During the Wei and Jin Dynasties, the armored cavalry was fully developed, and as one of the main weapons of cavalry, the horse mallet was very popular. There are many records in the historical records of the use of horse mallets by generals on the battlefield at that time. For example, the Later Zhao general Chen An used to hold a large knife with a ring head in one hand and a horse mallet in the other, and when fighting, "the swords and spears were all down", and the power was unstoppable.
▲ Mural of the tomb of the Former Yan general Dongshou: armored cavalry holding a spear
Emperor Wen of Liang Jian specially wrote the book "Genealogy of the Horse Mallet", which summarized and summarized the techniques used by the hammer, and Emperor Wendi of Liang Jian believed that although the horse mallet was not a weapon that existed in ancient times, it was very mature after the development of the Southern and Northern Dynasties. The mallet originally referred to the riding spear used by the cavalry, but later, the spear used by the infantry was also called the mallet. According to records, Xianbei soldiers liked to use long hammers when fighting, and Liu Yubu's general Zhu Lingshi had a group of Xianbei warriors who were good at using rifles.
▲ Dunhuang mural "Five Hundred Bandits Become Buddhas", the main body of the picture is a scene of armored cavalry and infantry using a spear fighting
At that time, there were also super long hammers, and when the Northern Wei army besieged Sizhou, the Southern Liang assassin Shi Cai Daogong ordered the strong men to hold a long mallet that was 2 feet long and five feet long and had a long blade, and assassinated the Wei army's soldiers who ascended the city, and the Wei army was very jealous of this. The southern dynasty is 24.7 cm long, two feet five feet or 617.5 cm, this long hammer should be a specially built defensive weapon, later such as the Song Dynasty's defensive gun, the length is also more than 8 meters.
During the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, the gun referred to a sharpened wooden stick, and in the Popular Text, it is said, "The gun is stolen from the wood wound". During the Three Kingdoms period, under the supervision of Zhuge Liang, the craftsmen of the Shu Kingdom produced a batch of guns with steel gun heads, which was the first time in the history that guns with metal heads appeared. During the Sui and Tang dynasties, the horse mallet was still one of the most important weapons in the army, the tang dynasty law prohibited private ownership of the horse mallet, famous generals such as Wei Chigong, Luo Shixin, Shan Xiongxin were good at using the horse mallet, because the military often used the horse mallet, but also derived another kind of "snatching the hammer" martial art, that is, in the battle to take away the other side's horse mallet, Wei Chigong was good at capturing the mallet, and had repeatedly captured the horse mallet of Li Yuanji, who was also good at using the horse mallet in the competition.
▲ The eight kings of the Tang Dynasty divided the relics
At that time, cavalry also carried double spears in battle, and during the Anshi Rebellion, Bai Xiaode, a general under Li Guangbi, once held a double spear and beheaded Liu Longxian, the general of the Shi army. After the Tang Dynasty, people began to call the spear a gun, the reason for this change in title, there is no conclusive theory, some people think that in the dialects around Jianghuai, the spear is called 鏦, the pronunciation of the word 鏦 is similar to the gun, over time, the world will call the spear a gun. According to the "Six Classics of Tang", the standard long guns at that time were lacquer guns, wooden guns, white dry guns and flapping guns, lacquer guns are horse mallets used by cavalry, wooden guns are used by general infantry, and white dry guns and flaming guns are the weapons of the Imperial Forest Army and the Forbidden Army.
▲ Tang Bohai Iron Spear, excavated from the ruins of the Two Circles of Beijing in the Bohai Sea in Ning'an City, Heilongjiang
The Taibai Yin Jing records that soldiers in the Tang Dynasty army each held a long gun. In addition to being used as a fighting weapon on the battlefield, the spear can be inserted into the ground as a horse when encamped, and when crossing the river, it can be tied into bundles and used as a simple raft. There are also records in the history books of the Tang Dynasty infantry using long guns to fight, in the fifteenth year of Zhenguan, when Li Ji and Xue Yantuo fought, when the war was unfavorable, they once counterattacked successfully with the combat method of charging with long hammers.