Is there a difference between the Sentinel and the Scout in the Cold Weapon Age Army?
Although these two branches of the armed forces are engaged in the work of reconnoitring the enemy's situation, they are still very different.
In short, the two are effectively equivalent to the difference between the scouts and special forces of the modern army.
The Sentry Rider and the Scout have the following things in common.
What they have in common is that both belong to ancient reconnaissance units.
Anyone who can serve as a sentry and a rebuke must be skilled in martial arts. Whether it is off the horse, riding and shooting, shooting on foot, long and short soldiers, stabbing and hand-to-hand combat, and other skills, all of them are elite soldiers who are proficient in everything.
In addition, in addition to martial arts, the sentry and the rebuke must also be educated, able to write, draw, and count, otherwise, how can he reconnoiter and report the enemy's situation clearly.
The difference between a Sentinel and a Scout.
The difference between the two lies in the difference in the scope of the area in which the reconnaissance mission is carried out.
Sentinels are reconnaissance and sentinel activities between the two armies of the two warring sides;
The rebuke was to cross the enemy's defense line and go deep into the enemy's rear to conduct reconnaissance and intelligence spying.
First of all, the sentry cavalry is a standard cavalry. Generally refers to the light cavalry in the army, and is also equivalent to the reconnaissance company and rapid reaction force at the corps, division, brigade, and regimental level of the modern army.
Their task is to find out the enemy's situation in front of their troops, and at the same time to prevent the enemy's reconnaissance of their own side.
Sentinels were to be responsible for guarding the front and flanks while marching.
When the ancient army was marching, it would send sentinels to the front and the left and right flanks respectively, and the minimum requirement was to release twenty or thirty miles, and if the terrain was open, then the sentinels would have to go forward fifty or sixty miles, or even hundreds of miles.
Originally, a team would be released every three or five miles, so that the enemy situation in front could be transmitted back as quickly as possible, so that our troops would have time to put on armor and prepare for battle.
The armor weighs dozens of catties, so the soldiers of the ancient army in order to preserve their physical strength, do not wear armor when marching during wartime, and only after the sentry cavalry reports the enemy's situation, only after the sentry reports the enemy's situation, the general ordered: wear armor to carry out the army, change from the marching army to the battle formation, and prepare for battle.
However, there is a problem here, in "The Actual Record of Military Training", Qi Jiguang asked the Ming army to march in armor, what is the explanation for this?
In fact, it is also very simple, Qi Jiguang is a soldier, and he usually trains the army in armor to exercise his endurance. In wartime, physical strength is conserved, and armor is worn only when there is an enemy situation.
If the two armies of the enemy and ours camp and confront each other.
Then the activity area of the sentry cavalry mission is between our army and the enemy, and it is active in the front line of the enemy's position to carry out reconnaissance and grasp the movements of the enemy troops in front of them. Once the enemy has a abnormal movement, it will immediately pass through the relay and quickly feedback the detected enemy movement to its own commander in real time.
The range of activity of the sentry cavalry is generally limited to the battlefield, and there is no need to cross the enemy's defense line and go deep behind the enemy to conduct reconnaissance.
At the same time, the sentinels were also responsible for hunting down or driving out the enemy's sentinels in front of our camp's defensive lines. Strive to do it: I can detect you, but you can't see me. As for who can hold whom in the end? Then it depends on the overall combat effectiveness level of the sentry cavalry on both sides, who is higher and who is lower.
If the two sides line up in the field for a decisive battle.
Then the sentinels have to take on the task of blocking the battlefield. It is also necessary to observe the deployment of the opponent's formation as much as possible, and to prevent the enemy's sentry cavalry from galloping close to our military formation for reconnaissance mission.
Therefore, before the large-scale field battle, the first thing that broke out must be the forward sentinel battle between the two sides.
How were ancient wars fought?
First of all, there will never be a heads-up between the two generals in **!
When the armies of the two warring sides are about to meet, both sides will dig trenches, cut wood, and build camps to establish a strong defensive line, depending on the favorable terrain. This is called: hardening the village and fighting to the death.
It's like two fighters fighting, first of all, you have to hold the fight to defend, if the fight is not tight, then you will definitely be beaten! Fighting a war is the same as fighting, and the principle in this regard is the same.
