Second-hand time travel: Liu Bei, the big-eared bandit

Chapter 114 Armored Cavalry
Out of respect for Guan Yu… or perhaps out of respect for Zhang Fei’s craftsmanship, Xiahou Dun acquired a lot of good iron and sold it to Guan Yu at a reasonable price.

Selling iron at a fair price these days would be a loss-making business; they only dared to do it because they had the protection of the Grand Minister of Agriculture, Cao Song.

Therefore, Guan Yu specially asked Zhang Fei to work overtime to produce several works as a return gift for Xiahou Dun.

Zhang Fei probably never imagined that he would actually become an artist, with his works being quite valuable, even enough to be exchanged for strategic resources...

Having obtained the fine iron, Liu Bei forged many weapons and armor.

The more armor you have, the better.

If a household has ten sets of armor, that's called "armored rebellion."

But if a family has three thousand armored cavalry, then they are the pillars of the nation...

If you had 30,000 armored soldiers at home...

Forget it, don't think that far ahead. Liu Bei's immediate goal is three hundred armored cavalry, somewhere between a rebellion and a pillar of the state...

Armor is easy to make; as long as you have money, manpower, iron, and leather, you can just make as many as you can. Scale armor is too complicated to make and takes too long, but lamellar armor will do.

To ensure protective capabilities, high-strength steel was used in critical areas such as the breast shield, collar, and helmet.

It took several months to produce a single suit of armor. To speed up the process, Liu Bei even used an assembly line and rushed to produce a batch of vernier calipers to ensure standardization. The highest precision could be controlled to one centimeter (one-hundredth of an inch, about 0.23 millimeters).

Liu Bei's company pays piece-rate wages; blacksmiths only need to forge armor plates and are paid according to the number of qualified plates.

The leather and lining were made by Bian Ji's hired workers, who were also paid per piece.

The final assembly was completed by the military. The manufacturing and warehouse were currently managed by Bian Ji, while Bian Bing was in charge of distribution. The siblings were in charge of receiving goods into the warehouse and sending them out of the warehouse, respectively.

Armor was usually only distributed when soldiers went out on missions, to prevent them from hiding their armor at home and being reported.

The military's record-keeping and supervision affairs are currently handled by Guan Yu, the commander of his personal guards. If any armored soldier fails to fight first in battle, his armor will be confiscated, and he will be demoted from armored soldier to recruit and have to start all over again.

In fact, there have always been battles at Xiheting, but they are smaller in scale and less frequent. In the beginning, there were frequent battles against the Hu people at the foot of the Great Wall. Later, in order to support Qian Zhao, they often went north on missions.

Fewer Hu people are coming now, but they still patrol every day, and Duan Jiong's training has never stopped.

Zhang Fei remained the head of the cooks. The cooks were rotated every two weeks, with three squads in each batch. This was a reward and benefit for those who excelled in training and missions. Zhang Fei would lead them to slaughter pigs and sheep, purchase ingredients, pet cats and dogs, and sneak some food along the way. Although they were never idle, they were quite content.

Everyone was busy, and Liu Bei himself was very busy.

Liu Bei certainly couldn't do things like steelmaking and blacksmithing; he was only good at drawing.

Liu Bei wanted to make a batch of horizontal swords, as well as various triangular armor-piercing cones, including arrowheads.

Liu Bei never even considered things like halberds or spears. Alien equipment requires too much steel, which is impossible to make these days, and even if it were made, it wouldn't be cost-effective.

Given the technological level of that era, forging a horizontal sword was already very difficult.

The horizontal sword is a very practical battlefield weapon, and short weapons such as swords and shields are indispensable in the military.

It's not that spears are bad, but that long and short weapons need to be used in combination. The Han army has never been a single-purpose force; both long and short weapons are necessary.

Like Liu Bei's personal guards, they were equipped with lamellar armor and iron helmets. Their long weapons, depending on their individual circumstances, included spears or halberds, while their short weapons were ring-pommel swords or maces, along with shields or hooks. At the same time, those skilled in archery were also equipped with bows and arrows, and squad leaders were equipped with crossbows.

—All of these combined constitute the equipment of a warrior; he carries a truly massive amount of gear.

Most people could never earn this kind of equipment in their entire lives, which is why the "head of the enemy" in military merit is so valuable, with each head taken earning a rank of nobility.

In actual combat, each squad would work together, with long weapons, swords and shields, bows and crossbows, and several people cooperating with each other, and they would switch weapons at any time depending on the situation.

