In the modern era of hot weapons, in order to prevent soldiers from being injured, body armor is generally used. Ancient technology is limited, body armor is impossible, but in order to prevent heavy casualties, they will still pay more attention to the protection of soldiers, under this demand, armor was invented. However, although the protective effect of the armor is strong, because it is made of iron sheets, the weight is also very frightening.
When it comes to the weight of armor, we have to mention the Song Dynasty - among the protective armor of the dynasties, the protective armor of the Song Dynasty can be said to be the heaviest compared with other dynasties, and if converted into the current unit of measurement, the general weight can reach 69.6 kilograms. And because in the Song Dynasty, infantry would wear this kind of extremely heavy armor, so this type of armor is also called infantry armor.
The birth of the infantry soldier
For the Song Dynasty, without Yanyun Sixteen Prefectures, not only lost a natural barrier, but also lost a number of natural horse farms that existed in the north, which led to the Song Dynasty not having enough raw materials to support the production of horses to form cavalry. Within the Song Dynasty, whether it is the Northern Song Dynasty or the Southern Song Dynasty, due to the development of the commodity economy, the scale of the city has gradually expanded, the land is in short supply (mostly used to grow grain as a cash crop), the development of grassland to raise horses is obviously unrealistic, and the cost is immeasurable, so the road of large-scale development of cavalry is blocked.
But we should be clear that in the context of that time, it was quite difficult to have no cavalry, because in the Song Dynasty, it was the period when the northern nomads, the Liao and Jin, developed into the heyday, and their cavalry units have always caused headaches for the Song army.
It is obviously impossible for Song to use cavalry to fight cavalry, but he always has to find a way to fight against cavalry, and Song can only improve his own infantry if he wants to work hard, so a new generation of infantry armor such as infantry armor was born. In fact, the foot man armor first appeared in the Tang Dynasty period, and the Song Dynasty period can be regarded as an improvement of the Tang Dynasty's step man A.
Characteristics of infantry armor soldiers
Infantry wearing infantry armor, their whole body is covered with a layer of heavy armor made of iron pieces, this armor is made of thousands of pieces of armor spliced or sewn, if you want to divide the category should be a kind of armor. As mentioned above, the infantry armor is quite heavy, and the weight is actually its most essential feature - the 69.6 pounds in front of it is actually only the normal configuration, if you encounter more elite troops, especially cavalry units, you will continue to increase the number of armor pieces.
The core material of the infantry armor is iron sheet, because of the strong closure of iron, so many people feel that such armor will definitely be quite airtight. In fact, we said earlier that because it is spliced, its breathability is still relatively good.
This may also be the adjustment made by the Song Dynasty, especially the Southern Song Dynasty, in the environment at that time - the main battlefield at that time was in the Central Plains, due to the influence of the temperate monsoon and subtropical monsoon climate, the temperature here was generally relatively high in the summer, and in the case of hot climate, if the air permeability was not good, it may lead to heat stroke for soldiers, bringing great disadvantages to the combat situation, so when designing, climatic conditions should be taken into account.
In addition, due to the difference in infantry classification, the infantry armor is not exactly the same, and this difference is mainly reflected in the weight - roughly the more melee infantry, the thicker the armor. Let me give you an example, since archers are long-range outputs and lancers are close-range firefights, archers' armor is relatively light.
The advantage of the infantry armor soldiers
Because the characteristics are mainly heavy, its advantages are also obvious, that is, the defense is very strong. Even if they were at a distance, they were not afraid of the cavalry's long-range mounted shooting, because the bow and arrow could not fully penetrate their armor, so it would not cause them any fatal damage.
And even close-range attacks were hard for them to work, because almost all of their deadly parts were tightly protected. In fact, this was also the case, and after the use of infantry armor, the casualty rate of the Song army was greatly reduced.
And has been able to better protect themselves, if the class of troops are optimized selectively matched with some suitable weapons, coupled with the general's on-the-spot change of position can be appropriate, it can cause quite sufficient lethality to the enemy. Because of the reduction of casualties in the army, coupled with strong defense, it is bound to enhance the self-confidence and morale of soldiers, and under the impact of soldiers who are not afraid of death, the probability of winning this battle is greatly improved.
The best use of infantry infantry was the famous Southern Song Dynasty general Yue Fei, because his control over the battle situation was quite strong. Whether it is the weapon configuration or the military formation, he uses it quite cleverly. At that time, in the face of the large-scale attack of the Jin army, he adapted to local conditions, targeted according to the opponent at that time, and with the help of the strong hard and rigid ability of the infantry armor infantry, organized a dense army formation to attack the Jin army and defeat the Jin army.
Disadvantages of the foot man A
But there is nothing perfect, there are advantages and disadvantages, and the same is true of the step people. Although the infantry's weight-bearing ability is relatively strong, if they carry such heavy armor during the long march, plus some other necessary items, the infantry's physical strength will definitely exceed the human body load limit and become a big problem. And no physical strength is naturally no combat effectiveness, which leads to a large killing weapon has become a burden, so infantry wearing infantry armor is not suitable for long-distance running combat, more use of it for short-distance combat, or defensive warfare is the best.
In fact, this is also a practical reason why the Song generation, why sometimes can often achieve victory, but can not take advantage of the victory to pursue, deeply expand the fruits of victory, after all, wear too heavy, if the pursuit, it will certainly consume too much, not only can not catch up, but also may lead to their own in the pursuit of the gradual transformation of the inferior side, more than worth the loss.
And the step man armor itself has a very realistic reason, but also easy to be prohibitive - that is, the production cost is too high, in fact, this is also understandable, after all, so many nail pieces need more raw materials, and this over time has also become a drawback of the development of the step man A.
In the Song Dynasty, the emperor started by mutiny, especially afraid of the generals, the cup of wine to release the military power is ultimately to cure the symptoms rather than the root cause, so the establishment of a heavy text and light martial arts does not become a rule, this rule is still deeply rooted in the later Southern Song Dynasty. If you want to invest too much in the construction of the army, it is obviously unrealistic, so the infantry armor is actually not very popular.
In addition, in fact, the weight will also affect the mobility of the infantry infantry, and the lack of mobility is easy to be caught as a breakthrough for restraining the infantry infantry. The reality is also true, after encountering many losses, the nomads slowly found a way to crack the nature, for example, later when facing the Mongols, the more experienced Mongolian nomadic cavalry flexibly used their mobility, using a roundabout way to bypass the heavy infantry armor army, driving straight into the rear camp, or attacking the flanks, in short, try not to confront it head-on, and sure enough, this extremely powerful infantry armor completely lost its effect.
summary
Seeing the infantry and infantry of the Song Dynasty, it is actually easy to remind us of the Macedonian phalanx that was once invincible, because the two are indeed very similar in both strengths and weaknesses, and they are indeed the same. However, there is a big difference between them, the Macedonian phalanx was used for frontal attack at that time, while the Song was mainly used for defense.
Song This is also a flexible use, cleverly avoiding its disadvantages. After all, the weight is placed here - causing its active offensive ability to be too weak, but its defensive power is still extremely strong, which is also one of the reasons why the Southern Song Dynasty repeatedly suffered from foreign wars, but at the time of the Great Patriotic War, it was able to resist the strong Mongolian iron horse many times. However, this still has an inevitable flaw after all, in the face of Mongolian adjusted tactics, the Southern Song Dynasty was stereotyped after all, did not keep pace with the times, and after being targeted by the Mongolian Iron Horse, it still did not get rid of the bad luck of the country.