"Get on the horse!" Captain Wu Bei gave the order and at the same time he got on the horse himself.
And this was the fourth time he rode on his own war horse after he went north with the army and entered Jingzhou. In addition to daily training, he was absolutely reluctant to ride on his war horse in daily life. The previous three times he had to do combat missions because of this.
, and the same is true this time.
"Draw your sword!" Captain Wu Bei ordered again after they all mounted their horses. In fact, the cavalry below knew what to do without him having to say it.
"Go slowly!"
This small cavalry unit began to advance slowly, crossing the trees in the woods. When they were about to emerge from the woods, Captain Wu Bei ordered the troops to start speeding up: "trot forward!"
At this time, they had already rushed out of the woods on horses that started to trot, and the sound of horse hooves began to sound in the sky.
The Ming Army cavalry hundreds of meters away also discovered them one by one at this time. The Ming Army officer in the lead shouted something, obviously to gather his cavalry to prepare for war!
But it's too late!
For the cavalry unit, which has begun to speed up and is getting faster and faster, covering a few hundred meters is just a short moment. As Captain Wu Bei pointed the saber forward and diagonally, he shouted: "Charge!"
"At that time, this cavalry unit with only a dozen people was already less than a hundred meters away from the Ming army cavalry.
Even though these Ming cavalry moved quickly, most of them had already mounted their horses, and even started to gather their formations to fight, but the time left for them was simply not enough. In fact, for them, the best way to deal with it was to simply mount their horses and run away.
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It's a pity that they didn't, they chose to fight, and some even urged the war horses to launch a countercharge!
The next moment, Captain Wu Bei led fifteen cavalrymen under his command and ran into the Ming cavalry in front of them. Although the scattered Ming cavalry also rose up to resist, their scattered formation made them unable to fight despite their total strength.
There were nearly ten more cavalrymen, but in fact the cavalrymen who fought against Captain Wu Bei's cavalry, especially at the same time, only had two or three people fighting against them.
And this is the real advantage of wall charging tactics!
This tactic is actually not special at all. It has only one core point, which is to concentrate as many troops as possible to attack the enemy's small number of troops, so as to obtain a local strength advantage on the same front.
In other words, try to use two cavalry or even three or four cavalry to attack one of the enemy's cavalry. This advantage can work even when the enemy's total strength is obviously greater than your own!
This battle between cavalry was unfair from the beginning. Captain Wu Bei's cavalry discovered the Ming cavalry first and launched a surprise attack as soon as possible.
And this unfairness made the outcome of this small-scale battle doomed from the beginning: the Ming army was defeated miserably!
And the defeat was extremely miserable. Except for a few cavalry who saw that the momentum was not right, they turned their horses and ran for their lives. Most of the other Ming army cavalry were killed by Captain Wu Bei's cavalry. Most of them were killed or injured.
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After the battle, Captain Wu Bei was satisfied and collected the horses that originally belonged to the Ming army's cavalry. Now these horses were captured by them. In addition, the swords and other weapons of the Ming army were also confiscated.
As for the prisoners, not a single one was captured, because in this fierce cavalry confrontation, regardless of the enemy or ourselves, as long as they were injured, most of them would be seriously injured, and in this era, there is actually no difference between being seriously injured and being killed in battle.
One of the cavalrymen under his command was killed, and there was also a seriously injured person. Although the wounded person's injury seemed a bit serious, it was his own robe after all. He couldn't just deal with it like he did with the seriously injured people of the Ming army. Instead, he simply
After simple disinfection with the alcohol carried by the army, he was bandaged, and then he was put on horseback to take him back. As for whether he could survive, it only depended on God's will.
As for the Ming Army, seven or eight people were killed on the spot, and about ten others were seriously injured. When dealing with such seriously injured Ming Army soldiers, they directly dealt with the wounded. Anyway, they would not be able to save them if they did not touch up the wounds. They would be there in the future.
Dying slowly in pain, this process may take a few minutes or a few hours, but it is basically impossible to survive.
However, a lot of horses were captured, more than ten in total, and he found that these horses were much better than the southwest horses used by his own people. As a cavalryman, he could recognize them at a glance. These Ming cavalry horses should be
Most of the Mongolian horses in the north are 1.3 meters tall at the shoulder, which is almost ten centimeters taller than the horses from the southwest they carefully selected.
The shoulder height of most southwest horses is generally only about one meter. Only a few outstanding ones can reach 1.2 meters. The war horses used by the cavalry of the Tang Dynasty King's Division are naturally selected southwest horses, with the minimum standard of shoulder height.
It is 1.15 meters, and some can reach 1.2 meters.
These Mongolian horses used by the Ming army as war horses can reach a height of one and three meters at the shoulder. Although this height is still very short for riding war horses, it is relatively rare in East Asia.
