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The attack was entirely unexpected but the Kazaks were ready for the charging horsemen before they arrived. The men and boys turned their horses towards the enemy, waving their own swords and nailed billets of wood while the women and children, unbidden, turned the beasts away from entering the defile and shepherded them past it along the main valley. Thus in a matter of moments there was a screen of mounted men between the Kazak column and the charging Tibetans. Long before Ali Beg had ridden back down the hill, his men had counter-charged and were among the Tibetans.
The battle which followed was a real old-time cavalry melee such as Genghis Khan and the Golden Horde loved: a wild charge into and through the enemy's ranks, a hasty reforming on the far side and then back once more—slash, parry, slash again, aiming always at the man and not at his horse. Clothes were thick on both sides and it took a shrewd blow to cut through them—indeed, the nails were often more effective than the swords. Unhorsings were many and casualties, comparatively speaking, few. The Kazaks admit to only three killed, though many more were wounded, in the course of a three-hour battle in which they were heavily outnumbered. They claim to have killed at least a score, disabled twice or thrice that number and captured many horses and weapons. In a sense, the horses captured themselves because when one lost its rider it generally followed the horse of his vanquisher. The picture of the unwounded, riderless horses galloping up and down the battlefield, neighing, snorting and bewildered, in the wake of still-embattled warriors adds not only a touch of fantasy to the grim savagery of the scene, but perhaps throws fresh light on the campaigns of the Kazak and Mongol horsemen who rode victoriously to Peking, Delhi, and, indeed, across most of Asia and Europe in the Middle and Dark Ages. It also provides a glass through which to view the mass destruction methods of the twentieth century which wipe out man and beast and change the very face of the earth.
Описывается сражение казахов с тибетцами, отмечено, что плотная одежда задерживала сабельные удары и дубинки с забитыми туда гвоздями(шокпары) были эффективнее клинков.