"Marshal, the Wei army has put horse armor on all the horses of the cavalry in the front row, and the cavalry is even more armored, whether it is a person or a horse, it is difficult to hurt with swords and arrows, this round of charging is not good for our side. Do we need to strengthen the guard in the middle? ”

After seeing the formation of the Wei army clearly, a general spoke with some concern.

The other generals were also worried about the same thing, and they all looked over.

Ning Zhiyuan smiled lightly: "It's best if they dare to come, I was originally worried that Old Thief Xie would retire because Yinglin was captured."

Rest assured, I have my own opinions. ”

Since the big marshal has already said this, it is naturally difficult for others to say anything.

At this time, Ning Zhiyuan ordered loudly: "The Shenji Battalion listens to the order and changes into a gun array." ”

"Yes, sir.

The commander has an order, and the Shenji battalion quickly changes into a gun array. ”

With the command of Meng Ping, the commander of the Shenji Battalion, the soldiers of the Shenji Battalion, who were lined up in a column of five people and a thousand columns, quickly expanded and moved to both sides.

After the expansion, although the formation was still a column of five people, there was a space of about two meters on the left and right sides of each column.

In other words, the formation spread more than twice as much to both sides.

When the 5,000 soldiers of the Shenji Battalion holding muskets had dispersed, the tens of thousands of spearmen who had been waiting in the back immediately filled these vacant positions in a formation of ten people.

These spearmen were elite veterans selected from various armies, and not only wore helmets and armor, but even the spears in their hands were specially made.

The large spears used on the battlefield were one zhang and eight inches long, but the spears used by these veterans were one zhang and six feet long, more than five feet longer than ordinary spears, and the barrels of the guns were much thicker than ordinary spears.

This is a special spear used against cavalry, which can directly stab the opponent from his horse when the cavalry rushes over.

The main responsibility of these gunmen was to keep the musketeers on both sides safe.

As soon as the enemy cavalry really rushed in front of the musketeers, these spearmen had to rush out immediately to resist them, and they must not allow the enemy cavalry to disrupt their formation.

This spear forest formation was discussed by Chi Fei and his father-in-law Ning Zhiyuan, Ning Yabai, and Ning Yafeng, father and son, to deal with the formation of cavalry charges.

While flintlock pistols are nearly invincible to enemies who can only use cold weapons, there is one class that can pose a threat to them: cavalry that can charge quickly.

Once the musketeers are rushed in front of the enemy cavalry, it is very likely that the entire formation will be scattered, and the role of the musketeers will be completely lost.

Therefore, Chi Feicai proposed to add pikemen to the musketeers as the last line of defense.

These spearmen do not need to be specially kept in the Shenji Battalion, they only need to participate in the training of the Shenji Battalion on a regular basis.

Once the time came to actually go into battle and there was a lot of cavalry to deal with, the spearmen were improvised into musket formations.

Now it's their turn.

……………………

Seeing that the Northwest Army had transferred a large number of pikemen to the front, including An Guogong and Xie Changfeng, the generals of the Wei Army were not surprised.

This shows that the Northwest Army's muskets really don't have a long range, so they need pikemen to defend the formation.

As long as the cavalry can successfully rush into the formation, the enemy will be in chaos, and this victory is already present. The generals were excited.

An Guogong, who was wearing a mighty battle armor, ordered the heralds: "Inform the whole army, capture the enemy's general Ning Zhiyuan alive, seal the marquis of ten thousand households, and promote the official to three levels." ”

The heralds immediately informed the whole army of this order.

As soon as this order was issued, it immediately caused a commotion in the whole army.

From the military generals to the soldiers and soldiers, they all instantly became excited as if they had been beaten with chicken blood.

Taking advantage of the surge in the number of soldiers in the whole army, An Guogong said coldly: "Pass my order, and the whole army will go to war." ”

At this time, both sides have reached the critical moment of a decisive victory, and operations such as persuasion and resignation are completely redundant, just start fighting directly, and everything will be true on the battlefield.

The order was quickly issued to the whole army, and then the flag was waved and the horn sounded, and the rest of the hundreds of thousands of troops pressed forward like a flood except for the ordinary people.

The momentum is amazing and murderous.

For the Wei army, the key to this battle was whether it could successfully break through the Northwest Army's firecrackers.

In order to achieve this goal, the cavalry is the real protagonist of this battle.

Under the sound of a loud horn, I saw that more than 6,000 elite cavalrymen wearing armor and all equipped with horse armor set off first.

They were followed by another 15,000 ordinary cavalrymen unarmed with horse armor.

More than 20,000 cavalry divided into two groups at the same time, and roared in unison towards the Northwest Army in front.

In the face of the menacing more than 20,000 cavalry, the Northwest Army was silent, but all the veterans clenched their weapons with strained faces, ready to fight with the enemy who rushed over.

"The Shenji battalion obeys the order, try to aim at the mounts of the enemy cavalry, and prepare in the first row."

With the command of Meng Ping, the commander of the Shenji Battalion, thousands of musketeers in the first row immediately raised their guns and took aim.

Meng Ping looked at the large number of cavalry that were constantly rushing straight towards the enemy with a serious expression, and was silently counting the distance of the enemy in his heart.

