Really began to promote cavalry on a large scale or from the Warring States period to Wuling, Zhao Haoqi? Khufu rides a horse and shoots? With the popularization of sports, countries in the Central Plains rely more and more on mobile cavalry to fight. So cavalry, chariots and infantry together formed the army in the late Warring States period.
However, the stirrup was not invented until the Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties. The earliest existing stirrup was buried in the tomb of Feng Sufu, a nobleman of Northern Yan in the Sixteen Countries Period of Eastern Jin Dynasty. Long straight handle wood core covered with copper skin? Stirrup
Feng Sufu lived in the late Sixteen States of the Eastern Jin Dynasty, which has been nearly 200 years since. Therefore, in the more distant Qin and Han dynasties, cavalry did not have metal stirrups in the sense of later generations, but this did not affect the charging and slashing of cavalry in the Qin and Han dynasties.
On the contrary, the cavalry in Qin and Han Dynasties created more brilliant achievements than later generations.
Qin Shihuang sent Meng Tian to attack the Xiongnu in the north, and Emperor Wudi sent Wei Qing, Huo Qubing and Li Guang to crusade against the Xiongnu, all of which used a large number of cavalry. Among them, the third battle of Mobei in BC 1 19 used the most cavalry, and the Han Dynasty used100000 cavalry, 19000 war horses and hundreds of thousands of logistics infantry in this battle.
That is, in this large-scale cavalry campaign, Huo Qubing achieved? Seal the wolf in the house? Great feats, Huns are far away, and there is no Wang Ting in the south of the desert.
However, because there were no stirrups at that time, the cavalry in the Han Dynasty could not fix their bodies well when riding, so they could only clamp the horse with their legs or tie the horse's legs with cloth belts, and they could also achieve a fixed effect. But you can't increase the load of cavalry and horses, otherwise you can't charge, which weakens the protection of cavalry.
Therefore, before the stirrup was invented, there was no real heavy cavalry in ancient China. At most, a sudden riding in leather armor appeared in Youzhou of the Eastern Han Dynasty, which was completely different from the heavy cavalry in later generations.
During the Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, with the emergence of stirrups, the cavalry's legs were liberated, and the cavalry's charging ability and load-bearing ability were greatly enhanced. Therefore, cavalry became the main force in the field battlefield and the nemesis of infantry.
During the Northern Wei Dynasty, the earliest armored cavalry (heavy cavalry) appeared in the history of China. This kind of heavy cavalry can not only break through the infantry, but also has strong defense ability, and its combat effectiveness far exceeds that of the light cavalry in Qin and Han Dynasties.
With the help of lanterns, ethnic minority regimes that were good at using cavalry rose one after another, posing a great threat to the Central Plains dynasty. However, the Central Plains dynasty, which was dominated by farming people, was short of horses and advocated civilized rule, so it was defeated repeatedly in the face of the attacks of nomadic people in the north.