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In the current military establishment of the Qin Empire, infantry has still become the main component of the Qin army. Pen | fun | pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 ｉｎｆｏ

In contrast to the Qin military officers in the period of the First Emperor, that is, the infantry, the proportion of heavy infantry under Zhang Jiashi was much higher than that in the period of the First Emperor.

Among the 3,000 to 5,000 men under the command of the commander of a frontier county, half or more of the heavy infantry of the Qin army wearing iron armor accounted for half or more, and most of the rest were crossbowmen or cavalry troops of the Qin army, which were mainly scouts.

For the Qin army, such a ratio can be said to a large extent that the Qin army's troops occupy part of the advantage in equipment.

However, such an establishment is expensive on the one hand, and on the other hand, it has quite high requirements for the specifications of the soldiers.

A Qin infantry armed with a large iron shield, wearing iron armor and an iron helmet, the cost of equipment is already between three and four times that of the leather armored light infantry among the soldiers of a mainland county.

This is not the worse place, for Zhang Jiashi, while the equipment is well-equipped, there must be enough personnel to use these equipment to make these equipment have room to play.

It's just that compared to the problem of heavy infantry, the number of knight troops of the Qin army is not too much, and it has always been a problem that Zhang Jiashi cannot solve, or the Qin Empire cannot find a solution in a short period of time.

The agrarian ethnic system is not ignorant of the breeding of horses, on the contrary, several agrarian ethnic groups led by China have developed cavalry units that had a great influence at that time.

It's just that the number of these cavalry units has always been small, or more can only concentrate these cavalry units to play a high mobile combat efficiency.

The number of horses is one aspect of the influence, and the other aspect of your influence is that the number of people who can ride horses is much smaller than those who can drive chariots at the beginning.

This point was fundamentally changed after the Hufu cavalry shooting, but whether it was a country with a large number of horse farms, or a country like Chu that had to use agricultural land to develop horse farms, the cavalry establishment was still relatively scarce.

Moreover, because of their relatively poor horse breeds, even if a certain number of cavalry units are developed, the agrarian people will not have a large scale of heavy cavalry.

As early as the Shang Dynasty, there were a small number of knights and horseback riding customs, and the northern nomads of the same era were called "riding Kou, the Fang people of Shang: the Zhou people were famous for raising horses for the Shang Dynasty." The Book of Poetry Daya records that the ancestors of the Zhou people "the ancient father of the ancient man came to the court and walked the horse".

During the Spring and Autumn Period, there were thousands of cavalry combat records, such as in 636 BC, when Qin Mugong sent Jin Gongzi Chong'er back to China, he sent "two thousand horses".

During the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, the number of uses of cavalry gradually increased, and the war books used for cavalry also emerged one after another, such as the requirements for knights to fight and select knights in Liutao.

But it is clear that these cavalrymen do not have the ability to storm a formation.

During the Warring States period, various military books and actual combat formations that used cavalry to fight appeared in battle.

The Han Dynasty had already paid considerable attention to the use of formations, and the "eight formations" were popular at that time.

The note says: square formation, circle formation, peony formation, Mu formation, rushing formation, wheel formation, floating frustration formation and goose marching formation.

Historical records record that Li Guang's 4,000 cavalry and the Xiongnu's 40,000 cavalry encountered, so that the circle array resisted with bows and crossbows for two days and supported until the rescue arrived.

In the battle of Li Ling's infantry and cavalry, the formation listed is "holding halberds and shields in the front line, and bows and crossbows in the rear", which is also a defensive formation. In offensive formations, the infantry is often in the center, and the cavalry is on both flanks, which is easy to outflank.

That is to say, during the Han Empire, even the Xiongnu archers, faced with a well-organized infantry phalanx, also lacked the ability to impact these infantry phalanxes.

Arms production during the Han Dynasty was directly controlled by the state. In order to ensure that the army had a sufficient supply of weapons, the Han Dynasty set up full-time officials to manage the weapons manufacturing industry on the one hand, and the "examination order" under the imperial servants was specially responsible for the production of weapons. On the other hand, a very large "arsenal" has been set up. All kinds of weapons that are supervised by the inspection order are sent to the arsenal for storage, and from there they are distributed to the relevant units.

Starting from Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, the iron-smelting industry was operated by the government, and more than 40 iron officials were set up throughout the country, which not only promoted the use of ironware, but also promoted the development of iron-smelting technology, and the Western Han Dynasty reached the level of "100 smelting gang".

The weapons often used in the Han Dynasty, that is, a large number of weapons that formally equipped the troops, long-range shots were mainly crossbows and bows, and there were halberds, spears, knives, and swords in combat.

