Chapter 336: Minister of Works Zhang's Clever Chain Stratagem

Commanding a battlefield in the cold-weapons era was far more difficult than in the later age of firearms.

This difficulty was not a matter of complexity. In terms of complexity, with the constant innovation of military technology, arms and weapons inevitably became ever more finely divided and ever more complex.

The difficulty spoken of here was chiefly this: transmitting orders from senior officers down to the specific fighting units was extremely hard.

In an age when communication depended on shouting, orders could only be delivered by orderlies.

Even for an army formation of just ten thousand men, accurately passing orders down within a short time was no easy matter.

It required orderlies who were highly efficient and could fully grasp the commander-in-chief's operational intent.

Moreover, orders could not be passed directly from the commander-in-chief to the most basic fighting units; they could only be relayed down level by level, which in turn required large numbers of junior and mid-level officers of high quality, so as to ensure that by the time an order reached the bottom it had not gone stale or been misunderstood.

But this only increased the difficulty of transmitting orders, because the execution of feudal armies was often very poor, and junior officers would delay out of fear or other reasons.

To put it plainly, the greatest command problem on an ancient battlefield was the timeliness of transmitting military orders and the execution ability of the rank and file.

That was why the military codes of strong armies in ancient times were always exceptionally harsh — the so-called Seven Prohibitions and Fifty-Four Beheadings and the like, regulating every aspect down to the finest detail.

In some respects they were stricter than the regulations of later ages, and compared with other ancient states and peoples, they far surpassed them.

Of course, those who drew up military codes surely knew that harsh codes were very hard to enforce among illiterate soldiers and illiterate junior and mid-level officers, who simply could not remember them, and even had trouble understanding them.

So these harsh military codes were mainly not meant to be enforced; rather, the codes were meant to serve as a kind of brainwashing and conditioned reflex.

They made junior officers and soldiers fear the military code more than death, thereby raising their execution on the battlefield and making them as responsive as one's own arms and fingers.

Later generations often jokingly called the countries of the Chinese cultural sphere the East Asian Monster House, with armies of explosive fighting strength, and a very important reason for that was the tradition of strict military codes.

Even the Turks, Xiongnu, and even the Mongols on the steppe, through study of and exchange with the Central Plains dynasties, all placed great emphasis on military codes.

At the height of their power, these armies could use military codes to form a highly efficient combat system, and against the lax armies of Central Asia and Europe they naturally produced crushing blows.

This was also why, before the large-scale appearance of firearms, a small force led by a commander, or by a trusted fierce general of the commander-in-chief, could often change the course of a battle.

Apart from their good equipment and training, the greater reason was their good execution: they could find the breakthrough point on the battlefield in the shortest time and carry it out resolutely.

On the whole, apart from a very few iron armies like Grandfather Yue's Yue Family Army, in most cold-weapons-era battles, out of a hundred thousand men, the core fighting strength would not exceed twenty thousand.

The rest could be regarded as something slightly better than cheerleaders, useful for raising morale, cleaning up the battlefield, seizing ground, and joining pursuits, but of little use in the decisive engagement.

And once these twenty thousand core troops lost thirty to forty percent, or half, and collapsed, the battle was over.

This was also why, in the cold-weapons era, armies could generally only sustain losses of around ten percent.

Because the trusted inner troops willing to fight for the greatest benefits were only that few, and you could not expand these elite troops just because you wanted to.

Elite soldiers had to be maintained with large amounts of resources. Productivity in the feudal era was what it was, and the wealth produced determined the upper limit on the number of core soldiers and officers.

The reason the Guiyi Army under Zhang Zhao, which grew out of the Fengtian Army, was so formidable in Hexi and Anxi,

apart from the little bit of golden-finger help Zhang Zhao provided, was chiefly that these several thousand men had been raised by Zhang Zhao with everything he had, and everything about them was deeply bound to Zhang Zhao.

