Chapter 345: Shock Cavalry

"Back in the day in New Qinzhong, we followed the Great King and fought the Xiongnu barbarian cavalry. Looking back now, cavalry's nothing special — knock 'em into a ditch, and your old man here just raises his blade and brings it down, one chop per head!"

Qin He was a Platoon Centurion, commanding a hundred-man unit. When he wasn't drinking, he wasn't much of a talker. But the junior officer under him was an old soldier too, with a mouth that had no gate. He was always bragging to the brothers under his command about how they'd followed the King of Wei, striking the oars midstream to cross the Yellow River and fight the Xiongnu — the spittle flying from his lips more torrential than the Yellow River itself.

When he finished, he'd turn and throw a question at Qin He, who'd been listening in silence, demanding he back him up.

"Centurion Qin, these louts don't believe me — you tell 'em!"

Qin He only nodded, letting it pass as silent agreement. Truth was, he was too embarrassed to lie, and just muttered inwardly: "We'd only just been folded into the ranks back then. If we'd really caught that battle and earned merit, I'd be commanding a whole battalion by now."

Take their own superior, for instance — the Major who commanded a thousand men had gotten there exactly that way. The Wei army now had plenty of factions, and the New Qinzhong old guard styled themselves the direct line. But even within the direct line, there were ranks within ranks: how early or late you'd followed the King of Wei, whether you'd taken part in the major campaigns, whether you'd earned any merit — all of it was crucial for determining seniority.

Though the facts were a little off, he'd heard his comrades recount the events plenty of times, and later, while garrisoning the beacon towers, he'd clashed with Xiongnu roving riders a few times himself. Qin He truly was no stranger to cavalry.

Was there any cavalry in the world fiercer than the barbarian riders?

Never mind the remnants of the Surpassing Cavalry Battalion, whose standing in the Wei army had plummeted. Looking at their battle record, infantry beating cavalry didn't seem all that hard after all.

"Longyou riders ought to fall somewhere between the barbarian cavalry and the Surpassing Cavalry Battalion, right?"

Yet when they actually faced them in formation, as the soldiers felt the ground tremble and swallowed hard one after another, Qin He kept his face steady, but inside, he was pretty tense himself.

They were far in the rear of the formation, and the troops to their left and right were still hastily assembling. The enemy had charged without even finishing their own formation, attacking with no regard for the rules of war, and for a moment the scene was chaos.

Qin He scrambled up onto the armored war-cart assigned to them and looked out from the height. His gaze swept past the dense mass of black heads and black helmets in the forward ranks, and he could see the enemy riders sweeping in from the west like a blizzard, rolling toward them.

"Something's off."

He spat out the dry grass root he'd been chewing to ease his nerves, a flicker of surprise in his eyes. Though Qin He was far away, he could tell this cavalry was nothing like the Xiongnu riders: not lightly equipped like the barbarian cavalry, who used bows as their main weapon, shooting as they rode, swift and fleeting in their comings and goings.

Instead, they massed together, over a thousand riders forming a single block, and came charging straight in just like that. The front ranks all had barding on their horses and mostly carried long lances and ring-headed blades.

At a hundred-plus paces out — the very spot where they ought to have reined in and loosed their arrows — the Longyou riders didn't stop. Instead, they spurred their horses faster, surging forward in a headlong rush, charging straight for the edge of the Wei army's right wing!

It was a meeting engagement. The Wei army had just arrived; the carts they'd brought weren't yet properly deployed, the formation was still loose, there'd been no time at all to dig trenches, and they hadn't even managed to set out the chevaux-de-frise. The forward troops, hurriedly assembled to the drumbeats, had only just gotten off two volleys from their crossbows and raised their dagger-axes and lances when the cavalry slammed into their ranks!

Long dagger-axes snapped against horse armor. The violent impact sent men and horses tumbling. The good-family riders concentrated their assault on a single battalion, and a hundred-pace stretch of the line came under attack, instantly plunging into chaos.

