Armored cavalry was the king of the battlefield of that era. On the battlefield of tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands, they might not be thousands, but they could be powerful in the three armies.≧At that time, Armored cavalry was a trumpet division built by various countries without hesitation to make huge sums of money, and was an important goal of the competition. They were elites and even the soul of the military. The number of heavy cavalry increased and decreased, and even represented the rise and fall of a country's dynasty. When the heavy cavalry belonging to it declined and died, it also declared that the future of this dynasty was not long and was about to collapse.

Later Zhao Shile destroyed Duan Mopi and seized 5,000 war horses wearing horse armor; in the battle against Ji Dan, Shile seized tens of thousands of horse armor. Because the armor and cavalry were extremely powerful, this special type of troops appeared even in southern China, which was not suitable for cavalry combat.

This emerging armies developed during the Southern and Northern Dynasties, the standard armored cavalry consists of six major parts, including a curtain, a chicken neck, a chest, a horse's body, a parasitic, and a saddle, stirrup, reins and other equipment.

The "face curtain" is a narrow metal protective surface with eye holes on it, which mainly protects the face of the horse; the "chicken neck" is a pair of armor on the neck, made of armor pieces, with buckles in front to buckle; after being tied, it is a large piece of armor at the middle and back of the horse... And the "parasitic" is a broom-like thing placed at the tail of the horse to protect the back of the cavalry. Many heavy-armored cavalry horses also have a tube with tassels on the foreheads, with brightly colored tassels, and paired with the cloak and helmet tassels on the knights, which is a special style on the war horses.

Armored cavalry was popular in the Sixteen Kingdoms, and all countries were equipped with a large amount of equipment, such as the Three Thousand Black Spears of the Later Zhao army. It was the treasure of the Later Zhao country.

However, as the saying goes, there is a shield, and the thicker the shield is, the thicker the shield is. The thicker the shield is, this is also the trend of the development of the army. When the cavalry is heavy-equipped, in addition to constantly pile up armor for heavy cavalry, other equipment and tactics to crack heavy cavalry began to appear.

Later, a vest generally weighs more than 100 kilograms, and some even weighs 200 kilograms. The human armor and vest usually weigh more than 200 kilograms to 300 kilograms. This does not include the weight of the knight. Such loads require extremely high requirements for war horses and have a huge load. While the protection ability is constantly improving, the maneuverability of heavy cavalry is also decreasing and lower, and in the end, it basically completely lost the high maneuverability and flange assault capabilities that cavalry possessed.

Even the best war horses can only slow down, trot, jog, charge, and have good explosive power, but they have extremely poor endurance and can only continue to fight for a short period of time. This makes the ace troops that have spent countless money can only be dispatched once a day in a battle. They may not be able to maintain once every half an hour.

With the development of war practice, the weaknesses of armored riders' equipment have gradually been exposed. Armed riders have poor mobility. Although they are suitable for frontal assaults, they are not suitable for mobile tactics. They are not suitable for interspersed or detoured, and the heavy equipment makes them simple in tactics and slow in action.

Although armored cavalry has obvious advantages when dealing with poorly equipped infantry, they are often unable to handle maneuverable and flexible light cavalry and well-equipped infantry. They are even at a disadvantage.

Secondly, new equipment continues to appear. After the rise of heavy-armed soldiers, many weapons and equipment specializing in dealing with heavy cavalry have emerged accordingly.

Strong bows, hard crossbows, even big axes, long spears, etc. have been greatly improved, which pose a great threat to heavy cavalry.

During the north and south periods, the bow power became stronger and stronger. The stair bow developed to reach more than ten stones, and the horse bow could also reach six stones. The most important thing was the development of crossbows. The "Wanjun Divine Crossbow" that appeared at that time was "all the way to it". Later, a bed crossbow that had to be used to twist the strings was developed to specifically deal with heavy cavalry. In addition, a chariot crossbow was developed, which could fire seven iron feather arrows at the same time, and the range was even 700 steps away. The chariot crossbow could be installed on a chariot and used on a warship. It had maneuverability and could better fight against heavy cavalry.

In the late Southern and Northern Dynasties, the number of equipment for bows and crossbows was greatly increased, especially the army of the Northern Dynasties, and even the equipment rate of bows and arrows reached 100%. Almost everyone had a bow, and even had a equipment rate of 20% of the crossbow machines. A large number of crossbow equipment, as well as the use of chariots, and the re-use of combat vehicles, and the tactics of light cavalry changed, which caused more and more restrictions and threats to heavy cavalry, and the cost-effectiveness of use continued to decline.

The power of new destructive weapons continues to grow, posing a great threat to slow-moving armored cavalry. In the development of military affairs, when the power of destructive weapons is significantly higher than that of protective equipment, there will be two possible reactions. One is to continue to try to strengthen equipment defense, and the other is to simply cancel defense equipment to reduce load and improve mobility. Just like in the later era of Heat Arts, soldiers simply stopped wearing armor and went into battle lightly.

In the post-Three Kingdoms era, when Zhou Qi and Chen divided the world into three parts, all countries began to adopt the general method of partially canceling protective equipment, that is, canceling the vest. The war horses no longer wear vests, or only retaining one horse armor. They changed to light cavalry with only cavalry armor to increase maneuvers to avoid the opponent's killing and injury, achieving good results.

