Chapter Sixty-Nine: Crossbow Cavalry

Not the original thousand, but three thousand! The reason why the messenger was not killed was because he leaked all the information in Bohai, the ratio of soldiers, and all kinds of light and dark forces. Selling himself for glory, the messenger not only did not lose his life, but also made a lot of money in the hands of the Xi people, and he was famous and profitable.

The Xi people got the information, and they did not move, while sending people back to their tribe to transfer another 2,000 people, and there was a great momentum of annexing the Bohai Sea in one fell swoop.

After learning the truth, Duan Hongchen jumped up angrily, pointed to the sky and the ground, and cursed a unique word of the Ya people. After scolding, Duan Hongchen mobilized an army and began to respond to the enemy.

The people are half farming and half herding, and there are still a lot of horses in the country. Duan Hongchen collected the horses, formed a cavalry team of no more than 500 people, and also divided the soup for Xu Qing, so that Xu Qing could form a cavalry team of 100 people.

Don't look at these dozens of horses, they are grassland horses, which are completely different from the horses raised in the Guannai Horse Farm. The steppe horses are taller and stronger, while the horses in the sekiki are weaker. Historically, almost all Han dynasties will try their best to find grassland horse hybrid breeding to improve the combat effectiveness of the army.

But the people on the grassland will be extra wary of the Han people buying horses, and only the kind of waste horses that have no war horses for three generations will be sold to the Han people. In other words, this is a technological monopoly, even when the two sides are at peace. It was difficult for the Han Chinese to buy horses, but the trade between the steppe and the steppe people was much simpler.

Xu Qing saw the value, if Bohai Kingdom was used as a transit station and wanted to pick up Cangzhou by sea, wouldn't he be able to buy a steady stream of horses? Xu Qing only thought about this idea in his heart for the time being, and now he still has to work together to solve this wave of threats from the Xi clan.

Duan Hongchen and Xu Qing had 6,000 people in their hands, as well as hundreds of cavalry. Among the 6,000 people, there were 4,000 Bohai soldiers, most of whom were still armed with short-handled axes and other weapons, but Xu Qing gave them the equipment of the 2,000 Goguryeo people, and then they finally had the appearance of some troops. But these 6,000 infantry against 3,000 cavalry are still a dead end. In addition, the cavalry in Xu Qingduan's hands was only newly formed, and he was not skilled, and he did not have the strength to fight against the cavalry who were skilled in bows and horses of the Shangxi people.

Can't you hold on to the city? No, because many of the people in the city had migrated and had not brought much rations. When you are not surrounded, you can hunt, fish, and there are caravans coming, anyway, there are many ways to get food, but after being surrounded, you can only eat the old book.

It is terrible to eat the old book, and you can eat food for a month while making food, but if you only eat the old book, you can only eat it for ten days. When I conquered the Five Kingdoms before, I captured a large amount of military rations, but that was still not enough. Even if it was planned, there would not be enough food in the city for a month.

If there is not enough food, it will not be possible to defend the city. But go out of the city and fight a decisive battle, even if you win, you will suffer heavy losses, and if someone else comes to attack in the future, you will have no power to resist. Escape? Where to flee? You can't walk on four legs on two legs. Broken Hongchen was helpless again.

The Xi cavalry was stationed outside the city. Alas, there is no way, the cavalry is born with restraint against the infantry, who can go against the mandate of heaven?

Xu Qing said: "I can! ”

The law against the sky of Xu Qing's infantry and cavalry is the crossbow. The crossbow is a lethal weapon that is commonly used because it doesn't require much training to operate, and even a new recruit can quickly become a master of using a crossbow with an exceptionally high hit rate.

In Western Europe, the crossbow was considered an illegitimate weapon, as it required very little skill and was enough to kill an armored knight who had spent his entire life training in combat.

Richard the Lionheart of England was shot twice by a crossbow arrow and died of his wounds the second time. The death of such a great man at the hands of an ordinary or low-ranking soldier was so appalling to the nobility that in the twelfth century the Pope tried to ban the use of crossbows on the grounds of cruelty.

The crossbows of Western Europe were passed down from China, and the crossbows of the disciples and grandchildren were so strong, not to mention the ancestors'. The bed crossbow of the Ming Dynasty could reach a range of kilometers than some steps. The gun is still miles away.

The Taya people, or the Bohai Kingdom, still only have bows, not crossbows. Coincidentally, Xu Qing happened to study the production of crossbows.

The structure of the crossbow is not complicated, but it is: an arm, a bow, and a machine. The "arm" is generally wooden; The "bow" is across the front of the arm; The "machine" is installed in the place behind the arm deviation.

The most important part of the crossbow is the "machine", the crossbow machine is generally made of copper, and the iron can also be used, which is installed in the crossbow "Guo", and the front is the "tooth" used to hang the string, and there is a "lookout mountain" behind the "tooth", which is equivalent to the sight; The "lookout mountain" of the crossbow is engraved with a scale, which makes it easy to adjust the angle of the crossbow according to the target distance and improve the hit rate of the shot. Underneath the tongguo there is a "hanging knife", that is, a trigger, which is used to fire arrows.

When the crossbow is launched, the string is first opened, it is held on the "tooth" of the crossbow machine, the arrow is loaded in the arrow groove on the "arm", and after aiming through the "Wangshan", the "hanging knife" is pulled to shrink the "tooth", the string is unhooked, and the kinetic energy formed by the rapid rebound of the open bowstring is used to shoot the arrow at high speed.

