In 1127 AD, the Northern Song Dynasty fell. Immediately, the ninth imperial prince, Zhao Gou, ascended the throne in Shangqiu amidst widespread anticipation, inheriting the Song imperial line and r...
As for the 6,000 civilian laborers who followed the army, only a few of them were on the rafts to steer the boats, but most of them were marching along the river under the cover of the large formation, pushing wheelbarrows or helping to pull the rafts.
It was not until the morning that the army maintained this strange formation, gave up Tangqu, and then slowly advanced along the river.
However, at this point, Qu Duan and the others vaguely realized something, and they all stopped arguing and doubting.
The army marched forward. In the afternoon, when the weather was already somewhat hot, smoke and dust suddenly rolled up from the front and side. Without Li Shifu's cavalry squad delivering the news, Yue Fei and others already knew that it must be that the King of Liang had hastily gathered some troops and rushed over to harass.
"Don't worry about them, keep the formation and keep moving forward." Yue Fei ordered immediately. "Follow the previous arrangement and wait for him to attack!"
"Let's try!" After a night of hard work, Weiming Anhui wore a golden crown and looked exhausted. Under the daylight, his face was full of wrinkles. "Remember, all tribes should be ready. Use bows and arrows, and leave after shooting. All families and tribes have not yet arrived. We only have four or five thousand people. Don't fight!"
"All cavalry units must not attack without orders!" Seeing the foreign cavalry trampling on the green seedlings to adjust their formation, the messenger from the central army also set out at the right time to convey the most important military order on behalf of the commander-in-chief. "Follow your own sequence and follow the command of your own marching commander-in-chief. All commanders-in-chief should deal with it according to the original plan!"
The Song army's order had just been passed down, and on the other side, the poorly trained Xixia tribal cavalry, seeing the Song army's continuous marching sequence, rushed out one after another without waiting for their friendly forces to be in position... Of course, they saw the outermost mixed formation of spearmen, swords and shield soldiers, and also saw the armor on those outer soldiers, so of course they would not be stupid enough to crash into those formations, but just ran towards the gaps in the formation, ready to harass with arrows, or look for the Song army cavalry circling around the formation.
However, when the first group of foreign cavalry wearing tattered green cloth robes and shaved heads rushed to the effective range and prepared to draw their bows, suddenly, the Song army foreign cavalry on the opposite side turned around and withdrew from the side gap of the Song army infantry formation in the same sequence as themselves and entered the army formation. The undisciplined Xixia foreign cavalry could not stop their horses at all and took advantage of the situation to catch up, preparing to shoot arrows at the Song army infantry formation.
However, at this moment, when the Song army's foreign cavalry turned into infantry formation, a volley of arrows shot towards them from the gaps between the Song army's marching swords and spears.
To be fair, this round of reflections is still a bit less powerful than the Xixia people's bows and arrows.
But the problem is that infantry bows have a longer range than cavalry bows, and the Song army's traditional crossbows such as the Shenbi bow and the Kedi bow are far superior to the opposing foreign cavalry... More importantly, unlike the Song army's foreign cavalry who basically all have leather armor, officers are basically fully armored, and armored cavalry and outer infantry all wear iron armor, these temporarily recruited Western Xia foreign cavalry basically have no armor.
Therefore, arrows shot from the slightly slowed-down army formation, and immediately knocked the foreign cavalry who had advanced too far off their horses, with blood all over the ground.
Without any command, the Western Xia foreign cavalry scattered backwards, while the Song army's foreign cavalry wearing leather armor poured out from another gap in the army formation and chased the Western Xia foreign cavalry who were out of formation. Many of the foreign cavalry were caught off guard and many were shot down by the Song army's light cavalry in the process of gathering their formation.
Moreover, unlike the Western Xia foreign cavalry, most of the Song army's foreign cavalry did not linger in a fight amid the shouts behind them. Instead, they quickly cleaned up the battlefield next to the marching column, gathered the usable war horses, slaughtered the injured war horses and Western Xia people, and then carried the arrows and dead horses on the ground back to the marching column... It was roughly the same throughout the army, with only one exception, that is, the armored cavalry stood out and blocked the foreign cavalry from going out to fight, and they did not gain much.
In the distance, Western Xia Liang Wang Weiming Anhui, who had found a small hill to watch the battle, stared for a long time, but was horrified... He was not shaken by this loss. In fact, this was just a test. He did not expect this hastily gathered tribal light cavalry to gain anything. But the problem was that during the battle just now, the Song army did not stop at all!
That’s right, although the Song army slowed down, it continued to advance calmly throughout the entire battle!
This is the most terrible thing!
"Every ten miles, have the soldiers put on their armor and rotate to the outer layer. The whole army will keep moving. We will march forty miles today." Under the banner of serving the country with loyalty, Yue Fei rode his horse slowly, looked at the sun, then looked at the smoke and dust rising around Weiming Anhui in the distance, and calmly turned back to look at Qu Duan. "Tomorrow we will march fifty miles."
Qu Duan, who was riding side by side with Yue Fei, did not respond directly. Instead, he looked incredulous: "It actually works?"
"These are the soldiers of the imperial camp, and they have excellent military discipline." Hu Hongxiu's face flushed, and he looked at them from the side. "With such military discipline and proper military formation, how can it not work? And the key is that the governor had foresight and abandoned the Tangqu Canal, allowing the army to march along the river. The river not only protected the baggage and the laborers, but more importantly, it also covered half of the military formation, preventing the Xixia people from going around to find flaws, and allowing us to only take care of one side of the defense. Otherwise, how could we use that emergency military formation to cover the entire army? In my opinion, the biggest advantage of this battle is the march. Yue Governor made an antelope hanging on the corner and marched along the river, but he inadvertently smoothed over this biggest difficulty... He really has the style of Li Yaoshi!"
Qu Duan nodded again... Let's talk about who Qu Da is? Given his temper, he must be dissatisfied with Yue Fei, so he may not agree with Hu Hongxiu's words about "Li Yaoshi". But he also saw that the biggest feature of Yue Fei's marching emergency formation is that it relies on the river. Although it seems simple, it is really a great trick. After all, everyone can set up this kind of marching formation to deal with the harassment of light cavalry, but relying on the river can save half of the protective troops and cover half of the attacked parts, which can reduce the burden of the troops to the greatest extent, making it light and simple, so as to continue to march. But if we take the Tangqu Canal, there will be no such advantage, but it will become a flaw... The Western bandits will harass across the canal that is only a few dozen steps wide, and may even force the Song army to split up, which will reveal more flaws.
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