When the Bandit infantry battalion rushed in, they advanced in the traditional formation, and then the arquebusiers in the middle fired and the spearmen took cover.

However, when the two sides were firing at a distance of about 80 meters, the infantry battalion of the Broken Thieves Army, which was more numerous, was actually suppressed by the Guards infantry team of only more than 140 people.

And this phenomenon almost made several middle-level officers of the Broken Thief Army on the opposite side unbelievable.

The Broken Thief Army and the Tang Army have been fighting for many years, and they are already quite familiar with the Tang Army's combat methods, so even if they have several times the strength, they do not dare to take it lightly, but list the most standard and dense formations to fight.

According to the past practice, even if the pseudo-Tang thief army is stronger, it is not so easy to defeat them several times the number of troops, even if the opposite side is the pseudo-Tang Guards wearing black military uniforms.

The Puppet Tang Guards, they also knew that it was rumored to be the Guards of the Puppet Tang Emperor Li Xuan, and their combat effectiveness surpassed that of the ordinary Puppet Tang Thieves, but even so, they were confident to fight.

Especially when they got closer and found that there were not a large number of heavily armored spearmen in these pseudo-Tang guards, they just thought that the opportunity had come!

There are many troops on their side, there are more than 200 musketeers on both sides, and the two sides use muskets to shoot, their own side will not fall behind, and they have the opportunity to kill and injure more pseudo-Tang thieves, and they have no spearmen, but they are the core spearmen of hand-to-hand combat.

Otherwise, they would not have rushed out of the village to take the initiative to attack.

But they didn't expect that these pseudo-Tang Guards wearing black uniforms were different from ordinary Tang troops, they were not equipped with spears, but their musketeers didn't know why, they were arranged very closely, and this kind of closeness was absolutely impossible in the arquebus era.

Moreover, after the pseudo-Tang thief army on the opposite side lined up in an extremely tight formation, it only discharged three rows of horizontal formations.

In each round of fire, nearly fifty flintlock muskets were fired!

On the other hand, on the side of the Broken Thieves, although they have more musketeers, reaching nearly 200 people, because they list the traditional six-row horizontal formation, there are only about 30 musketeers in each round.

And more importantly, the opponent's reloading speed is faster, but it is only three rounds of shooting, even because the distance between the two sides is still relatively far away and the hit rate is too poor, but the musketeers on the side of the thief army have already fallen more than 20 people, but the pseudo-Tang Guards on the opposite side have only fallen seven or eight people.

If you shoot like this, it will be finished sooner or later, so the general of the Ming army on the opposite side ordered the troops to continue to advance and prepare for hand-to-hand combat!

However, as the distance narrowed, the casualties of the Ming army were also increasing, especially the last round of medium-distance shooting, which killed and injured forty or fifty Ming soldiers on the opposite side almost on the spot!

At this time, these thief armies did not have the courage to continue fighting, so they turned around and ran away.

Seeing that the Broken Thieves Army took the initiative to retreat, the captain of the Guards who led the team was also relieved!

Although their own side is equipped with flintlock pistols, the loading speed is faster, and the firepower is more intensive, but after all, the difference in strength is too great, if the opposite Ming army regardless of casualties, continue to rush forward, then their own side can only play another round of salvo at most, although the last round of salvo can kill and injure a large number of Ming troops, but the remaining Ming army will at least exceed three hundred people.

At that time, the two sides will enter hand-to-hand combat, and in the case of a large number of spearmen on the other side, although the other side is equipped with cuirasses, it will still suffer some losses in the fight, and if one is not done well, there will be a large number of casualties.

Now that the enemy has taken the initiative to retreat, he is also relieved!

At this time, he couldn't help it, why did the people above still want to reduce the length of the flintlock pistol, using muskets and bayonets to fight the enemy's spearmen hand-to-hand, it was already a loss, if the length of the barrel was also shortened, this would be even more of a loss.

However, this was just his own idea, and it was completely different from the thinking of the upper echelons of the Guard, because the top generals of the Guard, after analyzing the early tests and statistics, were already inclined to continuously increase the density of firepower.

Imagine that two armies armed with flintlock pistols and arquebuses, if the two armies are equal in strength, and one army is equipped with flintlock pistols, then all the infantry with soldier muskets can concentrate several times the width of the fixed battlefield with arquebuses.

Just by shooting with a musket, you can inflict heavy damage on your opponent!

As for hand-to-hand combat, although the chances of occurrence are still very large and very important, if you can kill and injure a large number of enemy troops before hand-to-hand combat, then it can also create a favorable opportunity for subsequent hand-to-hand combat.

Shortening the barrel helps to increase the reload speed, and increasing the reload speed will increase the rate of fire, which is also acceptable to sacrifice a certain amount of hand-to-hand combat ability for rapid-fire.

Besides, even if it is shortened, it is actually only ten centimeters shorter, and it will not affect the bayonet combat ability of the musket too much.

After all, the length of the musket was already far inferior to that of the spearman, ten centimeters longer and ten centimeters shorter, and there would be no fundamental changes.

