The tactics of musketeers in the era of smoothbore guns actually had two routes, one was the platoon gun tactics that pursued firepower density, commonly known as queuing to shoot. One is the pursuit of precision sniper tactics, also known as skirmishers, light infantry tactics, or chasseur tactics.

And these two routes are not opposites, but synergistic with each other. In military history, there are very few strong troops that can rely on one branch of the army to cover them.

The Mongols were not good at cavalry, not with the English lobstermen, not with Napoleon's artillery.

If there are only privates who shoot in a platoon, and there are no skirmishers who can cover the formation of the privates, then the privates will be easily sniped by the opposing stragglers with excellent marksmanship.

If there were no artillery and cavalry, the battle would not have to be fought. The infantry who will only line up to shoot must not be blown to slag?

As for using the superb cavalry and archery skills of the Mongol cavalry to deal with a modern army composed of various arms, no matter how good your skills are, it is a dead end.

Bows and arrows may be able to shoot against a regular smoothbore gun and a private who has not been trained in shooting for a long time.

But when you encounter skirmishers equipped with high-quality smoothbore guns or even rifled guns and first-class shooting skills, it will be miserable. Isn't that a live target?

By the way, the accuracy of the smoothbore gun was not as bad as later generations imagined. According to a large number of Western records from the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. With a high-quality smoothbore gun, a projectile with a small clearance between the barrel, a fixed gun mount, and a good shooter, it is not a problem to hit a single person at a distance of 170 meters.

Of course, muskets and musketeers who meet the requirements are rare and expensive!

Therefore, today's Western Song Dynasty and Great Mongolia are also multi-arm coordinated play.

In the early morning of July 17, 1217 Western Calendar, when the morning sun was shining, when the smoke that filled the battlefield was dispersed by the strong wind blowing from the northwest, when the two sides of the melee on the battlefield began to retreat to the sound of golden drums. A battle in the era of alternating hot and cold weapons with the coordination of multiple arms will soon begin.

Tuo Lei could have taken advantage of the opportunity for the opponent to retreat a little bit to withdraw from the battlefield, but he was confused. Feeling that now that the sky was bright and the smoke had dispersed, the Song army had left the favorable terrain and ran to the grass outside the "bungalow area" to set up a formation.

Moreover, the number of Song troops who left the preset position and came out of the field did not look very large, and the formation was still a little scattered...... Of course, they are elite, otherwise they would not have beaten the warriors of the Great Mongolia so badly.

But such a formation, swaggering out of the "bungalow area", is obviously underestimating the enemy.

The arrogant army will be defeated!

Tuo Lei has also been in battle for a long time, and when he saw the loose and collapsed appearance of the Song army, he knew that there was still a fight!

So he decided to fight again...... Even if he didn't win, he would be able to make Temujin's main force retreat safely.

The 200,000 troops that Temujin brought this time were not all highly mobile Mongol soldiers, but half Mongol soldiers and half Persian soldiers.

Now the Mongols could ride their horses and spread their hooves, but what about the Persians? You can't leave them behind! Temujin was now the king of Persia, and the 100,000 Persian soldiers who followed him to the fort of Yirebao were basically loyal Illuminati, which was the basis of Temujin's rule in Persia.

If the pursuing Song army was killed or wounded in large numbers during the retreat, it would be very disadvantageous.

In addition, Temujin's army carried a large number of cattle and sheep, and it was impossible for them to travel more than 100 miles a day like the cavalry. If Temujin's main forces had been in too much of a hurry during the retreat and had abandoned their cattle and sheep, it was likely that the troops would have run out of food after retreating to the area of the Shaye Ho Valley.

After careful consideration, seizing the opponent's flaws and playing a beautiful guard blocking battle is obviously the best choice.

……

July 17, 1217 Western Calendar, three quarters of the hour.

On the steppe west of Yiliebao, about 10,000 Western Song troops and less than 20,000 Great Mongol troops have already been deployed.

The grassland, which was the battlefield, had not been set on fire, because Temujin's main camp had been in this area last night. The Mongols can't burn their khan by setting fire to the steppe. So the area didn't go overboard, and there was dead grass more than half a man tall everywhere. Such a landform is very beneficial to the Song army, which has a large number of "gun doctors".

