"Three years into a bow, three months into a crossbow, ah······"

Standing on top of the wall, looking at the outside of the city, wandering behind the slave cannon fodder, and moving parallel to the city wall, Jin Shu sighed, but also sighed.

Becoming a bow in three years and a crossbow in three months is actually a long-standing consensus in the Central Plains;

- If you want to train a soldier to become an archer with a qualified level of combat effectiveness, you need to train for at least two to three years.

Note that the training here does not mean that this soldier finds a target at home and practices one arrow after another for three years;

But after initially mastering the skills of bow and arrow shooting and officially becoming an archer reserve, in the army, follow the archer phalanx, and practice for another two to three years!

In the past three years, most of the training content is not the shooting accuracy of individual soldiers, but the salvo efficiency of the entire archer phalanx, and the degree of tacit cooperation between each other.

As for archery, it could only be practiced by the soldiers themselves.

Compared with the ultra-high training cost of archers, which can be completed in three years, the training of crossbowmen is obviously much simpler.

In the first step, the selection requirements of the crossbowman will be lowered by the archer;

The selection of bow soldiers often requires that the arms, waist and abdomen of the candidate soldiers are strong, the body is as tall as possible, and the eyesight is higher than that of ordinary people.

That is, these seemingly simple selection requirements have supported the ultra-high quality of archers of the Han family's 'non-elite, not a bow'.

- Ordinary big-headed soldiers, not to mention their stature and eyesight, can not lack arms and legs, and can afford to pick up spears and swords, they are already qualified!

The crossbowman, which is also a long-range strike class, only puts forward two requirements for the candidate: waist and abdominal strength and normal vision.

Because compared to the archers who need to draw their bows and shoot by themselves, and also maintain the aiming posture of holding their bows, the crossbowmen only need to be able to pull the crossbow machine and complete the loading of arrow feathers;

The 'open crossbow machine' here can be arm open, foot open, really not, and even pouted - lying on the ground with your back to the sky, pulling the crossbow string with both hands, and kicking the crossbow body with both legs to complete the loading.

In addition to the difference in selection requirements, the training intensity of crossbowmen is also much lower than that of archers who have been established in three years.

The reason is simple: the attitude of the crossbow machine is very relaxed;

- Hold a crossbow machine loaded with arrows, aim in the direction of the enemy, and be ready to shoot at any time.

On the other hand, the bow not only requires the shooter to maintain the posture of holding the bow without shooting when waiting to shoot, but also needs to adjust his breathing to ensure that the hand holding the bow does not tremble.

Especially at the moment of shooting, you must be like a sniper in later generations, adjust your breathing and heartbeat to the best state.

To put it bluntly: the crossbow machine is actually a 'lazy man's bow'.

The crossbow arm controls the trajectory of the arrow, so that the crossbowman does not need to spend years practicing accuracy;

The crossbow machine that can be loaded and ready to fire also makes the crossbowman do not need to have strong endurance and strength;

As long as you can complete the loading of the crossbow machine and aim at the enemy and pull the trigger, you can basically count as a qualified crossbowman.

And 'a bow in three years, a crossbow in three months', in today's Han Dynasty, is also supported by actual data.

- It takes at least three years for a reserve of archers composed of young and strong men who can 'draw their bows' to ensure that the average target rate of individual soldiers reaches 60% at a distance of 80 paces;

However, it only took three months for a crossbowman reserve composed of 'non-disabled' young men to increase the average target rate of individual soldiers at a distance of 80 paces to 60 percent, or even 70 percent.

The training cost alone, which is almost at two extremes, is enough for any army that has both bows and crossbows to abandon archers in all directions and instead use crossbowmen as the main long-range strike class.

Of course, the premise is that the crossbowman can perfectly replace the role of the archer and complete all the things that the archer can achieve.

As for today's Han Dynasty, the reason why they have not completely abandoned the 'archers', which has high training costs, long training time, and high requirements for soldiers, is mainly because of the crossbow machine, which is still a natural disadvantage that is not as good as the bow and arrow.

First of all, it is the composition of the crossbow machine, which is composed of a horizontal bow, a crossbow arm, and a crossbow machine.

As a result, the crossbow machine, a 'bow fired horizontally', has almost no projectile lethality, and can only inflict damage on the enemy through a near-flat fire.

In this way, the problem arises.

- Bows and crossbows, as long-range strike arms, are in the vast majority of cases closely protected by infantry, even heavy infantry;

That is to say, in war, in addition to the specific environment such as city attack and defense, and fortified battles, most of the situations of 'two armies facing each other', bows and crossbows need to be projectile to cause damage to distant enemies, and do not accidentally injure the front of them, so as to protect their infantry array.

