Chapter 2904: New Journey (10)

Tactical training for the cavalry officers was Yang Ning's personal charge. In his own words: "No one understands cavalry better than I do."

Though the Jeju Island Cavalry Training Squadron had been organizationally folded into the military academy, the Hallasan camp stood a good distance from the academy proper, so the cavalry department's courses were still conducted at the horse ranch.

The officers' lecture hall had been converted out of an old stable — a timber-framed stable designed in the early days under Zhang Xingpei's direction, its whole prefabricated frame shipped to Jeju by sea and raised on the spot; within, it was lofty and broad, quite an imposing hall.

Now its walls were whitewashed and hung with great maps of the Nanyang region, of Liaodong, and of Mongolia; from the high trussed roof hung the Morning Star flag and the Star-and-Fist colors, and beneath them the enemy standards the Senate had captured across its campaigns. Behind rows of long plank tables sat the full muster of this training cycle — the special service cadets, the academy cadets, and the training squadron's own officers down to company and platoon level. The air held tobacco, sweat, and old paper.

Yang Ning stood at the front before a plank painted black to serve as a blackboard. He had changed out of that flamboyant hussar rig and into the full dress of a horse grenadier of the First French Empire's Imperial Guard, the gold wire on his shoulder boards glinting faintly in the light from the high windows. He did not speak at once; he took up the chalk and wrote out several words:

The Eight Banners. Combined arms. Resilience.

Done, he turned, his gaze sweeping the many faces below — expectant, grave, faintly curious. Tan Shuangxi sat toward the rear, back held stiffly straight, the newly issued notebook and pencil in his hand.

"Today we will speak of no points of horsemanship, and we will hack no posts." Yang Ning began, his voice clear, pushed no higher than it needed to be, yet reaching every man. "Today we speak of the enemy we may one day face from horseback — and of how we mean to answer him."

He pointed at the words on the board. "Intelligence and analysis tell us that our principal adversary on land in the future will be the Manchu Qing — and it is not the tribal host of horse-archer bravado so many imagine. It is evolving, and fast." He took up his pointer and set it on Liaodong.

"Their way of war shows more and more the skeleton of a combined-arms system: masses of trained infantry that can absorb casualties; light cavalry for sudden raids and unpredictable harrying; heavy foot and horse sheathed in armor and armed with good steel, serving as the anvil that breaks a line; and over all these their choicest element — the Bayara, for instance — the cavalry hammer thrown in at the decisive moment to settle the battle. They have, besides, waked to the worth of cannon: they have raised a dedicated arm, the Ujen Choha, repairing and putting to work the guns taken from the Ming, and learning their use in practice."

He paused, letting the words sink to their full depth.

"And more important still: tempered by decades of unbroken war at comparatively light cost in blood, the Qing army has amassed combat experience and morale in abundance. On the battlefield its organization and its toughness both rise above its foes. It can take a hammering, suffer heavy losses, and still hold its fighting formation and its rhythm. That is the core of its strength — and it must never be slighted because its equipment lags behind ours."

"Then — against such an enemy, with a system that bends without breaking and a will to match, what do we lean upon?" Yang Ning turned the point. "Upon our firearms, beyond question. Rifles and guns can deal them ruin at long range; their heavy armor counts for little before our lead balls and roundshot."

He turned the point again, weight gathering in his voice. "But does superior firepower mean we win every battle at our ease — that we can avoid all close contact?"

He answered himself. "History tells us no. The Second Counter-Encirclement, the great battle of Chengmai, and many a fight since all show the same thing: even where our fire held every advantage, the enemy might still pay a dreadful price and crash into our ranks. What stopped them at the last was the wall our infantry brothers raised with bayonets and their own flesh. Fire weakens, delays, kills — but it will not always stop a stubborn-willed army from closing."

His eyes went to the infantry-bred officers in the audience, Tan Shuangxi among them. "This, I trust, you all understand — and those of you returned from the mainland front rather better than I."

Tan Shuangxi's hand went unbidden to the somewhat worn Medal of Valor on his chest, and across his mind flashed the close, bloody work beneath the walls of Chaozhou.

"So — the question." Yang Ning chalked one great question mark onto the board. "How do we drive our firepower to its utmost, while keeping ourselves, so far as may be, out of the close fight of attrition they fight best — the contest of will against will, flesh against flesh?"

He paused, and his gaze went keen. "The core idea is this: force the enemy to fight under the conditions worst for him, and strip him of the conditions in which he does his best. Plainly said — play our long suit, strike his short one."