But no matter how the battle unfolds, everyone must be equipped with a sword, especially in melee combat between infantry and cavalry.

A cross-blade can be modified from a ring-pommel blade, but the required craftsmanship is much more advanced. The hardness of the blade needs to be evenly varied to make it hard inside and tough outside in order to be practical.

Techniques such as high-temperature steelmaking, localized quenching and tempering, and blast furnaces already existed at this time. The hardness of the blade of the ring-pommel sword or Han sword at this point already showed a gradient change. However, this gradient change was rather abrupt, formed by localized quenching of the blade edge, and the overall blade was still prone to chipping or breakage.

To achieve both high steel core hardness and good outer toughness, the steel-cladding method is required.

As for techniques like steel plating, steel filling, clay covering, and tempering, Liu Bei only knew the names but didn't know how to do them.

Although the advantage of Chinese lies in the fact that one or two characters can express the core meaning and at least give people a clue, it takes a lot of time and effort to turn these nouns into reality.

Liu Bei didn't understand technical matters, but he did understand that as long as he was willing to spend money and experiment with iron, the craftsmen would naturally give him an answer.

Whoever can make what Liu Bei wants will become rich.

The blacksmiths initially described it as a triangular pyramid, including the arrowhead and spearhead, as well as a triangular dagger for handheld use.

However, the triangular pyramids here by Liu Bei were not cast iron pyramids, but forged steel pyramids, which had higher labor costs.

The triangular pyramid wasn't just used to break through armor; Liu Bei used it to assemble armored cavalry.

Currently, Liu Bei has 400 warhorses and over 300 cavalry, which is enough for his needs. He only has over 300 men who can ride horses. In order to establish a solid foundation of discipline among his troops and to maintain the stable development of Xiheting, Liu Bei has not yet recruited any Hu people.

Based on his half-understood memories, Liu Bei began to try nailing horseshoes and made a batch of high-bridged saddles with suspended double stirrups.

Shoeing horses isn't a difficult task, but in those days, nobody really knew how, so Liu Bei had to demonstrate it himself.

Unfortunately, he was kicked by a horse as a result.

The main problem was that Liu Bei's operating procedures were not standardized; he had never actually done this job before.

The horse wasn't kicked too hard, but Liu Bei's demonstration still achieved its purpose—everyone felt that Liu Bei was demonstrating how to court death in various ways...

After acquiring a batch of horseshoe-studded warhorses, Liu Bei also acquired a reputation that spread very quickly—the spendthrift son.

Before, no one said Liu Bei was wasteful for opening a clinic, because it was a good deed of saving lives and healing the wounded. Everyone said that Liu Bei was benevolent and virtuous.

But most people think that shoeing high-quality warhorses is just throwing money away...

Only Duan Jiong expressed his agreement, and together with Liu Bei, they gradually improved the high-bridged saddle and the double stirrups.

The cavalry spear shafts were also lengthened, reaching a length of eighteen feet, more than four meters—this was a true eighteen-foot spear, the kind that was thinner at the front and thicker at the back, and one-third longer than the cavalry halberds of this era.

The spearhead is very short, only five inches long, and it uses a triangular pyramid instead of a blade.

This is to reduce the weight at the front end, ensuring that the spear does not bend or droop too much when raised, and also to increase the power of the charge.

Because the triangular pyramid was so short, the cavalry lance didn't look imposing at all; it looked like a wooden pole with a small triangular head nailed to the front...

But this is the true weapon of war; as the saying goes, all are equal under the lance...

With this equipment, Liu Bei's troops truly became armored cavalry.

They weren't exactly heavy armored cavalry, as they didn't mass-produce horse armor, only some leather breastplates to protect the horses' necks and chests.

Adding armored soldiers created a type of soldier that did not yet exist in this era: the charging cavalry.

To train cavalry to charge into battle, Liu Bei and Duan Jiong put a lot of effort into it, and even specially found brittle wooden poles to tie soft cloth to for practical training.

Quite a few people were injured during the drills, but fortunately a hospital had just been built in Xiheting...

However, this practice gradually became a trend, especially for Zhang Fei, who loved to charge on horseback and would look for a suitable wooden pole to practice with every day.

Every now and then in the horse stables, you could see two knights wearing two layers of armor clashing against each other with brittle wooden poles with soft tips, making Liu Bei feel a little dazed, as if he had traveled back to the Middle Ages.

(End of this chapter)