The armored cavalry was the king of the battlefield in that era, on the battlefield of hundreds of thousands or even hundreds of thousands, they may not count thousands, but they can shock the three armies. At that time, armored cavalry was a trump card division and strategic force built by various countries at great expense, and it was an important target of the arms race of various countries. They are the elite, but also the soul of the army, the increase and decrease of the number of heavy cavalry, and even represent the rise and fall of a national dynasty. When the heavy cavalry to which it belonged decayed and fell, it also announced that the dynasty was about to collapse with few days to come.

Later, Zhao Shile destroyed the battle of Duan Mopi and captured 5,000 war horses wearing horse armor; In the battle against Ji Tang, Shi Le captured tens of thousands of horse armors. Because of the infinite power of armor and cavalry, even in southern China, which is not suitable for cavalry combat, this special type of troops has appeared.

This new type of military developed during the Northern and Southern Dynasties of the Sixteen Kingdoms, the standard armored cavalry, composed of six parts, the curtain, the chicken neck, the chest, the horse body armor, the back, the parasitic, and also equipped with the saddle, stirrups, reins and other equipment.

The "face curtain" is a long, narrow metal cover with eye holes on it, which mainly protects the horse's face; The "chicken neck" is a pair of armor on the neck of a horse, which is made of armor pieces and has a buckle on the front to fasten it; After riding, there is a large piece of armor in the middle and rear of the horse...... The "parasite", on the other hand, is an upturned broomstick-like thing placed on the horse's tail to protect the horseman's back. Many hoplite horses also have a tasseled pipe on their foreheads, which are inserted with brightly colored tassels, and are paired with the knight's cloak and helmet, which is a special style on the horse.

Armored cavalry was all the rage in the Sixteen Kingdoms, and all countries were heavily equipped, such as Hou Zhao's 3,000 Black Lance Dragon Army. It is the treasure of Hou Zhao's town.

However, as the saying goes, where there is a spear, there is a shield, and the thickness of the shield is the tip of the spear. The thicker the shield at the tip of the spear, this is also the trend of the development of the army. When the cavalry is reloaded. In addition to constantly stacking armor for the heavy cavalry, other equipment and tactics to crack the heavy cavalry also began to appear.

Later, a vest is generally more than 100 catties, and some even reach a weight of 200 catties, and the weight of human armor plus vest usually reaches more than 200 catties to 300 catties, which does not count the weight of knights, such a load has extremely high requirements for war horses, and the load is extremely large. While the protection capability is constantly improving. The mobility of the heavy cavalry also decreased day by day, and finally the cavalry basically lost its high mobility and flank assault ability.

Even the best war horses can only slow down, trot, and jog to charge, and although their explosive power is good, their endurance is extremely poor, and they can only fight for a short time. As a result, the ace troops, which have been piled up at the expense of countless sums of money, can often only be dispatched once a day in a major battle. It may not last for half an hour at a time.

With the development of the practice of warfare, the weaknesses of the armor and cavalry equipment were gradually exposed. The armor is equipped with poor mobility, and although it is suitable for frontal assault, it is not suitable for mobile tactics. It is not suitable for interspersing and detours, and the heavy equipment that surprisingly wins makes its tactics simple and slow.

While armoured cavalry has a clear advantage against poorly equipped infantry, it is often less effective against agile light cavalry and well-equipped infantry. Or even at a disadvantage.

Secondly, new equipment is constantly emerging. After the rise of the heavy cavalry, there were also many weapons and equipment specially designed to deal with the heavy cavalry.

Strong bow and hard crossbow. Even large axes and spears have been greatly improved, which pose a great threat to the hoplites.

During the northern and southern periods, the bow power became stronger and stronger, and the foot bow developed to more than ten stone power, and the horse bow could also reach six stones. The most important thing is the development of crossbows, the "Wanjun Divine Crossbow" that appeared at that time, "everything is not destroyed", and even later developed a bed crossbow that had to use several oxen to twist Zhang Xian, which was used to deal with heavy cavalry. In addition, the crossbow was later developed, which could fire seven iron feather arrows at a time, and the range was up to 700 paces. The crossbow can be used on chariots and warships, and has mobility and can better fight against heavy cavalry.

In the army of the late Northern and Southern Dynasties, the number of bows and crossbows was greatly improved, especially the army of the Northern Dynasties, and even the equipment rate of bows and arrows reached a terrifying number of 100%, almost everyone had a bow, and even 20% of the crossbow machine equipment rate. A large number of bow and crossbow equipment, as well as the use of crossbow bed crossbows, plus the reuse of chariots, and the change of tactics of light cavalry, made the heavy cavalry more and more restricted and threatened, and the cost performance of use continued to decline.

The growing power of new weapons of destruction poses a great threat to the sluggish armored cavalry. In military development, when the power of anti-personnel weapons is significantly higher than that of protective equipment, there are two possible reactions. One is to continue to try to strengthen the defense of the equipment, and the other is to eliminate the defense equipment altogether in order to reduce the load and improve mobility. Just like in the era of hot firearms in later generations, soldiers simply stopped wearing armor and went directly to battle lightly.

In the post-Three Kingdoms era, when Zhou Qi Chen divided the world, all countries began to generally adopt the partial abolition of protective equipment, that is, the practice of canceling the vest, and the war horse no longer wore the vest, or only retained a horse body armor. Changed to light cavalry with only cavalry armor to improve mobility to avoid the opponent's damage, and achieved good results.

