Historians of all ages have not understood it.
According to Yue legend, Jin Wushu, commander of the Jin army, had an ace army called "serial horse", which connected 30 horses with chains, and the impact was unstoppable, but it was broken by Yue Jiajun's hook sickle gun and "horse leg cutting tactics" in Yancheng War. The inspiration for the serial horse in Yue Chuan probably comes from the Water Margin, where Liangshan Qunxiong killed Hu's serial horse with a hook and sickle gun.
In the real Song-Jin War, the Jin army did have an elite army called "Kidnapper Horse". But what exactly is a kidnapper horse? In the works of the descendants of Yue Fei, the kidnapper horse was equated with the serial horse for the first time, and the kidnapper horse was characterized as a serial horse tactic that "runs through Weiso and links three people".
Under the "authoritative certification" of York, "Kidnapping a horse is a serial horse" has become a conclusion. On the one hand, Shuo Yue Quan Zhuan popularized this statement to the people, making the mysterious serial horse tactics a household name; On the other hand, Ma Kua, serialized in Sanma Connected, is full of pictures of "thirty horses".
Judging from the current cognition and military common sense, the statement of serial horses is extremely absurd. If three or 30 horses are connected together, not to mention the different speeds of the horses, they will be implicated in each other. If one horse is suddenly injured or killed, it is a tragedy that other horses fall down in a chain. It can be said that the serial horse is an extremely amateur military thought and cannot be applied in actual combat.
From the Southern Song Dynasty to the Qing Dynasty, from the imperial court to the people, it has become an indisputable conclusion that "the abducted horse is a serial horse".
About the same time that Yue Zhuan became popular, Emperor Qianlong, who had experience in military facts, took the lead in seeing the clue and questioned the myth of serial horses that had been circulating for hundreds of years. He thought it was not feasible in actual combat, perhaps because the Song people found an exaggerated excuse for their defeat. However, it is Mr. Deng Guangming who really solves this problem from the academic level. His detailed textual research in the biography of Yue Fei completely overthrew the saying of serial horses, and "Kidnapping horses is about cavalry" became an unpublished theory.
In the hundreds of years that "the turned horse is a serial horse" was misinformed, surprisingly, almost no one had strongly questioned this absurd statement before Qianlong.
This shows that although China had an extremely great historical narrative tradition in ancient times, in fact, even historians of past dynasties could not understand how ancient wars were fought, let alone romantic novels that spread false stories.
The official history neglected the details of the war intentionally or unintentionally.
As Li Shuo wrote in the preface of Three Hundred Years of Civil War, "How did China fight in ancient times? Historical records are often not so detailed. For example, how many troops did the two sides invest in the famous Chu-Han War? What is the length and width of each array? Is it the same as the Terracotta Warriors unearthed from the Qin tomb? How was the engagement? You can't even see it in Historical Records. In China's ancient history books, there are a lot of "blank spaces" for the most basic situation of war. In fact, it is not entirely because historians are ignorant, and the generals in the ancient Chengping period did not know how to fight the real war (cold weapon war). Most of the military commanders who have experienced troubled times have no academic qualifications and cannot be recorded. "
China's historical records also have the tradition of writing in words, always conveying a certain value of "being close to sages, being far from villains", while the tactical details, weapons and equipment and other technical contents in the war have relatively no such bearing capacity, so they have been diluted.
For example, when the official history of ancient China involved war, there were many traitors behind the defeat, either directing blindly or framing loyal ministers who could fight and destroying the Great Wall. This is almost a classic way to write history: the great defeat in the early stage of the Anshi Rebellion in the Tang Dynasty was due to Yang's selfishness, the tragedy of the Jingkang Rebellion was due to the rebellion of Tong Guan and Cai Jing, and the defeat of Xiangfan in the Southern Song Dynasty was even destroyed by Meng Yuan, all because of the great eunuch and the opium war in Jia Sidao and Ming Yingzong.
Therefore, the analysis and recording of many wars will ultimately assume the function of "being a mirror of management".
To put it simply, China's official war narrative is "de-detailing" and "de-technicalization".
It is precisely because the official history intentionally or unintentionally ignored the details of the history of the war that it lost its place on the question of how the ancient wars in China were fought, and the demand of the people was real, so the power of interpretation went to the romance novels, and the war was thus "fragmented in romance", "disordered in Machamp" and "mystified". This is like, in ancient society, because some supernatural phenomena can not be explained scientifically, the right to interpret belongs to religion and folklore.
Describe the most popular routines in ancient wars.
