Chapter 355: Don't Be a Fool

Hooves pounded past — the ground shook, the hills trembled.

The Drill Horse Camp completed its formation change at a fast trot: three thousand-man cavalry companies fanned out in line, each with its Left Lieutenant in front and Right Lieutenant behind; then the Left Lieutenants accelerated out from the moving formation, overtaking the officers to reach the very front of the line.

And during this process, the Left Company Commanders under the three Left Lieutenants led their horsemen straight to the very front, shifting from a fast trot to a slow gallop, forming the first shock assault formation with three hundred and sixty riders.

Each cavalryman maintained a four-pace gap to left and right, spreading across four li to blanket the river valley as they surged toward the enemy riders under the three Company Commanders' leadership.

Behind them the main body still kept up the fast trot, the larger formation never losing contact with the smaller assault formations, simply unfurling in sequence the second, the third, the fourth, all the way to the fifth shock assault formation.

This sight threw Assistant Regional Commander Zhang Hongye, who was intercepting ahead of the government army's formation, into panic: too fast!

Zhang Hongye was an Assistant Regional Commander of Yansui Garrison, ten years in the saddle with countless battles behind him, yet this cavalry force before him had reacted far too quickly as a whole.

The government army had two Battalion Commanders and two Mobile Corps Commanders' cavalry units in front of their formation; they had launched their attack at eight hundred paces from the enemy, partly because artillery fire was falling behind them, and partly because the enemy riders were still sitting on the ground, unmoving.

At six hundred paces the enemy riders began shouting oaths and rallying their troops; Zhang Hongye only sneered at that — you could say Ningxia's finest garrison battalion had been annihilated, you could say Guyuan's veterans had scattered to the winds, but who could say Yansui's border troops were no border troops?

Because the enemy riders' movements had changed, the government cavalry's charge speed was also slowing — this was thoroughly orthodox drill: advance at full speed when the distance is great, then gradually slow as the distance closes, ensuring that by the last fifteen paces you have decelerated to half your top speed.

This is the optimal charge speed: the lance still carries absolute killing power, yet after striking an enemy there is enough reaction time to pull it back out, and the saber can still slash an opponent.

Most critically, if the enemy situation turns unfavorable or the enemy formation cannot be broken, those last fifteen paces still leave the cavalryman room to wheel away and try again.

Zhang Hongye believed that not only his own cavalry trained this way — the enemy horsemen trained this way too.

He did not fear a head-on clash; in small-scale field battles under three thousand men, the Ming army's victory rate was astonishingly high, and they never feared any opponent.

What panicked Zhang Hongye was that the enemy riders had started moving late, but their speed was fast — as if they had timed it perfectly, waiting for his men to decelerate, and then they spread out and swarmed forward in a rush, giving him no time at all to change his orders.

In that one instant of panic, he could hear only two kinds of hoofbeats: his own side's hoofbeats had gone from the initial clop-clop, clop-clop to three beats, then to four.

While the enemy's hoofbeats were going from four beats to two — the enemy was accelerating, and they were decelerating.

Zhang Hongye's eyes nearly burst from their sockets; there was no time to signal with flags. He reined in his warhorse and shouted till his voice tore: "Li Fuming! Tang Tong! They won't turn back!"

Every man in the government army knew: the horsemen before them would not turn back.

They did not know how Liu Chengzong had trained these fools who knew only how to charge forward and collide, but the government cavalry's Company Commanders at the front line all reined their horses around and turned back — and this only hardened the resolve in the Marshal's Manor horsemen's eyes as they kept charging forward at their fixed pace.

War has never been won by courage alone — otherwise the victor at Sarhu would have been Du Song, who was split into four pieces and still fought for an entire day.

Above courage, it is tactics, the situation, and skill that determine a soldier's state of mind when he puts his courage into action.

Every single cavalryman in the Drill Horse Camp could serve as an officer; every man knew what state of mind the enemy would be in when facing their charge, and knew even better what the enemy would do.

Because three years of study was too long — they had first learned Ming cavalry tactics, and then learned the tactics designed to counter Ming cavalry.

