The light of the sword is like the moon reflecting on Kyushu

Chapter 1938 The battle damage is so heavy?
Pan Mei's face changed drastically!

He didn't expect that the intelligence was seriously distorted!
According to the latest intelligence, in addition to 30,000 infantrymen in Jinyang City, there are at most 3,000 Khitan heavy cavalry - the Tielin Army.

This was the weakest time in the history of Northern Han! Considering the previous experience of Song army attacking Northern Han, Khitan would certainly send troops to help.

According to intelligence, the Khitan could provide support of up to 30,000 heavily armored cavalry.

In order to cut off the reinforcement route of the Liao army, Yunzhou Surveillance Envoy Guo Jin was specially ordered to deploy at Shiling Pass in the north of Taiyuan to block the Liao army rushing to the rescue from the north!

He ordered Meng Xuanpu to be the military commander and stationed in Zhenzhou to block the Liao army reinforcements coming from the east!

Liu Baoxun was ordered to concurrently serve as the Northern Transport Envoy and lead part of the main force out of Zhenzhou to contain the Liao army in Youzhou from sending large-scale aid to the west or moving south!

So far, none of the three groups have reported any news of the enemy breaking through the defense line.

Pan Mei frowned! Where on earth did these 30,000 Khitan cavalry come from?

And where did those 30,000 Western Xia cavalrymen who rushed out from the east come from?

What on earth does the Imperial City Division do?!

Damn it! Wei Qiansui misled me!
If I had known this, why would I have underestimated the enemy and attacked the city directly?
Putting aside the unexpected cavalry harassment, was there anything wrong with my arrangement? Use the trebuchet to bombard from a distance and use the fire pot bombs to destroy everything on the opponent's city wall!
Then use the powerful three-bow crossbow to suppress the enemy's counter-fire, and at the same time fire tread peg arrows to nail them into the outer wall one by one to build a peg ladder to climb the city. The infantry can take advantage of the situation to climb the city!
But now the Song army's infantry was like surrounded prey, exposed to the iron hooves of the cavalry of the two countries!

The Song army only had long swords and rattan shields!
This kind of rattan shield is specially designed to deal with the rain of arrows falling overhead during sieges!
Although this rattan armor can resist the attack of ordinary arrows, it cannot withstand the heavy blows of heavy armored cavalry wielding lances!
Faced with the impact of the heavy cavalry, they would be knocked away with their shields!

The fighting on both sides of the east and west was quite fierce!
The Khitan cavalry on the left wing crushed the Song army formation back and forth like a torrent!

Liu Yu, the deputy general next to Pan Mei, frowned and said, "General Pan, the left flank is in a tight spot. Should we withdraw our troops?"

Pan Mei's eyes were grim: "Where to retreat?"

Liu Yu's tone weakened a bit, "Withdraw to the central army formation!"

"If they retreat, can they outrun the cavalry?"

"This one……"

"When infantry encounter cavalry, they can only fight to the death! If they retreat, they will die faster!"

Liu Yu naturally knew that the infantry had no power to resist the heavily armored cavalry, but he was really anxious when he saw the heavy casualties suffered by the Song army!
Fortunately, the Song army also had 20,000 heavily armored cavalry this time, which tied down the Western Xia Iron Harriers on the east route, otherwise the Song army's infantry would have suffered even greater casualties!

On the top of the city wall, Liu Miezhou and Eunuch Zhou appeared again.

Liu Miezhou couldn't help but feel deeply moved when he saw the Khitan cavalry smashing the Song army's formation into pieces!

"General Yang, I never thought the Liao cavalry would be so powerful!"

Yang Ye said: "The Liao cavalry is known as the most powerful in the world! It is indeed worthy of its reputation!"

Liu Miezhou said: "I heard that the most famous infantry of the Song army is Luoyang Tiger, which is said to be the second most powerful in the world. How come it is so weak against the Iron Forest Army of the Liao Dynasty? Could it be that Luoyang Tiger is just a show-off?"

Yang Ye thought: Who doesn't know that you have fought countless battles with the Song army! Going all the way south and conquering Southern Han, how could you not know how powerful the Luoyang Tiger of the Song army is? It's clearly a test for me!
He said seriously: "Cavalry has an inherent restraining advantage over infantry!"

Liu Miezhou asked, "What do you mean?"

"First of all, in terms of mobility, cavalry has an absolute advantage! Cavalry can travel hundreds of miles a day, and can quickly penetrate, outflank, and harass, while infantry marches at less than one-third of their speed, and is prone to passive defense. The Khitans have light cavalry - also known as the Eagle Army, which can travel 300 miles day and night! They can carry out tactical destruction on the enemy's logistics line, posing a huge threat!
Secondly, they have an advantage in crushing force. The heavy cavalry, such as the Liao Tielin Army, can charge with a force of more than a thousand pounds! Although the Song army has a chariot formation, it is still easy to be crushed and dispersed when facing a dense charge! "

Again, tactical flexibility gave the cavalry an advantage. The Liao army used a compound tactic of "luring the enemy deep into their territory - dividing and annihilating them", combining "mounted archery and long-range attack" with "spear close combat". In the face of cavalry, the infantry was clearly at a disadvantage!"