The enemy cavalry's onslaught was so fierce it left no time to think. The soldiers at the front were stunned; the troops behind them were dazed too. This was their first time facing large-scale cavalry head-on. Even with their officers drilling it into their ears, when the moment came, they were still caught off guard.

The battalion the good-family riders had burst into — over a thousand men — fell apart. The tall, armored warhorses were like monsters, and the terrified Wei soldiers began fleeing to the rear.

A single point of collapse can drag down a whole line, then spread across the entire front. Half a year ago, it would have turned into a cascading rout, the kind where the front breaks and the rear crumbles and scatters. But this time, the rear formations actually held firm!

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The soldiers who'd regained their wits leveled their lances, aiming them at the Longyou good-family riders who, having won a small victory, were still trying to push deeper, and also at their own panicked, fleeing comrades.

"Any who turn and flee, breaking our ranks — kill without mercy!"

"Third Battalion, on me! Shift forward! Plug the gap!"

Amid the surging mass of heads, Qin He heard the Major's bellowing shouts, and saw the Colonel's pennant waving — ordering them to envelop from the flank, turn the rear into the front, and drag the attacking good-family riders into a melee!

But the Longyou good-family lads were sharp. The moment their charge struck home, they wheeled their horses and sped away. Even those whose mounts had been killed doubled up with comrades, shooting as they rode, withdrawing in good order, leaving behind only a field of broken corpses and dead horses on the snow.

That single assault was brutally savage. At least a hundred Wei soldiers lay dead on the spot, with over two hundred wounded, while the good-family riders had lost barely a dozen killed, and their wounded had managed to pull back — and a thousand more servant cavalry were waiting a mile out to receive them.

"No pursuit! Everyone pull back — forming ranks is the priority!"

Qin He and his men had already pushed their armored war-carts forward to the very front line, replacing the battalion that had taken the heaviest losses.

Qin He lowered his head. The snow wasn't white at all — it was filthy. Yellow mud, red blood, foul and defiled, like a painting.

Before him lay a dead horse. Its barding covered its chest and face. At least three or four dagger-axes and lances had snapped against it before one had driven deep into the gap between the chest-piece and the neck-guard. But the horse still wasn't quite dead — it had even trampled a fallen Wei soldier to death, its hooves sticky with blood and gut-filth.

Yet it had fallen after all. A gash had been opened in its neck, the blood drained away — its own rider had ended its life with a dagger.

"This horse armor's better than my own body armor."

Qin He ran his hand over the finely crafted barding. He didn't know much about such things; he could only tell the iron was good, the leather was good, and the lacing was exquisite. The thin armor plates arrayed together had a cold, grim beauty. He wondered how many dozens or hundreds of farmers and craftsmen on some estate, over how many months or years, had labored to make it.

He lifted his head and watched the enemy's silhouettes — after that thunderclap strike, they'd swiftly pulled back before the Wei army could envelop them as a rearguard, leaving behind only a mess of muddy hoofprints. A cold sweat broke out on him, and he muttered inwardly:

"Compared to them, the Xiongnu don't amount to shit!"

"The strongest cavalry in the world — it's the Longyou good-family riders, isn't it?"

……

The good-family riders' attack on the far edge of the right wing was sudden and clean, giving every unit in the Wei army a terrible fright.

Attacked before the formation was even set — this was it, they were done for!

But as the commander of the right wing's ten thousand men, Imperial Counselor Jing Dan did not panic. He knew this was a probing assault by the enemy, taking advantage of their unsteady footing, and also a blow aimed at Wei army morale.

Watching their figures withdraw with such composure, Jing Dan couldn't help but sigh: "In this realm, the strongest cavalry must be the Youzhou shock cavalry of Shanggu and Yuyang. But the good-family riders aren't far behind — they can rank second."

Though King Wuling of Zhao had adopted barbarian dress and horse-archery, cavalry in the Warring States era was still only an auxiliary arm, doing odd jobs like cutting supply lines and chasing routed foes — which, admittedly, was all the Surpassing Cavalry Battalion was good for now, too.

