Zhao Ta was shocked when he received the news that Yelu Yu was besieged, not only because Yelu Yu was defeated, but because the large number of Black Tatars went south to confirm his conjecture, they were not just here to fight the autumn wind, but were driven and bewitched by the Jurchens to contain the Xijing troops.

If Yelu Yu died in battle, the escape of King Liang that had just been quelled would inevitably cause a new wave of turmoil in Xijing, and he decided to personally lead troops to reinforcements, and was attacked by a small group of Tatar troops halfway through, and these people were unfamiliar with guerrilla tactics, and they surrounded the Xijing army like a swarm of flies. If you ignore him, he will buzz around you, and if you stop and beat him, you just raise your hand, and he will already fly away!

Today, Zhao Ta ordered the brigade to go first, and he personally led a group of men and horses to break away from the ambush behind a terrace, preparing to ambush the Tatar 'guerrillas'. When a group of about five hundred Tatars appeared in the telescope field of vision, Zhao Ta did not give the order to attack, but continued to hide.

The Tatars seemed to be born experts in guerrilla warfare, and the harsh living environment, and the ferocious beasts were the best teachers, as if they smelled danger in the air, they suddenly reined in their horses and sent a team of ten people to search and investigate. Fortunately, Zhao Ta was in ambush, otherwise he would have been exposed.

The telescope brought the Tatars closer to their eyes, with scimitars and bows at their waists, quivers and spears on their backs, and dwarf Mongolian horses sitting on them, with short-eared hats on their heads and wide leather robes. swept the entire Central Plains and climbed to the peak of the overlord of the world. They built a vast empire that spanned Eurasia and left posterity in the dust.

But Zhao Ta breathed a sigh of relief. Before Genghis Khan, the steppe cavalry mostly used scimitars to charge and kill, this style of knife originated in the Arab region, after the early expansion of the Arab Empire, they introduced the Arabic scimitar to Central Asia, and the Turks used the combination of the mechanics of the scimitar and the impact of horses to the extreme.

The Turks used the impact of horses, combined with the mechanics of the scimitar, to easily cut off the enemy's body and even armor and weapons, even if the knife was not sharpened. The most powerful cavalry before Genghis Khan was the Turkic cavalry, not the Mongol cavalry. So the change of the knife has contributed a lot.

As one of the most crucial elements of cavalry, the horse, the Mongolian horse is actually only an inferior horse in the eyes of the cavalry. Mongolian horses are short, slow to sprint short distances, and not very capable of long journeys, and it is not the Mongolian horse that many people mistakenly think is known for its ability to travel long distances. Moreover, the Mongols were not very tall, their strength was not strong compared to the other nomadic peoples around them, and the well-known backward level of culture and technology made it difficult to imagine that the Mongols would be able to rule almost all of Eurasia in the future.

Since cavalry is different from infantry, it is impossible to carry a strong man with great lethality but bulky. Only a few small bows can be worn. As a result, the cavalry's cavalry not only has a short range, but also has little lethality, and cannot effectively kill some heavily armed or even infantry with medium protection capabilities. Therefore, the cavalry was equipped with bows and arrows at that time for defensive purposes. For example, when the scout cavalry is found by the enemy and needs to escape, they should first use their bows and arrows to keep the enemy at a certain distance from them to facilitate escape. Or when dealing with light infantry and other light cavalry. Give the enemy a certain amount of damage before approaching the close one, or at least disrupt the enemy's preparations. Hand-to-hand combat to facilitate the rush to the enemy!

Another important point is that cavalry cavalry usually does not have a high hit rate. This is because it is necessary to balance the body and grasp the direction of the horse in the horse. It is indeed very difficult to grasp the hit rate. The training of a cavalryman with a high hit rate is no less difficult than the training of special forces in modern times. This, coupled with the problem of range and lethality of mounted archery, has led many tribes and nomads to be unwilling or feel that it is not worth spending so much time and effort on training qualified mounted archers.

And the reason why Zhao Tan set his sights on their equipment was because he knew that the reason why the Mongol cavalry of later generations was able to dominate the world, in addition to their proper tactics and strategies, the improved bows and arrows contributed a lot, and their rise began with the improvement of bows and arrows...

In order to deal with the tribes that were stronger than himself, Genghis Khan first started with the bow and arrow used by the cavalry, and greatly increased the strength of the bow, but the size did not increase much, at least the cavalry could still be used without affecting the control and flexibility of the horse. The bow used was significantly larger than the bows of other cavalrymen, but not longer than half of a man's body, so that it could also be used on horses.

