"Detective Di Renjie" is a TV series that I believe everyone should have seen, this drama is mainly about a series of events that occurred during the Wu Zhou (Wu Zetian usurped the Li Tang artifact, changed to the Yuan Da Zhou, and there is a thing in the play that makes many friends very confused. That is, whether the Turks (a nomadic people, who were still very powerful at the time) who had been pressed to the ground by Emperor Wen of Sui and Emperor Taizong of Tang, were not as powerful as they were on TV, and whether their so-called tiger division, eagle division, and leopard division really existed?
Hao Tong estimated that many elder brothers should have thought about this problem, and otherwise dare not say, anyway, I have thought about it. So today Haotong will talk to you about the distribution of this Turkic army to see if there is any existence of these three (this article was asked by a friend who did not want to be named, so he deliberately opened an article to answer).
First of all, it can be guaranteed that these three exist, and they are basically similar to what is said in "Detective Di Renjie".
The Turks were steppe regimes established by a nomadic people, originating in the desert north and being a multi-ethnic (tribal) regime. There was a Great Khan within the Turks, and this Great Khan was generally held by the most powerful tribal leaders within the Turks. All the armies of the Turks were divided according to the tribe, each tribe had its own army, according to the size of the tribe, the level of combat effectiveness to assign titles, of which the strongest was the tiger division, followed by the leopard division, and finally the eagle division.
The first one, the Tiger Division
There are a total of 3 tiger divisions, they are personally commanded by the Turkic Khan, is the Turkic Khan's pro-army unit, in general, can only be mobilized by the Turkic Khan and his immediate family, outsiders have no right to move, there is no clear historical record of how many people there are in these 3 tiger divisions, but conservative estimates should be more than 50,000 people (counting the tiger division's appendages, slaves).
As mentioned earlier, each tribe of the Turks has its own army, with the exception of the Tiger Division, which is formed (independently) by the elite selected by the Turkic Han from all the tribes, and in general, unless the Turkic Great Khan orders (and the Tiger Division only obeys the orders of the Turkic Great Khan, no matter who the Great Khan is, it is not directly related to the tribe of the Great Khan), the Tiger Division will not be easily mobilized (the Tiger Division has always been around the tribe where the Turkic Great Khan is located, just in case, but the other troops are mobile, the reasons are said later).
The war horses of the Tiger Division are the best "Helan" (Helan is the general name for Turkic horses), and are equipped with high-end horse harnesses such as horse titles (the one bitten in the horse's mouth), stirrups, and Helan horses are generally good at long-distance raids, so the combat effectiveness of the Tiger Division was definitely the cavalry of any powerful Central Plains Dynasty at that time.
The Turks were very short of iron because they were nomadic peoples, but the Tiger Division was equipped with iron weapons because it had to defend the Great Khan. Their weapons were divided into three types, bows and arrows, armor (non-nobles and tiger masters in the Turks were not allowed to wear armor, as was the Central Plains Dynasty, and the armor was far stricter than that of swords), and sabers.
Because the tiger division is 3, it is divided into the front guard, the middle guard, and the rear guard, of which the front guard is responsible for attacking and tempting, the middle guard is responsible for protecting the king's tent of the Turkic Khan (the Great Khan of the Turks also lives in a tent, although it is large but can also move), and the rear guard is generally a private army formed by the relatives and direct tribes of the Great Khan, to put it bluntly, it is a reserve, which is responsible for watching the back and charging at any time.
The second, the Leopard Division
The leopard division is divided into 16, which is the backbone of the Turks, in fact, we can understand that these 16 leopard divisions are 16 tribes, and one of them is responsible for maintaining a leopard division, and the leopard division obeys the chief of the tribe in addition to obeying the great khan. In general, leopard masters are the standard of Turkic middle tribes, and a leopard division is normally 10,000 people (leopards seem to be Turkic totems, similar to gods, and enjoy offerings).
The leopard division's weapons are also 3 types, divided into sabers, spears, and horse trippers (this horse trip is full of wisdom and needs to be mentioned. Horse tripping is similar to a horse pole, because the steppe is not full of trees, in order to facilitate the tethering of horses, so the Turks invented this, that is, at night to tie him to the horse's legs, so that the horse can not run but can walk freely in small areas, wartime began to open for the enemy).
Some friends may ask here, they are all nomadic people, don't leopard masters have bows and arrows? It is like this, because the leopard division is inferior to the tiger division, it can hardly be divided into iron arrows, but the soldiers of the Central Plains Dynasty have armor, and ordinary feather arrows (one of the main weapons used by the Turks, with average lethality) cannot hurt people at all, so they are also equipped, but they will not be used easily.
The third, the Eagle Division
There are a total of 32 eagle divisions, which are the main non-combat forces of the Turks, as mentioned above, in fact, 32 eagle divisions can be said to be 32 tribes, and they are mainly small tribes. The eagle division's daily tasks probably included patrolling Turkic territory, stationing somewhere on the border to assert sovereignty, monitoring the movements of the Central Plains Dynasty's large army, and sneaking up on the Heavy Troops of the Central Plains Dynasty over long distances.
The main composition of the Eagle Division is the members of the tribe, so the size of the Eagle Division is very different, the ordinary Eagle Division may only have a few thousand people, but the top Eagle Division may have tens of thousands of people, more than the Leopard Division. The Eagle Division is best at fighting in small groups, combining to annihilate the enemy if necessary.
The Eagle Division does not have a unified standard weapon, their weapons are self-sufficient tribal members, if they have money, they use iron, and when they have no money, they use wood, so under normal circumstances, the Eagle Division will not face the enemy head-on, because they are too weak.
Finally, to answer the previous question, the Turkic leopard division and the eagle division are mobile, why? As mentioned earlier, both the leopard master and the eagle division have a fixed tribe to supply (the tiger division needless to say), but the tribe has to follow the fertile water and grass to graze, so they have to move, and they move the leopard division and the eagle division that is supplied must also move, which makes sense. So there was a very common situation at that time, if there was a very urgent wartime, they would definitely suffer losses, because there was time for the transmission of the news, and there was time for the assembly of personnel.
Calendar year today: On January 3, 1839, Daoguang Fenglin Zexu was made the minister of Qincha and banned opium in Guangdong; on January 3, 1927, the Hankou Incident broke out;