Song Zhen's bravery was like a splash of water. There was movement but it was quickly submerged in Guo Liang's armored formation.

After killing three people, Song Zhen, who failed to receive follow-up reinforcements, was sandwiched between two armored soldiers who were approaching him, and was stabbed in the neck from behind with a sword.

The blood was gushing out desperately. Song Zhen knew that he would not be spared. He struggled to look north, but halfway through the struggle on his neck, his whole body was drained of strength and fell limp to the ground.

Song Zhen died.

Song Dynasty is just a microcosm. The attack of Daibei Tuqi was not interrupted because of the death of one or two people.

After sixty breaths, Daibei's sudden cavalry increased their horse speed again. Guo Ying and Jia Xiong led the last sudden cavalry through the rain of arrows and finally hit Guo Liang's front.

The only way infantry can compete with cavalry is through perseverance, courage and strong formation.

Courage allows soldiers to face galloping horses without abandoning their formation, and perseverance allows soldiers to fight to the death. All of these are for one thing, which is to maintain a strong formation.

And these, Guo Liang's troops have quite a few, and they even have more than the ordinary infantry camp, that is, armor and weapons.

After the cavalry rushed up, what they encountered was not the expected retreating bandit army, but a forest of spears. Their horses were frightened and kept retreating, either because they wanted to get around these "porcupines"

.

But it's a pity that Guo Liang's troops were fully deployed. On such a long front, these people were stabbed wherever they went.

The Daibei Tuqi's first impact failed to knock Guo Liangbu away, so they had no chance later.

After the infantrymen in the front row stopped the Daibei cavalry, the archers in the back row were able to calmly scatter arrows at these unarmored targets.

Screams rang out from Guo Liang's position, and soon two unique Han army flags were unfurled by Guo Liang's men, who shouted:

"The thief will be killed by me, Gao Jian!"

"The thief will be killed by me, Sun Cheng!"

Following these two explosions, the surviving Daibei cavalry lost their courage and retreated like defeated dogs.

Under the Youzhou assault cavalry military system, no matter what the circumstances, the military flag is not allowed to be abandoned. Those who lose the flag will be beheaded! Even if they are defeated, as long as the military flag is still flying on the battlefield, the officials of each department are not allowed to withdraw from the battlefield. Those who retreat without authorization will be beheaded! Such as the flag of the headquarters

If it is lost, the officials of its department must gather under the banner of other departments.

Only when all the flags on the battlefield have fallen down can the battlefield be evacuated.

At this time, all the flags of the Daibei Assault Cavalry have fallen to the ground. Without the leadership of the general, the remaining Assault Cavalry will subconsciously withdraw, whether it is to evacuate the battlefield directly or move closer to other units later, but they must

Get out of this fire.

So, in a panic, the Daibei cavalry turned their horses and evacuated towards the west.

But they didn't know that they would be covered by the rain of arrows from the Taishan Army again.

The front of Guo Liang's troops was in chaos, and people kept cutting off the heads of Han cavalry and hanging them on their waists. Fortunately, the generals on both sides were still there, scolding their subordinates for such behavior.

Despite this, when the Daibei Assault Cavalry evacuated, the shooters of Guo Liang's department still missed the opportunity to shoot. But other departments of the Taishan Army did not.

The attack of Daibei's sudden cavalry only affected Guo Liang's troops, such as the left and right troops, especially the 500 shooters in the middle. They had already had time to prepare. Now that the enemy cavalry had arrived in the coverage area, how could they let it go?

So under the orders of the military officials, the arrows shot from three directions were missed, once again covering the Daibei Tuqi on the way to escape.

This time, the speed of Daibei Tuqi's horses was much lower than before, and this section of the road became their end.

After a long day, the sun finally sets in the west.

The setting sun is rendering the earth, giving the battlefield a red filter, which is also the color of blood.

The fighting on the battlefield is actually still going on. The right formation of the Qingzhou Yellow Turbans in front is still holding on. More and more broken troops have thrown themselves into the formation to hold on after escaping the pursuit of the Han army.

Especially after they knew that the Taishan Army was coming, the Youzhou Cavalry that was raging on the battlefield were mobilized, and the Qingzhou Yellow Turban was also recovering visibly to the naked eye.

But the noisy fighting was theirs, and in the east corner of the battlefield, there was only silence.

The advance of the Youzhou Assault Cavalry has stopped. In fact, after the Daibei Assault Cavalry attacked without authorization, Cui Jun had already ordered all the troops to stop so that he could readjust their formation.

It was at this stop that the riders in the front row of the Youzhou Cavalry could see the miserable scene in front of them.

The small land was densely covered with arrows, and countless generations of Beituo cavalry were crucified there together with their horses.

A war horse was lucky enough to be alive, but its master fell off the horse and fell asleep without knowing what happened. So it kept licking its master to wake him up quickly.

But it didn't know that its owner was lying on his back with his limbs spread out, his face twisted in pain. Beside him, there were a few people who were still alive and were trying to crawl towards home.

go.

In this situation, the sun sets in the west, and the arms are broken and the limbs are broken.

All the Youzhou Assault Cavalry were speechless. They knew the strength of the Daibei Assault Cavalry, and they were also a powerful force in the border areas. But here, from the time they charged to being defeated and finally being covered by arrows, it only took a moment.

It takes ten months of pregnancy for a person to be born, and another sixteen years to grow up, but it only takes this short moment to die.