One hundred and eighty steps...... One hundred and sixty ...... One hundred and forty ...... One hundred and twenty ...... One hundred and ten......

"Fire!" When the cavalry had just stepped into a distance of about a hundred paces, Meng Ping decisively ordered to open fire.

Although the musket is the best in terms of hit rate and lethality within 60 paces, when facing a cavalry that can move quickly, it must not be too stubborn and old-fashioned, and must know how to adapt to improvisation.

No matter how low the hit rate is, as long as you shoot one step earlier, you can strike at the enemy one step earlier. Therefore, Meng Ping gave the order to open fire in advance.

At his command, a thousand musketeers in the first row pulled the trigger almost simultaneously. Suddenly the flames rose to the sky and thick smoke rose everywhere.

"Hiss......" Under this first round of firing, hundreds of war horses of the Wei army suddenly fell to the ground and could not get up again while making a wail, and the cavalry on the horses naturally fell down with them.

Some of them were not shot on their horses, but the cavalry on their horses were hit, and the whole person fell off his horse screaming.

Once these cavalrymen fell to the ground, they were greeted with an even more tragic fate.

Countless war horses behind them stepped directly on them, trampling them into pulp almost instantly.

Seeing that the musketeers of the Northwest Army opened fire at such a distance, and also let so many horses wearing horse armor fall to the ground with guns, An Guogong, who had always been very deep in the city, couldn't help but change his face greatly.

Xie Changfeng, the eldest son of the second room standing next to him, turned his whole face even pale.

He never expected that the fire gun could hit so far.

It wasn't at all what he expected, only fifty or sixty paces away, which was already a hundred paces.

This is still the second, what really gave him a basin of cold water was that the fire gun was able to penetrate the armor of the cavalry and the horse armor on the war horse, which was what made him feel the most terrifying.

Obviously, these armors and horse armor were difficult to penetrate even strong bows, but it was unheard of to be pierced by those firearms from such a distance.

At this moment, Xie Changfeng felt a chill all over his body.

This proposal to let the cavalry lead the charge was made by him himself in front of everyone, and if the battle was really defeated because of his proposal, then he ......

He didn't dare to think about it any longer, only hoping that the cavalry brigade would succeed in rushing into the enemy's ranks.

In fact, at this time, the order to charge had been given, and even if he wanted to stop, it was impossible for the cavalry brigade to really stop.

At this time, whoever dares to stop will immediately be directly knocked down and trampled by the colleagues in the rear, so even if the cavalry witnesses the tragic situation of their colleagues, they can only continue to rush forward, hoping to rush to the front of the formation as soon as possible.

"Don't stop, keep rushing forward, kill!" The leading general shouted loudly.

"Kill!"

"Kill all these Northwest barbarians!" Several other thousand households also shouted loudly.

"Canopy, canopy, canopy......" responded to them with a muffled sound of lead bullets.

Almost every round of shooting can knock down about three or four hundred people in an instant. And the closer the cavalry is, the higher the hit rate.

By the time the cavalry had reached a distance of sixty or seventy paces, the rate of success of the musketeers had reached almost sixty percent or more, and almost every round of fire could take away five or six hundred men.

The armor on the body of these cavalrymen and the horse armor of the war horse were penetrated almost instantly, and the lead bullet directly entered the human body or the body of the war horse, causing fatal wounds.

The reason for this is the problem of the armor itself.

The armor of this era was mainly based on armor.

The so-called armor refers to the armor composed of thousands of pieces of armor connected to each other, and the advantage is that it is easy to maintain, and where there is damage, only the damaged armor can be replaced.

Such armor can withstand most bows and swords, but it is as thin as a piece of paper in the face of the epochal thermal weapon of the musket.

Not to mention the armor, even the plate armor with the best protection in the European Middle Ages was only abused in front of the musket.

Unless there is a special plate armor, the plate armor is only two to three millimeters thick, which can block most arrows, but it is useless in the face of powerful muskets, because the lead bullets fired by the muskets can easily tear through the armor of this thickness.

Only plate armor with a thickness of more than five millimeters could really withstand the fire of the musket.

But the problem is that once the plate armor reaches this thickness, it will be unacceptably heavy.

It is a big question whether people can stand for a long time when they put it on, let alone run.

Therefore, in the era of muskets, three-quarters of the top three would prevail.

It's not that the soldiers don't want to wear full-body plate armor with more protection, it's that they can't wear it at all.

The cavalry also had horses to share the weight, while the infantry had to wear castrated and strengthened armor, and later even the cavalry wore only cuirass and helmets.

An Guogong and the others naturally did not know these histories from another world, so they would wishfully think that ordinary armor and horse armor alone could resist the fire of muskets.

By this time they knew that it was too late, and as round after round of muskets rang out, row after row of cavalry fell to the ground.

If this man falls, not only will they be trampled to death by their colleagues in the rear, but it will also seriously hinder the progress of the team.

In particular, the war horse itself has a huge body, and once it falls to the ground, it is often easy to trip over the cavalry in the rear.

In order to avoid the fallen horses, the cavalry in the rear could only force their way around.

As a result, the charge of the entire cavalry brigade was forced to slow down.

But this slowness, they were greeted by more continuous lethal lead bullets.

The massacre of cavalry by musketeers finally appeared in this era.