However, Captain Wu Bei didn't know that just when he led his cavalry platoon to defeat a Ming army cavalry and even captured more than ten horses, more Ming army scouts came in one after another, and the Tang army's
It is impossible for the peripheral cavalry to completely intercept these Ming army reconnaissance cavalry.
In the same way, the cavalry units of the Ming Army were unable to intercept all the reconnaissance of the Tang Dynasty King's Division. Therefore, the existence of these reconnaissance cavalry made both sides more aware of each other.
When the Ming army returned to Jingzhou from Xingquan Prefecture and began to circle the north, Chen Keqiao did not take any action at first, but soon he learned that the Ming army in Jingzhou City also left the city and was also heading north.
when.
He made a prompt decision and directly ordered the troops to set off and head directly to the north!
He had already seen that these Ming troops wanted to avoid him and then join together. In this case, his plan of waiting for work would naturally be impossible to realize.
Now he has to compete with these Ming armies for time, and defeat the Ming armies coming out of Jingzhou City before the Ming armies converge!
And in this, he is full of confidence!
He brought most of the main troops of the 3rd Infantry Brigade over, and there were also a lot of auxiliary troops, with a total strength of more than 7,000. If the Ming army was hiding in Jiancheng, then he might also want to avoid
He avoided fighting due to casualties, but now that the Ming army in Jingzhou City ran out on their own, he was not polite.
In the field battle, he had great confidence to defeat the Ming army, which numbered only ten thousand people, and it would not take too long to find them and defeat them. The entire battle would probably not take more than a day.
But if you want to defeat them in the field, it's not whether you can beat them in the early stage, but whether you can find them first, and find and defeat them before the two of them meet.
Therefore, in the subsequent battles, the role of cavalry was still irreplaceable. Chen Keqiao sent out almost all the reconnaissance cavalry in the infantry unit. Later, he still felt that the reconnaissance cavalry was not enough, and even used the cavalry originally for peripheral realm tasks.
The Second Cavalry Battalion also dispatched some cavalry to serve as reconnaissance cavalry.
Although the reconnaissance cavalry in the King's Division of the Tang Dynasty also belongs to the cavalry, the reconnaissance cavalry teams directly under each infantry regiment and the cavalry in the military cavalry battalion are actually completely different arms. At most, those reconnaissance cavalry can run fast on horseback, and then become human
They are clever and can break through the enemy's blockade to conduct reconnaissance missions, but it is too reluctant to let them engage in immediate combat.
The essence of the cavalry in the cavalry battalion is not actually reconnaissance, but for regular combat. The focus of both sides is different, and the subjects of daily training are also different.
Of course, when necessary, the scout cavalry can be pulled up and used as regular cavalry, and the regular cavalry can also be pulled out to serve as scout cavalry, but the effect is not so good.
After all, the formation of the army in the Tang Dynasty was relatively short, and the training of cavalry took a long time. It was impossible for the Tang Dynasty King's Division to equip every cavalry with a variety of combat skills at the same time. They could only focus on developing one of them.
, to form combat effectiveness as soon as possible.
Under this general situation, the cavalry of both sides are still fighting continuously. This kind of cavalry fighting is mainly small-scale fighting. Generally speaking, one side wants to break through the blockade and intercept them for reconnaissance, and the other side just wants to stop them.
Overall, the casualties on both sides were not large, and the results were relatively even.
Because in small-scale battles, the competition is who has better horses, better equipment, and better riding skills. In this regard, the Ming army actually has a clear advantage, and the Tang cavalry has the advantage.
There was a large-scale cavalry battle, so although our own small-scale cavalry suffered relatively heavy losses, through the blockade and sweep of the second cavalry battalion, we annihilated the Ming army's cavalry units several times in a row.
This evened the results for both sides!
Chen Keqiao was a little dissatisfied with this point, because the Tang Dynasty had a small number of cavalry. The Fourth Army only had a total of 200 regular cavalry, and about 70 more reconnaissance cavalry.
The cavalry unit with less than 300 people had lost more than 30 people in the cavalry battles in recent days, which made Chen Keqiao a little worried.
So later on, we simply changed the reconnaissance mode. Not one, but two cavalrymen went out to conduct reconnaissance. If they were caught by the enemy, they would just deliver food. It would be better to go out to conduct reconnaissance as a platoon. In this way, they would encounter the Ming army's reconnaissance cavalry and small soldiers.
A large-scale intercepting cavalry can also fight a battle.
This is also the reason why Chen Keqiao later sent the Second Cavalry Battalion to act as a reconnaissance force.
In this way, the losses of the cavalry were much smaller, but the relative results were greatly expanded. This change in the situation also made the Ming generals on the opposite side heartbroken and worried.