In this small-scale contact battle, the Ming army left nearly 100 corpses and wounded, which must have been a major loss for the Ming army participating in the battle, but for the entire central battlefield, it was only an insignificant small battle.

The next day, the temporary brigade of the Guards arrived in Lujiang City, and began the siege on the spot, and the new army of more than 3,000 Ming troops defending the city was defeated, and more than half of the casualties fled.

As for the other thousands of old-style Ming troops in the city, that is, the guards and the like, the warring sides directly ignored them.

There is no way, now in the war between the Ming army and the Tang army, the old army is almost useless except for cavalry, and it is not good to fight in the field, and it is also not good to defend the city.

But the cavalry of the Ming army is still very important!

In the previous battles of Yangzhou, Huai'an, Xuzhou, Fengyang and other battles, because the operations were fixed along the canal, Huai River, and the Yellow River, the Tang Army's march was along the river, and the logistics supply was also the same.

This made it difficult for the cavalry of the Ming army to find good opportunities.

At that time, in the Battle of Yangzhou, the Ming army was in the north of Yangzhou City, but nearly 5,000 cavalry were deployed!

However, these 5,000 cavalry did not dare to launch any attack until Yangzhou City was broken, and could only watch Yangzhou City fall, and later successfully covered the retreat of more than 20,000 routed troops.

Because in a fixed positional battle, these 5,000 cavalry could not pose any limited threat to the huge Third Army.

However, in the battle of Luzhou Mansion and Anqing Mansion, the cavalry of the Ming army quickly played a huge role, and the number of Ming cavalry here is quite a lot, and there are all kinds of horses, I am afraid that there are three or four thousand cavalry, well, all the professional cavalry, are the original border cavalry.

Emperor Zhengde successively transferred more than 80,000 border troops to the south, most of the infantry of these border armies were finished, but the cavalry was basically not lost, and later some of these cavalry withdrew to Shandong, and some were absorbed by Yu Dayou.

At present, these three or four thousand cavalry of the Ming army are active in the fields of Anqing Mansion and Luzhou Mansion north of the Yangtze River, and they do not participate in the defense of the city, let alone fight any field decisive battle with the pseudo-Tang thief army, but are divided into several teams of 1,000 cavalry to attack the small-scale Tang army and logistics and transportation troops.

For this reason, the Seventh Infantry Division and the Guards Provisional Brigade were in a headache, and asked Wang Chaohong, the commander of the Second Army, to send cavalry to support.

However, the new commander of the Second Army, Lieutenant General Wang Chaohong, was also very helpless!

His second army didn't have many cavalry, and it was only a thousand people when it was full, and because it was a two-way battle, he didn't concentrate the cavalry of each unit, but also divided it into two roads.

And even if you want to rely on cavalry to expel and annihilate the cavalry of the Ming army, it is difficult to do it, because people don't fight your cavalry at all, and they run away when they meet it.

There was no cavalry, and Wang Chaohong just let the Seventh Infantry Division and the Guards Temporary Brigade take care of it themselves, and asked them not to rush in, and they didn't have to rush to take down Hefei and other areas, as long as they dragged the Ming army, and then made plans after he took Anqing City.

Wang Chaohong doesn't care about them, the Seventh Infantry Division and the Guards Temporary Brigade can only figure out their own way!

What's the solution?

In fact, there is no way, first of all, it is to act in a group, try not to disperse, when the troops perform the task, it is best not to be less than one battalion, because if the standard infantry battalion of an army is about 500 people, the formation of a quadrangular phalanx is enough to fight against the cavalry, even if the cavalry of the Ming army wants to bite hard, they have to pay a certain number of casualties.

And to exchange infantry for cavalry, that's a lot of money!

It is not only a group action of troops, but also a concentrated action of logistics and transportation troops, and for each transportation, the logistics department will mobilize at least 1,000 or more people, or even more than 2,000 people, to form a temporary transportation group.

There will also be at least one standard infantry battalion to escort you!

However, even so, it was ambushed by the Ming cavalry several times, because the terrain was too flat, and the speed of the cavalry rushing over was too fast, and it was naturally impossible for the people in the transportation process to line up, so they were often scattered as soon as they rushed.

In the end, they had no choice but to requisition carriages on the spot for transportation, and after encountering the attack of the cavalry, they directly lined up with vehicles to block the attack of the cavalry!

Although this method is said to be effective in defending against cavalry attacks, these carriages are all temporary requisition, not to mention messy, and they are all two-wheeled carriages, with small transportation volumes, and they are not very suitable for defensive operations.

Upon hearing the news, the Privy Council urgently sought help from the Royal Institute of Technology, wanting a standard carriage that could transport goods and at the same time effectively form formations and block enemy cavalry attacks, and it had to be cost-effective, which did not mean that the carriage should be cheap to manufacture, but that it should carry as much cargo as possible with the least number of horses.

If the cost performance is not high enough, the army does not have so many horses to tow horse-drawn carriages to transport goods, so the designed carriages cannot rely too much on horses.