After the formation of the defensive line, the two sides began to confront each other, each sending a large number of sentinels to spy on each other; Or send small forces for a tentative attack. This is called skirmishment and contact warfare, the purpose of which is to find out the weak points of the opponent's defenses.
Large-scale battles generally do not break out until the weaknesses of both defenses are exposed. Only when one side first exposes a vulnerability in the defense will the other side deliver the fatal blow. And this blow is really fatal!
Examples of war:
For example, in the Battle of Guandu of the Three Kingdoms, since Cao Cao relieved the siege of Baima, beheaded Yuan Shao's two generals, and severely defeated the edge of the Hebei cavalry, Yuan and Cao held each other on the battle line.
The two sides built their own camps, and small units crossed the battle line, spying on each other, attacking each other's grain routes, and so on, but they never dispatched more than 5,000 troops to fight a major battle. It wasn't until Cao Cao finally got Yuan Shao's military rations that he was mainly stationed in Wuchao, that a large-scale battle broke out. As a result, Cao Cao fired the black nest and gave Yuan Shao the most fatal blow.
During this period, the two sides confronted each other according to their camps for a year and a half!
Another example is the battle of Wu Shu Yiling. Lu Xun led the elite soldiers of Eastern Wu and 50,000 troops to stick to Yiling, and also confronted Liu Hai for a year.
In this year, Lu Xun endured the ridicule of the generals of Eastern Wu under his command who were "afraid of the enemy and avoiding war", and the deep ditches and high bases and strong walls did not come out, and he did not move.
But behind the scenes, he sent a large number of sentinels to reconnoiter the movements of the Shu army, in order to wait for Liu Bei to relax and then there were loopholes in the defense deployment.
After waiting for more than half a year, I finally waited for the opportunity. Lu Xun's tight wall without fighting finally made Liu Bei misjudge that Eastern Wu did not dare to take the initiative to attack, and the defense of the Shu army began to relax. Then, Lu Xun seized the opportunity to launch a fire attack, playing a classic example of "burning the company camp".
And Lu Xun was able to accurately predict the movements of the Shu army and learn the loopholes in the defense line of the Shu army, all thanks to the merits of the Eastern Wu sentinels.
Sentinels are regular combat units that are dispatched with their subordinate units. That is, when the war broke out and the army was dispatched, the sentinels were dispatched.
However, the rebuke was dispatched in advance before the two countries were at war and the war was about to break out. They will disguise themselves as peddlers and pawns and go deep into the enemy's defense area or into the enemy's territory to spy on the enemy's military deployment, troop movements, and even political trends.
Rebuke is like a conspiracy, but it's not a spy. Because the scouts were military personnel, they were only sent in advance when they were preparing for battle. And when the spies are friendly with the two countries, they are also pervasive.
The army of the Ming Dynasty has a type of troops called "not collecting at night", which should be the rebuke, and they are different from the "Tangma Sentinel Cavalry" described in the "Actual Record of Military Training", which should be like modern special forces, which are to go deep behind enemy lines for reconnaissance.
A special forces member must first be a qualified scout. However, qualified scouts are not necessarily selected for special forces, because the tasks to be performed by special forces are much more complex and extensive than those of scouts.
It can be inferred from this that the relationship between the ancient army sentry and the rebuke should also be this relationship.
In ancient times, there were no professional sentinel cavalry troops, and they were all temporarily selected from elite light cavalry to form sentinel cavalry during war. However, if we want to go deep behind enemy lines, we must also have a special organization and special personnel.
It's just that most of the ancient Chinese military books "emphasize the way and ignore the arts", focusing on the theory and principle of using soldiers, but there are very few descriptions of the specific application of techniques.
Therefore, there is no clear record of how the ancient scouts and sentinels were trained and selected, how much an army was equipped, and so on, and it is all speculation.
For example, the Liao Army's "Far Stopper" sentry cavalry, the Iron Harrier in the Western Xia Army, and the "White Army" under the command of ** Mu in the Song Dynasty are all legendary elite sentry cavalry reprimanding troops, but what kind of these troops are, the details are already known.