In romance novels, there are roughly three kinds of the most popular narrative routines in ancient wars.
First, strategy. In the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, the success or failure of almost every battle is mainly based on strategy, while the strength, equipment and tactics are secondary. The most commonly used strategy in Romance of the Three Kingdoms is "fire attack", and the key words and decisive factors of heavy fighting are almost arson. The battle of Guandu burned Wu Chao, Battle of Red Cliffs burned Chibi, and the battle of Yiling burned the camp. Zhuge Liang is the king of fire attack. In addition to cooperating with Zhou Yu to set fire to Chibi, he also set fire to Bowangpo, Xinye and Fu Jiabing, and almost burned Sima Yi to death in Shanggu. It is obviously impossible to use fire attack so intensively in real war, but it exposes the author's routine in romantic war.
Second, one-on-one hit. One-on-one combat among military commanders is one of the leading factors to promote the development of war plots in Tang Shuo and Water Margin. One-on-one fights in romance novels are often like this. Two military commanders fought one-on-one, and the winner was wiped out, and the loser was torn apart. The main role of soldiers is the cheerleaders waving flags in the competition, and the influence of military commanders' personal military courage on the war is infinitely expanded, which is prone to "improper courage". The subtext is that the army is not important. Compared with strategy, the distance between one-on-one war and real war is even farther, just like the war scene in The Journey to the West, where 100,000 heavenly soldiers will crusade against Huaguo Mountain, just a contest between Nezha and the Monkey King and Erlang God.
Third, the array method. "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" has eight arrays, "Every day, every hour, unprovoked, comparable to 100 thousand soldiers", Lu Xun was trapped by a pile of stones; "Water Margin" has nine palaces and eight diagrams array, one-word long snake array, six flowers array, four-door bucket bottom array and so on; Yang Jiajiang has a gate array, and Mu Guiying's gate array is the most hearty battle in the book; There are five phalanges in The Complete Biography of Yue.
In ancient wars, arrays were real, such as Qin Jun's infantry array, Emperor Wu of Song's moon array, Qi Jiguang's mandarin duck array, and even eight arrays. However, the prescribed movements of these marching arrays are far less confusing than those in romance novels, and are full of supernatural factors. These magical formations are like gestures in martial arts and have no practical value.
Although most of the war descriptions in romance novels are absurd, it must be said that it is they that have defined China people's vision and imagination of ancient wars for hundreds of years. It is so ingrained that when the author talks about ancient wars after writing this book, the first subconscious reaction is still "romance": the brave general immediately brandished a knife and shouted "Hey, let Tong Ming die!"
War history lovers' "on paper"
First, ancient books (official history, notes). Although the history of war is not the focus of official history, it also has a big historical background. Although the history of war has its independence, there is no ancient war divorced from the overall situation of history. More importantly, some simple moral judgments and "prejudices" about war in the official history can just become "targets" for writing. For example, Zhao Kuo's defeat in the battle of Changping on paper, the role of treacherous court officials in the defeat of the war, and excessive admiration for famous soldiers such as Yue Fei all increased the topicality and problem consciousness of writing.
Second, romance novels. Although most of the war descriptions in romance novels are absurd, they also provide targets like the prejudice of official history. Comparing the war in "romance novels" with the real war can produce many interesting chemical reactions. For example, in the relationship between the kidnapper horse and the serial horse in The Legend of Yue, the bane of the serial horse is the hook and sickle gun. Although they are "hemp knives" in history, both weapons are aimed at cavalry's "horse legs". On the issue of cutting off a horse's leg, Yue Quanzhuan is not wrong, but it is a confirmation of history. For another example, the eight-array diagram and the wooden ox and the flowing horse in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms have existed in history, but they have been mythologized. It's also interesting to distinguish them.
Third, contemporary works and papers on the history of war can be divided into two parts.
First, there are some interdisciplinary works. For example, General Theory of Ancient Weapons by Mr. Yang Hong is a monograph on the history of weapons, and the evolution of ancient weapons and tactics has become an important thread on paper. The perspective of military geography is very important in some works and papers of military geography, especially when writing articles about Changping War, Chu-Han War and Zhuge Liang's Northern Expedition.
The first is the contemporary works that break the dull situation of the study of ancient war history. First of all, Zeng Ruilong, a genius who died young, completely defined the writing paradigm of ancient war history in Jing Ke's whispers and Tuoba Northwest. Secondly, Li Shuo's Three Hundred Years' Civil War, especially his pioneering research on ancient cavalry. In addition, Guo's Military Code of the Central Empire has a refreshing perspective on military geography.