Entering the beginning of the autumn harvest in August, this is also the time when the horses are fat and strong, and it is also the time when the nomads go south to plunder, at this moment the loyal and brave army has entered the Xijing Road one after another, resting in Shuozhou and Huanzhou, and the second brigade of the Kryu Army is deployed in the north to prevent the autumn, protect the autumn harvest and the transfer of livestock for the winter. Zhao Ta's summer vacation has also ended here, the Guards Brigade rushed to meet with the prince, Zhao Ta sent a brigade to escort Zhu Shuzhen and Yu Liyan back to Datong, Xijing City, and Zhao Xin led the Praetorian Guards to stay on the front line.

Zhao Ta set up the camp at Jiujiu Spring, which was an important passage for the Tatars to enter this area with the back of the Yin Mountain, and it was also their route to the south in previous years, and the contact between the two armies was inevitable, and a conflict broke out...

Early one morning, a patrol of 200 men sent by the Xijing Forbidden Army encountered a Tatar vanguard unit. The Tatars originally had no iron weapons, and only made iron weapons after getting the iron money of the Song Dynasty, so the arrows were mostly made of bone, and the armor was also made of cowhide or fish skin, which was one level worse than the Xijing Forbidden Army equipped with iron armor.

In the melee, personal riding and martial arts are the most important, and the nomadic cavalry mainly requires personal skills, and personal riding skills and martial arts are the inherent talents of the horseback people. The Xijing Forbidden Army was also mostly selected from nomadic tribes, and also possessed this quality.

At this moment, they are all born in the nomadic sudden encounter and a fierce battle broke out, the number of the two armies is about the same, the victory or defeat depends on the personal quality, the side with high people, large horses, thick armor, and fast knives naturally has the advantage, this is obviously not the specialty of the Tatar light cavalry, because there is no heavy armor protection, once the opponent enters a stalemate, the Tatar light cavalry loses its flexible mobility, and now has to fight with the opponent in close combat. It's the last thing they want.

The Xijing Forbidden Army was trained by Zhao Xin in reference to the training methods of the loyal and brave army, and they launched a strong attack on the Tatar cavalry with thick armor and sharp swords. They're not practiced in vain. The tactics of Hejin were so successful that the Tatars could not resist and began to retreat. So the Xijing Forbidden Army prepared to wave their troops to cover the kill, rush into the enemy group, and prepare to perform their melee combat skills, but the situation was not as smooth as imagined.

When the neat formation of the cavalry of the pursuing Xijing Forbidden Army began to disperse, the retreating Tatar light cavalry retreated and shot arrows at the pursuing Xijing Forbidden Army, their bows were strong, and the bone arrow clusters could actually shoot through the iron armor within thirty paces. Of course, the Xijing Forbidden Army would not wait to be beaten, and they also began to return fire with bows and arrows. And at this time the real battle has just begun.

In the face of the counterattack of the Xijing Forbidden Army, the Tatars quickly dispersed in their retreat and detoured back to the sides and behind the Xijing Forbidden Army's cavalry, constantly firing arrows at them. And the Xijing soldiers were constantly falling off their horses under intensive shooting, and their numbers were getting smaller and smaller, and they were driven together like cattle. Realizing that it was not good, the Xijing soldiers began to retreat, preparing to break out of the encirclement.

But it was a little late, and the hunt took place, and the Tatars were so excited that they roared and galloped back and forth, and shot the arrows from their quivers without mercy. Under the dense attack of bows and arrows, the Xijing soldiers suffered heavy losses, and only more than ten horsemen broke out of the encirclement with wounds and fled back to the camp. When reinforcements arrived, there were only corpses scattered everywhere. Their armor, swords, and horses became trophies of the Tatars...

And this was only the beginning of the contest between the two sides, Zhao saw this kind of battle as a contest between regular cavalry and irregular cavalry, but he found that the invincible group charge tactics of the past did not have an advantage. And it's very strenuous. The Tatars often used sneak attack tactics to loot grain and grass. Capture the stragglers. Taking advantage of his familiarity with geography and the ease of advance and retreat, the light cavalry came and went at a moment's notice. If you can win, you will fight, and if you can't, you will scatter, give full play to your imagination, strive for the initiative on the battlefield, and deal with their army.

In the face of the Tatar light cavalry that you have thousands of troops and horses, and I come and go like the wind, the armies in Xijing are a little helpless, and they are always exhausted by the opponent's mobilization. Zhao Ta somewhat understood the powerful Qin Shi Huang, the reason why he spent thousands of financial resources and was infamous for thousands of years to build the Great Wall must be that there was no good way for the nomadic Xiongnu, so he had to do it. It is not Zhao Ta's character to be beaten passively, he laid a trap against the tactical characteristics of the Tatars...

The Tatars gradually found the pattern in the battle with the Xijing army, and they found that the Xijing army that used firearms was the most difficult to provoke, and their bows and arrows were not their opponents with firearms. And the important places are guarded by them, so they didn't get much oil and water during this time.

On this day, the Tatar scouts reported that a thousand-man team of the Xijing Forbidden Army escorted a large amount of grain and grass into a rear stockade, ready to camp, and there were only some tribal troops in the stockade, and a thousand people said that it was more or less, and it was obvious that this was a piece of fat with more spines and less flesh, so they decided to concentrate their forces and eat it.

That night, 5,000 Tatar cavalry took advantage of the darkness to bypass the stronghold of the Xijing army, evade the reconnaissance cavalry, adopt mobile and roundabout tactics, spare a large circle from the side, and then use the speed advantage to directly attack the stockade of the grain. This flexible combat method suddenly caused the Xijing forbidden army who escorted the grain to fall into a panic, and after they made fierce resistance, they gradually lost their support and abandoned the village in a panic.

The Tatars were happy to take these grains and grass into their arms, and when they returned with the booty, it was already dawn, and the scouts suddenly found that a group of Xijing soldiers appeared in front of them, and no one wanted to spit out the fat in their mouths.

In the moment of crisis, 2,000 dragoons of the Krup, armed with firearms, rushed over and launched an intensive charge, defeating the large number of Tatars who were in full swing, while the Krüd army suffered very little losses. Seeing that the opportunity was not good, the Tatars used the magic weapon of escape to disperse and break through. But they found that this time they were not as lucky as in the past, the Xijing cavalry of the brigade surrounded from all sides in a dense stone wall formation, in the face of this collective charge, no matter how superb the individual martial arts were, it was useless, and after a fierce battle, many Tatar light cavalry corpses were left in the wilderness to be cut down.

The Tatars, who suffered a great loss, did not give up, but went south more frequently, attacking the tribes to which Xijing belonged with small troops, and the methods were more cruel, often after the people, young men and women were taken captive, all the livestock were gone, the camp became a sea of fire, and the fields to be harvested became ashes... (To be continued......)