The armor is armor and shields. There is also a kind of hook. Bows and arrows, an indispensable weapon for cavalry, were generally equipped with compound bows in the Han army. In addition, in the long-range weapons of the Han Dynasty, the use of crossbows seems to be more extensive than bows, and there are hand crossbows and foot crossbows, and cavalry can only use hand crossbows.

The crossbow is regarded as the most sophisticated equipment of the Han army, as well as the halberd, the most important fighting long-handled weapon in the Han Dynasty, and it is inseparable from the cavalry.

And just as important as the halberd, there are spears, which are used in large quantities, and they are already steel products. Short-handled weapons are knives and swords, some of the unearthed steel swords can be up to 124cm, the knife began to rise in the Han Dynasty, the Warring States period has not yet appeared, the iron sword is still the main short-handled weapon in the early Han Dynasty, but after the knife appeared, it gradually squeezed out the sword and became a widely used weapon.

At the beginning of the Han Dynasty, armor was still mainly armor and shields. The shield is made of wood, leather and iron, the common style is the bottom edge is flush, the upper end is composed of two arcs to form a gourd shape, the shape of the middle ridge is raised, about one-third of the height of the soldier, and then the upper and lower two sharp hooks are installed on the iron shield, it has become a new type of weapon - the hook, which can be attacked and defended.

The armor of the Han Dynasty was mainly "xuanjia", that is, iron armor, which gradually perfected and crowded out the traditional leather armor, which was inlaid with armor pieces, and the armor pieces used at that time can be divided into three categories. The first type is a large long nail piece, also known as a nail piece, whose height gradually shortens over time; the second type of nail is much smaller than the first type, and the shape is closer to a square, generally the lower edge is relatively straight, and the upper edge of the two corners are rounded; the third type, the smallest in size, closer to the square, less than 4 cm high, less than 2.5 cm wide, another appearance of this kind of nail piece is made into the shape of a locust leaf or willow leaf.

The above three types of armor can be woven into two types of armor, that is, the armor made of large long armor and the fish scale armor made of small and medium-sized armor. Leather armor became a supporting role for iron armor, but it still served as an important auxiliary piece of armor.

When the heavy cavalry appeared on the battlefield, it was the era when the private soldiers of the army were the core of the army, starting from the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, through the Wei and Jin Dynasties and the Sixteen Kingdoms to the Northern and Southern Dynasties.

At that time, the clan gate system and the clan military organization were combined, and the powerful clan had a large number of private armies. Those tribes were both dependent on the peasants and the private armies of the powerful clans. This special personal dependence relationship began to develop malignantly from the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty to the Wei and Jin dynasties, which also affected the composition of the feudal army at that time.

At that time, the generals who led the troops were all from wealthy families, and also had their own private troops, and often had a large number of armor and weapons, and these well-equipped private troops formed the core of the army under their command. This naturally led to a series of changes in the composition, command, and armament of the armed forces.

The early private tribes were not necessarily cavalry, let alone heavy cavalry, and the appearance of private units in the form of armored cavalry was related to the fight against the nomadic heavy cavalry. Before entering the Central Plains, these ethnic groups were nomadic economies, with excellent horses, and their armies were all cavalry, and they often retained the form of clan military organization.

After these foreign nationalities entered the Central Plains, equipped with the smelting technology weapons and armor of the Central Plains, the heavy cavalry of the people and horses were dressed in heavy armor - armor cavalry, and the number of iron horses in the historical materials was not much, until the beginning of the Tang Dynasty, Li Shimin returned to the dynasty and still had the record of "Chen Iron Horse Ten Thousand Horses".

That is to say, no matter when, cultivating a qualified heavy cavalry is a lot of money for a country or a family. This also limited the development trend of hoplite cavalry in China.

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The history of heavy cavalry in the West was later than in the East, and the Assyrian Empire was arguably the first large state to develop as a nomadic people.

The use of horses in warfare is due to the nomads.

As early as the second millennium BC, the Hittites swept Phoenicia, Mesopotamia and Egypt with two light chariots.

The earliest regular cavalry was the Assyrian cavalry, which appeared in the 9th century BC.

At that time, all the cavalry were equestrian masters.

Three thousand years ago, there were no saddles and stirrups, and controlling a horse with only the reins required a great deal of skill. Riders sat on bare-bottomed horses, their feet curled up high, and it was a very uncomfortable position, so the reins were short and stiff, not only to control the horses but also to serve as handles. The horse's chew is long and wide, and even if the rider pulls the reins hard, it will not be dragged out.

