After the young cavalryman said this, the middle-aged cavalryman on the side quickly stepped forward and said, "Master Jiang? Are there any enemy cavalry? How many are there?"
Looking at the way the middle-aged cavalry speaks, it is not the tone of an elder speaking to a junior, but the tone of a lower-ranking person speaking to a superior. The reason is very simple. The young cavalry has the rank of second lieutenant on his shoulders and is wearing
It is a dark blue officer's uniform, but the military uniform worn by the middle-aged cavalry is the blue jacket and red trousers worn by ordinary soldiers, and the military rank on the hanging is sergeant.
The young second lieutenant nodded slightly, then turned around and said: "Sergeant Lin, listen to it yourself. If I heard it correctly, I'm afraid there are more than twenty riders!"
After hearing this, Sergeant Lin leaned over and put his ears to the ground to listen!
Second Lieutenant Jiang frowned slightly, and then walked back. He wanted to quickly tell the news to other comrades in the woods and his commander, the platoon leader of the cavalry platoon, Captain Wu Bei.
Although Second Lieutenant Jiang Baocun was only a sixteen-year-old boy, he was already a veteran rebel. No, we couldn't say that. He should be said to be a senior Tang soldier.
His father was a bandit. During the Huangzhushan era, the small village where his father was located was attacked by the Tang Dynasty. After joining the entire Tang Dynasty, he naturally moved into Huangzhushan with his family.
When Li Xuan selected the first batch of Guards soldiers, he was not selected because he was too thin. However, due to frequent fierce battles with the Ming army in the Tang Dynasty, the demand for soldiers increased day by day. When the Guards were once again
When the scale was expanded, he was finally selected into the army.
But his luck was not very good. He had just become a member of the Guards. Before he could train for a few days, the Guards was disbanded and merged with other troops. Therefore, he could not compete with the previous Guards.
Colleagues were also promoted quickly and were still ordinary soldiers after being assigned to other units.
In addition, his body was relatively thin before and he was not used too much. However, after the food supply from the Tang Dynasty came, he also ate desperately, and all kinds of training were quite profound.
Later, when the Tang Dynasty established a formal cavalry unit, because of his excellent physical condition and his ability to integrate well with horses, he could not become a formal cavalry force even though he did not have any foundation in equestrian skills.
However, a cavalry unit naturally has other auxiliary forces. After Jiang Baocun entered the cavalry unit, he did not become a formal cavalryman, but instead became a groom.
Dealing with horses all day long, he also learned equestrian skills from the cavalrymen who surrendered to the Ming army. When the Tang Dynasty rushed out of Zhengtai County and entered Xingquan Mansion, he finally got his wish and became a knight.
Official cavalry.
After fighting several large-scale battles with the army in the north and south, he soon became what a soldier can achieve: sergeant!
Then it was because he had learned a lot of characters in the past period of time. Although he was still far from being able to read and write articles, he could barely read and write common characters, so he got a place to go to the martial arts school for further study.
Chance.
After a month of studying in the martial arts school, he became a second lieutenant officer in the Tang Dynasty and was sent to the split second cavalry battalion as a second lieutenant and deputy platoon leader.
Because the number of cavalry is scarce, and cavalry is originally an elite unit, and because it is difficult for the Tang Dynasty's cavalry troops to expand, and they frequently perform meritorious service in battles, it is difficult to promote them in terms of positions, and they can only be given to those with high military ranks.
compensated.
Therefore, the current rank configuration of the cavalry of the Tang Dynasty is usually relatively high. There are almost no second-class soldiers in the formal cavalry, and there are even few first-class soldiers. Many of them are non-commissioned officers.
The military ranks of officers are usually high. A platoon leader is often a lieutenant or even a captain, while the captain is a captain at the lowest level, and there may even be a major.
The commanders of cavalry battalions often start out as lieutenant colonels. Some senior cavalry battalion commanders, such as Lu Yuzhi, commander of the 2nd Cavalry Battalion, have the rank of colonel.
In terms of military rank, the commanders of cavalry and artillery battalions are often at the same level as the commanders of infantry regiments in the regular army.
Although Sergeant Jiang Baocun is young, his military rank is much higher than that of the middle-aged cavalry Sergeant Lin behind him!
When Jiang Baocun walked back, Sergeant Lin behind him also stood up and followed quickly: "They are indeed cavalry, there are at least twenty of them, and our cavalry around us has no other friendly troops at all except us. These
The cavalry must be fake Ming cavalry!"
This judgment of Sergeant Lin is also the unified judgment of Second Lieutenant Jiang Baocun and platoon leader Captain Wu Bei!
"These twenty-odd riders are just outside. Their speed has slowed down. They must have dismounted and are walking. What do you think? Do you want to give them a fight?"
