In the ancient wars of our country, people often relied on the help of animals to fight wars. Under the condition that the weapons were not advanced enough at that time, this played a considerable role in winning the battle. According to the literature, there are dozens of animal wars in China's ancient wars, almost all dynasties and generations have had, and some examples of warfare are collected for your reference.
The earliest beast wars
About four or five thousand years ago, the primitive public ownership in the Yellow River Basin began to disintegrate, and wars between tribes for wealth were constantly fought. At that time, the Yellow Emperor clan, led by the famous tribal alliance leader Huangdi, and another large clan, the Yandi clan, fought a major war in The Wild Mountains of Hanquan (near present-day Zhuolu County, Hebei).
According to the Liezi. The Yellow Emperor": "The Yellow Emperor and the Yan Emperor fought in the wilderness of Hanquan, with the handsome bear, the wolf, the leopard, the cat, and the tiger as the precursors, and the eagles, ospreys, eagles, and kites as the banners." The Yellow Emperor Clan drove a group of trained beasts into battle, and after three fierce battles, finally defeated the Yandi Clan, this war may be the first "beast war" in China's history.
Elephant warfare
At the end of the Spring and Autumn Period, Wu Chu was vying for hegemony, and with the support of the Jin state, Wu Wang Lu appointed famous generals such as Wu Zixu and Sun Wu to rule the army, and in 506 BC, he invaded the Chu state, "Five Battles and Ying (Chu Capital)". King Zhao of Chu abandoned the city and fled west, and the Wu army then covered up and pursued him. Seeing that the King of Chu was in danger, King Chu Zhao's side of Yin Gu stood up, and it turned out that he had a unique skill--training elephant. Only to see Gong Yingu lead the elephants out of the heavy loads, light a fire on their tails, and drive them to rush towards the Wu army. The elephants' tails were burned, and a head rushed to the Wu army camp like crazy, and many poor Wu soldiers were knocked to the ground by the elephants and trampled into meat cakes. The Wu army did not dare to continue to pursue, allowing the King of Chu to escape safely.
In the winter of the nineteenth year of the Qing Kangxi Dynasty, during the battle between the Qing army and the wu sangui, Geng Jingzhong, and Shang Zhixin, the rebel general Wu Shiyao used the local elephant to assist in the battle. Elephants are trained to strike fiercely, and knives, guns, and arrows are not easy to hurt. Later, the Qing general Cai Yurong offered a plan, and when he was about to fight, he burned the forest, and the elephants were frightened and recoiled into Wu Shiyao's military camp. The rebels were unexpected, trampled by elephants and killed and wounded countless times, and the Qing army took the opportunity to rush to kill and eliminate the main force of the rebels.
Fire Bull Wars
In the late Warring States period, the Yan general Le Yi led his troops to capture more than 70 cities in the State of Qi, and the State of Qi was almost destroyed, leaving only the two cities of Jucheng and Jimo to support it. In 279 BC, King Hui of Yan was jealous of Leyi and switched to riding robbers as a general. The robbers ordered the excavation of the ancestral graves of the Qi people and indiscriminately killed the descendants, which aroused the strong resistance of the Qi people. Tian Dan was elected by Qi Min as a general of Jimo. After Tian Dan became a general, he first sent women old and weak to the city to guard, and then sent people to send gold pretending to surrender to the Yan army to paralyze the Yan army.
Secretly, they collected more than 1,000 cattle in the city, tied seven-pointed knives to the horns of the cattle, tied greased reeds to the tails of the oxen, chiseled dozens of holes in the city wall, lit the reeds on the oxtails one night, and drove the fire cattle to rush madly to the Yan army camp. The Yan army was unprepared, seeing so many monsters rushing in, braking in chaos, throwing away their armor, crying for their fathers and mothers, holding their heads and trampling on each other. The qi army and people took advantage of the victory to pursue and break the Yan army.
Coincidentally, during the Tang Dynasty, there were also people who studied Tian Dan's fire bull array and did not want to be self-defeating. The Tang Dynasty Anshi Rebellion caused the Tang capital Chang'an to fall into the hands of rebels. After Emperor Suzong of Tang succeeded to the throne, he sent Fang Zhen to attack the rebels in an attempt to retake Kyoto, but was defeated at Chen Tao in Xianyang County. So Fang Zhen imitated the fire bull array in the Spring and Autumn Warring States period to turn the tide of the war. Unexpectedly, the rebel military had already made preparations, "fighting, thieves and dusting the wind", and shouted loudly, so that "the cattle were terrified, because they were tied and set on fire, and the people and animals were defeated." In this battle, the Tang army suffered more than 40,000 casualties and suffered heavy losses.
In June 1900, the Eight-Power Alliance landed at Dagukou and invaded Tianjin. The leaders of the Tianjin Boxers, Zhang Decheng and Cao Futian, joined forces with Nie Shicheng, the viceroy of the Qing Dynasty, to resist heroically. At that time, there were more than 10,000 invading troops gathered in the Zizhulin Concession, and the enemy planted many mines in the Majiakou area in an attempt to stop the Chinese military and civilian attack. On July 6, the Boxers launched an attack, they found dozens of cattle, imitated the method of the ancients, tied cotton wool stained with kerosene on the tail of the ox, ignited the rear of the cattle charge, detonated the enemy mines, the Boxers then covered up, killed many enemies, and effectively dealt a blow to the arrogance of the invaders.
Lions win over elephants
During the Southern and Northern Dynasties, the Liu Song Dynasty had a general named Zong Wei, who was not only brave in fighting, but also strategic. Once, he was ordered to conquer the southern Yilin kingdom. At first, the fight went well, but then King Lin Yi hung up the elephant, and although Zong Yi had experienced hundreds of battles, he had never seen such a battle formation.