In the early Han, when they fought the Xiongnu, the old tactics from the civil wars no longer worked. Opinions vary on the full story behind the disgrace at Baideng, but one thing is certain: the Han troops got schooled by unfamiliar tactics. After much painful reflection, they began raising horses on a massive scale and building up their cavalry.

But no matter how they trained, shooting as they rode was something the riders of the Central Plains could never master. To insist on competing with the Xiongnu — who were riding sheep at three and shooting foxes at five — in that arena was to abandon one's strengths and play to one's weaknesses.

Since they couldn't beat them at horse archery, they adopted a tactic that could leverage the Han army's advantages in stout armor and sharp blades: shock cavalry!

"Shock cavalry" means cavalry capable of charging and breaking enemy formations. At first, they were still just "mounted infantry" — horses were a tool to close the distance, the goal being to engage the Xiongnu in close-quarters blade combat. By the time of Emperor Wu of Han, they'd transformed from a mere appendage of infantry and chariots into the army's core, able to harass with bowfire from a distance and smash home with shock charges up close.

No one was more adept at this tactic than Huo Qubing. He launched several deep raids into the Xiongnu rear, leaving the Xiongnu utterly stunned for an entire generation.

Huo Qubing's final campaign was against the Xiongnu's Left Division, where he sealed the victory at Langjuxu Mountain. His army was composed mainly of men from Youzhou and Bingzhou. Today's Youzhou shock cavalry are plainly the most orthodox inheritors of General Huo's shock tactics. Ever since the Xin Dynasty began, they've spent years tangling with the Xiongnu and Wuhuan beyond the frontier.

Though many of the forebears of the Longyou six-commandery lads had followed Huo Qubing as his subordinate generals and colonels, after incidents like Huo Qubing shooting and killing Li Gan, it's hard to say how much of that bond remained. The good-family riders' shock cavalry tactics were learned more from the Western Qiang.

The Western Qiang live intermingled with the Han people of Longyou. Their soldiers excel in the valleys and are weak on the plains, but their most famous trait is a fierce eagerness to charge — at the slightest provocation, they launch a cavalry assault. The good-family riders have adopted this, and today we've seen their valor and keen edge with our own eyes.

Know the enemy and know yourself, and in a hundred battles you'll never be in peril. Jing Dan had personally led the Youzhou shock cavalry in battle at Shanggu. He knew very well the strengths of shock cavalry — and he knew their weaknesses too!

"They can only stake everything on the force of a single charge — they cannot last!"

……

The Wei army's central command had chosen a slightly elevated hillock to plant its banners. From here, the entire situation on the Zhouyuan battlefield was clearly visible. When the good-family riders launched their sudden assault on the right wing, Diwu Lun saw it all with perfect clarity.

"Great King, the first company of the right wing's third regiment has nearly collapsed…"

Zhang Yu and the others around Diwu Lun all urged him not to stand beneath a crumbling wall, but to withdraw to the abandoned village hamlet behind them and simply wait for the battle to end.

"Who says they've collapsed?"

But he was reprimanded by the King of Wei for it. Diwu Lun turned his gaze back to the battlefield. The right wing was struggling to adjust, and the soldiers in the rear ranks were filling the gaps in the front. There was no collapse at first contact, no large-scale rout. These past six months of fighting had not been in vain.

"For an encounter battle hit by a surprise enemy cavalry charge, holding up this well is already no small feat."

Diwu Lun was also watching the enemy's movements. Unlike the simple and clear-cut judgment of Jing Dan, the thoughts in Diwu Lun's mind were far more complicated.

"Though the Longyou cavalry of good families are the elite among the Central Plains horsemen, in my eyes, their weaknesses are legion... No high-cantle saddles, no stirrups, no horseshoes — that such cavalry can still manage a charge, one can only praise them with: the brave know no fear."