In the Anxi and Hexi period, they took more than sixty percent of the surface benefits of the Khotan Golden Kingdom, and Li Shengtian's Palace Guard Army was reduced to playing second fiddle to the Fengtian Army.

More than sixty percent of Khotan's output was converted into grain, mules and horses, and other supplies for the Fengtian Army.

It was the same after their return: the wealth and goods Zhang Zhao obtained from the Hexi monastic community, the fine fields opened up in Liangzhou, and the wealth, fields, and lands confiscated in Lanzhou from the the the Shatuo Li clan and the Jincheng Wang clan and others — all of it was for maintaining these several thousand men of the Guiyi Army.

This was also why he needed to keep campaigning: to use more wealth and land to expand the core numbers of the Guiyi Army and to feed them.

So in this battle outside Mapaoquan Village, He Chuan had to wait until his yabing guards had finished donning their armor.

Because they were the core fighting strength of the entire rebel army, and while the yabing guards were arming themselves, Defense Commissioner Wu also had to lead his personal guards forward to hold the line.

Otherwise — heh! When it came to plundering wealth and girls, the yabing guards ate their fill before giving the other soldiers a little of the broth; now that a hard fight was coming, if they made the other soldiers go up first, that would be breaking the rules.

If you show no loyalty, don't expect any from me. These soldiers would dare to simply down tools right on the battlefield, and they would do so as a matter of course.

So on He Chuan's side, although orders were issued one after another, the soldiers at the very front barely moved.

The crossbowmen coming from the great formation on the right were still dawdling, and had not launched even a single attack against the Guiyi Army's whirlwind catapults.

Fortunately, at this moment the Guiyi Army's whirlwind catapults stopped firing.

First, the dressed stone shot was nearly used up; second, the key components of the catapults had worn too severely, and their kinetic energy had dropped considerably, so they had to be inspected and repaired.

But the destruction caused by these eighty camel-borne whirlwind catapults was still terrifying: they had directly smashed two du of crossbowmen into paralysis and shattered four du of bowmen and crossbowmen into collapse.

Although a du in the Central Plains was equivalent to one jiang of the Guiyi Army, only a hundred-odd men, it inflicted enormous psychological pressure on the rebel army and dealt a severe blow to the morale of the entire rebel force.

Dong-dong-dong-dong! After about the time it takes to drink half a cup of tea, the great drum of the rebel army's center and the drums of each command began to pound, and Defense Commissioner Wu led five hundred of his personal guards forward.

With his forward command and steadying presence, the rebel vanguard, over six thousand men, advanced on the Guiyi Army in three large formations and more than a dozen small ones, directed by drums and banners.

Defense Commissioner Wu's five hundred men were in the center, armed with arm-drawn crossbows, with sword-and-shield men guarding the front, and on either side archers carrying spears on their backs and strong bows in their hands.

On the left and right wings were crossbowmen armed with wooden single-shot crossbows, less powerful but more flexible.

At this moment the wooden crossbowmen on both wings spread out in a crane-wing formation, and their numbers were fairly dispersed; they adopted a "stars across the sky" shooting strategy.

That is, the crossbowmen scattered and used a small number of bolts to blanket the entire enemy army, creating the illusion that bolts were coming from every direction, with the emphasis on striking at enemy morale.

Zhang Zhao waved his hand, and the great drum beside him began to pound. Hearing the commander-in-chief's drum, the command drums of the officers of each zhen, ying, and du began to sound in response.

With each beat of the drum they took one step; through the drumbeats the officers controlled the soldiers' pace, thereby ensuring the integrity of the formation.

At the same time, the yellow banner with black characters beside Commander-in-Chief Zhang Zhao began to sway left and right, and Bai Congxin in the distance received the message and immediately made arrangements.

Murong Xinzhang on the left wing and Li Cunhui on the right wing each led two hundred cavalry galloping out from the two wings; they were going to strike the scattered "stars across the sky" crossbowmen on the rebel army's left and right wings.

