Dahan first prince

Chapter 420: The Miserable Yulin!

"A bow is made in three years, and a crossbow is made in three months..."

Standing on the top of the wall, looking at the outside of the city, behind the cannon fodder of the slaves, the Loufan bow cavalry moving parallel to the city wall, Jin She couldn't help but let out such an exclamation besides sighing.

It takes three years to make a bow and three months to make a crossbow, which is actually a long-standing consensus in the Central Plains;
——If you want to train a pawn into a bow pawn whose combat effectiveness reaches a qualified level, you need at least two to three years of training.

Note that the training here does not mean that the soldier finds a target at home and practice arrow after arrow for three years;

Instead, after initially mastering the bow and arrow shooting skills and officially becoming an archer reserve, in the army, follow the archer phalanx, and practice for another two to three years!
In the past three years, most of the training content was not the shooting accuracy of a single soldier, but the salvo efficiency of the entire archer phalanx, and the tacit understanding between each other.

As for archery, it can only be practiced by the soldiers themselves.

Compared with the super high training cost of archers, which can be completed in three years, the training of crossbowmen is obviously much simpler.

In the first step, the selection requirements for crossbow pawns will be greatly lowered by bow pawns;
The selection of bow soldiers often requires that the candidate soldiers have strong arms, waist and abdomen, be as tall as possible, and have better eyesight than ordinary people.

That is, these few seemingly simple selection requirements, but they supported the super high quality of the Han Dynasty's "non-elite, not bow".

——Ordinary soldiers, let alone stature and eyesight, if they have no lack of arms or legs, and can wield spears and swords, they are already considered qualified!

As for the crossbow pawn, which is also a long-range strike unit, only two requirements are put forward for candidates, waist and abdomen strength and normal eyesight.

Because compared with archers who need to draw their own bows, shoot by themselves, and maintain a bow aiming posture, crossbowmen only need to be able to pull the crossbow trigger and complete the loading of arrow feathers;

The "opening the crossbow" here can be the arm stretching, the foot stretching, if not, it can even be stretched out - lying on the ground on the back, pulling the crossbow string with both hands, and pushing the crossbow body with both legs to complete the loading.

In addition to the difference in selection requirements, the training intensity of crossbowmen is also much lower than that of 'three-year-old' bowmen.

The reason is simple: the shooting posture of the crossbow machine is very relaxed;

——With the crossbow loaded with arrow feathers, aim in the direction of the enemy and be ready to shoot at any time.

On the other hand, when looking at the bow, not only does the shooter need to keep the posture of holding the bow but not shooting when the shooter is waiting to shoot, but he also needs to adjust his breathing so that the hand holding the bow does not shake as much as possible;
Especially at the moment of shooting, you must adjust your breathing and heartbeat to the best state just like the snipers of later generations.

To put it bluntly: the crossbow is actually a 'lazy bow'.

The crossbow arms that control the trajectory of the arrow launch, so that crossbowmen do not need to spend years practicing accuracy like archers;
The crossbow machine, which can be loaded and ready to go, also makes the crossbowmen not need to have strong endurance and strength;
As long as you can complete the loading of the crossbow and pull the trigger at the enemy, you can be regarded as a qualified crossbow.

And "three years into a bow, three months into a crossbow", in today's Han Dynasty, is also supported by actual data.

——It takes at least three years for a reserve archer composed of young and strong men who can hold a bow to ensure that the average target rate of individual soldiers reaches [-]% at a distance of [-] steps;
However, a reserve team of crossbowmen composed of 'non-disabled' young and strong only needs to spend three months to increase the average shooting rate of individual soldiers at a distance of [-] steps to [-]% or even [-]%.

Just the training cost, which is almost at the two extremes, is enough for any army with both bows and crossbows to give up the bows in all directions without dead ends, and turn to crossbows as the main long-range strike arms .

Of course, the premise is that crossbowmen can perfectly replace the role of bowmen and complete everything that bowmen can do.

As for today's Han Dynasty, the reason why they did not completely abandon the "bowmen", which are expensive to train, take a long time to train, and have high requirements for the source of troops, is mainly because of the crossbow machine, there are still many natural weapons that are not as good as bows and arrows. disadvantage.

First of all, it is the composition of the crossbow machine, which is made up of a horizontal bow, crossbow arm and crossbow machine.

As a result, the "horizontal firing bow" of the crossbow almost does not have any projectile lethality, and can only cause damage to the enemy through a nearly flat shooting method.

In this way, the problem arises.

——Bows and crossbows are both long-range strike arms. In most cases, they must be closely guarded by infantry, or even heavy infantry;

That is to say: In war, except for specific environments such as city offensive and defensive battles and fortified battles, in most cases of "two armies facing each other", bows and crossbows need to be projected to cause damage to distant enemies without accidentally injuring them. , to protect their own infantry array.