At such times, the shortcomings of the crossbow machine's 'inability to eject' reveal an inherent disadvantage.

In order to ensure long-range strike firepower, and at the same time ensure that the rear bow and crossbow fire will not 'backstab' the infantry array in front, the generals often have to give up the crossbow machine and use the archers as the main means of long-range strike.

As for the crossbowmen, they will stand on both sides of the archers phalanx and be responsible for covering, unless they are punched in the face by the enemy, the crossbow machine will most likely not get the opportunity to participate in the battle.

In addition to the fact that it cannot be projectile, the crossbow machine has another flaw that cannot be ignored compared to the bow.

- The range of the crossbow machine is fixed.

Whether it is a three-year-old child or an eight-foot man, if he pulls the trigger of the three-stone crossbow, he can only shoot a three-stone arrow.

Such a characteristic naturally greatly reduces the requirements for crossbowmen and raises the lower limit of crossbowmen;

But correspondingly, it also limits the upper limit of the crossbowman, which often can only depend on the strength of the crossbow itself.

The archers, on the other hand, are different, and how far they can shoot and how strong they are depends entirely on the skill of the archer.

As long as the strength of the bow operator does not exceed the upper limit of what the bow can carry, it is easy to achieve the achievement of 'my bow has an effective range of 100 paces, and I can hit 120 steps'.

Finally, there is the question of lethality.

As a high-cost individual long-range strike weapon, the quality of the bow is often not too low.

Admittedly, this also increases the cost per soldier of the archers in disguise, but it also ensures the archers' lethality against the enemy, that is, the penetration of the arrow feathers.

The crossbow machine, on the other hand, is mass-produced by the state machine according to the 'standard equipment', and usually does not pursue excellent individual performance, but only guarantees the range above the horizontal line.

As a result, crossbows and bows, even with the same limited range, often reflect a gap in lethality and penetration.

To put it bluntly: archers are things that rich people play with, and they have almost no other disadvantages except for being expensive;

The crossbowman, on the other hand, is a copycat version of the archer that is obtained by people who can't afford to play archers, and at a smaller cost.

In addition to being able to strike from a long range, and at the same time not having high requirements for the source of troops, the biggest advantage of a crossbow machine over a bow is that it is cheaper.

This is like the era of thermal weapons in later generations, where machine guns and sniper rifles per capita of infantry can naturally ensure the greatest firepower advantage;

But considering the cost, machine guns are really not as good as submachine guns, sniper rifles, and they don't have the fragrance of rifles.

In today's era, the advantages and disadvantages between bows and crossbows are completely reversed in the Huns.

- A cheap leather crossbow, the Huns will not make it at all!

Even if the crossbow machine was captured on the battlefield and obtained from the Han people, the Huns could not maintain and repair it at all, and often could only disassemble the crossbow machine, discard the crossbow machine and the crossbow body, and only keep the bow on the crossbow machine.

On the contrary, it was the bow that only the rich played with became the main, even the only, means of long-range attack of the Huns.

But who will come back: the bow, after all, is played by the rich;

The Huns had no money, no technology, and even the production technology of the crossbow machine, which also led to the bows equipped by the Hun cavalry, which often did not enter the eyes of the Han soldiers.

Because most of the bows of the Hun cavalry were made by hand······

But it is different from those inferior bows that can only shoot a few dozen paces away and are broken at every turn on the battlefield: outside the city of Ma Yi at this moment, this Lou Fu archer, which is known for its bow and arrow shooting skills, is obviously a little different!

As far as Jin Shu could see, at this moment, Lou Fu's archers were moving back and forth parallel to the city wall along a position about one hundred and fifty steps away from the city wall;

And when they find an 'opportunity', these archers will speed up and quickly come to a position about one hundred and twenty paces away from the city wall;

Once they reach the 'firing position', the archers will turn over and dismount, shoot a bow and arrow in an upright position, and then jump on their horses without looking back, quickly retreating a hundred and fifty paces outside the city walls, and continue to move back and forth in search of the next chance to shoot.

For this kind of fighting method, Jin Shu felt extremely familiar.

- This is the main tactic implemented by the Hun cavalry after defending, or 'biting' the Han infantry phalanx;

Parallel to the Han army's array, he moved horizontally, dismounted and fired when he found an opportunity, and then quickly retreated.

Perhaps in the eyes of later generations, this way of fighting by moving around the prey, finding an opportunity, but dismounting to shoot, and then getting on the horse and leaving, seems somewhat comical;

But considering the 'civilization stage' of the Hun cavalry, perhaps no one would think so.

- The Hun cavalry of this era did not have a saddle!

Not only is there a saddle, not even a rein!

