Since the advent of the practical bilateral stirrups during the Five Hu and Sixteen Kingdoms periods, the "king" of the cold weapon battlefield, the super heavy cavalry "armor and mounting armor" with thick armor, began to appear on the historical stage, and gradually rampaged on the battlefield of the great chaos of the Southern and Northern Dynasties that followed.
At that time, not only the northern armies that were good at horse kung fu were vigorously developing armor and mounting, but the southern regime, which was very short of war horse resources, also tried every means to use captured or smuggled horses to form its own heavy cavalry corps.
However, this "armor riding gear loading fever" came to an abrupt end after the establishment of the Tang Dynasty. The Tang Dynasty was originally founded by force, but throughout the history of the Tang army (especially in the Tang War to Destroy the Turks), it was the predecessor of the armored horse armor - light cavalry that came out of the limelight.
Then, why did the Tang Dynasty, who once dominated the battlefield and upgraded the armor and horse armor for a while, not be welcomed when it reached the great martial arts?
Above_ Heavy cavalry during the Southern and Northern Dynasties
First, the change in combat objects makes the existence of armored mounts embarrassing.
As we all know, during the Southern and Northern Dynasties, the Countries of the Northern Dynasty, which were most keen on developing armor and horse armor, were mainly targeted at the Southern Dynasty army with infantry as the main force for national defense. As Su Xiaohua said in "Beizhen Forces and the Political Culture of the Northern Dynasty", in the face of infantry, the strong impact of armor and armor makes it the best candidate for the vanguard of the battle.
Moreover, compared with the traditional light cavalry, the psychological shock and sense of oppression brought by the armor and armor of the group charge to the enemy is undoubtedly much higher, so for the Northern Dynasty, which is good at cavalry tactics and does not lack war horse resources, this super class that integrates impact, protection and deterrence is naturally the ideal choice for them to defeat the enemy.
For the Southern Korean army, in the face of the huge pressure of the enemy's armor and mounted armor, its way to solve this threat is nothing more than two: one is to "ride with foot", that is, to use advanced tactics and equipment configurations to upgrade the tactical system of the infantry, so as to restrain the enemy cavalry, the representative work is Liu Yu's "but moon array"; the second is to treat his body with his own human way, that is, to develop his own armor and mounted equipment to eliminate the gap with the opponent's cavalry, just like we often say that "the best weapon to deal with tanks is tanks". It's all about the same thing.
Above_ Northern Qi Kacai riding samurai figurines
However, in the Tang Dynasty, the main opponent of the Tang army became the cavalry of the nomadic regime represented by the Turkic army. So, what kind of cavalry were the Turkic cavalry? According to the words of the Book of Sui, "Come like a fierce arrow, go like a broken string, if you want to chase, good is difficult."
It can be seen that the Turkic cavalry is the standard light cavalry with riding and shooting as the main means of combat and is known for its mobility of "coming and going without a trace". According to contemporary scholars, only 1/20 of the total number of warhorses wearing horse armor in the Turkic army, and most of their armor is leather armor, not metal armor. So the Turkic cavalry was a standard light cavalry corps.
Above_ Turkic heavy cavalry on a steppe mural
Although the armored mounts relied on horse armor with an average weight of 30-40 kg and the rider's armor of 20-30 kg to bring super defensive power, it also made the cavalry lose mobility. This loss of mobility was tolerable against infantry regiments. But in the face of the swift light cavalry, the result can only be that you can't catch up with others, and if you are chased by others, you can't run away, and you fall into complete passivity.
Therefore, long before the Jinyang rebellion, Tang Gaozu Li Yuan "was able to ride more than 2,000 archers, eat and drink, and join the Turks" (Tang Dynasty Entrepreneurship And Living Notes, vol. 1), and the Shifa Turks formed a light cavalry of more than 2,000 people. In the Battle of Huoyi, known as the first battle of the Founding of the Tang Dynasty, Li Shimin and Li Jiancheng led the Turkic light cavalry to defeat the armored cavalry led by the Sui general Song Laosheng, which is enough to explain the problem.
There were also heavy cavalry during the Tang Dynasty
Secondly, the development of military science and technology has challenged the survivability of armor and mounting equipment.
We know that the most proud of the armored riding armor is the excellent protection that its men and horses are wearing thick armor. However, in the north-south scramble that lasted for more than three hundred years, the various armed forces also made a lot of efforts to solve the problem of how to effectively kill the armor and riding gear. At the turn of the Sui and Tang dynasties, with the continuous development and progress of military science and technology, more and more weapons could be used to restrain armor and riding gear.
