If you are a veteran gamer, especially a large-scale strategy RPG (role-playing) game with ancient historical background, and you mainly use class battles to restore ancient battlefields as a gimmick, then when I ask you what is the strongest class in ancient times, you will most likely answer:
Mounted archers
。
Yes, in games such as "At least and Slash 2" and "Total War: Three Kingdoms", the mounted archer or the class called the archer, as long as you operate it properly, it is a BUG-like existence, often 0 deaths to block the opponent's hundred-man army, what is less to win more, to win the weak to the strong is not a word. Not only is this kind of large-scale class confrontation game, even in a single-player RPG game like Zelda Wilderness, once the protagonist Link, nicknamed Helaru Rogue, rides on a horse and carries a bow, then he can shoot the nightmare cyclops in a circle.
High-speed mobility and ultra-long attack range make the "archer" a frightening existence in the era of cold weapons.
Such as King Zhao Wuling's "Hufu Riding Shooting", such as the Mongolian archers dominating Eurasia, and then such as the Jurchens conquering the world with bows and horses, and finally evolving the "steppe riding shooting culture", riding archery has always been a god-like existence on the ancient battlefield in the minds of most people?
Unfortunately, however, the mounted archery was not as powerful as it is now on the real battlefield, at least it rarely made a brilliant battle in the history of world war with the main force. The opposite of the shooter you always have in the game is always the main output, in
In the real era of cold weapons, riding archery has always been only an auxiliary class
So today, we will talk about the gap between literary and artistic works and reality.
Chinese's first contact with the concept of "riding and shooting" should be the "Hufu Riding And Shooting" policy of King Wuling of Zhao in the Warring States period, and the "Records of History" volume 43 "Zhao Shijia" records:
In the first month of the nineteenth year, the Great Dynasty Letter Palace, summoned Fei Yi and discussed the world, and after five days, he ordered Yi Hu to obey, change the military system, and learn to ride and shoot.
It turned out that the Early Warring States State of Zhao was a country with a rather weak military strength, bordered by the powerful nomadic Donghu in the northeast, the Xiongnu in the north, and gulinhu and Guloufu (a branch of Rong Di) in the west, all of which were good at riding and shooting, and the soldiers were strong.
Zhao Guo was like a small point mixed in with a group of people, who were bullied at both ends for three days.
When Zhao Yong, the king of Zhao Wuling, succeeded to the throne, he felt that he was always being bullied, so he observed the powerful Donghu and Xiongnu, who were all dressed in tied clothes and whizzed on horseback and whizzed arrows. It is precisely for this reason that in 307 BC (the nineteenth year of King Wuling of Zhao), Zhao Yong gave the order
"Hufu rides and shoots
The military system is called "the division of the long skill to control the yi." After all this tossing,
The military strength of the Zhao state gradually became stronger, and later destroyed the Zhongshan kingdom, defeated Lin Hu and Lou Fu, and opened up the three counties of Yanmen and Dai County in Yunzhong, making it the strongest country among the six eastern kingdoms
Does that prove that the "archers" are really very cattle?
The answer is clearly no
This is not to say that Zhao Yong's "Hufu Riding Shooting" was useless, but under the actual conditions at that time, at best
"The rookies peck at each other
", can not play a decisive role. The reason is also very simple, currently in the world
The earliest physical stirrups were excavated in the tomb of Feng Sufu, a Northern Yan nobleman in Beipiao County, in 1965, around the middle of the 3rd century to the beginning of the 4th century AD. Another piece of "riding and shooting" the most important equipment Takahashi saddle, the earliest discovery in China at present is the riding maid excavated from the Leitai Han Tomb at the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty.
So the archers of the 4th century BC, we can imagine how they took a bow and shot arrows.
Soldiers were required to ride across a bare horse or simply fix the unsupported soft saddle, tighten the horse's abdomen with both feet, and then release the reins, with one hand on the bow and the other for archery
...... Not to mention archery, even if they were given a pistol, it is estimated that before they could pull the trigger, they would be turned upside down by the horse first. So there's a historical joke called"
Great Qin Iron Ride
"Because during the Qin dynasty, our country had neither iron nor the main cavalry formed.