There were three types of cavalry in the Assyrian army: light cavalry, made up of nomads under the Assyrian Empire, armed with bows and arrows and javelins, mounted archers, who wore hard leather armor, and heavy cavalry, armed with spears and swords, and engaged in close combat.

Later, cavalry gradually took the place of chariots, which became more and more cumbersome, and the four-horse-drawn chariot eventually became a vehicle for the infantry.

There is not enough information to say whether the Assyrian heavy cavalry were mounted cavalry, but there is no doubt that the mobility of this heavy cavalry should not be too bad, and the possibility of wearing metal armor is not too great.

And the Western countries that really developed armored cavalry were the Byzantine Empire.

The Eastern Roman heavy cavalry flourished during the reign of Justinian I, and under the command of Belisarius and Narces, they achieved brilliant victories. The riders of the heavy cavalry, clothed in armor, armed with spears and bows. The implementation of such a mutation is obviously aimed at making every soldier who has undergone rigorous training have both mobile "shooting power" and "impact power." Western military historians refer to this kind of cavalry as "double-function cavalry".

This "dual cavalry" refers to those cavalry that can kill and damage the enemy from a long distance, and can also launch a surprise attack at close range.

After the Byzantine heavy cavalry, only the heavy musketeers of the 17th century had this function.

Battle of Casirinham in 553. The opponents in this battle were the Franks, who were mostly infantry, armed with helmets, basswood shields, swords, javelins, and battle axes, both of which could be used for throwing. The Frankish infantry had a method of fighting when the javelin was stuck in the enemy's shield, rushing up and stepping on the handle of the gun to pull the enemy's shield off, and then take the enemy out.

The Franks were aggressive, seasoned warriors.

On the Byzantine side, there were infantry, dismounted heavy cavalry, heavy cavalry, and light cavalry, and the command was Narces. In battle, the cavalry lay in ambush on both flanks, with groups of infantry in front and dismounted heavy cavalry in the rear rows. The Franks first broke through the first few rows of Byzantine infantry, but the Frankish offensive was thwarted as they dismounted and heavy cavalry joined the battle.

It may have been Narce's tactical arrangement: to keep the Franks glued to the frontal battlefield to buy time for the Byzantine heavy cavalry to encircle from both flanks. When the Franks found out, they were already surrounded by Byzantine heavy cavalry, but these seasoned infantry immediately set up in dense defensive formations, ready to resist the charge of the Byzantine heavy cavalry.

But the Byzantine heavy cavalry did not attack, but fired wildly with bows and arrows. Originally, if the Franks dispersed the formation, they could reduce the number of casualties from bows and arrows, but they were afraid that once their ranks were dispersed, the Byzantine heavy cavalry would raise their spears and charge. As a result, in such hesitation, the Franks suffered huge losses and finally retreated.

It can also be said that the hoplites played a decisive role in large-scale warfare.

At that time, just as the problems encountered in the development of heavy cavalry in the Eastern countries were the same as the number of heavy cavalry in the West.

In the Western countries of the same period of the Byzantine Empire, it was only during the Crusades that the synonym for hoplite cavalry units was developed - the Knights.

The Knights emerged during the Crusades in the Middle Ages as a religious feudal military organization established by Western European feudal lords to defend their territories in the East.

After the end of the First Crusade, the Crusaders occupied the richest regions and the most prosperous industrial and commercial cities on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean, and established four Crusader states in this area, which were 1,200 kilometers long from south to north.

Due to its coastal location, flat terrain, lack of natural barriers, and the possibility of attack, the Crusader states were in turmoil under the threat of Muslim eyes.

In order to consolidate these countries, there is an urgent need to establish a standing armed force.

As a result, the Pope of Rome organized several more orders of monks and knights, which are the three famous orders in history, namely the Knights Hospitaller, the Knights Templar and the Teutonic Knights. Its mission was to suppress the rebellion of the people of the Crusader states, fight against the neighboring Muslim countries, and defend and expand the Crusader territories. The three orders soon developed into elite professional armies, capable of fighting enemies anywhere. They recruited troops on a large scale in Europe and grew stronger by the day.

In its ostensible form and nature, the Order was a gang of monks, with religious constraints similar to those of the friars. Most of these monks and knights were outlaws from the rundown aristocracy of Western Europe, who were organized in a monastic manner and dedicated their lives to "defending Christianity".

Members of the Order are not allowed to marry and have children, nor seek wealth, nor go against the will of their superiors, nor are they allowed to waver in their will to "devotion to Christianity" because of their obsession with worldly life.

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