The first is the gradual advent of strike weapons such as hammers, hammers, and whips, which do not need to consider breaking armor, as long as they smash the opponent with a fierce force to cause internal injuries. Secondly, the progress of the bow and crossbow greatly enhanced the penetration ability of arrows, and in the classic battle of Liu Yu's "Moon Array" defeat of tens of thousands of northern Wei cavalry (including 5,000 armored cavalry) in the twelfth year of Yixi (416), the Jin army "and the large crossbow hundreds ... A hundred crossbows are sent out" (The Book of Song, The Biography of Zhu Chaoshi), so that "the Wei soldiers could not be, and when they ran away, the dead accumulated" (Zizhi Tongjian, vol. 118).
Above_ Northern Wei murals
In military history, when the lethality of the enemy significantly exceeds the defensive power of the other side, all it can do is to continue to strengthen the defense or simply give up the protection. The Europeans chose the former, upgrading the lock armor to plate armor, which further reduced the mobility of the cavalry, making it a slow-moving target. The Tang army chose the latter, that is, partially abandoning protection and enhancing mobility, reducing the output effect of enemy lethality through maneuvering, which has been supported by archaeological evidence.
In the famous "Six Horses of Zhaoling", it is really impossible to find a war horse wearing horse armor. This is the same as the breech gun after the invention, what armor to wear is useless, so everyone no longer wears metal armor, but improves the mobility of individual soldiers, so that they can flexibly dodge and reduce the probability of being killed by guns.
Above_ Zhaoling Liujun Li Yuexi Hand Tuo
Moreover, although the Tang Dynasty cavalry did not have the name of armored riding equipment, it did have the fact that armored riding equipment was equipped.
Some people may say, you are not right, the Tang Dynasty also had its own heavy cavalry, that is, the famous Xuanjia horse. I disagree with this. Because from the existing historical data, the Xuanjia horse is undoubtedly a cavalry known for its mobility, whether it is the old and new Tang Dynasty or the "Zizhi Tongjian", there are too many records about the Xuanjia horse "chasing for more than a hundred miles", "rampage, like the wind passing", "riding at a very high speed, after the enemy line", all of which show that the advantage of the Xuanjia horse lies in its super mobility.
Of course, as some scholars have said, the warhorse ridden by Xuanjia is armored, but this kind of armor is by no means a full set of metal horse armor equipped with armor riding equipment, at most it is a layer of leather armor on the horse's front surface and horse neck, so that it will not affect the mobility of the warhorse, but also meet certain protection needs. Therefore, the Xuanjia horse can be counted as an alternative heavy cavalry, that is, a "heavy armored light cavalry" with people wearing armor, horses without or less armor.
Above_ Tang Dynasty light cavalry
Although the cavalry of the Tang Army is no longer tightly wrapped from head to toe like the armored riding gear, it has inherited the excellent "gene" of the armored riding armor and armor being good at breaking the formation. On the one hand, this is because of the practical application of bilateral stirrups, so that cavalry can use crossbows and spears more effectively and flexibly, on the other hand, the Tang did not sweep the heavy cavalry tactical concept of their predecessors into the garbage heap, but boldly combined it with cavalry Turkification.
Whether it was at the Battle of Huoyi or the Battle of Tiger Prison Pass, the Tang cavalry led by Li Shimin adopted a style of play similar to that of the Heavy Cavalry of the Northern Dynasty, which broke through the center and directly pounded the center. And this tactic, as summarized in "The Northern Town Forces and the Political Culture of the Northern Dynasty", "is not learned from the Turks, but the experience of the Sixteen Kingdoms and the Northern Wei Dynasty in the long war."
Therefore, although the armored cavalry was in decline in the Tang Dynasty, the Tang Dynasty cavalry combined Turkic characteristics on the basis of the armor and armor, and eventually developed into a composite light cavalry that can be both riding and shooting and charging, that can run long distances and can break through the formation, which is undoubtedly a great masterpiece belonging to China in military history!
Author: Lin Sen Correction/Editor: Lilith
Resources:
[1] Su Xiaohua, "Beizhen Forces and the Political Culture of the Northern Dynasty"
[2] Zhang Mingyang, Notes on the History of Ancient Chinese Warfare
[3] Wang Yongxing, "Brief Discussion of Military History in the Early Tang Dynasty"
The text was created by the History University Hall team, and the picture originated from the Internet and the copyright belongs to the original author