"In general, weapons and equipment often determine the choice of tactics, which in turn affects the development of weapons and equipment. The rise of heavy cavalry during the Wuhu and Sixteen Kingdoms period brought about the development of anti-personnel weapons during the Northern and Southern Dynasties, and finally made the tactics based on mobility gradually replace the tactics based on impact and protection capabilities as the mainstream of the battlefield, and this tactic eventually affected the historical trend of replacing armored cavalry with light cavalry. "Yi Feng gave a vivid military history lesson to a group of people who were blindly superstitious and heavily armed with cavalry." What's more, with the unification of the Central Plains by the Great Sui, the war continued to decrease, the soldiers were constantly reduced, and the standing troops were also turned into government soldiers who worked as farmers in their spare time, and the main enemy of the imperial court was the Turks in the north. The Turks were mainly light cavalry, and in the face of these highly mobile light cavalry, the hoplites were no longer suitable for the mainstream of today's warfare. If you can't even catch up with the enemy, you can't touch it, even if you don't move your sword and gun, but what use is it if you can't hit someone? ”

"What's more, raising an armored cavalry is equivalent to five light cavalry, which is not a low cost."

After Qin Qiong and the others heard Yi Feng finish speaking, they felt that the tall image of the invincible ironclad cavalry in their hearts collapsed. It turned out that the invulnerable hoplites had turned into stupid and stupid iron lumps, which was simply unacceptable.

"Is it really useless to ride again?" Wei Chi Jingde said as he looked back at the knights and war horses who had been dressed in heavy armor, they had already prepared, the cavalry got on their horses, lifted their lances, and began to adjust their formation. A thousand heavy cavalry was divided into two regiments, a regiment of five hundred men. A wedge-shaped formation was formed, with twenty men in the first row and twenty-four in the second row, each row increasing in turn until sixty-four men in the last row, a total of twelve rows, the total number of the whole array was five hundred, and the last row lacked four people, only sixty horsemen.

Looking at these all-black black iron bumps, everyone and horses are wearing black armor, solemn as a mountain. It's really hard to imagine that these people are already on the verge of being eliminated.

"Although in the mainstream, heavy cavalry is no longer as suitable as light cavalry for today's battlefield. But it doesn't mean that heavy cavalry is useless, any type of army has its value, the key is to see how the generals use it. With good tactics, heavy cavalry still has unimaginable combat effectiveness on a specific battlefield. Of course, this can only be exceptional cases. Although Yi Feng does not worship the hoplites, he also does not feel that the hoplites have nothing to do. In fact, in history, at the end of the Sui Dynasty and the beginning of the Tang Dynasty, there was a climactic era of heavy cavalry, and when Yang Guang was in power, Luo Yi's Youzhou Iron Cavalry was a heavy iron cavalry of up to 5,000 people. And Tang Taizong Li Shimin, there was also a Xuanjia army established by himself, although the number was not more than 1,000 people, but he could always bear the brunt of the battlefield and charge through the formation, I don't know how many merits were established for Li Shimin.

But in general, the most important thing is not the class, but the tactics and coordination. Without good tactics, the cavalry may not be able to beat the infantry, and without good coordination, the cavalry may be surrounded by light infantry.

The ability of hoplites to break the formation is unparalleled in the world, but the opponent is mainly infantry, and it has to be on a large battlefield to better play their role. This time, the Sui Dynasty dispatched three heavy cavalry, but the target of the battle was the Turks, as everyone knows, the main force of the Turks is light cavalry, and the battlefield will be in those areas suitable for cavalry on the frontier. The heavy cavalry has very few opportunities to play a role, the light cavalry comes and goes like the wind, and when they see the opportunity, they run when they know the difficulty, and the heavy cavalry even has a difficult chance to go into battle.

Yi Feng was not interested in training another heavy cavalry, but looking at the orderly heavy cavalry of the sect under the command of Yang Xiong, he was thinking in his heart that maybe he could find a way to leave this army and swallow it. If you can swallow it, not only does it save time for training, but you also have a full set of equipment directly in your hand, which can also be regarded as a trump card, and it may have a big effect when it is critical.

Thinking of this, he smiled and said to Qin Qiong: "Since you like armored rides, then you can get closer to them along the way, be familiar with them, even if you make friends." After all, now this thousand heavy cavalry is under my command, and it belongs to our Eastern Route Army, and there may be a chance to go into battle together to kill the enemy in the future. ”

Qin Qiong was a little excited by Yi Feng's words, and she was not very moved.

"If you can learn some real skills from over there, I might be able to give you a try to assemble a hundred armored cavalry." Yi Feng gave Qin Qiong a lot of temptation, "Moreover, I may consider designing and creating a set of steel plate heavy armor for this heavy cavalry, which is lighter but stronger than the current armored cavalry." ”

At this time, Qin Qiong finally couldn't help but waver, "One hundred is too little, how can you get a group." ”

Yi Feng smiled, "It depends on how many real skills you can learn, and if you can lead a hundred heavy cavalry well, it will not be a problem to increase to five hundred cavalry in a regiment." ”

"It's a deal." Qin Qiong showed a happy look on his face, and he lifted his feet and ran to the side of the sect group to step up his study and observation. (To be continued......)