Xu Qing knew a kind of strong crossbow, the divine arm crossbow of the Northern Song Dynasty. You must know that the Northern Song Dynasty has always been weak in military power, and it was able to block the Mongolian iron cavalry, not only because of the large use of firearms, but also because of the rapid development of crossbows. Because firearms could not be equipped on a large scale at that time, while crossbows, which were relatively simple to make, could.

The Divine Arm Crossbow was a standard weapon that the Song army was equipped with on a large scale, and almost every infantry had one. The bow is three feet three feet long, the string length is two feet five, and the range is more than 340 paces. It's powerful enough and easy to make. In addition, Datang's excellent crossbow arrows are not weaker than this, and the strength of this divine arm crossbow is that it can be equipped on a large scale, so Xu Qing is not afraid that the Bohai Kingdom will threaten Datang in the future.

Thinking clearly about the stakes, Xu Qing drew paper by hand and told Duan Hongchen and Xu Qi his thoughts. This crossbow alone is not enough, the crossbow is relatively slow to reload, and against the mobile cavalry, it needs to be constantly fast. In order to be able to have sustained lethality, Xu Qing also made a five-row line formation.

Since a crossbow shoots farther than a bow, it requires more power to reload when using a crossbow. Each time you reload a crossbow arrow, you need to bend down with your foot and use a lever to fill the bolt.

Based on this, Xu Qing made a three-row line array. After the first row shoots arrows, bend down to fill, then the second row continues to shoot, after shooting, the waist fills, and the third row shoots arrows. After the third row is finished, the first row is just filled, and you can shoot again. If it is filled in advance, then squat directly on the ground to release the arrow.

In this way, a formation with crossbow arrows against cavalry was formed. In fact, this three-row line array has a nice name, but unfortunately Xu Qing can't remember it.

The equipment of the government soldiers is bows and arrows, horizontal knives and iron line guns, and Goguryeo imitates the equipment of the government soldiers, so the last time Xu Qing destroyed them, he still left 2,000 strong bows, plus the ones made when he was breaking the red dust to defend the city, there are almost 5,000 bows. If you pick out the strength and use, you can modify the "bow" part of the crossbow.

In addition to Xu Qing's guards, there is a * in the hand, and the patterns of the "arm" and "machine" are also easy to draw. The previous major repairs of the city walls left a lot of good wood, although not strictly dry wood, but it was enough for this battle.

Duan Hongchen saw Xu Qing's plan, shouted that it was feasible, and quickly made a decision to implement Xu Qing's plan. The first told the people of the whole city, saying that once the Xi people came in, they would burn, kill and loot, which aroused the desire of the people in the city to defend the land. Hope. Subsequently, Duan Hongchen organized the people to make the "arm" and "machine" parts of the crossbow, and the army carried out bow transformation.

The reason why the bow is not as powerful as a crossbow is because the bow is manual, and from pulling it out to shooting it, it all depends on a person's "arm strength". The better the bow, the greater the arm strength required, except for a few famous generals such as the flying general Li Guang, ordinary people can't even pull it away. Ordinary people's arm strength is only that great, so the power of the bow is limited.

The crossbow is different, and the crossbow can be used to catch forces other than the arm strength, such as the "foot pedal" mentioned above, so you can use a stronger bowstring and thus be more powerful. What Xu Qing has to do is to harden the bow body and strengthen the bowstring that he already has in his hand, so that the requirements of the crossbow have been met. How do you meet the requirements of a crossbow? The two of them can't pull apart......

Because the outside of the city has been besieged, the situation is more urgent, and the various parts that everyone rushed to make are not very exquisite. Xu Qing took out an assembled finished crossbow and tried it, and the effective shooting could shoot more than three hundred and ten steps at the farthest, which was slightly worse than the Divine Arm Crossbow, but much stronger than the previous bow. Anyway, it's a solution to the urgent need, so let's be a "Mr. Almost" for a while.

In the first month, the rations were in the warehouse, 3,000 enemy soldiers were outside, the time was urgent, and the situation was critical, and in this atmosphere, the will to survive and defend the land was vividly aroused, and 300 usable crossbows were made in one day.

While rushing to make crossbows, three rows of line formations were trained, and on the eighteenth day, three thousand strong crossbowmen were ready to go.

I don't know why, the Xi people outside the city are very face-saving, from the siege to the present, they just came to scold a few times, and they didn't even put an arrow. Of course, they really can't do anything other than scold. Although Longquan City is dilapidated, it is not something that can be flown over by riding a horse.

On Xu Qing's three-line formation, Broken Hongchen has been slightly improved. Rather, a thousand spearmen were in front of the formation, three thousand crossbowmen were in the middle, and a thousand crossbowmen were behind the formation, and the crossbowmen had a bow and arrow in their hands, which could join forces with the crossbowmen when the cavalry was nearer. Inflicts a more intensive rain of arrows. In addition to this, three hundred cavalry were placed on each side of the formation.

One day, when the Xi people came to scold again, Xuan Hongchen only ordered Xu Qing to take 1,000 people to defend the city, and ordered the remaining 5,006 soldiers and horses to leave the city. Without waiting for the Xi people to marvel, Duan Hongchen's side had already set up the formation.

The drums of war were silent, and only the wind blew on the battlefield.

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It seems that I have participated in the Explosive Week event again, and I don't plan to get red envelopes, I just want to take the opportunity to get acquainted.

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