In the history of ancient Chinese warfare, countless strong troops have emerged, and if you want to discharge a list of elite troops in ancient China, the first choice of who must be difficult to convince. After all, whether it was the Great Qin Iron Army that flattened the Six Kingdoms, or the Han cavalry that arrived at Wuhu in one Han Dynasty, or the invincible Xuanjia Army in Li Shimin's hands, it was difficult to find an enemy in the same era.
However, in this list, there must be no Yue Fei's back crest army.
Among the four generals of the Southern Song Dynasty, Yue Fei was the best general, and the Back Ridge Army was the absolute elite of the Yue Family Army. This army was invincible and extremely famous, and Yuan Fu praised it in his "Mengzhai Collection": "The horses and horses of the back ridge army are invincible, and they have suppressed several columns of waiting in those years, and the ancestors have heard a lot of scattered, and who in the future generations recognizes the hidden shadows." ”
To the proud Jin Jun, he also issued an exclamation that "it is easy to shake the mountain, but it is difficult for the Yue family to be difficult" to the Proud Army.
The fear of the enemy is the greatest reward for an army. With its brilliant achievements, the Back Ridge Army wrote a legend, and it was Yue Fei who created this legend.
Since Yue Fei, or since the formation of the cavalry of the Back Ridge Army, the Song Dynasty has always been very afraid of cavalry when facing the northern nomads. On the one hand, this is due to the fact that the nomadic people are good at riding and shooting, on the other hand, the Song Dynasty has not been able to recover the Sixteen Prefectures of Youyun, and the heart hinterland is exposed under the eyes of the enemy, which can be described as a clear view.
This hidden danger has not been solved, and finally evolved into the shame of Jingkang when the Jin army marched south, leading to the demise of the Northern Song Dynasty.
In the face of the powerful Jin army, especially the cavalry, the hundreds of thousands of forbidden troops of the Song Dynasty were like tofu, and they collapsed at a touch.
After the establishment of the Southern Song Dynasty, with the dense water network in the south and the characteristics of the Jin army's poor water warfare, it was barely able to resist the enemy's offensive. Yue Fei's rise was during this period, and he turned the tide of the tide and led the Yue family army to fight fiercely with the Jin army, defending the newly established Southern Song Dynasty regime.
However, the strong Yue family army still had a weakness in the face of the Jin army, that is, its cavalry unit was not good, and could only rely on infantry to fight the Jin army.
Yue Fei did not want to establish a cavalry force, but the Southern Song Dynasty had already lost the north, especially the fall of Guanzhong in Hebei, leaving the Southern Song Dynasty in a situation where there were no warhorses to use.
Pseudo-Qi helped Yue Fei solve this problem, and during the attack on the Pseudo-Qi army, Yue Fei captured more than fifteen thousand warhorses, which became the basis for the cavalry unit of the Back Ridge Army.
There are many theories about the origin of the name of the Back Ridge Army.
One theory is that the crest is a tall mountain, and the back crest army is the warrior who can carry the mountain, tenacious and infinitely powerful; the other is that the crest refers to the wine bottle, and those who can take the wine bottle for the general are all cronies, so the back crest army refers to the soldiers.
The "Yunlu Manhua" records: "Han and Yue soldiers are particularly skilled, and those who are brave and strong in the middle of the army, do not put their relatives and accompany the army, called the back crest, once they enter the back crest, the armies are under the command of the subordinates, with them, they are very polite, the rewards are abnormal, the brave and healthy are incomparable, and all those who have strong enemies, send their backs to the crests, and there are no one who cannot be broken." ”
According to the records, both Han Shizhong and Yue Fei formed the Back Ridge Army, but judging from the battle results, Yue Fei's Back Ridge Army was obviously superior.
As Yue Fei's personal guard, the Yue family army was absolutely elite, and the back ridge army was divided into two teams, cavalry and infantry, with the cavalry commanded by Wang Gang and the infantry commanded by Yue Yun, and the two teams were commanded by Yue Yun together.
