It's a bit funny to say, the so-called "Western Regions" war horse that Hu Shangjin dedicated to Liangzhou Thorn History is not the kind of high-headed horse in the extreme west as Zhang Xi said, and even this horse is not from the Western Regions at all, but from Youzhou.

More precisely, it comes from the extremely cold land north of Youzhou, where a kind of horse is produced.

Hu Shang didn't understand the relationship between the Han and Cao Wei at all, and felt that since they were not a country, if the war horses that appeared in the area north of Youzhou were pretended to be the war horses of the Western Regions, these Han people should not be able to recognize them.

But Zhao Yun is a native of Hebei, and he was engaged in cavalry in his early years, so how can he have no concept of local war horses.

War horses are also produced in the extremely cold places north of Youzhou, this Zhao Yun has heard of it, but the war horses produced here are not as explosive as the war horses produced in the grasslands in the south or west of Youzhou, at most they have some advantages in cold resistance and weight.

Considering the combat environment near Youzhou, if you deal with the grassland cavalry of Youzhou and Bingzhou, this kind of war horse is definitely not as popular as the war horse produced in the south of Youzhou, after all, in terms of explosiveness, sometimes it will determine the outcome of a battle.

But now, Zhao Yun feels that maybe it can suit his needs.

It is difficult to find a perfect war horse, if you only lose a little explosiveness, but you can have good weight and endurance, it is also an option.

The hoplite cavalry was not originally pursuing extreme speed, but pursuing heavy defense and impact.

Again, through the difference between this batch of war horses produced in the north of Youzhou and the local Liangzhou war horses, Zhao Yun seems to have found some ideas.

Heavy cavalry is actually a type of army with obvious advantages and disadvantages.

The hoplites have a stronger assault ability and can easily defeat the light cavalry or rangers in a head-to-head confrontation, but the hoplites are slow, if the light cavalry and the rangers find the hoplites in advance and don't give the hoplites a chance to get close, then they can rely on the rangers to shoot and kill the hoplites a little bit.

Even if you put armor on the horses, at most it will improve the continuous combat ability of the heavy cavalry, and if you can't get close, you still have no way to take the rangers or light cavalry.

Without him, the speed really can't catch up.

But now, Zhao Yun seems to have figured out the solution to the shortcomings of the heavy cavalry, perhaps in the difference between the Liangzhou war horse and this Youzhou war horse.

In this way, through various relationships and methods, Zhao Yun tried to smuggle this Youzhou war horse from the area north of Youzhou, and on the other hand, Zhao Yun also began to accumulate little by little, train little by little, and explore a complete set of cavalry combat systems that belong to him.

10,000 cavalry, only 10,000 cavalry, of which only 3,000 hoplites.

There is no way, the money is not enough, Liangzhou has more places to spend money than Yongzhou, and the local security is also unstable, and the iron weapons and ordnance needed to form the cavalry also have to be transported from the south of Yizhou, and there are not many iron mines that are easy to mine locally.

Let's put it this way, in order to determine the size of this cavalry legion, Zhao Yun didn't know how many times he quarreled with Xu Miao, and finally reluctantly pulled out the money and food from Xu Miao's mouth to form this 10,000 cavalry.

Now, it is the first battle of Zhao Yun with this 10,000-strong cavalry army, and it is also the first battle for Zhao Yun to test his cavalry combat concept in actual combat, and Zhao Yun must make an appearance.

His opponent was the 13,000 Cao Wei cavalry corps led by Niu Jin.

And the cavalry corps on Cao Wei's side is also very funny to say, basically light cavalry.

There are also some stories in this.

In the history of Cao Wei, there was once a heavy cavalry unit with great achievements - the Tiger and Leopard Cavalry.

Whether it is the White Wolf Mountain Formation, or the 300 miles of running day and night to pursue Liu Bei, or the Tongguan Breaking Ma Chao, the Tiger and Leopard Cavalry are all in the most critical moment, into the most difficult battle.

Except for the pursuit of Liu Bei, the other battles have completed the ultimate strategic purpose, and it can be said that the merit is outstanding.

But this heavy cavalry unit was disbanded after Cao Cao's death.

Of course, to put it nicely, it was Cao Pi who ordered the expansion of the tiger and leopard cavalry, but as it expanded, the tiger and leopard cavalry disappeared and became a light cavalry corps.

There are many reasons for this.

On the one hand, the tiger and leopard ride is too unruly.

The tiger and leopard cavalry itself is Cao Cao's formed troops, strictly speaking, it should be Cao Cao's personal guard troops, and the soldiers of this army, placed in the ordinary Cao army, are all officers at the level of 100 generals.

In addition to Cao Cao, the only recorded commanders of this army are Cao Cao, Cao Chun, Cao Xiu, and Cao Zhen. A proper general of the Cao clan.

This led to the fact that this army, as Cao Cao's guard, only obeyed Cao Cao's dispatch.

After Cao Cao's death, Cao Pi succeeded to the throne and naturally inherited the command of this army.