The riding saddle Diwu Lun now used was still the small saddle the Queen had given him as a gift before he journeyed north to join the army. It was a low-cantle saddle, clearly concave in the middle, but its two ends were still quite flat, quite unlike the high-cantle saddles with towering ends seen in later television dramas and on racecourses.

Though better than a primitive saddle pad, it still could not stop violent jolting. Thus, at the moment of the shock charge, not only were many Wei soldiers sent flying, but the riders on horseback also often flew off entirely, crashing down hard before the enemy.

Horseshoes did not exist either. It was Diwu Lun who had first promoted this item in the Wei army. Even if what was nailed on was wood, it could ease the wear on the hooves of oxen and horses, reducing the chance of them being injured or dropping dead. In an era where livestock were precious, this was a bargain of a trade.

The Longyou warhorses on the opposing side enjoyed no such preferential treatment. Even cherished by the good families, who rode only pack horses when not in battle and let the warhorses follow the army with empty backs, crossing the Long Slope meant rugged roads, and with the winter snow, the horses were far more delicate than the men. Likely several thousand horses had already dropped dead or lost their fighting strength...

"The surviving Longyou horses, compared to after autumn, must be a full circle thinner and weaker."

With no pasture grass in winter, and Right Fufeng having no chance to stockpile dry hay beforehand, the warhorses could only be fed wheat and beans. One horse eats the rations of at least five men. So many hungry horse mouths must have given the Wei clan a splitting headache. Was a major reason for their retreat, apart from fear of Little Geng cutting off their rear, also the pressure of logistics difficulties?

Rather than let the Longyou warhorses waste away by half without a decisive battle, better to take a gamble... That was probably what Wei Cui was thinking.

As for stirrups, needless to say, at present there were only single-side stirrups, or even just a knotted rope hung, merely to make mounting swift in battle. Diwu Lun had heard that the Longyou good-family sons, who prided themselves on superb horsemanship, even considered hanging a single stirrup beneath the saddle a disgrace, and took mounting without stirrups as a mark of excellence. Thus when they charged, not only did they have to grip lances and hold halberds, and brandish ring-pommel sabers, they also had to split their focus to clamp their legs tightly to the horse's belly.

Diwu Lun thought to himself, "Although the good-family cavalry are full-time warriors, lacking stirrups as a foothold on the horse, their legs cannot gain lateral leverage."

"Once a charge devolves into close combat with men and horses tangled together, when the horses stop moving and they are surrounded by infantry, they will fall to a disadvantage!"

"Was it not just such overconfident charging that got the Yue Cavalry Camp routed, men and horses toppled, by Lai Xi's two thousand men?" Diwu Lun now began mocking Yue as well.

The probing attack of the Longyou cavalry had yielded decent results, and they would likely grow even more arrogant next. Diwu Lun gave the order: "Pass the word down, let the whole army know."

"The Third Company of the right wing repelled an assault by several thousand enemy cavalry, inflicting disproportionate casualties, and held their ground. Every man is awarded one gold cake!"

The same old gold offensive again. Diwu Lun was exceedingly generous in his spending. After all, deeply steeped in consumerist culture, even if he had never raised a pig, he had seen one run. Later on, he would have plenty of ways to swindle those gold cakes back out of the soldiers' hands... no, to reclaim them...

And incidentally, by spreading the false report of "inflicting disproportionate casualties," he told the whole army: the enemy cavalry are nothing to fear.

The main Longyou force, infantry from the sixteen powerful clans, had now entered the battlefield. Banners snapped in the wind as they assembled just five li away. The cavalry slowly pulled back, arraying themselves on the two wings.

The Wei army, too, had recovered from its earlier panic. War chariots were pushed to the front, and the formation was drawn up in neat order.

Though it was clearly a freezing day, Diwu Lun only felt rather hot. This battle was a grand review of his own faction's field-combat capability:

"The cavalry ranked among the best under heaven, the charge-specialist Longyou good-family sons."

"Meeting the stand-specialist Wei soldiers."

"Will it be your spearpoint that is sharper, or my shield that is harder?"

PS: Second chapter at 23:00.