I am not Yuan Shu

Chapter 241 They Are Not Good at Running
Jiang Yin did not realize that he had lost the possibility of winning from the very beginning. Faced with such a situation, he could only desperately urge his soldiers to quickly prepare and attack immediately.

The infantrymen were busy putting on armor, helmets, and looking for weapons.

Only a hundred or so cavalrymen who had been feeding their horses just now hastily mounted their horses, barely dressed themselves, and then, at Jiang Yin's urging, went forward to meet the enemy, trying to stop the charge of the Han cavalry.

But it's all meaningless.

But it must be said that the performance of this rebel army, which Yuan Shu thought was useless, was already quite good.

Considering the performance of a team whose majority members were non-professional soldiers, it was already quite good that they did not collapse and flee at the first moment.

Among this rebel army, only more than 300 cavalrymen and more than 200 archers could barely be considered professional soldiers, and the rest were transferred from the county soldiers and other menial teams.

Even these county soldiers can be considered regular troops among the entire rebel group.

Because at least they are organized, have touched weapons, and occasionally have some military training, which is better than nothing.

As for the main body of the rebels, they were purely farmers, refugees, miners, etc.

A small number were attracted by money, but most were forced here and had no choice.

Liu He and others had no reason or motivation to form an elite and combat-ready army in the inland prefectures and counties that had been stable for a long time and occasionally had some bandits and thieves. Even as county governors, they actually had the power to turn their thousands of county soldiers into combat-ready groups.

In contrast, this vanguard army is composed of cavalry and archers, and the rest are county soldiers. They can truly be called the elite among the rebels.

But so what?

Facing the real elite, they are still far behind.

In addition to the elite Northern Army and Sanhe Knights, the rest of Yuan Shu's vanguard cavalry are elite members of the Yi Xin Hui armed team who have received professional training in Maoling and other places and have fought against the Qiang cavalry many times.

Needless to say, the elite troops of the Northern Army are the most skilled group of people in mounted combat in the Han army.

The Sanhe Knights were standard elite mercenaries and had followed the Han army on more than one expedition.

The vanguard army composed of these three groups is absolutely top-notch in terms of combat effectiveness, regardless of the extent of their coordination with each other.

In comparison, the rebels led by Jiang Yin were far inferior to Dong Xuan's Huben Army in terms of equipment, training and morale, and were not opponents of the same level at all.

The vanguard army led by Yuan Shu was like a tiger ready to pounce, while Jiang Yin's rebels were like a panicked flock of sheep. The gap between the two was obvious.

Moreover, although it was the first time for Yuan Shu to lead an army in an attack on his own, he would definitely not make the same mistakes as Jiang Yin, which were so obvious that only an amateur would make.

To be honest, Yuan Shu didn't know how such a person could be appointed as the vanguard general.

Is it true that there are no capable warriors among the rebel forces?

The already scarce cavalry was even dispersed. Before one group of people had a chance to mount their horses, another group had already rushed over. This was not a war; it was simply a child's play!

So he gave an order, and his light cavalry shot arrows at the more than one hundred rebel cavalrymen who were charging towards them.

The skill of horse archery requires long-term practice and a large amount of resource investment, and is not something that ordinary armies can master. Basically, only the elite cavalry of the Han Army on the border and the Northern Army can skillfully use this skill on the battlefield.

And among Yuan Shu's subordinates, there just happened to be a group of light cavalry that were capable of riding and shooting. Each of them was a brave warrior with superb archery skills, and their arrows never missed their targets.

Hundreds of arrows flew into the air, drawing graceful arcs and falling towards the rebel cavalry.

At that moment, the sky in front of the rebel cavalry seemed to be covered by a rain of arrows, and more than half of them were knocked down in an instant.

Some were shot directly in the vitals and died on the spot, some were shot and injured and fell off their horses and died. The remaining twenty or thirty people were lucky enough not to be hit by arrows, but there was no joy on their faces.

Because at this time, the Han cavalry responsible for hand-to-hand combat had already rushed over like a storm.

They were holding ring-handled swords or spears, and with just one encounter they knocked all twenty or thirty people off their horses.