In the vast majority of cases, the so-called 'Hun cavalry' is nothing more than a primitive man riding on the back of a bare horse, holding the horse's mane with both hands!

In such a primitive stage of civilization, the Loufu cavalry, which could carry a longbow and arrow clusters, move quickly on the back of a bare horse, and complete dismounting, aiming, shooting, and getting on the horse in a very short period of time, obviously opened Jin She's eyes.

In particular, the projectile range of 'minimum 120 steps, maximum 145 steps' displayed by the Lou Fu archers made Jin Shu feel even more frightened.

"Such a fine bow should not be ······ by Hu Man"

"What are the results of the wars of the past?"

"Or, it is the people of the border pass who are traitorous and ·········"

With a thoughtful murmur, Jin She's gaze outside the city couldn't help but become a little grim.

Lou's annoying bow is definitely impossible to be made by the Huns!

Because of the craftsmanship of the Huns at this stage, it is impossible to make a bow with a range of more than 100 paces!

It is even no exaggeration to say that in the known world of this era, the only one who can make a bow of this magnitude and this effective range is the Han family!

And right now, the bows of the thousands of Lou Fu rangers outside the city, even if the source is aside, it must be the Huns' 'pouring the power of a country', collecting all the good bows, and equipping them on the body of the Lou Fu Bow Riders.

This can also show from the side: for the Huns who are better at hand-to-hand combat, especially hand-to-hand combat, how important it is to be annoying to be good at shooting······

"Good!"

Just as he was thinking about it, he saw that among the Lou Fu archers reverberating left and right outside the city, a person suddenly fell off his horse!

Turning around excitedly, Jin She saw that about thirty paces to his side, a Yulin crossbowman who had completed the design was lying in the middle of the city wall, loading the terrifying divine arm crossbow with arrow feathers;

After about fifteen breaths, the Yulin crossbowman finished loading.

And when the crossbowman hunched over and came back to a battlement, the Lou Fu archer who had been shot off his horse outside the city had stopped struggling, and let the war horse let out a wail beside him, and he could not move even a moment.

"Good chance!"

Seeing the fall of the archer, the rest of the comrades around him were also very surprised, and they involuntarily gathered beside the archer;

At the head of the Ma Yi wall, without waiting for Jin Shu to open his mouth to give an order, there were already hundreds of Yulin crossbowmen, all of whom invariably pointed the three-edged arrow cluster on the crossbow machine, which emitted a chilling light at that moment, to the outside of the city, the area where the Lou Fu archers gradually gathered······

Whoosh!

It was obviously louder than the ordinary crossbow machine, especially if it was almost in unison, which provoked the other crossbowmen on the wall to look sideways;

So much so that no one noticed it except Jin She on the city tower: one hundred and fifty steps outside the city, an obviously richly dressed Hun nobleman was riding his horse and running quickly into the distance······

"—The Han people's bow and crossbow can shoot up to one hundred and fifty paces!"

"Retreat! Fall back!

！ ”

Jebe was so frightened that the archers turned around as soon as possible, and quickly left the battlefield in the direction of Jebel's departure;

But Jebel, after all, is just a person.

On this battlefield two or three hundred paces deep and several miles wide, there were still many buildings that were annoying, and they did not hear Jebe's hoarse cry······

"The building is annoying, you have to run!"

"Plus three losses!

！ ”

Almost at the same time that Jebel ordered the retreat, Quan Xu, the captain of the Yulin school on the city wall, also gave the battle order for the first time!

Then, one after another, the Yulin crossbowmen dressed in scale armor and holding the divine arm crossbow, under Jin She's dumbfounded gaze, put two more arrows in the slot on the crossbow arm······

"Three of them?"

Whoosh!

Without waiting for Jin Shu to react, another round of shooting shot out of the city;

- The effect is remarkable!

From the first Lou Fu Archer being shot off the horse, to the Lou Fu Archer who stepped forward to check was almost wiped out;

Then he ordered a retreat, and finally, he went to Captain Yulin's 'three salvos', and began to fire rapidly at full load, firing freely at the top of the wall.

In just one cup of tea, the Huns suffered hundreds of casualties on one of the troikas!

And a moment later, when most of the crossbowmen at the head of the wall gave up shooting, abandoned the defensive position of the city to the sword and shield, and turned to help the Yulin crossbowmen load the crossbows, an almost straight 'line' from east to west had appeared in the area of one hundred and fifty paces outside the city.

——On the day of the first battle, the archers of the Loufu Department had a total of 6,000 cavalry, and thousands of dead and wounded!

What's even worse is that as the building is scrambling to retreat, the slave cannon fodder who is still desperately crawling towards the wall has completely become the abandoned son of the Huns········