When these dispersed crossbowmen saw the cavalry galloping toward them, more than a dozen of their squad leaders began roaring furiously, and the crossbowmen who had been scattered like stars across the sky began to assemble in units based on two squads.

Like plum blossoms, they clustered on the left and right wings; twenty crossbowmen rapidly formed into a semicircular small formation of ten crossbowmen, four spearmen, three sword-and-shield men, two hook-scythe men, and one great-club man.

Of these, the crossbowmen were responsible for long-range strikes.

The spearmen resisted direct cavalry charges.

The sword-and-shield men guarded against volleys from enemy cavalry.

The hook-scythe men used the curved hooks of their hook-scythes to drag charging cavalrymen down from their horses.

The great-club man was the one responsible for beating the cavalrymen to death.

They were scattered all over the ground like plum blossoms, twenty men to a small formation, able to attack and defend, and able to support one another.

If cavalry really did charge over, passing through their mutually supporting 'plum blossom' formations, they'd be in for a skinning!

With this style of fighting, those steppe cavalry with slightly inferior armor would often have few men left after just a few charges.

Unfortunately, the Hexi army was no steppe people, and they knew very well how deadly this style of fighting was.

So when Murong Xinzhang and Li Cunhui saw the rebel troops shifting formation quickly, they immediately circled around, halted at a distance, and then dismounted.

These elite riders of the Guiyi Army basically all wore padded armor, and on their horses they carried not only horn crossbows but also foot bows — they would never come charging into the formation.

Murong Xinzhang roared several times, and two hundred riders formed a small crane-wing formation, advancing slowly under the direction of a small drum.

The horn crossbow's range was about the same as the wooden single-shot crossbow, its power a bit greater, but its rate of fire somewhat slower.

But at this moment, Murong Xinzhang's two hundred men were all heavily armored crossbowmen with advantages in armor and numbers. The moment the two sides met, the rebel troops were shot into utter chaos, men and horses toppling.

"Fuck your mother! Is this really cavalry from Hexi? Better armor than me, strong bows and hard crossbows, and they can even dismount and fight as heavy armored foot archers!"

The rebel Captain cursed loudly and hurriedly ordered his spearmen, hook-sickle men, and club wielders to pick up crossbows and begin returning fire.

But they had originally formed a plum blossom formation, and now having to switch to a crane-wing formation suited for shooting threw the soldiers into a flurry of confusion.

Suddenly! Just as their plum blossom formation scattered, the sound of hoofbeats rang out.

It turned out Murong Xinzhang had not dismounted all his men — he had kept thirty riders back. Now, as the rebel troops changed formation, they charged out from behind the riderless warhorses.

"Thirty riders think they can charge my two hundred men? I'll shoot you dead!" The rebel Captain sneered and ordered his crossbowmen to concentrate their fire on the charging Hexi cavalry.

Although these Hexi cavalry were spread very wide apart, under concentrated fire from dozens or even a hundred strong bows and hard crossbows, they still quickly lost more than ten riders. The rest circled around and scattered to both sides, not daring to charge again.

The rebel Captain bared his big yellow teeth in a grin and was about to jeer, but his face suddenly froze.

Because after this wave of thirty-odd riders had been shot apart, the remaining Hexi cavalry had seized the opportunity to mount up.

Now it was one hundred seventy armored riders charging his two hundred men in a crane-wing formation only one rank deep — and they had just emptied their crossbows, with no time to reload.

"Fuck your mother! I'm done for!" Cold sweat slid down the Captain's forehead as he frantically reached for the spear he had just tossed aside at his feet.

But at that moment, the soldiers ranked beside him collapsed in a thunderous rout. Many turned and ran, because they knew full well there was no time and no way to hold.