They didn't even cause any damage to the Han cavalry, and they left the stage of life in such a hurry, as if they were just passing by on the stage.

At this time, Jiang Yin was still hurriedly ordering his infantry to form a battle array. He urged the shield soldiers to raise their shields and form a simple defense line against the fence, like a curled-up hedgehog trying to use its hard thorns to resist the invasion of outsiders. The rebel soldiers' spears poked out from the gaps in the shields, seemingly very lethal, but the hands of these soldiers were shaking constantly, which greatly reduced the lethality.

Of course, this cannot be blamed on them.

A month ago, most of them were county soldiers doing odd jobs or even farm work. The linen clothes under their armor were still stained with mud from the ridges of the fields in their hometowns. Before that, the big scenes they had experienced were basically large-scale agricultural labor, and as everyone knows, agricultural labor will not kill people.

At least there won't be so many deaths so quickly.

The huge size of the cavalry and the war horses combined, as well as the ferocious speed of their charge, can create an extremely terrifying visual and psychological impact on people.

It's like a dump truck sprinting a hundred meters towards modern people, vowing to send them into the reincarnation channel of the second dimension.

It is definitely not something that ordinary people can bear.

Even if Jiang Yin was not an ordinary person, he could not bear this horrifying scene.

He didn't expect that the Han cavalry would rush in so quickly. He originally thought that he had enough time to prepare fortifications and adjust the deployment of the troops, but now it was too late.

He had no time to find out who was responsible, nor did he have time to think about how to better deal with the current situation. He could only bite the bullet and order the archers to shoot arrows, trying to use arrows to stop the advance of the Han cavalry.

But that doesn't mean much.

As the archers behind the shield wall shot their panicked and weak arrows, the Han cavalry had already approached.

They only had time to shoot one round of arrows, and those arrows were like stones sinking into the sea, basically having no effect on the Han cavalry, and disappeared in the torrent of Han cavalry.

The thatched fence and the fragile shield wall could not stop the charge of the Han cavalry.

The Han cavalry holding spears were in a dominant position and thrust their spears into the shield wall directly in front of the formation. The rebel spearmen behind the shield wall were stabbed to death one after another. The bloody scene stimulated everyone's nerves, and the rebel shield wall collapsed almost in an instant.

What followed was a one-sided massacre.

The military formation is gone. What means do the infantry have to fight back against the cavalry?

No more.

They ran around like headless flies, thinking only of escaping from this place of death. Some were even so frightened that they collapsed to the ground, without even the strength to run away, and could only howl.

Jiang Yin had no choice but to charge forward with his relatively elite guards, trying to resist Dong Xuan's attack.

However, he soon found himself overwhelmed.

The Han cavalry were well-trained and coordinated. Their attacks were like wave after wave, continuous and uninterrupted, while the rebel soldiers appeared weak and powerless. Not only were they unable to fight back, many of them even trampled on each other in panic, resulting in countless deaths and injuries.

During the battle, the Han cavalry fully utilized their advantages. They used the speed and flexibility of their horses to constantly shuttle through the crowd of rebels.

Many rebel soldiers were hit by the cavalry's spears and scimitars before they could react and fell to the ground. Their bodies were pierced by spears, and their necks and arms were chopped off by scimitars. Blood splattered everywhere, and it was a horrible sight.

If this was the case for the soldiers who had already been equipped, then the many more rebel soldiers who had not yet had time to put on their armor or pick up their weapons had already collapsed when they saw the Han cavalry break into the camp and kill everyone in their way.

They didn't even have time to grab their weapons, they just turned around and ran, they climbed out of the camp and ran towards the cold water that was already frozen enough for people to walk on.

In a sense, running away is not wrong.

Those who survive on the battlefield are often not brave fighters, but runners who are good at running.

As long as you run fast enough, you can live longer. For those ordinary rebel soldiers, escaping from the battlefield may really be their only way to survive.

However, this was complete despair for Jiang Yin and the rest of the rebel soldiers who were caught in a critical attack by the Han cavalry.

Because they don't look like they are good at running.

(End of this chapter)