At this time, the shortcoming of the crossbow machine's "unable to projectile" revealed its inherent disadvantages.

In order to ensure the firepower of long-range strikes and at the same time ensure that the bows and crossbows shoot from the rear without "stabbing" the infantry array in front, the generals often have to give up the crossbows and use the bowmen as the main means of long-range strikes.

As for the crossbowmen, they will stand on both sides of the archer phalanx to cover them. Unless they are attacked by the enemy, otherwise the crossbowmen will most likely not get the chance to participate in the battle.

In addition to 'cannot be thrown', compared with bows, crossbows have another flaw that cannot be ignored.

——The shooting range of the crossbow is fixed.

Whether it's a three-year-old child or an eight-foot man, if you pull the trigger of the three-stone crossbow, you can only fire an arrow with the strength of three stones.

Such characteristics naturally greatly reduce the requirements for enlistment of crossbowmen and raise the lower limit of crossbowmen;
But correspondingly, it also limits the upper limit of crossbowmen, which often can only depend on the strength of the crossbow itself.

However, archers are different. How far they can shoot and how powerful they are, all depend on the skill of the bowman;

As long as the strength of the bowman does not exceed the upper limit that the bow body can carry, it is easy to achieve the achievement of "my bow has an effective range of 120 steps, and I can hit [-] steps".

Finally, there is the question of lethality.

As an expensive individual long-range strike weapon, the quality of the bow is often not too low.

It is true that this also increases the individual cost of archers in disguise, but it also guarantees the ability of archers to kill the enemy, that is, the penetrating power of arrow feathers.

However, crossbows are mass-produced by national machines according to "standard equipment". Usually, they don't pursue excellent individual performance, and only guarantee a range above the standard line.

This leads to crossbows and bows, even with the same limited range, often showing differences in lethality and penetration.

To put it bluntly: Archers are something rich people play with, except for being more expensive, there are almost no other disadvantages;

As for the crossbowmen, those who can't afford to play with bowmen are the next best thing to do, and at a lower cost, they get the counterfeit version of bowmen.

In addition to being able to strike from a long distance, and at the same time not demanding too much on the source of troops, the biggest advantage of crossbows over bows is that they are cheaper.

This is like the era of hot weapons in the later generations. The infantry per capita machine guns and sniper rifles can naturally guarantee the greatest firepower advantage;
But considering the cost, machine guns are not as good as submachine guns, and sniper rifles are not as good as rifles.

But in today's era, the advantages and disadvantages between bows and crossbows are completely overwhelmed by the Huns.

——The Huns would never make a cheap and solid crossbow!
Even if the crossbow was seized on the battlefield and obtained from the hands of the Han people, the Huns could not maintain or repair it at all. They often had to disassemble the crossbow, discard the crossbow and the crossbow body, and only keep the bow on the crossbow.

On the contrary, the bows played by rich people have become the main, or even the only, long-range strike method for the Huns.

But who will come back: Bows, after all, are played by rich people;
However, the Huns had no money, no technology, and the production technology of the crossbow machine was not yet available. This also led to the fact that the bows equipped by the Huns cavalry were often not in the eyes of the soldiers of the Han army.

Because most of the bows of the Hun cavalry are handmade by themselves...

But it is different from those inferior bows that can only shoot dozens of steps away, and are broken at every turn on the battlefield: at this moment, outside Mayi City, this Loufan bow cavalry, which is proved by bow and arrow shooting technology, is obviously more than one class!
As far as Jin She could see with his naked eyes: at this moment, the Loufan bow cavalry was moving back and forth parallel to the city wall along a position about 150 steps away from the city wall;
And when they found an 'opportunity to take advantage of', these building bow riders would speed up and quickly come to a position about 120 steps away from the city wall;
After arriving at the 'shooting position', these bow riders would turn off their horses, shoot a bow and arrow upright, then jump on their horses without looking back, quickly retreat to a position 150 steps outside the city wall, and continue to move back and forth, looking for the next shooting opportunity.

Jin She felt very familiar with this way of fighting.

This is the main tactic implemented after the Xiongnu cavalry encircled, or "bited" the Han infantry phalanx;
——Moving horizontally parallel to the Han army array, dismounting when you find an opportunity, and then quickly retreating.

Perhaps in the eyes of later generations, this kind of fighting method that moves around the prey, finds opportunities, but dismounts to shoot, and then mounts and leaves looks somewhat ridiculous;

But considering the 'stage of civilization' of the Hun cavalry, maybe no one would think so.

——The Huns cavalry in this era did not have saddles!
Not only are there no saddles, stirrups, even very few reins!