But the problem is that Cao Pi faintly found that the attitude of the tiger and leopard cavalry towards him did not seem to be particularly recognized, and neither Cao Zhen nor Cao Xiu, whom he appointed, could control this army as completely as Cao Chun.

In addition, if Cao Pi wants to usurp the throne and become emperor, he must upgrade the specifications of the pro-guard troops, and naturally need to upgrade the tiger and leopard cavalry to the Su guard cavalry, so he must expand the army.

Then Cao Pi played a political trick, causing a strange incident in which the tiger and leopard rider disappeared while greatly expanding the tiger and leopard ride.

On the other hand, even for Cao Wei's side, it was not an easy task to maintain a heavy cavalry force of up to 10,000 people.

The heavy cavalry unit is the most expensive unit of money and food, not to mention that the ordinary soldiers in the tiger and leopard cavalry are all at the level of a hundred generals, so the treatment is definitely higher than that of the ordinary elite.

This is not a small amount of money.

When Cao Cao first began to form the tiger and leopard cavalry, the number was not large, probably only one or two thousand people, and even in the thirteenth year of Jian'an, when Cao Cao sent troops to pursue Liu Bei, the tiger and leopard cavalry strength was about 5,000 people, but in the twentieth year of Jian'an, the strength of the tiger and leopard cavalry was tens of thousands.

Once the cavalry troops are tens of thousands, even if they are light cavalry, the cost is staggering, let alone heavy cavalry troops.

Compared with maintaining a tiger and leopard cavalry of tens of thousands of people, Cao Pi would definitely prefer to form a light cavalry force of 50,000 people, and the expenses of both sides are about the same.

Finally, and most crucially. At the national level, the significance of the existence of heavy cavalry is actually not great.

This has a lot to do with the changes in cavalry tactics of this era and the shortcomings of heavy cavalry.

In the previous cavalry tactics, cavalry appeared as an auxiliary branch of infantry, and when the battlefield was stalemate, cavalry was put into battle, striving to break the stalemate on the battlefield, defeat and pursue the infantry, which was the greatest use of cavalry.

At this time, the hoplites took into account the impact power and the obvious speed advantage over the infantry, and naturally they could achieve the greatest results.

However, the hoplites also have disadvantages, that is, the speed is not fast enough, when encountering light cavalry or rangers, in the face of the enemy's cavalry, it is easy to be unable to keep up with the speed, and finally be killed by guerrillas.

On the contrary, the hussars did not have such drawbacks, and compared to the infantry, the hussars had the same speed advantage, the impact was not weak, and the maintenance cost was much lower than that of the hoplites.

Rather than keeping a heavy cavalry of tens of thousands of people, it is better to equip a large number of light cavalry from the cost of maintenance of the country.

Anyway, several horse-producing areas at that time were under the control of the Great Wei, and the turtles in Jiangdong were okay to operate boats and fight, but when it came to cavalry, I am afraid they had never even seen horse hair.

As for Liu Bei, he later occupied Yizhou, and there were some horses in Nanzhong, but the horses in Nanzhong were short, with outstanding endurance but insufficient explosiveness, and they were used to transport grain and grass, and they were used for battle, and they were completely crushed by the Great Wei cavalry.

Even if Ji Han later occupied Liangzhou and had a horse-producing land, Cao Wei still didn't care too much.

After all, the Liangzhou cavalry is famous for its rangers, but today's cavalry combat ideas are based on light cavalry tactics as the mainstream, the rangers are hard and rigid light cavalry, there is not much advantage in speed, and the defense is slightly insufficient.

Moreover, even if the Shu thieves occupy Liangzhou and have cavalry, with the size of the Shu thieves, they can't maintain a cavalry force that is too large, and they are definitely inferior to Great Wei in terms of the number of cavalry, so what's there to worry about.

On the battlefield of the Han Dynasty, the main duel is still dominated by infantry, what the heavy cavalry can do, the light cavalry can also do, and what the heavy cavalry can't do, the light cavalry can also do.

Therefore, it is not difficult to understand that Cao Wei gave up on continuing to maintain the tiger and leopard cavalry and adopted the method of expanding the army, expanding the tiger and leopard cavalry from 10,000 to 50,000 and changing it to light cavalry.

And now, the 13,000 light cavalry led by Niu Jin finally met the Liangzhou Cavalry Corps led by Zhao Yun near Dali County.

Moreover, both sides coincidentally took the initiative to charge at each other's cavalry corps.

First, it is to make a record of achievements and play a new way of thinking about the use of cavalry.

Another. Well, Niu Jin really didn't take Zhao Yun in his eyes.

is just a bodyguard, and he has achieved a high position by virtue of his early years of following the main guard, what can he do.

Niu Jin has not seen such a character, such as Xu Chu of Emperor Taizu Wu of Suwei. And the fate of this guard, who didn't know his importance, personally led the army, Niu Jin followed General Cao Ren back then, and he saw it clearly in Fancheng.

Outside Dali City, is the place where you Zhao Yun is buried!!

(End of chapter)