He thought about it and finally came up with a way to deal with the elephants. He said to the general, "I have heard that the lion can subdue a hundred beasts, and the elephant must be afraid of it. Therefore, he ordered his subordinates to make many fake lions.
The battle began again, Zong Wu asked the soldiers to carry the "lion" out and place it in front of the position, the elephant saw the "lion", frightened and ran, Zong Wu took advantage of the situation to lead the army to rush to kill, and soon won the victory.
Painted Beast Wars
After the Tang Dynasty went through the Anshi Rebellion, the centralization of power was greatly weakened, and the forces of various feudal towns and towns were often attacking and killing each other in order to compete for territory. In the early years of Emperor Dezong of Tang, Zhu Tao, the empress dowager of Youzhou and the grand master of the imperial history, used the excuse of disobeying the imperial court to lead an army to attack another separatist, Li Weiyue, and when the two armies met, Zhu Tao saw that Li Weiyue's cavalry was fierce, so he made people "paint the paint in the shape of a lion and hundreds of fierce soldiers", and Li Weiyue's "army and horses were shocked and defeated.".
Monkey Wars
In the fifth year of the Northern Song Dynasty, the leader of the Yi clan in Yanzhou rebelled, and the Song Hunan edict asked Zhao Tong to lead troops to encircle and suppress it. Bu Leak occupies the wheel hoard. Here the mountains are hundreds of years high, the bamboo forest is dense, the stone is the city, and the wooden fence fence is arranged on the periphery, and the roadblocks are sandwiched on both sides, making it difficult for the officers and soldiers to enter. At that time, the general found that a cliff was undefended, and found that there were many monkeys on the mountain, so he sent a strong man to capture thousands of monkeys, and then tied the hemp into a bunch of torches, and then poured anointing wax and tied it to the monkeys.
The general first sent a large army to attack head-on, from morning to dusk, secretly sending monkeys to the top of the cliff, and when they reached the wooden fence, the monkey's tail was lit on fire, and even Bu Leak's residence was burned. Suddenly, the army was panicked, and countless people were killed, burned to death, and fell off the cliff.
Pigeon fighting
In February of the first year of the Northern Song Dynasty (1041 CE), Western Xia Yuanhao led his troops to Weizhou (渭州, in modern Pingliang, Gansu), and the Song commander Han Qi ordered Ren Fu to lead an attack and advance to 5 miles from Yangmulong City (present-day southeast of Xiji, Ningxia). Sang Yi, the advance general of the Song Army, saw that there were several silver clay boxes next to the road, and there was a beating sound in the boxes, and he was suspicious. When Ren Fu led the main force to arrive, opened the lid of the box, and more than a hundred sentry pigeons flew out of the box and hovered over the Song army. The Western Xia ambush learned that the Song army was in ambush and besieged on all sides, and the Song army was defeated. Known in history as the "Battle of Haoshuichuan", it set a precedent for the earliest use of military pigeons in the history of ancient warfare in China.
Camel wars
During the Kangxi Dynasty, Dzungar Geldan of Erut, Western Mongolia, colluded with Tsarist Russia to launch a rebellion, and fought south to Uzumuqin, which was only 900 miles away from Beijing, and the Qing court was shaken. In the twenty-ninth year of the Kangxi Dynasty, the Kangxi Emperor issued an edict to personally march and met With Gordan's army at Ulan Butong. The rebels tied felt to the back of camels and formed thousands of camels into a camel city, which hindered the Qing army's attack. Later, the Qing army changed its tactics and bombarded the center of the camel city with artillery, the camels collapsed, the rebel position was in chaos, and the Qing army took advantage of the situation to pursue and defeat the Geldan army.
Little Frog vs Japanese Devils
During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the Japanese invading army occupied the county seat of Qinyuan in Shanxi Province. A squadron stationed in the city often went out of the city to sweep and maim the people. During the wheat harvest season in 1943, Japanese soldiers often went out of the city to grab wheat, and the militiamen used many ingenious methods to defeat the enemy.
"Frog warfare" is one of them, they caught many frogs, stuffed pepper noodles into the frogs' mouths, and quietly placed them in the outer trenches of the Japanese strongholds, and flocks of night-time frogs, day and night, "croaked" and screamed, making The Japanese devils could not sleep at all times. During the day, I fell asleep and couldn't grab food. Later, the Japanese soldiers went down to the trenches to catch frogs, and the militiamen took the plan and hung mine leads on the frogs' legs, and as soon as the devils grabbed the frogs and pulled them, the mines sounded, and the devils were blown to the ground.
Buffalo opened the way to help intersperse
In the counterattack against the Vietnamese self-defense, the second battalion of a certain regiment was ordered to intersperse along the High (Ping) Cha (Ling) Highway towards the nameless heights on the north side of The Banli. When the troops advanced to the west side of the 800 heights, the enemy's guard posts on the west side of the highlands constantly shone flashlights on the road, and the troops could not advance. In order not to expose the war wood attempt, the troops had to hide in place. But the time has exceeded 3 a.m., and if you stay too long and can't be interspersed in place on time, you will miss the fighter.
In the midst of anxiety, the four companies and four squads serving as sharp soldiers found dozens of buffaloes on the west side of The 800 Heights approaching along the road. The squad leader Zhang Hai'ou made a clever move, and even ordered the whole class to drive the cattle back and let the cattle "open the way" in front, and the troops followed behind the cattle, deceiving and confusing the enemy with the sound of buffalo walking and shouting, and covering the troops. When the enemy sentry noticed that there was movement on the road and used flashlights again, they immediately lay down and hid, and the enemy only took the cattle, did not arouse suspicion, and stopped the illumination. The interspersed troops took advantage of the enemy's illusion and quickly passed through the enemy Cao's line.