In fact, before the Han Dynasty, most of the Chinese cavalry was
Use the horse as a maneuver, then stop the horse before shooting
They are not the main combat army on the battlefield, and it is impossible to make Zhao Guo strong just by "riding and shooting". We can see this from the formation of the Terracotta Warriors of Qin Shi Huang, and the number of cavalry in the Terracotta Warriors is very small, this is because
Even if you just ride on the back of a horse with a soft saddle, and your legs are long enough to clamp the horse's belly, the selection of talents is already equivalent to the national athlete we are now selecting
It is impossible to have a large number of cavalry teams in the pre-Qin period like in the movie, which is unrealistic. Second, it can also be seen from the fact that the cavalry is far away from the main camp and concentrated in the corner of the side
The most important role of cavalry is to undertake reconnaissance, envelopment, harassment, pursuit and other roles, not the main battle force.
Therefore, it is obviously not in line with reality to completely attribute the later strength of the Zhao State to the military system of "Hufu Riding and Shooting", and believing that the archers were invincible in the pre-Qin Dynasty. In fact, the powerful factors of Zhao Guo later were very complicated, with Zhao Yong's
Individual efforts, but more importantly the course of history
, and the chaos of the various kingdoms allowed the Zhao kingdom to profit from the fishing, and here it was no longer unfolding.
If King Zhao Wuling's Hufu riding and shooting is more luck, then the Mongol army's western expedition, the golden iron horse breaking through the Eurasian continent, and directly inserting the chrysanthemums of Western European civilization, in this case in front of us, can it be proved that the "archers" are the kings of war in the era of cold weapons?
The answer is still no.
What is even more funny is that this reason is the same as the "unreliable shooting of Hufu riding and shooting" a thousand years ago, or the constraint of science and technology
。 Yes, by the Yuan Dynasty, cavalry was already recognized as the king of war all over the world, but here we are talking about heavy cavalry, not mounted archers. Anyone who has a slight impression of junior high school physics should know that after the bow and arrow is shot out, due to the action of gravity, it is an estimate of the motion of the parabola. When we are fixed somewhere, experienced archers can indeed calculate the ballistic distance and the point of the arrow, but if it is on the back of a galloping horse, and the equilateral number of wind, plus the rapidly changing real battlefield, no one should say that he can fully grasp it.
In the 1980s, Chinese archaeologists excavated a war bow and its bow in the tomb of the Yuan Dynasty warrior general in the Tianshan Mountains on the south bank of Yanhu Lake in the southern suburbs of Urumqi
The body length is 131.5 cm, the distance between the two bows is 119 cm, the bow body is divided into three segments, the sides are symmetrical, the wooden mid-waist, each end is cut into a pointed mortise about 10 cm long, wedged into the bow dry wood, the bow stem is wood on the unified side, until the tail, the reverse side is bone
。 This is a very typical small regurgitated composite bow, the advantage is that it is easy to carry, at the same pound count, it is easier to wind than a single weight bow, faster, it can be said that it was born for riding and shooting.
But the disadvantages of this thing are also obvious, its pull is only 60-80 pounds, although the range is about 50-80 meters, the real effective range is only a pitiful 15 meters, if it is on horseback, this distance is discounted. If the Mongols really used the archers as the main force to conquer Central Asia and Eastern Europe, it is estimated that they would be caught and hung like chickens by their eagles.
Having said all that, how did the Mongols become a feared force? As a matter of fact
The main force of the Mongol Expedition was still heavy cavalry and heavy infantry with long guns
。 Many people will think that the Mongols as nomadic people must be very backward in equipment, but in fact it is just the opposite, since there is no shortage of war horses,
The Mongols were far less expensive to arm a heavily armored cavalry than others
。 Just like someone else builds a car to have an engine, chassis and gearbox, and then add a car shell, the three major pieces of Mongolian artificial cars are directly picked up on the line, which is nothing more than a shell money. meantime
The Route of the Mongol Expedition to the West coincided with the Silk Road
To say that the people's words are that they use the war to fight and plunder, and pick the richest road to kill and burn all the way, so the most expensive heavy cavalry in the era of cold weapons is not worth anything in the eyes of the Mongols.