"What else is there to say? Of course we have to fight. Their direction is towards the main force of our army. With so many cavalry rushing in, the other lone scout cavalry of our army cannot be opponents at all, and the same goes for the infantry.
If you can't stop their sudden investigation, you must stop them, otherwise, they can run all the way to the front of our Chinese army camp!"
Captain Wu Bei quickly made up his mind. Although his own troops were smaller, the enemy was overt and we were covert. The enemy was completely unprepared for our own, and the enemy was not far away from our own. Now he could already see it.
The more than 20 Ming army cavalry were walking slowly a few hundred meters away.
This is almost an ambush fighter plane sent to your door. It would be a pity to miss it. Besides, under such favorable tactical conditions, it is not a big problem for the opponent to have a few more people!
So he quickly gave the order: "Everyone, prepare to fight. When you rush over, be more clean and tidy. Put away your muskets. No one is allowed to use muskets without orders from me. We will mount our horses and charge directly to destroy them. When we charge,
Don’t stop, just rush over!”
Nowadays, the cavalry of the Tang Dynasty have undergone equipment innovation. In addition to the necessary sabers, the cavalry have also begun to be equipped with short-barreled muskets.
There is no way to equip the cavalry with matchlocks, because the cavalry of the Tang Dynasty are almost all light cavalry, and the horses they ride on are mainly southwest horses. Although the horses have good endurance, they can be used as pack horses and pull horses.
The horse is still passable, but to be honest, it is very unqualified to be used as a riding horse.
Therefore, it is impossible for the cavalry of the Tang Dynasty to be equipped with heavy equipment such as armor. At the same time, because their equestrian skills are average and their mounted shooting is even worse, they cannot play mounted shooting like those nomads or the northern frontier cavalry of the Ming Army.
But cavalry, even light cavalry, cannot conquer the world with only one saber. At the same time, Li Xuan did not turn these cavalry into mounted infantry, bring muskets and then fight dismounted. That would be a complete waste of the only resources of the Tang Dynasty.
Hundreds of war horses.
Even though these war horses are all southwestern horses, and only a few are Mongolian horses, which are extremely unsuitable for use as cavalry horses, they are still war horses, and they are the only war horses currently available to the Tang Dynasty.
After comprehensive consideration, Li Xuan equipped these cavalry with short-barreled matchlock guns and pistols. He originally wanted to directly equip the cavalry with several easier-to-carry pistols at the same time to form pistol cavalry, but the craftsmen of the Tang Dynasty
The power of the manufactured pistol is too small, and the effective range is too short. You need to advance within twenty or thirty meters of the enemy to shoot to cause effective damage.
Moreover, the industrial foundation of the Tang Dynasty was still poor. The broken pistols they produced had a very high failure rate. They often failed to fire and the ignition rate was less than half, which made the frontline cavalry quite resentful.
At the same time, this distance is the best distance for cavalry, and for a cavalry that is engaged in wall-mounting and charging, it is the best distance for melee combat at close range. It is better to just charge forward and engage in melee combat than to shoot and then turn and retreat.
Later, the cavalry were not equipped with pistols at all, but only long-barreled cavalry matchlocks. Of course, the length of this matchlock was still shorter than that of the infantry.
The original intention of the pistol is to fire a round of musket before charging at close range. However, due to the inherent shortcomings of the pistol, the frontline cavalry usually uses the pistol as a personal self-defense firearm or even for decoration. In actual combat, it is generally used
No, so he simply stopped equipping the cavalry with pistols. Li Xuan thought that after the research on flintlock guns appeared in the future, the firing rate of pistols would increase, and it would be easier to load and shoot before equipping them.
This long-barreled cavalry musket was used by the cavalry when dismounting and fighting on foot. However, so far, these cavalrymen of the Tang Dynasty had never engaged in dismounting and fighting on foot.
The cavalry of the Tang Dynasty was relatively abnormally developed. The tactic of wall-mounting charge, which is to form a neat formation and then charge forward to fight hand-to-hand, is okay, but it is not good to play small formations and mounted archery that require relatively high personal skills.
, even if you change the bow and arrow into a pistol, you can't use it.
As for dismounting and fighting on foot, it is also not very reliable!
So although they all carried muskets, Captain Wu Bei did not choose to use them. Anyway, they were only more than 300 meters away from the enemy. This distance was exactly the best charging distance for a cavalry, which was enough for them to use their speed.
Raise the limit, and then use the saber to kill all enemies in front of you.
So he simply ordered to charge directly with the saber. As for the musket, this crap can roll as far as it goes!
Following Captain Wu Bei's order, many cavalrymen stood beside their horses, and then formed a simple three-row formation, with five people in a row.
Although there are only a few dozen of these cavalry, they are still the most orthodox cavalry of the Tang Dynasty. They are best at, and it can even be said that the only thing they can do is charging on the wall, so they formed a tight formation.
They are going to use sabers to fight a charge that they are best at!