As we all know, during the Two Song Dynasties, the northern Yanyun Sixteen Prefectures were ceded to the Khitan by Shi Jingyao.
That area was the best source of good horses at the time, and the Song Dynasty's repeated conquests failed to reintegrate it into the ruling area. Yanyun Sixteen Continents fell into the hands of the enemy, which was undoubtedly a major blow to the Song Dynasty's Ma Zheng, coupled with years of conquest, the Song Dynasty army was difficult to form a large-scale cavalry, and could only resist the enemy with infantry.
But during this period, the Song army did not develop a spear array like the Macedonian army? Why? Are Westerners wiser? Or is it because the Song Dynasty army had a better way of rejecting horses?
What is the Macedonian Spear Array?
The spear array used by the Macedonian army, also known as the Macedonian phalanx, is famous in history and is called by Western scholars as the best way for infantry to fight cavalry in the era of cold weapons.
Thinking of the humiliating history of the two Song Dynasties, people will have such a doubt, if the Song Dynasty adopted the Macedonian phalanx to fight against the cavalry, would the outcome be much better?
But history does not have if, in order to understand why the Song Dynasty did not take the Macedonian phalanx against the enemy, first we must understand what the Macedonian phalanx really is.
The Kingdom of Macedonia was a state in ancient Europe, probably located in present-day Greece. In 359 BC, King Philip II of Macedon began a radical reform to save the enemy nation.
One of the most important reforms was the creation of the Macedonian Phalanx. This phalanx played a huge role on the battlefield as soon as it was created, not only helping the Kingdom of Macedonia defeat the invading enemy state, but also becoming the main force in its external expansion.
In a Macedonian phalanx, the number of heavily armored infantry, i.e., infantry with long guns, was generally 1,024. Each of these soldiers was armed with a Sarissa spear, a javelin, a short sword, a concave copper shield, and a copper helmet, and generally only soldiers in the first two rows wore breastplate and shin armor. And these soldiers were the aristocratic elite at that time, who received systematic military training from an early age and had extremely high military literacy.
Armed with spear shields, this heavily armored infantry faced the roaring cavalry, clenched their shields in their hands and pointed them at the enemy. The enemy cavalry will form a fear when they see these dangling guns, whether it is a man or a horse, thus weakening the momentum of the impact.
Therefore, as long as you form a phalanx to resist the enemy steadily, you will generally achieve considerable results. Moreover, the cost of training a cavalry is far greater than the cost of training an infantryman, and the difficult to break the spear array will naturally make the cavalry commander retreat.
So if the spear array is so easy to use, why didn't this method be taken against the enemy cavalry during the two Song Dynasties in China?
Was it because the information was blocked during that period, so that the ancient Chinese could not know this method of the Macedonian army against the enemy, and they themselves failed to come up with similar tactics of warfare in the long-term confrontation with the enemy, so they failed to popularize the spear array?
Second, the "spear array" in history
To understand this problem, we must first know whether there was a method of facing the enemy in ancient China similar to the Macedonian spear array.
Turning over the historical records, we find that the "gun" has a very long history in China, and it is recorded in the "Spring and Autumn of the Lü Dynasty": "When there was no clam, the people stripped the forest trees to fight." This account shows that as early as ancient times, the ancestors began to use tree branches and other materials to make simple spears to fight. During the Shang and Zhou Dynasties, the spear began to evolve into a spear and began to have a distinctly aggressive nature.
However, in the Spring and Autumn Period, the armies of various countries at that time did not have a tradition of infantry warfare, and most of them fought in chariots, so that the number of chariots became a measure of whether a country was strong.
So there was no soil for spear formations during this period. It was not until the late Spring and Autumn Period that a man named Wei Shu of the Jin Dynasty "destroyed the car for the line" and invented the Wei Shu phalanx, which ended the centuries-old history of vehicle warfare in China and began to turn into the period of infantry warfare.
It was also during this period that the spear began to shine brightly. From the cultural relics unearthed in various places, it can also be seen that in the Spring and Autumn Warring States period, the army was equipped with a large number of spears, spears, spears and other gun-shaped weapons, and the length reached a distance of three to five meters, and such a long weapon could only be used in the form of a phalanx.
For example, Wei Wupao, who was very famous at that time, was a pure infantry phalanx.
By the time the Qin Dynasty unified the world, the Qin army had learned to combine spears and shields to block the enemy's attack. But as time went on, pure spear phalanxes became increasingly difficult to trace.
In the armies of the subsequent dynasties, the infantry was equipped with weapons such as short guns, large knives, bows and arrows, shields, etc., and there were few troops with long guns. In the course of historical development, the spear array was gradually abandoned by the Chinese army.
In the Song Dynasty, even when the cavalry was rampaging through the Central Plains, it was difficult to see the reappearance of the spear array, why was this?
Why didn't the Song Dynasty use spear arrays?
In fact, the reason why the Song Dynasty did not use spear arrays was related to China's war traditions.
Since the Spring and Autumn Warring States period, the Central Plains have been in constant strife, and in the long history of battles, the Chinese army has developed to an extremely mature stage. On the battlefield, there are few cases of a single class of combat, generally a combination of multiple services, pay attention to flexibility and change, such as the long gun array, such a relatively clumsy tactic was quickly eliminated.
And in the long history, the Chinese military has paid more and more attention to long-range firepower. From the Warring States period onwards, more than one-third of the soldiers of the Chinese army were equipped with crossbows, and by the Song Dynasty, this figure reached two-thirds.
In this context, the array of spears that were guarded in formation could not prevent the rain of arrows roaring at all.
What's more, the cavalry faced by the Song Dynasty army was not simply heavy armored cavalry, but light cavalry that was good at riding and shooting. These cavalry often do not launch a large-scale charge, obediently crashing into the muzzle of the gun, but come and go like the wind, constantly invading.
Moreover, a very important feature of these cavalry is "plundering", they often do not choose the place where the Song army gathers, but constantly plunder some villages and towns and small cities of the Song Dynasty, making the Song army tired of running for their lives.
When the Song Dynasty army faced these cavalry, if it adopted the tactic of spear array, it could only be constantly fired arrows by these cavalry, becoming a living target that could not move.
At that time, the most effective method that the Song Dynasty army could adopt was to fight against the city and block the southward movement of these cavalry with the fortified city. During this period, it was very unwise to rush out of the city to engage in field battles with these cavalry, so the Song army failed to popularize the spear array.
Then did the Song Dynasty not have the tactics to restrain these cavalry, in fact, there were?
In order to counter these cavalrymen who were good at riding and shooting, the Song Dynasty army invented a kind of armor that could be called armed to the teeth - infantry armor. Once they encountered an enemy army in the field, these Song troops could immediately form a circle, surrounded by these heavily armored infantry, and inside were crossbowmen, relying on such formations to resist the charge and intrusion of cavalry.
Therefore, the reason why the Song Dynasty did not popularize the long gun array of rejecting horses was because this long gun array did not play much role in the face of light cavalry who were good at riding and shooting, and it was also a very unwise decision to choose to engage in field battles with cavalry.
In the absence of sufficient counterattack capabilities, the Song Dynasty army used its formation to resist the horse, and it was better to defend the city.
Text/Leyu
Reference: A Study of the Tactical System of the Macedonian Phalanx, Li Mingyi