Chapter 457: The Decisive Battle in the Hinterland (2)
In the general laws of warfare in ancient times, in order to save horsepower to the greatest extent, even if the impact is launched from a long distance of about one and a half miles, the entire horse team will not carry out the impact battle at the fastest speed at the beginning. After all, when the horses are approaching in front of the opponent's formation, they often have to perform other maneuvers and even fight. However, seeing the opponent on the other side is fundamentally different from the opponent in the traditional sense. The long-range shot is very powerful, but if you rush into the close range of those people, you should not encounter any phalanx of spears or even a resistance line that seems to be at least some threat. At the same time, when the opponent's formation to cope with melee attacks is extremely weak, the entire army does not need to maintain as close a combat formation as possible in actual combat. This made it possible for the large cavalry to attack without worrying about whether the previously important forward line was roughly in order, so that from the very beginning, the Ottoman and Safavid armies attacking the flanks were almost at the speed of a collective horse race.
Although the torrent of cavalry stayed for a moment in the attack due to the continuous casualties and losses, this only made the density of the cavalry in the front dozen platoons greater to a certain extent. Within a minute or so, the two massive torrents still crossed a distance of about a mile, approaching a distance of only one hundred and fifty steps from the front and rear of the two wings of the team led by Xiao Xuan.
At this distance, it is already a distance at which muskets and even bows and arrows can theoretically pose a certain threat. At this time, countless arrows flew into the sky like flying locusts, as if they would fall first before the enemy's cavalry rushed closer, forming a terrifying kill, completely clearing the way for the attack.
The efficiency of this kind of projectile attack or even a cavalry attack at a distance of about 150 paces is relatively low in regular combat. However, when you have an absolute superiority in strength, you can at least let the thousands of people in front of you attack hundreds of people, it seems to be completely different.
However, at this very time, when the advance of the cavalry torrent approached a distance of about one hundred and twenty or thirty paces, the officers and men on both flanks once again opened fierce fire with a total of 1,500 recoilless guns that had long been reloaded or had just been reloaded in the round fire.
In the first round of fierce fire, more than 700 black powder shelling and armor-piercing shells flew towards the enemy army column like a wall almost without missing a bullet at such a distance, causing six or seven thousand casualties and even tens of thousands of horses in a very short period of time.
When the enemy's cavalry approached a distance of about sixty or seventy paces in the denser confusion, more than 800 arrows and shotguns and even 80,000 small steel arrows flew towards the opponent, once again inflicting casualties on seven or eight thousand enemy troops.
After suffering a series of casualties of about 20,000 people, although the attack launched by the huge enemy cavalry group did not seem to be completely contained, the fierce resistance encountered by the front row seemed to be like a spring in a short period of time, and the entire large enemy cavalry group began to become more and more dense.
However, even so, the enemy cavalry that was approaching within sixty or seventy paces of Austria and constantly deploying guns and arrows still brought great pressure in an instant, and despite the perfect armor protection, it seemed to be extremely difficult to reload the fire, and the officers and men of the new guard battalion could only be prepared for close combat under the suppression.
In fact, at this time, some enemy horsemen who were scattered as strikers had already rushed into the formation. However, under the onslaught of an unknown gunpowder needle crossbow, the few enemy soldiers who broke into the stragglers were often quickly defeated by the onslaught. But at this time, the situation still seems to have become a phenomenon for a while.
At this time, a series of explosions that had made many people feel frightened once again sounded one after another. In the short time of the encounter, the baggage troops that followed the team used some special triangular barrels and even pit opening devices to launch a blasting attack at the fastest speed.
Under the fierce sweep of 230,000 shotguns of about 20,000 or 30 tons in each direction, the enemy cavalry attacking on both flanks again suffered casualties of 20,000 or more horses.
With the cumulative casualties and losses approaching about 20 percent, although some enemy cavalry groups that were still worthy of battle and trained for the firearms battlefield did not completely collapse under such circumstances, the enemy cavalry groups that were approaching both flanks also retreated like a tide.
In the course of the fierce engagement, the 200 medium field guns did not stop, and in the course of the most fierce battle that lasted several minutes, the opponent on the offensive also fired a total of 15 rounds of firepower and 6,700,000 shotguns, which once again inflicted heavy casualties on the opponent as a reserve.
In a short period of time, the total casualties and losses were only more than 10% for the army, which had experienced a lot of battles before, and barely could be considered a battle, but at this time, the team led by Xiao Xuan, especially the highly mobile cavalry group, began to use the recoilless launcher to launch a continuous counterattack at close range, Under the continuous attacks, the coalition forces, which were already clearly less than 300,000 troops, could only choose to retreat to their original positions, trying to resist the enemy's attack with effective defense.
At the beginning, Xiao Xuan did not intend to give the opponent a annihilating blow in the attack with such a small amount of troops. Constantly attacking the opponent's place that must be saved and giving the opponent the most efficient blow in the defense, but when the children in charge of reconnaissance around Xiao Xuan found that the opponent's fortifications were not the tunnel methods they often used, but more just some simple constructed breastwalls. It was also determined to give at least one of the forces a devastating blow first.
In this way, the same wide formation first attacked the Ottoman camp to the west.
At this time, accompanied by a little white smoke, the Ottoman artillery fire also began to prepare for a counterattack, but the subsequent counterattack surprised the opponent. Even at a distance of about two miles, the rudimentary earthen wall did not seem to be able to stop the black powder armor-piercing body fired by the recoilless steel cannon, and under the precise and fierce suppression, the attack soon became gradually scattered, and at a closer distance, the officers and soldiers who continued to fire at each other finally suppressed the opponent through the breastwork.