Murong Xinzhang, furious that the rebel crossbowmen had shot dead more than a dozen of his brothers, relied on the extreme speed of his mount Snow-Through-Dust and was the first to crash into the rebel ranks.

He swung his long lance, and with one strike he snapped the fleeing rebel Captain's head backward, breaking the neck bone outright. Then striking left and hammering right, he and his hundred-odd riders quickly cut down more than half of this rebel crossbow unit.

On the other side, Li Cunhui did the same, using nearly identical tactics to cave in the rebel crossbowmen on both flanks. Then they remounted and kept hunting for weak points in the rebel lines to harass.

At this point, Defense Commissioner Wu, commanding from the front, could hold back no longer. He signaled with flags, ordering the cavalry on both wings to sortie and make sure to devour the two units of Murong Xinzhang and Li Cunhui harassing his flanks.

The moment those several hundred rebel cavalry moved, Bai Congxin bellowed. He and Wang Tongxin split left and right, leading eight hundred cavalry out from the Guiyi Army's two wings to intercept the rebel cavalry.

At the same time, Sun Xiaoguo's main rebel cavalry force at Mapaoquan Village had received a batch of horn crossbows as support. He gathered more than eight hundred riders and came galloping straight for Zhang Zhao's main formation.

But almost simultaneously, a signal cannon boomed, and Zhebu Jiashi, Du Lun Chixin, Wen Chongle, the Qingzhou Tangut Li Yanli's unit, and the Huizhou Tangut Li Zhongchao and his son's unit — all lying in ambush at Mapaoquan Village — charged out from three sides at once.

Although this part of the Guiyi Army's cavalry was somewhat weaker, they had the advantage in numbers — a full twenty-five hundred men. The two sides immediately tangled and fought doggedly outside Mapaoquan Village.

The great battle on both wings had begun, and the two main infantry forces in the center had also marched into each other's range.

Arrows filled the sky like a swarm of bees, wailing as they flew toward each other. Soldiers on both sides fell to the ground in droves, screaming.

The sword-and-shield men at the front especially lay strewn across the ground under the fierce crossbow fire, while officers on both sides urged their soldiers forward without so much as a sideways glance.

When two armies approached each other, before entering crossbow range they basically walked slowly, because they had to maintain formation, and fear of death made everyone move slowly.

But once they entered crossbow range, the brutal exchange of fire made both sides involuntarily quicken their pace.

Finally, after the brutal exchange of fire, the two sides crashed together with a boom — above, long spears clashed and knocked; below, skirmishers bent low and fought like rats.

Setting aside the difference in armor coverage between the two sides, the rebel soldiers fighting now were not even the elite of the entire rebel force.

So the moment they made contact, they were beaten back again and again. Defense Commissioner Wu's five hundred elite troops suffered the heaviest casualties, losing at least sixty or seventy men.

The rebel troops were repeatedly driven back to regroup, then driven back step by step again. But at that moment, from his high vantage point Zhang Zhao saw that He Chuan's yabing guards had finished donning their armor and were beginning to form ranks and march down.

"Sound the gongs and withdraw! The heat is at its peak. Our army has been in armor for an hour and a half and fighting for two quarters of an hour, while the enemy has just finished armoring up. Order every captain and officer to fall back slowly — we fight again tomorrow!"

You want to fight? I won't fight you then. In any case, today we've already dealt a heavy blow to the rebels' morale, wounding or killing at least six or seven hundred.

And moreover, Zhang Zhao sneered darkly — the infantry may be pulling back, but the cavalry battle over at Mapaoquan can still go on. I'll wipe out your cavalry and see how you get through tomorrow.

"Order Bai Congxin to lead his troops and surround and annihilate the rebel cavalry at Mapaoquan. Bring me Sun Xiaoguo's head!"

—————— Off-topic ——————

It's not that I'm dragging this out! I genuinely couldn't finish writing it — I've already written over four thousand words and it's still not done. The battle ends next chapter!

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