Chapter 156 Cavalry

Five kilometers east of the tire peak, Dongguli.

Captain Yoshio Asano waved his sword, urged the war horse, and launched a third charge to an earthen.

The earthen is on the edge of a small mountain village. Inside and outside the earthen, several hundred-year-old branches and leaves are connected, and the vast and vigorous canopy covers a radius of more than 100 meters. The enemy hid on the thick tree trunks and the earthen walls, condescendingly, shooting at the charging Japanese cavalry.

The horse hissed, and a Japanese cavalry soldier was shot, fell down from the horse's back, hit the mud heavily, and was trampled by the roaring horse's hoofs.

Yongo Asano was shot in the right shoulder, but his right arm still held the saber tenaciously, and the bright sabre drew a cold light in midair.

This is a difficult offensive battle!

The Japanese cavalry, who went all the way from the capital to Pyongyang and frightened the enemy, encountered trouble for the first time.

The cavalry is the leader of the Japanese army and the pride of the Japanese Army. At the end of the 19th century, during the transition from cold weapons to hot weapons, cavalry was widely valued by various armies for their high mobility. The cavalry equipped with firearms not only inherits the speed advantage of the cold weapon era, but also has its strong firepower, making it the main assault weapon of the army.

However, it is extremely difficult to train cavalry.

There are two main reasons for this. The first is the problem of people, and the second is the problem of horses.

People's problem is easy to understand. Cavalry is a weapon between cold weapons and hot weapons. It is extremely difficult to fight on horseback and shoot. Therefore, the cavalry should be equipped with sabers while equipped with horse guns. Knives and guns are the symbols of cavalry. This requires the cavalry to master both cold weapons and hot weapons, and their proficiency is higher than that of ordinary infantry. Therefore, a qualified cavalry soldier must first be an excellent infantryman, and then receive harsh riding and shooting training.

Because of this, the number of qualified cavalry is very small.

However, compared with the human problem, the horse's problem is more difficult to solve.

People can always be trained.

And a qualified war horse cannot be trained alone.

An almost insurmountable obstacle to the development of cavalry is the breed of horses.

Compared with its cold weapon era, war horses need to bear a greater burden, adapt to more complex environments, get used to the roar of the battlefield, and maintain good control. For a species, these physical and psychological conditions are almost contradictory and difficult to reconcile.

It is much more difficult to choose a qualified war horse than a qualified cavalry.

Because of this, all armies know the great role of cavalry. However, compared with the era of cold weapons, the scale of cavalry is getting smaller and smaller - it is becoming more and more difficult to choose a war horse suitable for modern warfare.

The native Japanese horse is of Mongolian horse origin, which spread to Japan through North Korea and evolved into a Japanese horse. The Japanese horse is small and weak, and it is difficult to be a war horse.

The Japanese government realized that in order to build a European-style modern cavalry force, it must improve the bloodline of Japanese horses.

In 1867, the French emperor Napoleon III presented 26 powerful purebred Arabian horses to Japan. These horses inspired Japan's ambitious plan to improve horses. Improving horses has become Japan's national action. The country has comprehensively introduced horse breeds and quickly bred a large number of foreign horses.

These improved horse breeds have become the horses of the Japanese Army cavalry. The Japanese war horse is strong and violent. Although there is still a certain gap with the physique of the European war horse, it greatly surpasses the war horse of the Qing Dynasty.

Japanese war horses are generally taller than those of the Qing Dynasty, with strong load-bearing ability and fast running speed. In the past battles from the capital to Pyongyang, the Japanese cavalry rode a high-headed horse, showing off their power and coming and going like the wind. In an instant, they killed the Qing army's position. The Qing army was still busy loading bullets, and their heads had been cut to the ground by sabers.

The Qing army regarded the Japanese cavalry as ghosts, and even the Qing army saw the smoke and dust of the Japanese cavalry from afar, so they left their positions and fled.

However, in Dongguli, the Japanese cavalry, which had been rampaging, encountered trouble in front of an earthen.

Yio Asano, the captain of the cavalry squadron who had just won the emperor's medal in the Pyongyang Campaign, led his troops to launch two attacks on the earth encirclement, but was actually repulsed by the Qing army, and eight cavalry and three war horses were killed.