Was the archers useless in the Mongol army? Obviously, this conclusion is also wrong. According to the current historical data,
The vast majority of archers in the Mongol army played a role in luring, encircling and pursuing
。 For example, they would first have the archers fire two rounds at the more clumsy heavy cavalry in Europe, which, because of the need to control the distance, could not really cause damage to the heavily armed heavy cavalry, and most of their targets were larger horses, not people. When the enemy was confused by the horse-wounded formation, the Mongol heavy cavalry would come out of the nest and harvest the enemy like cabbage. Even in the charge of heavy cavalry, the archers would continue to harass the enemy on both sides of the battlefield.
Yes, the mounted archers could not inflict substantial damage on the other side at all, from the Zhao Wuling King Hufu riding and shooting to the Golden Family's conquest of Eurasia, this result has always been unable to be changed due to the limitations of technology.
However, taking advantage of its flexibility, the archers' ability to harass was unbeatable
。 This tactical thinking of the Mongols was even borrowed by the already moribund Byzantine Empire and became the key to the Byzantine Empire's recovery of Constantinople
Battle of Peragonia in 1259 AD
。 At that time, the Principality of Moriah led an army of 20,000 Frankish heavy cavalry and infantry, traversing the byzantine Empire's western expedition.
Since the Byzantine Empire at this time was already at the end of the crossbow, far inferior in strength to the Frankish heavy cavalry, this time was a war without suspense. However, the Byzantine commander found that the heavily armed Frankish heavy cavalry had a fatal flaw, that is, the man was armed to the teeth, but the war horse had no protection. So the Byzantine commanders cleverly deployed archers to harass the Frankish heavy cavalry, they specially picked the horse's head to shoot, and even used the bow and arrow to disturb the opponent's horses and prevent them from drinking water.
After all, this level of harassment requires neither penetration nor accuracy, but only maximum range
And so it came and went that the Frankish heavy cavalry was exhausted. When the real war came, Byzantium once again used the archers to shoot at the horses, and then used its own heavy cavalry to attack, and the end was self-evident.
So when we see this, we understand,
The archers were never the kings of war in the age of cold weapons
Because he had no way to inflict substantial harm on the enemy army, something that could not be changed due to technical limitations. If you have to say that the archers became battlefield harvesting machines, it will not be until the Jurchens begin to fight against the Ming Dynasty. They changed the nomadic tradition of small recursive bows,
The archers began to equip heavy recoil bows
For example, Xu Guangqi wrote in "Liaozuo's Danger has Been Neglected":
Within five steps, the thief shoots at the face, and every shot will be killed
Obviously this kind of"
Every shot will kill you
"There is also a constraint, that is, you must wait until the enemy is within five steps (10 meters) of yourself,
At this time, if you can't shoot the bow, there is a high probability that you will die
, is a way of fighting against death. However, because the northeast itself is not as flat as Mongolia, mainly mountain forests, so that the Jurchens can ride horses skillfully through the forests from an early age. In other words, I can still hide if I can't hit, which greatly improves the annihilation rate of the Jurchen troops.
But even so, the Jurchens' main combat formation on the plains was still to charge with heavy cavalry in the middle of the yellow flag station, and the rest of the flags were responsible for harassing and encircling the encirclement on the side. It's just that because it is a nomadic people after all, so after entering the customs later,
Riding and shooting culture has become one of the most important ethnic cultures of the Manchus
。 It is also in the Ming and Qing dynasties that archers were greatly mythologized, and people thought that archers were the kings of cold weapons warfare.
But yeah,
Although the archers are not the king of war in the era of cold weapons, they are definitely the well-deserved kings of cold weapons strategy
。 It is precisely because of the addition of the archers that the cold weapon battlefield is no longer a monotonous mode of heavy cavalry directly confronting that kind of combat, he makes the cold weapon war have more possibilities and combat deployment, and there are more classic examples of winning more with less.