As August drew to a close, the nomadic army turned south, and the Adrianople's supreme commander, John Ducasse, remained motionless until the twenty carts of the Tyrgu Khan and the horses covering the mountains and valleys disappeared on the southern horizon, and the troops of the Dirakim Military District and the Latin mercenaries did not leave the city.

Returning to the fortress, Angus described to the chief nobleman in detail the performance of the nobles in the Tyrgu tent when they saw a chest full of gold and silver silks, and then whispered a private reply from Solomon and Kutaisk.

Talma was still in Adrianople, and John didn't care about a slave girl, but since Kutaisk was not in a hurry to get his daughter back, he didn't have to give it up. As for Solomon's demands, not only did they not threaten the chief nobleman himself, but revealed the true position of the former Hungarian king in the Pecheneg camp.

"From now on, you must restrain your subordinates from going to the city, continue to hide our strength, Peter will inform you of the time to send troops, how effective our arrangement will be, it will depend on the next few days."

The scorching sun baked, the fish-scale iron armor of the steppe chieftain reflected a dazzling light, and from the military road to the Egnatia road, the long tribal horse team followed the Roman mark all the way south, as easily as tracking the sound of the brass bell on the horse's neck.

For the wildfires that spread southward like wildfires on the stalks of the Roman roads, behind the heavy ruts, Roman slaves in chains, women struggling with babies in their arms, a barb at the end of a stalk of grass could mean a journey of death.

The army was followed by 3,000 artisans and nearly 100 Roman bureaucrats in the service of the khan, and for the settlers it was a nomadic army, in fact, a moving city.

Influenced by their counterparts on the south bank of the Easter River, the army was even equipped with the Symmachoi, a four-stirrup pack horse typical of the Imperial League, to transport the wounded on the battlefield.

Solomon gazed in awe at the magnificent dust raised by this vast cluster of cavalry, and trembled uncontrollably in the depths of his soul, it would take superhuman courage to try to defy such a force, and could the Romans, who had long since lost their dominance over land and sea, really conquer such an army?

Unbeknownst to the Pechenegs and the deposed Hungarian kings, a Roman army was approaching their main force of 30,000.

The commander of this army was the emperor's brother-in-law Nikephoros Melisenos, as the imperial Caesar, the third person below the emperor, Nikephoros at this time mastered one-third of the troops of the Western Front, and there was also a Seljuk reinforcement from Malikshah, with a total strength of nearly 4,000 men.

In Constantinople, when it comes to the imperial Caesar, the first thing that comes to mind is always the empress's grandfather, Nikephoros, as a contender for the throne who once wore a purple robe, was of course very dissatisfied with this - when he accepted Alexios's persuasion to surrender, he did not expect that the other party would create a title of supreme nobility above the imperial Caesar after promising himself the title of Caesar, so that he would eventually be subordinated to Isaac Komneen.

If he wants to change this status quo and become the second man in the empire, he must obtain indisputable military merit. On his departure from the capital, Nikephoros Melisenos even deigned to consult Nikephoros Brenus the Elder, an imperial recognized tactician, in the hope of gaining some know-how in dealing with the Turks.

What is hateful is that the old blind man kept trying to instruct him on the key points of equestrianism, and finally asked him to pick a fast horse, and almost told him directly that when he met the Turks, he must not hesitate to flee for his life early.

Nikephoros Caesar felt his palms holding the reins drenched in sweat, it was nothing, he kept telling himself.

There is nothing to be afraid of, as in Larissa, nor can the sword of Bohemond hurt me, my stars are not dimmed, and Christ will never forsake me.

Under the watchful eye of the imperial Caesar, the Roman cavalry showed a high degree of discipline and rumbled forward, these were veterans who had followed Caesar himself for many years to fight the Normans, well-armed and well-arranged, far from being comparable to the flashy group of Aguntopplei at the emperor's side.

Caesar was a little uncomfortable with the messy Seljuk mercenaries from Baghdad, who had been captured in Asia Minor by a Seljuk warlord who had been bribed to serve him, but as a Roman, he would not have had a good impression of the entire Turkic people, let alone that the emperor, who had worked happily with Suleiman and Malikshah for a long time, would one day dump all the blame for betraying Nicaea on himself, and then be recorded by the emperor's daughter.