The selection of Yue Fei's back ridge army was extremely strict, and unlike the Song Dynasty forbidden army, which was mixed with fish and dragons, the back ridge army adhered to the principle of ning deficiency and non-indiscriminate, and only selected from the warriors in the army, and after entering the army, it also had to undergo very cruel training. It can be said that the Back Ridge Army was the first special force of the Southern Song Dynasty.
In addition to the selection of soldiers, Yue Fei also attached great importance to tactical training. The Back Ridge Army is very similar to the Qi Family Army, focusing on individual combat and group combat, and large units are often divided into several combat groups, with shield soldiers, archers, spearmen, and long knife soldiers dividing their work and coordinating, and cooperating closely.
Generally speaking, infantry facing cavalry at close range would only be reduced to lambs to be slaughtered, but the infantry units in Yue Fei's back ridge army became a nightmare for the cavalry of the Golden Army.
The Golden Vulture had two of the strongest cavalry in his hands: the Kidnapper Horse and the Iron Float.
The Iron Float Chart is composed of the most courageous and warlike ironclad heavy horses, the cavalry is covered with heavy armor, and every three or five cavalry will be connected by chains, forging the entire army into an indestructible torrent of steel. Wherever tiefutu went, the defensive fronts of the Southern Song Dynasty often collapsed immediately.
The abductor horse was a light cavalry similar to the Mongol cavalry, the soldiers were not armored, each one was a sharpshooter, they moved quickly, on the battlefield can quickly cut into the flank, with bows and arrows to inflict a large number of casualties on the Southern Song troops.
Jin Wushu's Iron Float Map and The Kidnapped Horse crisscrossed the battlefield and were invincible until they encountered Yue Fei's back crest army.
Yue Fei's back ridge army specialized in the iron floating map and the kidnapped horse.
The impact of the iron float is huge, and the bow and arrow cannot effectively kill it, but the formation is bulky and difficult to adjust the direction. Yue Fei took advantage of this and arranged long knife hands in each combat group to cut the enemy's horse legs. Once the horse's leg was broken, the war horse could only fall, and under the influence of the chain, other war horses were also affected. When the cavalry fell from the war horse, it could only be reduced to the ghost of the infantry under the knife.
The abductor was quick-moving and good at riding and shooting, but without armor. There were archers in each combat group of the Back Ridge Army, and when they encountered kidnappers, they would shoot them with bows and arrows.
Therefore, when fighting against the Back Ridge Army, only the infantry unit had already caused heavy losses to the Golden Army cavalry.
What is even more frightening is that the cavalry is the real sharp knife of the back crest army. Under Yue Fei's devilish training, every cavalry of the Back Ridge Army was elite, and they coordinated with the infantry to penetrate the opposing center.
The invincible Jin Army was immediately confused by Yue Fei's back ridge army. In the Battle of Haocheng, the Iron Float Map and the Kidnapped Horse of Jin Wushu suffered heavy losses, and more than 15,000 cavalry were defeated by Yue Fei; at the Battle of Yingchang, Yue Fei's back ridge army attacked again as a vanguard, defeating Jin Wushu, who led an army of 130,000. Although Zhu Xianzhen's statement that the five hundred elite horsemen of the back ridge army won over 100,000 is exaggerated, it can also be seen that the strength of the back ridge army in the hearts of the people in the world is strong.
Under the leadership of Yue Fei, the Beifeng Army could have become the vanguard heroes who regained the lost land and restored the Northern Song Dynasty, but unfortunately, they did not lose to the enemy on the battlefield, but lost to their own people.
Zhao Zhuo did not dare to let Yue Fei's Northern Expedition succeed, and Qin Ju was bent on seeking peace and betraying the country, and Yue Fei was eventually wrongfully killed.
Zhao Zhuo, worried that the Back Ridge Army was concerned about Yue Fei and threatened him, so he scattered them all and incorporated them into Zhang Jun's troops. In this way, this army that defended the country with blood and never tasted defeat disappeared into the long river of history.
Resources:
History of the Song Dynasty
The Collection of Mongsai
"Cloud Foothills"