When a moment of horror was staged on the streets of Guangzhou, the cavalry battalion far away in Shandong was in full swing chasing and killing the horse thieves entrenched in Mishenshan. Pen & Fun & Pavilion www.biquge.info

The main force of this horse thief is the rout of the rebels, the veteran of the original Dongjiang Town, who has fought with the Tartars, and the combat effectiveness is not weak, and the leader was Kong Youde's personal soldier, named Kong Lianshun. After the rebellion was put down, this group of routed soldiers had nowhere to go, and the doves occupied the magpie's nest, occupying the territory of a group of horse thieves on the Mishen Mountain, turning them into little brothers, and becoming one, from hundreds of bandits to one or two thousand "giant robbers" at once.

They took advantage of the gap between the initial determination of Shandong and the government's inability to conduct large-scale requisitions, and wantonly plundered the passing people and merchants, even the government's convoys, and won many battles without a single defeat, but when the cavalry battalion led by Ma Wei arrived, they kicked the iron plate.

Ma Wei himself is the border army of the night does not accept the background, whether it is riding or combat skills, experience is first-class, under his training, these grassroots Shandong cavalry riding skills have improved by leaps and bounds, the saber is also played, what is lacking is the opportunity to practice. When they arrived south to Shandong in the summer, they brought them a big killing weapon - the cavalry version of the Qionghai-style rifle.

The appearance of this rifle also came from Lin Weiye's idea, he borrowed from the cavalry carbine model of the British army's 18th-century brown bess flintlock pistol, and the barrel was truncated, and the length was between the army version and the pistol version, and of course the range would be reduced. Although the range is shortened, the power in the effective range is not reduced, and the short barrel is easier to reload with lead bullets, and the reloading action can be completed faster on horseback.

With such weapons, the cavalry battalion was very close to the way the famous Mongol hussars fought.

From the rise of Genghis Khan to the middle of the Yuan Dynasty, the Mongol cavalry was a formidable force, tactically agile and courageous, fighting an invincible opponent throughout Eurasia, and their weapons were mainly Mongol composite recurve bows and scimitars, the former used in long-range combat, and the latter in close combat. In the face of dense infantry arrays, the Mongols would crush their opponents with dense throwing shots; If the enemy launches a pursuit, they will hang their opponent like a kite, running and shooting back until the opponent collapses - this is the "mangu" tactic that terrified the Europeans; If their opponents flee, they can chase them from behind and reap their lives with their scimitars.

In the heyday of the Mongol cavalry, this way of fighting that could be far and close and could not be caught up with was almost unsolvable, whether it was a heavy full-body foot armor, a double-edged sword or a Damascus scimitar, whether it was the heavy infantry of the Song Dynasty or the knights of Europe, whether it was the Mamluk cavalry or the Cossack cavalry, they all fell under the iron hooves of the Mongols.

Of course, the cavalry that has been trained for less than a year cannot be compared with the Mongolian cavalry at its peak, and the gap in riding skills is needless to say - the Mongols are known as a people on horseback, and there are few opponents in horseback - and riding and archery cannot be practiced in a year or two. These cavalrymen, who were peasants half a year ago, could not hit the target even if they stood and shot arrows, let alone rode on the back of a bumpy horse? However, with the short gun, the gap in combat effectiveness has narrowed a lot. As long as it is a person with normal intelligence and sound limbs, he can shoot with a little training, and his power and range are enough to match the riding bow, and he can train in batches in a short time, unlike the archers, who can hone an excellent archer in a few years or even more than ten years.

When the rebel-led horse thieves encountered this group of officers and soldiers, they didn't think much about it at first, thinking that they were ordinary officers and soldiers. The leader, Kong Lianshun, commanded his brothers to launch a direct charge, trying to overwhelm the opponent with momentum and disperse the opponent in one blow - when they were still members of the rebel army, they relied on more skilled horsemanship and personal bravery than their opponents to defeat the local cavalry in Shandong, a tactic that was tried and tested.

Unexpectedly, these officers and soldiers are very cunning, each of them has a short gun in their hands, and there is more than one, they can be changed after the fight, and they don't wait for the horse thieves to get close, and they shoot without saying a word.

Kong Lianshun was dumbfounded, can the fire gun still play on horseback? I've only seen cavalrymen pick up bows and arrows to play with cavalry shooting, and I've never seen cavalry play with firearms. He instinctively felt that the other party was not simple, and whistled and beckoned the brothers to run away, but he didn't expect the other party to catch up unhurriedly. The war horses on both sides are Mongolian horses from the northern grasslands, and their endurance and speed are half a catty, and they can't get rid of them after running for a long time.

Kong Lian couldn't get angry, raised his saber, and shouted: "Damn, brothers, it doesn't feel good to be picked up as a rabbit, go back and fuck him!" The thieves hula and turned their heads to charge back. When they turned around, the opponent's short guns had been loaded, and "Woo Woo Boom" was another mess of shots. As the gunshots rang out, many more people were shot and fell off their horses.

This is Lin Weiye's method of combining the musket tactics of the European dragoons with the "mangu" tactics of the Mongolian cavalry, each cavalry is equipped with 2-3 short guns, loaded with gunpowder projectiles in advance, and when encountering the enemy, they use short guns to shoot, and two or three short guns take turns to fire, which can maintain relatively dense firepower, and ordinary people cannot get close. When the ammunition is finished, the horse retreats, reloads the ammunition and continues to load.

This lofty tactic originated with the most prominent king of Sweden, Gustav Adolf II, who learned it in battle with the Polish hussars. Lam improved on Gustav because he had a flintlock pistol with perfect performance, while Gustav still used an arquebus in his early days. In fact, the three-eyed gun of the Guan Ning Army is similar to this tactic to some extent, but compared with the three-eyed gun of the Guan Ning Army that turns into a burning stick after firing, the loading speed and firing frequency of the short flintlock pistol and fixed ammunition are more than one grade higher, and the power and lethality of the tactics are also much higher.

After all, Kong Lianshun had been Kong Youde's personal soldier and had rich combat experience, he saw clearly that the other party's fighting method was these three axes, and the riding skills looked a little jerky, and they were probably rookies, so he raised his saber and shouted: "Brothers, they come and go is this trick, don't be afraid, side by side, as long as you are close, you must not be our opponent!" ”

The horse thieves plucked up their courage and shouted and met them with the whistling buckshots. This method seemed to be effective, and although some people still fell off their horses, the officers and soldiers on the opposite side seemed to panic, turned around and ran away after firing their guns.

At this time, Kong Lianshun and the horse thieves came to the strength and chased after them all the way. The officers and men did not know what they were doing on horseback, they were slower than them, and the distance was slowly getting closer, and they were about to catch up.

At this moment, the officers and men suddenly slowed down, ran to the left, aimed their pursuers sideways, and raised their short guns in their hands—it turned out that they were reloading lead bullets when they ran slowly.