However, Youzhou Tuqi did not pity them, just because these Daibei people were really a disaster.

Just now, more than 20 Daibei cavalrymen rushed out of the rain of death arrows, but found that their retreat was blocked by the Youzhou shock cavalry who were pressing up.

Instead of dismounting and praying for forgiveness from the cavalry warriors, they actually raised their weapons and pointed them at today's warriors.

When they saw that the only thing blocking them was an outer wing of the cavalry with less than ten people, they all raised their swords and tried to rush through.

This rebellious behavior directly ignited the anger of many sharpshooters of Youzhou Tuqi. Without any orders, they picked up their bows and arrows and shot all the twenty generations of northern warriors to death.

Many white horse knights under Gongsun Zan also participated in the sniper killing, and he did not stop them at all.

These knights from the north are arrogant and careless, which is the malignant sore of Youzhou Tuqi. Gongsun Zan has long been unable to bear it, and he might as well die here.

But little did Gongsun Zan know that it was their extremely xenophobic Han mentality that made warriors like Dai Bei, who lived among both Hu and Han people, so sensitive and rebellious.

But with Gongsun Zan's temperament, even if he realizes it, he won't care.

No one has statistics on how many Daibei knights died.

But as spectators, we can know that the entire Daibei Tuqi battalion participated in the charge. There were 400 cavalry, of which 223 were killed, 106 were wounded and lying on the battlefield, and only 71 were captured.

.And a total of 300 war horses were missing or killed in battle.

A glorious division with a history was completely destroyed on the east side of the battlefield, shaking the determination of the Youzhou Assault Cavalry behind them to continue charging.

At this time, Cui Jun, the leader of Youzhou's sudden cavalry, was already determined to retreat, but he saw the soldiers coming from behind and knew that Lu Zhi must let him continue fighting.

Cui Jun paused for a moment, looked at his hometown in the north, took a deep breath, and exhaled:

"Let it go."

As soon as this was said, the five cavalrymen in the first row in front of the formation lowered their horses, and then each row lowered their horses in turn.

At this time, after the destruction of the Daibei Cavalry, there were still about a thousand Youzhou Tuqi, and the larger ones came from behind to join them.

After reorganizing the formation, the thousands of cavalry were still arranged in a cone-shaped formation.

Specifically, there are five cavalry in the first row, and then there are two more people in each of the six rows, and then the rest are all formations with the same number of people. This is a typical conical formation with a narrow front and large depth.

This formation was born out of the infantry battle formation, but in fact there are big problems.

The advantage of the infantry charging in a conical formation is that the rear row of infantry can advance against the front row, which can create forward pressure and penetrate the opposite horizontal formation.

But cavalry charging is not possible. In fact, being close to each other will frighten the horses and cause them to fall into confusion. In addition, the flaw of the conical formation itself is that it is easy to be attacked from both sides. Therefore, the cavalry charges in a conical formation. This formation is the only

Disadvantages without its advantages.

A more reasonable formation should be to arrange the cavalry in a horizontal formation, because the same strength of troops in a horizontal formation will have greater advantages in terms of impact strength and attack area.

In addition, charging in a horizontal formation can better utilize the discrete characteristics of the cavalry. Once the front is blocked, the horizontal formation can extend from both wings of the enemy to outflank and attack the enemy's weak points.

Since the conical formation has so many shortcomings and the advantages of the horizontal formation are so great, why did Cui Jun arrange such a conical formation? Is it because he doesn't know how to fight?

no.

It's because the current Youzhou Cavalry cannot form a horizontal formation.

There are many advantages to directly attacking with a horizontal formation. But there is a prerequisite, that is, the cavalry group must have a certain amount of training.

In the past, the Youzhou Assault Cavalry could attack each other in a horizontal formation. But now, the thousand-man Assault Cavalry team comes from almost five ministries. How can they have team training with each other?

Therefore, if Cui Jun dogmatically asks his men to charge in horizontal formations, the final result will be that the gaps between the teams will become wider and wider, and they will not be able to form an effective impact on the phalanx of the Taishan Army on the opposite side.

.

It was precisely because of his understanding of the military strength under his command that Cui Jun decided to deploy such a cone formation.

He had already given the order and when the attack started, all the troops rode slowly, and did not speed up until they were a hundred steps away from the Taishan bandit.

During this process, the cavalrymen in the following rows had to spread out to the left and right as they marched, so that when they hit the Taishan bandits, they would hit them in a horizontal formation.

From a column to a horizontal formation, these are the necessary training for Youzhou's assault cavalry, so it goes without saying.

There are even other explanations for Cui Jun's conical formation.

Why didn't he just charge in a column with equal numbers in each row? Instead, he arranged an echelon with two people in front and behind?

Because after Cui Jun observed the formation, he discovered that the Taishan Army on the opposite side was a large formation with a width of a hundred men. After the Youzhou sudden cavalry attacked, the cavalrymen in the front rows would inevitably be attacked from both sides.

Therefore, Cui Jun placed an extra rider on the left and right after each formation, specifically to protect the sides of the front row, and he would also be protected by the back row.

The reason why only six rows of echelons were arranged was because the cavalry behind them would form a horizontal formation during the charge, and naturally no side protection was needed.

But no matter what, the five people in the front row are the most dangerous.

Therefore, Cui Jun also specially mobilized five warriors in the army to serve as the leader.
To be continued...