the cohesion of firepower......"

Wang Huaizhi, who was on the mound, gave orders from time to time and commanded the training of the troops, and only on the training ground, after countless trainings, could he ensure that he would not make mistakes on the battlefield.

After the routine training after the training, Wang Huaizhi saw Chen Mingxin of the three teams standing there leading the horse, and seemed to have something to say to him.

"Chen Mingxin, do you have something to say?"

"Report to the battalion commander, I want to show the battalion commander something."

Chen Mingxin's tone seemed a little hesitant, although he was a little hesitant, but he was a little excited.

"What's that? Show it to me. ”

"Battalion commander,"

Chen Mingxin took out the short gun from the saddle, which was the most common equipment of the Ming cavalry - the double-barreled rifle handgun, the reason why the Ming army chose to improve the half-rotation tactics is because the range of the rifle gun is not inferior to the smoothbore long gun, since its inception, it has been popular with the cavalry.

"Battalion commander, look at this double-barreled gun, our standard configuration is two, plus a double-barreled long gun, when fighting, first put the long gun outside Baixun, then the short gun, after six guns, start to charge......"

A cavalry battalion has about 1,000 cavalrymen, each with six guns, which is 6,000 guns, and a 20% hit rate is enough to plunge the enemy camp into chaos, as long as the enemy is in chaos and cannot form a stable hollow phalanx, then what awaits them is a massacre.

And this is also the biggest feature of the cavalry of the Ming army, the combination of rifled fire and sabers.

"But, is six guns enough?"

Looking at Chen Mingxin, Wang Huaizhi motioned for him to continue.

"It's definitely not enough, otherwise, how could the brothers buy a short gun for themselves, but even if they have an extra short gun, at most they can only put 8 guns......"

Chen Mingxin looked at the battalion commander, and then said.

"Anyway, according to the brothers, even if you buy two more short guns, it's not too much......"

Wang Huaizhi nodded.

"It's really not too much, the more guns, the easier it is to break the enemy's defense, the easier it is for them to collapse, and the easier it is to charge, but not everyone has the money to buy so much, basically, we just bring one more, even if we have one more, it is all when we are trapped, occasionally emergency."

Not everyone can afford to buy a few short guns, and with a few more, it is not convenient to take and place them when charging into battle on horseback, so in order to balance, three short and one long, four guns are the standard configuration of the Ming army. It is precisely because of this that there is a saying of "Eight Guns in the Battle", and this Eight Guns is already the limit to a certain extent.

"Battalion commander, that's why I wondered if I could put a few more guns, so I ......"

Picking up the double-barreled short gun, Chen Mingxin pulled the hammer and said.

"Battalion commander, you see that in the past we used flintlock guns, and now we use flintlock guns, this fire guns are good, even when it rains, they are also used correctly, and it is almost impossible to touch the "blind fire", better is that it is not like the past with flintlock guns, to put a little gunpowder in the firing groove at the tail of the gun, otherwise it will not be able to sound, sometimes when we charge, those gunpowder are easy to scatter, so there will always be a blind fire. Now just fasten the fire cap and you'll be ready to go. ”

Using the fire cap, now the elite troops of the Ming army have begun to change their outfits, compared to the flintlock gun, his advantages are extremely significant.

The firing gun has significantly improved the firing reliability of firearms, and has good waterproof performance, and the failure of "blind fire" has been greatly reduced. With flintlock guns, there will be an average of one "blind fire" every seven rounds, and only one "blind fire" will occur when about 200 rounds of bullets are fired with a flintlock gun.

It is precisely because of this merit that he was immediately welcomed by the army as soon as he came out of the line. After all, its performance is so good that it's impossible to ignore.

As the elite of the Ming army, the cavalry is naturally in the first batch of reloading sequences, but because the cavalry used rifled guns in the past, the firing guns used now only replace the flintlock machine with a firing machine, so that the transformation of weapons is always simpler than the new production of weapons, so the cavalry is the only unit in the Ming army that fully uses the firing rifled gun, and the firing gun also overcomes the problem that the firing rate of the flintlock gun is not high in the past.

Hearing Chen Mingxin talking about the benefits of the firing gun, Wang Huaizhi just smiled and said nothing, listening to him continue.

"So, almost as soon as I got this hammer, I thought about something I had seen before, and then I had someone make one......"

Just as Chen Mingxin took out the things he wanted to show the battalion commander from the bag next to the saddle, the herald who came in a hurry over there had already arrived on horseback.

"Report, the Governor's Mansion is urgent!"