"Generally speaking, weapons and equipment often determine the tactics choice, and tactics will in turn affect the development of weapons and equipment. The rise of heavy cavalry during the Five Barbarians and Sixteen Kingdoms brought about the development of killing weapons during the Southern and Northern Dynasties, and eventually made the tactics mainly based on mobility gradually replaced the tactics mainly based on impact and protection capabilities into the mainstream of the battlefield. This tactics eventually affected the historical trend of replacing armored cavalry with light cavalry." Yi Feng came to a group of people who were superstitious about heavy cavalry.

A vivid military history lesson. "What's more, as the Great Sui Dynasty unified the Central Plains, wars continued to decrease, soldiers were constantly laid off, and the standing soldiers were also turned into government soldiers who worked in their spare time. The main enemy of the court was the Turks in the north. The Turks were mainly light cavalry. Faced with these high-mobile light cavalry coming and going like the wind, heavy cavalry is no longer suitable for the mainstream of today's war. If you can't catch up with the enemy and can't touch it, even if you can't attack people, what's the use of everything?"

"What's more, raising an armored cavalry is equivalent to five light cavalrymen, and the cost is not low."

After hearing Yi Feng's words, Qin Qiong and others felt that the tall and superior image of the invincible iron-armored cavalry in their hearts collapsed. It turned out that the heavy-armed cavalry that was invulnerable to swords and guns had become stupid iron lumps, which was simply unacceptable.

"Is the heavy-armed cavalry really useless?" Yuchi Jingde said, looking back at the knights and war horses who were already wearing heavy armor. They were ready. The cavalry boarded the horse, raised their long spears, and began to adjust the formation. One thousand heavy cavalry were divided into two regiments, five hundred men in a group. They formed a wedge formation, with twenty people in the first row and twenty four people in the second row, each row increased in sequence until the sixty four people in the last row, a total of twelve rows, with a total of five hundred. The last row was short of four people, and only sixty horses.

Looking at these all-black black iron lumps, people and horses all wear black armor, as solemn as a mountain. It is really hard to imagine that these people are already on the verge of being eliminated.

"Although in the mainstream, heavy cavalry is no longer more suitable for today's battlefield as light cavalry. But it is not just that heavy cavalry is useless. Any type of troops has its value. The key is how the generals use it. Cooperating with good tactics, heavy cavalry still has unimaginable combat power on a specific battlefield. Of course, this can only be a special case." Although Yi Feng did not worship heavy cavalry, he did not think heavy cavalry was nothing. In fact, in history, in the late Sui Dynasty and early Tang Dynasty, heavy cavalry emerged again. When Yang Guang was in power, Luo Yi's Youzhou Iron Cavalry was a heavy cavalry of up to 5,000 people. Emperor Taizong of Tang Dynasty Li Shimin also had a Xuanjia Army built by himself. Although the number was only a thousand people, he could always bear the brunt of the battlefield. He charged and broke the formation. I don't know how many achievements he made for Li Shimin.

But in general, the most important thing is not the military, but tactics and cooperation. Without good tactics, cavalry may not have fought the infantry. Without good cooperation, cavalry may be surrounded and killed by light infantry.

Heavy cavalry has unparalleled ability to break the formation, but the opponent is mainly infantry and must be on a large battlefield to better play their role. However, this time, the Sui Dynasty dispatched three heavy cavalry teams, but the target of the battle was the Turks. As we all know, the main force of the Turks was light cavalry, and the battlefield would be in areas suitable for cavalry on the frontier. There are very few opportunities for heavy cavalry to play their role. Light cavalry comes and goes like the wind, and they go as soon as possible and run away when they see the difficulties. It is very difficult for heavy cavalry to join the battlefield.

Yi Feng was not interested in practicing another heavy cavalry, but looking at the orderly heavy cavalry of the sect regiment under Yang Xiong's command, he was thinking in his heart that maybe he could find a way to leave this soldier to swallow. If he could swallow it, it would not only save time in training, but also have a full set of equipment to keep it in his hands, and it could also be considered a trump card, which might have a great effect at critical moments.

Thinking of this, he smiled and said to Qin Qiong: "Since you like armored cavalry, you can get closer to them along the way, familiar with them, even if you make friends. After all, these thousand heavy cavalry are under my command and are worthy of our Eastern Army. In the future, there may be a chance to fight together to kill the enemy. Now it is good to be more familiar with one or two."

Qin Qiong was a little excited by Yi Feng's words and was not very moved.

"If you can learn some real skills of heavy cavalry from there, I might be able to try to form a hundred armored cavalry for you." Yi Feng gave Qin Qiong a lot of temptation, "And, I might consider creating a set of steel plate heavy armor for this heavy cavalry, which is lighter but stronger than the current armored cavalry."

Now Qin Qiong could not help but shake it, "A hundred young people, how could they have to be a group."

Yi Feng smiled, "It depends on how many real skills you can learn. If you can bring one hundred riders well, it will not be a problem to increase them to five hundred riders in a group."
Chapter completed!