In most cases, the so-called 'Hun cavalry' is just a primitive man riding on a bare horse with his hands tightly holding the horse's mane!

In such a primitive stage of civilization, the upper cavalry who can carry a longbow and arrows on their backs, move quickly on a bare horseback, and complete dismount-aim-shoot-mount in a very short period of time, obviously let Jin She was a little eye-opening.

In particular, the throwing range of the Loufan cavalry archers of 'minimum 120 steps, maximum [-] steps' made Jin She secretly startled.

"Such an excellent bow is beyond the reach of barbarians..."

"Income from past wars?"

"Or, it's the traitorous people of the frontier..."

With a thoughtful murmur, Jin She looked out of the city and couldn't help becoming a little more serious.

Lou's annoying bow is definitely not made by the Huns!
Because of the current technology of the Xiongnu, it is impossible to make a bow with a range of more than [-] steps!

It is even no exaggeration to say: In the known world of this era, only the Han Dynasty can manufacture bows of this order of magnitude and effective range!
And right now, even if the source of the bows of the thousands of cavaliers outside the city is aside, it must be the Huns who "did all the power of a country" to collect all the good bows and equip them to the bow cavalry of the tower. body.

This can also show from the side: For the Huns who are better at hand-to-hand combat, especially off-horse hand-to-hand combat, how important it is to be good at archery...
"good!"

As he was thinking about it, he saw a person suddenly fell off his horse among the bow and horsemen echoing around outside the city!

Turning around full of excitement, Jin She saw about thirty steps away from him, a Habayashi crossbowman who had finished shooting, was lying on the inner side of the city wall. crossbow loading arrow feathers;
After about fifteen breaths, the Habayashi crossbowman finished loading.

But when the crossbowman bowed his waist and came back to a wall, the Loufan archer who had been shot off his horse outside the city had stopped struggling, and let the horse whine by his side, but he never stopped. Can move even a little more.

"good chance!"

Seeing the bow cavalry falling off the horse upstairs, the rest of the comrades around were also very surprised, and involuntarily gathered around the bow cavalry who had fallen from the horse;

On the top of the Mayi wall, before Jin She could give an order, there were already hundreds of Habayashi crossbowmen, and they unanimously put the crossbow on the crossbow. At that moment, the triangular arrow clusters that emitted a chilling light pointed to the outside of the city. The area where troublesome bow knights gradually gather...

Whoosh whoosh! !
The sound was obviously louder than ordinary crossbows, especially when they were fired at almost volley, which made the other crossbowmen on the wall look sideways;

So much so that, except for Jin She on the tower, no one noticed: 150 steps outside the city, an obviously well-dressed Xiongnu nobleman was galloping towards the distance on his horse...

"—Han people's crossbows can shoot up to 150 paces!"

"Retreat! Retreat!!!"

Jebe was so terrified that the cavalry archers of Lou Fan turned around immediately and left the battlefield quickly in the direction that Jebie left;
But Jebe, after all, is just a mortal person;
On this two to three hundred paces deep and several miles wide battlefield, there are still many buildings that are annoying, and Jebe's hoarse cry was not heard...
"The annoying man wants to run away!"

"Add Mitsuya!!!"

Almost at the same time when Zhebe gave the order to retreat, Quan Xu, Captain Habayashi on the city wall, also immediately issued a battle order!
Then, under Jin She's dumbfounded gaze, one after another Habayashi crossbowmen dressed in scale armor and holding crossbows with divine arms put two more arrows into the arrow slots on the crossbow arms. ·····
"Three arrows at once?"

Whoosh whoosh!

Before Jin She could react, another round of shooting was fired outside the city;
——The effect is remarkable!
From the first Loufang bowrider being shot off the horse, to the Loufan bowrider who stepped forward to check was almost wiped out;

Then Wang Zhebie ordered to retreat in Loufan, and finally, Captain Habayashi's "three arrows are ready", began to shoot rapidly with full load, and shot freely on the wall.

In just one cup of tea, the Loufan Gongqi, one of the three carriages of the Xiongnu Shanyuting, suffered hundreds of casualties!
And after a while, when most of the crossbowmen on the wall gave up shooting, threw the defensive position at the top of the city to the sword and shield, and turned their heads to help the Habayashi crossbowmen reload their crossbows, an area 150 steps outside the city had already appeared. An almost straight 'line' from east to west.

——On the day of the first battle, there were 6000 cavalry archers in the Loufan Department, with a total of [-] cavalry, and thousands of casualties! !

What's more terrible: as the people in the building scrambled to retreat, the slave cannon fodder who was still desperately climbing towards the wall became the abandoned son of the Huns...
(End of this chapter)