Chapter 310: Training, and More Training 4 — Breakthrough
What Youngwoo valued above all was the breakthrough.
Speed and mounted archery alone could not shake the heart of a great army. Arrows could throw the enemy's front ranks into confusion and force open their flanks. But to reach the emperor's great standard deep within the central formation, they would ultimately need the shock of horses, armor, and shields driving straight ahead.
The Jurchen cavalry had always excelled at circling swiftly, scattering, and shooting from horseback. They unsettled the enemy's gaze, tore at the edges of the formation, and picked off exhausted soldiers who fell behind.
It was a powerful method.
Yet when the Liao gathered hundreds of thousands of men and formed a deep battle line, circling its outer edge would not decide the battle. To wait for the enemy formation to break first was to surrender time to the enemy.
Youngwoo intended to change a battle of waiting into a battle of pressure.
Arrows opened the way. Maneuver drew away the enemy's attention. The final decision came through breakthrough.
The cavalry would first harass the enemy from a distance with arrows. Then the armored assault force would drive straight into the point that had begun to waver. The first rank would crush down the enemy's shields and spears. The second would widen the opening. The third would force its way deeper inside.
Only then would the battle move beyond shaking the enemy's front line and begin cutting through its center.
Youngwoo was not trying to destroy the entire army.
Killing every man in a great host was impossible from the beginning. When facing such an army, one had to strike its head and its waist.
The place from which orders came, the place where the banners stood, the place around which the soldiers' hearts gathered—those were the points that had to be shaken.
At the center of the Liao emperor's main formation stood the great imperial standard. That was the head of the battlefield.
No matter how many arrows were loosed, reaching that banner was difficult. Infantry and cavalry, shields and spears, guards and command tents stood in layer upon layer before it.
For that reason, Youngwoo gave the arrows a precise purpose.
They were not meant to kill every enemy soldier. They were meant to force men to lower their eyes and raise their shields, and to rob commanders of their sight for a single instant.
At that instant, the assault force would enter.
A breakthrough was not a reckless charge.
First, cavalry harassed the enemy from both sides, while the archers pressed the front. If the enemy shifted troops toward the flanks, the center grew thinner. If the center thickened, gaps opened in the links between the flanks.
Youngwoo trained his men to recognize that moment of weakness.
Then he drove the armored cavalry into it as a single mass.
The assault force was not meant to cut down as many men as possible.
Its task was to open a road.
The first rank took arrows and spearpoints on their shields. The second widened the gap with spears. The third used the force of their horses to pass through it.
The cavalry following behind struck down those who tried to close the opening. The archers in the rear shot over the heads of the assault force and suppressed the enemy's counterattack.
The moment the emperor panicked and moved, the whole army would begin to waver.
If the imperial standard withdrew, the soldiers in the front ranks would feel abandoned. If it shifted sideways, orders would become confused, and each unit would see only the danger before it.
Once the emperor's position was shaken, even hundreds of thousands of Liao troops could no longer move as one body.
Youngwoo saw that moment as the decisive point of battle.
For that reason, every exercise ended at the emperor's banner.
On the map table, a yellow standard was placed deep within the center. On the field, the troops repeatedly maneuvered, pressed, and broke through toward it.
The cavalry did not merely learn how to circle the enemy's outer edge.
They learned how to find a wavering gap, enter it, widen it from within, and advance all the way to the great standard.
What Youngwoo taught was a method for fighting a great army.
A great army was strong because of its size, but that same size made its orders slow and its changes of direction heavy.
Strengthen one side, and another grew thin. Thicken the front, and the rear responded more slowly.
Pierce that weakness. Ride for the center. Shake the emperor's banner.
That was the breakthrough tactic Youngwoo had prepared.
Another principle was concentrated fire.
Most Jurchen soldiers were excellent archers. Yet because each man shot on his own, the effect was limited.
Youngwoo made them concentrate their fire in the Goryeo manner.
Hundreds or thousands of arrows were to be directed toward a specific target. In modern terms, it resembled the creation of a beaten zone—a curtain of fire concentrated upon one section of the enemy line.
