The Manchu people are not satisfied with ten thousand, and ten thousand are not battle-ready!

The cavalry archery of the Manchu people is indeed formidable. When Wu Sangui occupied the entire territory south of the Yangtze River back in the day, the reason he did not dare to cross the river and march north was due to fear of the Manchu Eight Banners' cavalry archery, but that is not the key issue; the key issue is horses!

Since ancient times, the Central Plains dynasties have been plagued by the invasions of northern nomadic tribes. First of all, the geographical environment of the north is not suitable for agriculture, so occupying it is of little use. If fortifications are built, the issue of food supply and logistics becomes a big problem. The agricultural soldiers of the Central Plains require rice, steamed buns, and stir-fried dishes, needing to boil pots and cook rice. The nomadic tribes do not need logistics; they can graze cattle and sheep wherever they go, so dealing with northern nomadic tribes is at most about driving them away. Emperor Wu of Han, who exhausted the country's strength for military campaigns, was also only able to drive them away, but could not eradicate them;

The cavalry of the northern nomadic tribes comes and goes without a trace; they raid and then flee. Constructing the Great Wall was the best method for the Central Plains dynasties. Many people questioned that, with such a long wall, it is impossible to station troops to defend all of it. They could find a section without defenses and breach it. In fact, the Great Wall is not to prevent you from coming in, but to prevent you from going out. It waits for you to breach the Great Wall and come in, and as long as infantry are concentrated to block the gap, it will be difficult for you to leave; the northern nomadic armies, having left the grasslands, cannot last long;

It is not that the nomadic tribes are so powerful; the key is "horses." The "Nian Army," which caused chaos in the Qing Dynasty, was a Han cavalry unit, and it was an all-cavalry unit with combat power that was not inferior at all. The elite cavalry of Mongolia, the Zenggu Lintin army, was annihilated by the Nian cavalry;

Zeng Guofan was ordered to suppress the Nian Army and had no choice but to adopt the method of building grid-like walls in the Central Plains to stop the highly mobile cavalry of the Nian Army. When he forced the Nian Army into a corner, Empress Dowager Cixi worried that Zeng Guofan would continue to gain power and forcefully assigned the task of suppressing the Nian Army to Li Hongzhang. Originally, Li Hongzhang had always made fun of his teacher Zeng Guofan's method of building walls in the Central Plains. He initially tried to encircle and intercept but ended up suffering defeats and eventually adopted Zeng Guofan's method, albeit by utilizing rivers to build walls for separation, ultimately defeating the Eastern Nian Army;

The biggest problem for the Central Plains dynasties was the lack of horses and the inability to ride. Once they lost the Hejian area, there would be no source of horses, and the farming peasants could not compare in horsemanship with the hunters who grew up on horseback in the grasslands;

In the era of ancient cold weapons, horses were the key to victory. The Southern Song persisted for over a hundred years without horses, which was quite remarkable!

免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到support@aicoin.com，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。