"On the tactical level," he went on, "what the enemy excels at, and will inevitably seek, is rapid closing — to bring his numbers, his grappling, and his shock to bear. Our task is to make him stop, or at the least to slow his advance drastically, so that he stands exposed under our sustained fire and becomes a living target."

Some in the audience turned thoughtful; others found the notion next to fantasy — as if the enemy would ever stand meekly and be shot?

Yang Ning seemed to read the doubt. "Getting the enemy to halt of his own accord may be hard. But by tactical arrangement we can leave him no choice but to halt — or make his advance fruitless." He turned to the board and began sketching rapidly.

"For instance, we may study the classic battles of history. Among our reference texts is the Concise General History of Western Warfare, which gathers a good many of them. Read it well, whenever you have the hours!" The book was, in point of fact, something Yang Ning had compiled together with a number of his fellow West-worshippers.

"Take the wars of Renaissance Europe. The Swiss pike squares were famed for the violence of their assault; but at the Battle of Marignano, the French army, by ceaseless cavalry charges, forced the Swiss to halt again and again, contracting their formation to defend itself. A pike square once contracted loses its power of swift movement — and through the very hours they stood pinned in place, the French guns and arquebusiers were able to pour deliberate, unbroken, ruinous fire into their packed ranks. In the end the Swiss, masters of the lightning assault, were nailed to the ground, suffering losses out of all proportion."

He laid down the chalk and clapped the dust from his hands.

"The lesson of the example: with a fast-moving force — light infantry, say, or our cavalry — by continual harassment or menacing charges, pin the enemy's main infantry mass, forcing it to contract into defense or into slow movement, and so open the most favorable firing window for our own main firepower. If the enemy wants to charge, we simply refuse to let him get up a clean head of steam; if the enemy fears the guns, we simply see to it that he stands under them a good while longer."

The hall stilled, with only the whisper of nibs across paper. Many an officer — those who had known positional fighting above all — began to see the worth of the idea.

"Back to our hypothetical clash with the Jianzhou Eight Banners." Yang Ning touched the likely field of battle on the map. "Suppose they come on with heavy infantry at the core, foot archers and cavalry pressing upon the flanks. We would emplace our batteries beforehand to form the backbone of fire, and steady our line with well-drilled infantry squares. As for our cavalry—" he pressed the words with intent, "—the part it plays is decisive. Not to crash head-on into the enemy's massed strength — that is striking his long suit with our short one."

His gaze crossed the cavalry candidate officers in the rows. "Our cavalry will use its mobility — on the outer ring, a standing menace, harassing, striking at the enemy's flanks and rear guard, or delivering 'touch-and-go' charges against his infantry mass, measured to the hair. Not in hope of shattering him at one blow, but to disorder his formation, slow his feet, force him to divide his strength or halt to reshape his array against the threat. Only slow the enemy's advance — make him hesitant, tangled — and he must stand that much longer within reach of our guns and our volleys, and take that much more of the beating."

"And when the enemy has been gutted by long-range fire, when his formation begins to come apart and his morale has taken its wound—" Yang Ning closed his fist and rapped the lectern lightly, "—that is the moment: our infantry launches the countercharge, or our cavalry finds the soft place and delivers the decisive stroke."

He drew it to a close. "So the cavalry fighting of our future will not be, at heart, mere cutting and charging from the saddle. It will be control of the battlefield, denial of movement, the making of opportunity. We are to be the thorn that makes the enemy halt — the unseen hand that forces him to stand in the full strength of our fire. That demands the highest discipline, training, and tactical concert; and it is the root purpose of all our hard schooling in this place."

"As for the cavalry of the Qing banners," Yang Ning added in closing, his tone one of cool appraisal, "man for man they may be masters of their craft, sudden and fierce in the charge. To answer them — beyond holding our own morale and formation unbroken, and keeping a reserve to guard the flanks — we must drive the advantage of our equipment to its limit. The revolvers carried by every trooper of ours, for instance, will pour instant, heavy fire into a close melee, enough to make good whatever we may lack in experience here or there. Remember: war is a contest of systems, not a trial of bravado. Victory is won by the strength of the whole military organism."

The lecture ended, and Yang Ning opened the floor to questions. A brief silence held the hall; then a low murmur of discussion rose. Looking at the diagrams on the board and those key words, Tan Shuangxi felt his old, simple picture of cavalry — ride, charge, cut — break apart once and for all. What he had come to learn was far more intricate than keeping his seat or swinging a saber: a deeper science of governing a battle's tempo and of wielding forces in concert.

(End of chapter)