It was a method of focusing every arrow on a designated area.
He also replaced vague commands with precise instructions about the direction and range of fire.
Another principle was simultaneous shooting.
Mounted archery was familiar to the riders.
But familiarity did not automatically become military strength.
Jurchen soldiers loosed arrows according to their own eyes and hands. They shot when their horses reached the right stride, when an enemy came into view, or when the feeling came into their fingertips.
The method was fast, rough, and intimidating.
Yet against a broad battle line, its power scattered.
Some arrows arrived first, while others came later. The enemy saw the first arrows and raised their shields. They lowered their bodies to avoid those that followed.
Each soldier might possess great skill, but the pressure of the arrow storm as a whole was weakened.
Youngwoo intended to correct that.
A bow was a weapon of individual skill, but it also had to become a weapon that fell according to the army's command.
One arrow might aim at one enemy. But when hundreds fell at the same instant, an entire battle line bowed its head.
That single instant would open the road for the assault force.
So he created signals to control the shooting.
One long horn blast meant prepare.
Two short blasts meant raise the bow.
When the signal flag dipped forward, they drew the string.
When the drum struck once, they released.
Whether mounted or riding at speed, every soldier had to follow those signals.
At first, it was chaos.
Some men raised their bows before the horn call had ended. Others drew too late because of the movement of their horses.
Some watched the rider beside them and released in imitation. Others became so absorbed in the target ahead that they missed the drumbeat.
Even when they practiced with empty bows, the lines often fell out of order.
To conserve arrows, Youngwoo first trained them without shafts.
The cavalry rode forward, raised their bows, drew, and released.
Each time an empty bowstring slipped from the fingers, it made a dull twang.
Twang. Twang. Twang.
Whenever those sounds scattered unevenly, Youngwoo halted the exercise at once.
"Again."
The cavalry turned their horses and returned to their starting positions.
The horn sounded. The flag dipped. The drum struck.
Twang.
Twang-twang.
Twang.
The sounds were out of time again.
Youngwoo shook his head.
"The arrows must fall together if you want the enemy to lower their heads together.
There is no pride in having the fastest hand.
The strength of an army lies in releasing at the same instant as the man beside you."
The exercise was repeated several times each day.
First in groups of ten, then fifty, and finally by an entire unit.
The horses ran and dust rose. The riders lowered their bodies and waited for the horn, the flag, and the drum.
They learned to watch the signals before watching the enemy.
They learned to match the rhythm of the whole formation before trusting the feeling in their own fingertips.
As the days passed, the sound began to change.
The scattered twangs drew closer together.
Then, at last, dozens of bowstrings snapped at the same instant.
Twang!
One short, heavy sound struck across the field.
The riders turned to look at one another.
Only then did Youngwoo nod.
"That is the sound."
After that, they began using real arrows.
The horses ran. The horn sounded. The flag dipped. The drum struck.
Dozens of arrows left the strings at the same moment.
They did not scatter through the air as separate points. They rose like a black line and fell together.
Earth burst upward before the targets.
Arrows struck the wooden boards representing shield-bearing soldiers in a single beat.
When shot in that manner, even armor and shields offered little safety.
Only then did the soldiers understand.
A bow shot well by one man and an arrow storm falling together were entirely different kinds of power.
The first was skill.
The second was pressure.
One well-aimed arrow might pierce an enemy's heart. But only hundreds falling at the same instant could force an entire formation to bow its head.
Youngwoo bound simultaneous shooting together with the breakthrough.
The archers no longer remained at a distance merely to harass the enemy.
Immediately before the charge, they created the precise moment when the enemy's shields rose and his eyes were covered.
When the arrow storm fell, the enemy lowered his head. Spearpoints wavered. Commanders lost their view.
Through that brief opening, the armored cavalry entered.
And so every day on the training ground was filled with the same sequence of sounds.
The horn.
The flag.
The drum.
Then the sound of dozens, and later hundreds, of bowstrings snapping as one.
Twang!
Each time that sound rang out, the army of Jin changed a little more.