The improvement of the bow was mainly due to a substantial increase in strength, which also led to the occurrence of problems, the increase in the strength of the bow led to the fact that ordinary people could not pull it apart, so it could not be popularized to every cavalry, and the scale of natural cavalry archers was limited; Moreover, even if it can be pulled away, it cannot be well controlled, and the accuracy has become a problem; Also, a hard bow usually affects the rate of emission.

Speed is the most lethal problem in shooting, if the speed is slow, it is easy to pause while sprinting and shooting, and it is impossible to maintain coherence, and it will be counterattacked by the enemy. The cavalry could not shoot in an array like the infantry, because a stable queue could not be guaranteed during the charge, and the men in the back row might not inflict significant damage on the enemy if they shot down the people in the front row, resulting in a large increase in accidental injuries.

In order to solve these problems, Genghis Khan made a series of bold innovations from the training system, the mode to the later tactics. In order for the warriors of his own tribe to use this Mongolian strongbow that he invented, he trained and competed in various stimulating and rewarding ways from a very young age among the men of his tribe. The winner is rewarded, and the loser reduces the family's wealth and food distribution.

In the same way, similar rewards and punishments were given to the training of mounted archery skills, hit rates, etc., in order to stimulate and promote the mastery of the hard bow and mounted archery skills improved by Genghis Khan, so that the men of the tribe could basically pull the hard bow at the age of fourteen. So the boys of Genghis Khan's tribe were not so much raised on horseback, but rather on a combination of bows and horses...

After some scrutiny, Zhao Ta found that the Tatars still used small bows, thinking that the emperor in history didn't know what time and space Lu Dao was roaming in, and his grandfather might be in this ambushed team. Seeing that the enemy army was slowly approaching his preset ambush position, Zhao Ta waved his hand, and the trumpet of the charge sounded immediately, and the leopard who was on standby immediately rushed out from behind the mountain, the first battalion met the Tatars, and the second and third battalions outflanked from both flanks.

The Chasseur Brigade was a new unit formed by Zhao Ta based on a new form of combat and experience after capturing the Tatar gathering places such as the Tiande Army, and the situation at that time was similar to now, they encountered endless pursuit and harassment by the Tatar cavalry, and when they encountered the frontal resistance of the Xijing Army, they used their good mobility to quickly evacuate, and when they were lax, they suddenly appeared to attack, and the losses of the Xijing armies were higher than those in the large-scale battle, and they not only suffered losses of personnel under their pursuit and harassment, but also left an indelible psychological shadow.

So Zhao Ta targeted the formation of a cavalry team, this cavalry all rode back to the war horses, using nomadic cavalry to fight, to sneak attack and scattered charge, the formation of this "special" corps was highly valued by Zhao Ta, their training is extremely sophisticated. He wanted to turn the chasseur regiment into a better light cavalry than the local cavalry, training them to often use various complex terrain to conceal their whereabouts, and to hunt down local light cavalry guerrillas and find a camp to sneak up on the opposing side.

The new Cavalry Brigade consisted mostly of indigenous members recruited from tribes loyal to the Xijing government, who were skilled in mounted archery and skilled in horse combat, and were familiar with cold weapon combat. If the Xijing Army at this time is called regular cavalry, then they can be called irregular cavalry, they do not accept the group cavalry combat training that the Zhongxing Army must practice, but still retain their unique combat methods, fighting in the same flexible way of light cavalry dispersion.

The irregular cavalry required mainly personal skill, and individual horsemanship and martial arts were the inherent talents of these horseback peoples, who had to undergo rigorous training in firearms, in addition to choosing the weapons they were good at, as they often dealt with encounters and skirmishes. In such skirmishes, the power of the cavalry charge in large depth cannot be reflected, but the musket has a very important position in the battle, and the individual marksmanship is as important as their personal riding and martial arts, so the chasseurs are not only famous for their spears and sabers, but also for their accurate marksmanship.

The chassars returned fire with muskets if they were confronted by the nomadic cavalry, and in close combat, they were always more courageous. But the chasseurs often no longer used spears, preferring to use sabers. The saber equipped by the Zhongxing Army is designed and manufactured according to the memory of Zhao Ta's previous life, but traces of the Arab scimitar can be found in the modern saber, but it is more suitable for horse combat after improvement, because they and the enemy are irregular cavalry, so they often have to carry out rapid horseback melee without a formation at all, at this time the saber is much more flexible than the spear, and they are also not inferior in close combat.

Zhao Ta looked at the two armies fighting on the vast grassland, the snow and mist stirred up by the horses' hooves was like a blizzard suddenly coming, he watched the fierce battle, and at this moment the balance of victory was tilting towards his side... (To be continued......)