Yang Yao roared with laughter at the front: "They've lost their nerve!"

The true collision occurred only on the Marshal's Manor horsemen's left wing.

Facing them was Front Company Commander Dong Xueli, subordinate to Mobile Corps Commander Tang Tong; the government troops were all advancing on the left and retreating on the right, and Dong Xueli's unit was on the far right, with a cliff wall further right — no room to wheel around.

No escape, no way to avoid it — they could only keep the same four-pace spacing, steel themselves, and crash through the gaps against the Marshal's Manor horsemen.

In the instant of crossing, countless lances punched through armor like piercing thin paper; body after body crashed heavily from the saddle, like burst grain sacks flung to the ground.

The Marshal's Manor horsemen's left-wing Company Commander was called Feng Dakui — a groom by origin, one of the earliest peasant soldiers to join the Heaven-Reaching Monkey, later a top student at the Drill Platform, and already a Company Commander in the Yu Battalion by the time they reached Xining.

When the choice between Xining Guard Company Commander and Drill Horse Camp trooper was laid before him, he judged his own ability insufficient and chose the latter.

Because he could write, he was promoted to Squad Leader; he brought out a squad that trained relentlessly and was promoted to Platoon Leader; then when Liu Chengzong drew troops for the southern campaign and the camp ran short of officers, he finally returned to the seat of Company Commander.

Two years now, to this day.

Feng Dakui charged at the fore, both arms thrusting his lance through a government soldier who passed him on the left; right arm pushing forward, left arm drawing back, he pulled the lance free from the enemy's body in reverse — the long spear thrust out by the second rank was already before his eyes, and he deflected it with the butt of his lance.

At the same time he reversed his grip and brought the butt-spike smashing down onto the second rider's head.

With a dull thud, the sharp butt-spike punched through the helmet — he might not have killed this enemy, because the butt-spike tore the helmet clean off, but that was enough to give the soldiers behind him a window to strike.

In his heart he said to himself: second one!

In the Marshal's Manor's cavalry Company Commander drill manual, the requirement for a Company Commander charging enemy cavalry was to kill three men — the entire company was to kill three men.

Because in training they often said: when two hundred cavalry clash, only six men decide victory or defeat.

Out of a hundred cavalrymen, only three are true warriors — men who can charge without a thought for defense, single-mindedly set on taking the enemy's head; the next seven are no more than followers who only care about parrying to save their own skins.

As for the remaining ninety, they are fools with neither courage nor brains, who stake their lives on the valor or cowardice of others.

If others charge and fight bravely, they follow along and jab a couple of times at the corpses, sharing in the glory; if others lose their nerve and flee, they cannot escape and are ground into meat-paste, their livers and brains smeared across the ground.

So Yang Yao's theory was: you only need to kill the three opponents who dare to fight, and you will win the cavalry engagement.

This logic of "don't be a fool," instilled over long years, had become the consensus of the Drill Horse Camp — and the enemy's left wing and center all retreating only further cemented the Horse Camp soldiers' conviction.

When Feng Dakui, dragging his lance strap, burst through two layers of cavalry resistance and the field opened wide before him, the enemy riders' reserve force had already turned and fled; the left wing and center scattered in disarray under pursuit, men scrambling over each other to escape back to their main formation.

He slowly rode out twenty-odd paces, retracted his lance and raised it upright, gave the order for his unit to reform, then wheeled his horse around to look toward the center of the battlefield.

A few riderless warhorses let out mournful whinnies beside the corpses; a few more, with no attachment to their former masters, scattered and fled in all directions; and a few stupid horses, utterly ignoring that their masters had fallen, followed the enemy formation as it regrouped.

Feng Dakui did not count his men again, only gave a rough glance — his own formation's width had not shrunk by much; the enemy cavalry outnumbered them, but their width was considerably narrower.

The drill manual had not lied: friend or foe, there were never that many warriors who feared no death; most men in the clash only focused on deflecting the enemy's lance — but the Marshal's Manor clearly had a few more warriors.