It was not the eight cavalrymen that made Yoshio Asano heartbroken, but the three horses.

Every war horse is worth tens of thousands, and every war horse is the blood and sweat of the wrangler!

Before the war, 1.5 million horses were raised in Japan, but only 35,000 could be selected into the Japanese army. Most of them can only be used as livestock to consign supplies, and very few can become cavalry and horses.

If a person dies, it can be supplemented. The war horse died, but one less died.

What made Yoshio Asano even more angry was that the reason for the failure of the two charges was not because the enemy was strong.

It can be judged from the sound of gunfire that the enemy guarding in the earthen is just a small team of more than 30 people. Their tactics are not flexible, but only rely on earth walls and trees to defend mechanically. And their shooting accuracy is one level worse than that of their Japanese army. Such a Qing army should not pose a threat to the Japanese army.

According to the experience of Chenghuan and Pyongyang, it only takes one charge to deal with such a Qing army, Yoshio's cavalry force, which can end the battle in less than ten minutes.

The trouble caused to Yoshio Asano is this damn weather!

The hazy autumn rain is still falling, and the cold raindrops seem to have soaked every inch of North Korea, turning North Korea into a big quagmire.

Two days have passed since Anzhou, and Asano Yoshio's cavalry troops are fighting against the mud.

The horse's hoof fell into the mud, and the march was difficult, and the charge was even more impossible.

The so-called "charge" launched against the earthen is actually just a struggle in the mud.

Once the cavalry loses speed, they lose everything!

Those war horses struggling deep and shallowly in the mud and the soldiers on horseback have become live targets for the enemy.

Asano Yoshio's cavalry squadron is the advance search team of the mixed brigade. It is reasonable that the search team should not launch a strong attack when being ambushed by the enemy, but should be stationed on the spot and wait for backup.

From the capital to Pyongyang, the cavalry squadron turned thousands of miles and was invincible. In the face of the resistance of a small group of enemy troops, Yoshio Amano had no reason to persuade himself to stop.

The large army was still trapped in the mud a few kilometers behind the cavalry squadron, and Yoshio Asano did not have the patience to wait for those embarrassed infantry and artillery.

Without artillery support, the cavalry squadron launched three charges.

Two more cavalrymen were shot and shot down, including a lieutenant's captain who rushed in front of him.

The captain fell heavily into the mud and struggled to stand up in the distance. Asano Yoshio didn't have time to freeze, and the horse hit the captain's body fiercely. The captain snorted and drew an arc in mid-air and smashed into the pond not far away.

The captain shouted at the last moment before sinking to the bottom of the pond: "Give up the war horse!"

Yeo Asano's congested brain was awakened by this cry - the cavalry trapped in the mudflat is not as good as the infantry!

He quickly jumped off the horse, withdrew his sword, pulled out his pistol, and shouted, "Get off!"

The charge stopped abruptly, and more than 100 cavalry jumped off their horses almost at the same time, collected their knives, raised the Type 22 Murata continuous firing guns, and crawled in the mud.

Japanese soldiers in blue and black military uniforms rolled into the mud, like chameleons, turned mud yellow, mixed with mud everywhere.

The cavalry of the Asano Squadron, whose walking skills are no less than infantry.

Without the war horses, the soldiers quickly followed the infantry tactics, launched the loose line, relying on the muddy ditches as shelters, responding interactively, and moving forward step by step.

The Japanese-made 22 Murata-style continuous-shot riding gun, with a caliber of 8 mm, a length of 0.96 meters, a weight of 3.7 kg, 5 rounds loaded, and a range of 2,000 meters. Its performance is far different from that of the Type 22 continuous-fire rifle, and even less than the Type 18 single-shot rifle.

However, in close combat, the performance of riding a gun and a rifle is even.

Moreover, the Murata-style riding gun is light and easy to operate.

There was a muffled sound in the enclosure. On the road of the charge, the mud splashed, and the Japanese soldiers mixed in the mud raised their guns and shot at the roar.

Two screams sounded on the big tree in the breakout, and two Qing soldiers planted a big tree.

Yeo Asano laughed dumbly - it was the Qing army who carried the gun that made a roar.