Liu Miezhou said: "Is there no way to crack it?"

Yang Ye said: "Of course there are. The three-bow crossbows and divine arm bows of the Song army can break it! Unfortunately, there are too few of them."

"Too few?"

"Your Majesty, please look. The Song army actually only has ten three-bow crossbows. This thing is a powerful weapon for attacking cities and is also advantageous for killing infantry, but it is not very advantageous against cavalry, and the hit rate is not high. First of all, it is very difficult to aim and lock on the moving cavalry, and it is not necessarily possible to hit one arrow with several arrows! If they have thousands of three-bow crossbows, and they shoot arrows like rain, maybe only one out of ten will hit it!"

"Well, I think each crossbow needs thirty soldiers to operate, which is too labor-intensive."

"Yes, ten people are responsible for the winch to draw the bowstring, eight people are responsible for carrying the arrows, six people are responsible for adjusting the shooting angle, four people are responsible for maintaining the crossbow structure, and two people are responsible for command and coordination. If one person fails to cooperate properly, it will be impossible to quickly and accurately aim and lock on to the dynamic target! The penetrating power is very strong, but the hit rate is too low! If you attack indiscriminately, you will seriously injure your own people!"

"What about the God Arm Bow?"

"That's fine! Your Majesty, look, the Song army has 200 archers in place!"

A cold wind carrying the smell of blood swept across the battlefield, and the phalanx of 50,000 Song army infantry was collapsing at this moment!

The Khitan heavy cavalry was like a moving steel wall, with three layers of armor shining black in the sun, and the crackling sound of horse hooves breaking leg bones was like cracking ice! But no screams of pain were heard from the Song army!
The perseverance of Luoyang Hu also made the Liao cavalry look at him with awe!

Suddenly, a series of "clicking" sounds were heard. It was the sound of two hundred divine bows being strung at the same time! The rotation of the capstan gears merged into the mechanical chant of death!

Whoosh whoosh—

The first round of volleys of armor-piercing arrows drew seventy black lines in the air, and the Khitan vanguard who were hacking and killing the infantry suddenly fell to the ground!
Some cavalrymen were shot through the throat by an arrow!
Some cavalrymen were shot on their mounts!
One cavalryman was even pierced through his helmet by an arrow, and was sent flying backwards, where he was nailed to death by a cavalryman behind him!
But some arrows missed, while others brushed past armor and flew past with a string of sparks!

More than forty riders were killed or wounded in the first round of volleys!
But the dead do not fall off their horses! The cavalry charge is like a raging sea, unstoppable!
When the Song army was about to launch the second round of arrow rain, the Tielin army had already returned to the Song army formation, and the two sides were once again stalemate. The crossbowmen could not lock on the target and dared not shoot arrows at will! It was not until the cavalry army broke through the Song army formation and the two sides pulled a certain distance that the Shenbi crossbowmen fired the second round of arrow rain! But there were only 200 arrows! This time the Khitan cavalry was on guard and actually raised their rattan armor shields to resist!

Although the giant crossbow pierced through the rattan armor and shield, the arrow's power had weakened and it could no longer break through the heavy armor, and the cavalrymen were almost not harmed!
The Khitan heavy cavalry then quickly retracted their rattan armor and shields, hung their lances on hooks, raised their bows and shot an arrow at the Song infantry, put away their bows, picked up their lances again, and charged into the Song infantry formation. Their spears shot out like dragons, knocking down the Song soldiers. The whole set of actions was completed in one go.

And extremely skilled.

The Song army ignored the enemy's cavalry harassment, so the entire plan was disrupted!
The Song army did not prepare chevaux de frise, nor did they prepare hook-and-sickle spears. In order to reduce the weight, they even used rattan armor shields captured during the attack on Southern Tang. So the Song army suffered a great loss this time!
On the Song army's Gelu - the emperor's chariot - Eunuch Li said in a sinister voice: "Your Majesty, this time General Pan may have made a fatal mistake!"

Zhao Guangyi said in a deep voice: "You have no grudge against him, right?"

Eunuch Li said in a sinister voice: "There is no grudge! I have absolutely no intention of exaggerating or slandering anyone!"

"So what fatal mistake did he make?"

"The first is underestimation of the enemy, the second is misjudgment, and the third is self-abandonment!"

"Oh? Tell me!"