This enormously strengthened Feng Dakui's conviction, and at the same time emboldened more of his soldiers: though the enemy outnumbered them, the enemy had more useless fools.

He let out a great laugh: "Looks like all the enemy's warriors are over here with us — they've lost heart! Two ranks in line, keep smashing them!"

The line barely changed; only two cavalrymen whose long lances had been shattered in the collision fell back to the second rank at four-pace spacing, gripping their sabers and ready to charge.

Though Dong Xueli had deflected his opponent's lance in the clash, he was far less resolute than Feng Dakui, because after suffering light casualties his cavalry unit was now trapped between hammer and anvil.

Behind him was Feng Dakui's reformed cavalry; before him, the second wave of Company Commanders under Yang Yao kept charging forward.

And his reserve troops had all wheeled their horses and turned back — the cowards fled back toward the army, and the brave ones, forced by desperation, had only one path left: to sink deep into the enemy formation.

With no time to reform and no time to count casualties, Dong Xueli hastily wheeled his horse around, not daring to push deeper into the enemy formation; amid the agonized cries of his men with dislocated joints, he gave the order to charge back toward their own lines.

Even with only Feng Dakui's single unit blocking the way, they were still smashed until their gallbladders split with terror; in their panic men hung their long spears from their arms, few drawing their sabers, and without any prior agreement they all chose to pull out their bows.

They no longer dared to form up and clash with the reckless fools before them; nearly a hundred riders wheeled left, hoping to skirt around Feng Dakui and escape by the flank.

But they could not escape.

Though the soldiers frantically spurred their horses, the warhorses, after charging and galloping for several hundred paces, could no longer recover their initial speed; hemmed in and cut off, far from reaching their own lines, they instead drifted further and further from the infantry formation to the east.

Yang Yao still pressed the army forward at a quick march. The horse camp's formation, neither hurried nor slow, bore down on the enemy troops wheeling and fleeing back toward their own lines. They were scrambling over one another to escape toward the infantry formation, and the infantry, having only just formed up, opened several gaps again to let them through.

The central army of Canjiang Zhang Hongye ran back the fastest and in the tightest order. Their entire formation split into several columns and entered the lines in sequence, suffering almost no casualties.

Tang Tong did not run slowly either. Although two company commanders were left outside, the rest of the troops under his command did not suffer heavy losses.

Only the guerrilla general Li Fuming lacked the resolve to charge forward and also lacked the decisiveness to simply turn and flee. This caused the bulk of his force to be struck repeatedly in turn by several company commanders of the horse camp during the retreat.

His formation was smashed into scattered pieces, and he himself was even stabbed by a spear, becoming a trophy of war for Yang Chengzu's thousand-man headquarters.

Seeing his advancing troops sweep the enemy cavalry back to their lines like splitting bamboo, Yang Yao, brimming with confidence, reined in his warhorse and stopped his subordinates' impulse to press the attack on the infantry formation and expand their gains.

Horse troops could charge horse troops, but for now they still could not charge a deployed formation and a wagon camp. The enemy's will needed to be broken further.

Three horn blasts signaling the recall rang out from the horse camp formation. The right wing commanders of their own three thousand-man headquarters led their troops in a lateral shift to the left.

The left wing commanders who had gone into battle did not withdraw immediately. Only the six company headquarters that had earlier engaged the enemy reformed their ranks, taking up position at the rear where the right wing commanders had previously stood.

The remaining nine company headquarters had a clear division of labor. Six company commanders led their troops to swiftly clear the battlefield, bringing back wounded from both sides, along with enemy corpses and spoils of war.

Only three company commanders were needed to lead their troops, standing quietly with lances in hand, to choke off the four-li-wide river valley, ensuring the enemy horse troops, their first attack thwarted, dared not sally forth again.

Once they returned to formation, drumbeats came from Hexi Fort behind them. Right after, the artillery fired a second high-angle barrage. The shells flew over the contested battlefield once more, crashing down in a scattered mess among the enemy infantry formation.