"Speed up!" Caesar commanded, the sound of brass trumpets pierced the silence of the plain, and the ground seemed to shake as horsemen galloped and infantry marched at full speed as they passed the Imperial insignia with the portrait of St. Basil.

Glory doesn't wait for latecomers.

In this way, the two armies simultaneously converged at high speed on the southern front of Adrianople, and at the end of their marching arrows, Generals George and Nikolai had already built a large fortress with deep ditches and high fortifications at Kuller on the Military Boulevard.

After twenty years of treachery, rebellion, and civil war, the moribund Roman Empire seemed to be at the end of the road at the feet of the nomadic army, quietly waiting for judgment to come.

As night fell, Angus read a thick parchment book in the barracks of Adrianople, which he did not know who had written it, and who Robert Mallett had never mentioned when he handed it to him at the Bologna barracks, but Angus judged that the author was clearly a scribe familiar with the war, and that the slick and concise style of writing and the informative and powerful exposition were by no means comparable to that of a crude knight or a wandering bard.

The title of the manual is cavalry swordsmanship, but the notes take up most of the space, and the chapters on how to use and fight the carbine are more than forty pages. After the fall of the Roman Empire, scattered military training knowledge still existed, simulated confrontation, live target shooting, physical training and wooden sword practice were still circulating in different parts of Europe, and the training base in Constantinople was extremely complete, but Angus had never seen the training model described in the manual broken down into hundreds of subject regulations.

Some of the actual descriptions of the battlefield are invaluable to military scientists and commanders, and the author, after describing the various situations of cavalry charges, concludes that when cavalry charges, psychological factors determine the whole effect, a horse can be stimulated to rush into a large crowd of people, hundreds of horses are not, if the target is a dense iron wall, then the charge of hundreds or thousands of cavalry is just a posturing show, which will eventually end in a chaotic stillness and countless horses in front of the enemy. Therefore, in actual combat, it is more important to maintain a tight formation by rapid jogging, and to force the enemy's infantry or cavalry to flee or expose gaps with neatly drawn swords and bright spear tips, rather than relying on the knight's individual martial arts to exert the maximum attack effect in engaging the enemy or fighting. In practice, it is relatively rare for the enemy and the enemy to open a gap in the formation, fight each other in a staggered manner, or stop together after a large-scale melee, and once it appears, it is often accompanied by a large number of casualties on both sides of the war.

Reading this, Angus could not help but recall his own encounter with the Pechenegs, and with each other's corroboration, he was even more convinced that the most effective cavalry offensive was the most deterrent cluster attack.

The author also mentions that the nomadic tactics of scattering and surrounding (Rava tactics) and archery harassment tactics were also aimed at disrupting the formation and demoralizing, and that Parthian horseback archery was an effective means of luring the enemy in pursuit and exposing the chaotic enemy to the nomadic front. In addition, no matter what form of breakthrough is achieved, the most difficult thing is often the ability to control the breakthrough, and Alexander's greatest advantage is that he always personally commands and controls the cavalry to restore order from the chaos after the breakthrough, and then launch attacks on the enemy's flank and rear.

Angus, who had trained his subordinates to use horizontal echelons to attack in turn according to the first half of the manual, and through continuous victories with less, crushed the Magyars' cavalry on the battlefield, now reading this discussion, has some new insights: the advantages of echelons actually include organizational problems, because of the constant addition of some more orderly reserve forces, this tactic gains an organizational advantage in the battle by sacrificing the first wave of impact. And if it is repulsed, there are still reserve echelons that have not yet fallen into chaos to cover the retreat, and the exposed flanks of each echelon are also covered by the rear team.

The regulations also discussed the use of echelons in cavalry attacks, mainly emphasizing the use of flank fighters when they appeared, using the advantage of diagonal marching to outflank, or in the face of superior firepower, using echelons to ensure that the rear troops can withstand less firepower and maintain the new momentum before engaging the enemy.

This work is the current instruction manual for the English Guards, but except for a few generals such as Count Rodrigo, few war lords are interested in reading these principles in detail.

Until the East turned white and the chief nobleman was summoned, the highland mercenary was still in his hands, and the candle on the table had burned out.