The world's three major martial arts books are "Sun Tzu Art of War" (Sun Wu), "War Theory" (Clausewitz), "Five Wheels Book" (Miyamoto Musashi), of which China's "Sun Tzu Art of War" ranked first, it is the world's earliest military work, known as the "Sacred Code of Military Studies", which has a history of more than 2500 years.
In "Sun Tzu's Art of War", "Know yourself and know the other, never lose a hundred battles", "Soldiers, devious ways, so they can show that they can't, use and show that they don't use, near and far, far and near" are all martial arts that have been handed down to this day. But today, Xiaobian wants to take you to understand a tactic called "Macedonian Phalanx", which was called "Perfect Phalanx" at the time, but it really can't be cracked?
"Macedonian phalanx", friends who do not understand the military aspect may not be familiar with it, but see the following figure, this phalanx has appeared in many war movies.
In the 7th century BC (China was in the Spring and Autumn Period), the Macedonian phalanx was born. It was an early infantry combat tactic, a modified phalanx of the Greek heavy infantry phalanx. It seems to us now that the formation of this phalanx is not difficult, but before that, in homer's time (about the 12th century BC to the 9th century BC), the infantry fought in a swarm, not to mention facing the enemy, and their own people would be injured by mistake.
Therefore, as a tactic with a strict formation, the Macedonian phalanx could easily defeat the enemy who was chaotic on the other side, and was the innovator and leader of the world's tactics at that time.
The Macedonian phalanx had the largest number of standing troops, carrying Macedonian spears (13 to 14 feet long, later more than 18 feet) and a round shield with a diameter of 2 feet. With a shield in his left hand and a gun in his right hand, he protected both his own left and his companion's right.
If the front soldier falls, the soldiers in the 2nd row will quickly fill it in to ensure that there is no gap. The soldiers of the 1st platoon need to squat half-crouch and point their spears at the front, and the soldiers of the 2nd platoon put their spears on the shoulders of the soldiers in the 1st row, and the enemy coming from the front will "poke" one. However, such a formation requires all soldiers not to retreat, but to work together, because in the absence of a few people, the entire phalanx is in danger of scattering.
They therefore had strict organization and management methods, usually 64 armored soldiers formed 1 platoon, 128 men formed 1 company, 256 men formed 1 battalion, 1024 men formed 1 regiment, 4096 men formed 1 division (i.e. primary phalanx). Then a whole phalanx came down, there were about 30,000 people, which was the formation of the typical expeditionary force in Alexander's time.
However, with the death of Alexander, the Macedonian phalanx of hehewei did not continue to develop, stagnated, the infantry equipment and mobility became worse and worse, everyone was progressing, you regressed alone, needless to say, it was definitely going to lose. So later the Romans with the "invincible legion" destroyed the Macedonian phalanx, which shows that it is not invulnerable.
According to the history of the development of the Macedonian phalanx, its heyday was the Spring and Autumn Period of the Warring States period in China, and according to speculation, experts confidently said that the Macedonian phalanx was vulnerable to the Chinese army at that time.
During the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, China's military theory entered a climax, because the wars of annexation and hegemony between the princes became increasingly fierce, and in order to gain the upper hand, military talents from various countries emerged, and the monarchs of various countries were even more angry and strong, such as "avoiding the strong and attacking the weak", "inducing the enemy to set up an ambush", and "preemptively attacking and post-emptive strikes", that is, Cao Jiao said: "Fu war, courage also." One drum blows, then declines, three exhausts. He exhausted my surplus, so he gave it. "These military doctrines are applied in actual combat.
The fatal weakness of the Macedonian phalanx is to attack its two wings or back, without attacking its front, you can put it to death, they are particularly afraid of the arrow array, how fierce the Chinese arrow is, do not need to say more about it, its production in the Spring and Autumn Period also had a great progress, gradually abandoning the traditional bilate flat body from the Shang Dynasty to the Western Zhou Dynasty, and changing to a three-wing triangular pyramid type.
Therefore, if the Macedonian phalanx came to China in the Spring and Autumn Period, it would have no chance of winning.