This kind of high-angle bombardment was nothing like direct fire within four hundred paces. It could not be called accurate, could not blast open a bloody path or send shot skipping and crushing through the formation. It could only land within a general area, and even if a falling shell struck an enemy, one shot could only kill one or two men.

But the impact on the government troops' morale was enormous.

At the moment most suitable for the government infantry to bombard the horse troops, they could not open fire because their own cavalry blocked the field of fire. By the time their own cavalry had entered the formation, only scattered horse troops remained in the center of the battlefield, clearing it and carrying away the dead, while the bulk of the enemy horse troops had already taken up position over a li away.

When the shells fell into the infantry formation, they heard laughter from the distant enemy horse troops, like the roaring of mountains and tsunamis.

Watching their own horse troops flee in disarray under the charge of the enemy's neatly aligned horizontal formation, colliding blindly with one another in their panic, those fighting bravely undone by their fleeing comrades, those hesitating yet daring to fight killed because they were isolated and unsupported, while those who fled at the very first moment could retreat unscathed back into the formation, dragging others down with them to be mocked.

Which government soldier would not wish at this moment that he stood on the opposing side?

Which enemy soldier would not feel a surge of pride in his heart that our army is invincible under heaven?

The pride of the three garrison government troops, built on campaigning across northern Shaanxi to suppress the bandits, vanished completely amid the mocking laughter of the trained horse camp echoing through the river valley.

Watching his own cavalry all choose to evade in the head-on clash, and then be struck by the enemy cavalry one after another in that evasion, You Shilu, long since a sickly wreck, cursed furiously atop the earthen hill. He had his nephew support him down from the hill, found Zhang Hongye, who had fled back to the lines and was kneeling to report, and kicked him head over heels with one foot.

"Grand Commander, it is not that your subordinate is incompetent, they were targeting us specifically!"

"Bullshit!" Before You Shilu could speak, He Huchen cursed, "He's fighting a war with us, and he's not supposed to target us?"

Canjiang Zhang Hongye dared not talk back, only daring to think to himself: It's one thing for our Yulin Grand Commander to kick me, but what business is it of yours, a Ningxia Zongbing, to butt in? Do you have no clue in your heart why we didn't let the Ningxia horse troops take the lead in the fight?

The Yansui Garrison horse troops at worst retreated back here. Swap in your Ningxia horse troops, and I bet they'd lose half their number, believe it or not?

Ignoring He Huchen, he clasped his fists only to You Shilu and said, "Grand Commander, what your subordinate means is, they calculated the speed of our horse troops, and launched their fast-horse charge when we were at our slowest. They understand our tactics clearly — they did it on purpose!"

You Shilu was furious. He knew all too well the impact a setback in the first engagement could have on an army's morale. Knitting his brows, he said, "Send word to the entire army: Zhang Hongye retreated without authorization. He is stripped of his rank of Canjiang for now, allowed to atone for his crime through service... If he dares retreat again, we'll kill him to consecrate the banners!"

He exchanged a few whispered words with He Huchen and Yang Qi. The three men's opinion was to first withdraw out of the artillery's range, reform the army, and then advance again.

【889】 The three garrison grand commanders were utterly baffled. They knew nothing of Yang Yao's three-man theory, and only wondered exactly how Liu Chengzong had managed to turn an entire horse army into reckless fools who dared head-on charges.

The three garrison commanders were utterly baffled. They knew nothing of Yang Yao's "three kinds of men" theory — they were only curious how Liu Chengzong had managed to turn an entire cavalry unit into reckless fools who dared charge head-on.

But they all realized, from the capability displayed by the trained horse camp, that this campaign to suppress Xining was probably far more difficult than they had imagined. Perhaps He Huchen's worries were not superfluous, but the situation was even more complicated than he had feared.

The initial defeat cast a shadow over the three men's hearts. They dared not pin any hopes on the northern route's Gansu Garrison, a whole army of sickly wrecks, and could only place their hopes on the Lintao army on the southern route, wishing for some good news from that direction that could boost the army's morale.