"He underestimated the enemy because he forgot that the enemy had cavalry! So he was not well prepared to deal with the cavalry!"

"If he underestimated the enemy, why would he send out three teams to specifically stop the Khitan cavalry?"

"That means someone in those three teams underestimated the enemy! Otherwise they wouldn't have let the heavy cavalry in!"

“Is there a difference between misjudgment and underestimating the enemy?”

"Of course he did. He misjudged the situation because he didn't think about it. He underestimated the enemy because he didn't take it seriously. It's a matter of attitude. He did arrange people to stop the Liao army, but he overlooked the fact that Xixia would also send troops. This was a misjudgment of the situation."

Zhao Guangyi's eyes were deep. "It's not his fault. Even I thought that Xixia would not send troops! I always thought that Xixia was sandwiched between the Central Plains and Khitan. In order to hide their strength and quietly grow stronger, they would choose the strategy of playing both sides and pleasing both sides. I didn't expect that they would dare to directly stand on the side of the pseudo-Han!"

"They are taking advantage of the fact that the emperor has just ascended the throne and his foundation is unstable, and they want to fish in troubled waters and get a piece of the pie."

"Hmph, that's a nice thought."

"Your Majesty, if our 50,000 infantrymen on the left continue to waste their energy like this, they will be wiped out!"

"Then what do you mean?"

"Retreat! As long as the green mountains remain, there will be no shortage of firewood!"

"Once those 50,000 infantry retreat, they will immediately become prey for those cavalrymen and will die even faster!"

Eunuch Li's eyes flashed with a strange look, "So... these 50,000 infantrymen will not be able to escape death no matter what?"

Zhao Guangyi said: "If we fight, we will die. If we flee, we will die. Why not fight to the death? Moreover, if we fight to the death, we can be promoted if we survive and receive generous pensions if we die. Why not do it?"

Eunuch Li said: "Your Majesty, it seems that our heavy cavalry also suffered losses on the battlefield in the east!"

In the east, the Song Dynasty has 20,000 heavily armored cavalry and 50,000 infantry, and the enemy is 30,000 Western Xia Iron Harriers!
Zhao Guangyi asked, "Is that the Iron Harrier?"

Eunuch Li said: "Yes!"

"Why are the Xixia cavalry called Iron Harriers?"

"It is said that there are three theories. The first one is the theory of bird of prey symbolism. A kite refers to a small bird of prey such as a sparrowhawk, which symbolizes the swiftness and precision of the troops' attack. When the heavy cavalry charges, it is like a kite grabbing a rabbit, which reflects the metaphor of the speed and lethality of the attack by the bird of prey!

The second theory is the equipment connection theory. The top decoration of the Dangxiang cavalry helmet is similar to the head of a kite. In the poems of the Northern and Southern Dynasties, the term "kites" was used to refer to heavy cavalry. The Western Xia combined the military culture of the Xianbei and Khitan to strengthen the raptor-shaped features of the cavalry helmet.

The third theory is that it is a military metaphor. "Iron" represents the cold-forged heavy armor that is impenetrable, and "kite" represents mobility and flexibility, forming a contrasting positioning of "heavy armor + flexibility", highlighting the military characteristics of Western Xia. "

"Ha! You know a lot, huh?"

"hey-hey."

"Which one do you think is better, our cavalry or the Iron Harriers?"

"That must be our Song Dynasty heavy cavalry!"

"I want to hear the truth."

"Twenty thousand Song Dynasty heavy armored cavalry versus thirty thousand Xixia Iron Harrier cavalry, who will win in the end? Let's deduce it purely based on combat power.

First, let's compare the performance of the equipment. In terms of the protection system, the Xixia Iron Harrier soldiers wore cold-forged heavy armor, and ordinary bows and arrows could not penetrate the armor within fifty steps; the war horses were connected to the cavalry hooks, and they could maintain their charging posture even if they died in battle! This was their advantage.

The Song army's heavy cavalry had an upgraded version of the infantry armor, and was equipped with a standard crossbow with armor-piercing arrows!
In terms of attack methods, the Iron Harriers mainly used blunt weapons such as maces and iron bone clubs to specifically target heavily armored targets; while the Song army held sabers - specifically for cutting hook ropes, and improved hook-and-sickle spears - to counter the articulated system.

The second is the tactical characteristics. The advantage of Xixia: the hooks are connected to form a "moving wall" effect during the group charge; while the Song army adopts a "three-stage approach": three hundred steps away from the crossbow to interfere, within a hundred steps, concentrate firepower to attack the seams of armor; within five steps, close combat specializes in attacking the hook connection point!

The Song army suffered three to five casualties for every hook they cut off! "

Zhao Guangyi frowned and asked, "Is the damage so great?"

Thank you Yudong for your strong support and encouragement!