Therefore, Yang Tiexin, the chief general of the Song army, arranged his 16 teams of sharpshooters in a straggler formation in front of his main front - the scattered formation seen by Tuo Lei was put out by these gun doctors.

In fact, they are just scattered, not chaotic at all!

Behind the scattered gun doctors, Yang Tiexin put on a traditional phalanx. That is, with the pike phalanx as the core, the musketeer phalanx as the wings, the spear phalanx in front of the artillery team, and the cavalry on both sides of the large phalanx.

This style of play, similar to the historical Spanish phalanx, has been popular in this time and space for decades, but it has not yet reached the point of being eliminated.

This is because the flintlock smoothbore has not yet appeared, and the arquebus has a slow rate of fire in actual combat, so there is still a lot of room to use the spear to charge into battle.

In addition, sleeve bayonets have just appeared in the East. The musketeers on the Western battlefield were still not armed with bayonets, or a combination of muskets and maces and machetes.

Therefore, the ability of the musketeers to fight hand-to-hand and to defend against cavalry was insufficient.

On the other side of the battlefield, the tow mine also completed the formation.

He had about 10,000 Mongol soldiers, his own 10,000-strong army.

There were also 10,000 Persian undead troops in his hands, which used the name of the elite aces of the Persian Empire. The members were made up of the children of the Persian nobility who believed in the god of light, and were armed with arquebuses and spears. Commanded by Temujin's younger brother, Belgutai, the classic phalanx is now also present. It's just that there is no gun doctor who can act as a sniper.

The Mongol soldiers, led by Tuo Lei, were scattered on the flanks and rear of the Persian undead army.

In addition, the dozens of artillery pieces that covered the attack on the "bungalow area" by the cowardly Xue army last night had not yet been nailed to the fire gate, and they also participated in the battle on the morning of the 17th.

As usual, the engagement began with an artillery battle!

As soon as the hour came, the Mongol artillery began to roar first. Immediately afterwards, the artillery of the Song army also began to return fire.

The shells of both sides, coming and going on the battlefield, fell one after another around the opponent's spear arrays or artillery positions. Bursts of sand and dust were stirred, and from time to time shells fell into the crowd, knocking down the soldiers on both sides, and the round shells slashed over the human body, and suddenly the bones and tendons were broken, and even the heads and limbs of people were blown up at once, and the sound of screams and the smell of blood permeated the front of the battlefield.

However, the shelling was ineffective against a gun doctor like Wei Wenweng. They are stragglers, so they don't have to line up against the enemy, and naturally they don't need to stand upright and be shelled. So as soon as the cannon sounded, they all changed to a half-kneeling posture, half short, hiding in the grass, not afraid of shells.

And standing and being shelled is really a numbing thing for people's scalps, but it is also very helpless.

This is due to the fact that there are not only artillerymen, pikemen, musketeers, but also many cavalrymen capable of unleashing a fierce charge in the battle sequence on both sides.

Moreover, it is not easy to command a large phalanx of pikemen and musketeers on the battlefield, and it takes a lot of time to issue orders and carry them out.

In this process, most of the opposing cavalry has already rushed to the front!

So in most cases, infantry commanders were reluctant to let their men crouch or lie on their stomachs to avoid artillery.

Of course, the lethality of artillery in these years is also limited, and the dozens of cannons on the battlefield today may not be able to kill hundreds of people for half a day. For the more than 30,000 people who participated in today's battle, this is really not a large number.

If one side can't withstand an artillery battle, the textbook response is to throw the infantry into the offensive – in the era of the pike, the first side to attack often had to withstand a salvo of shotguns and arquebuses from the opponent's artillery. Obviously a bit of a loss.

However, if your own team has a large number of people and the cavalry has an absolute advantage, the chances of attacking first are quite good.

Therefore, after discovering that his own artillery fire accuracy and rate of fire were obviously inferior to the opponent's, Tuo Lei immediately ordered the Persian undead army to attack from the front, and at the same time ordered his own Mongol cavalry to start a detour to the opponent's flanks and rear.

Although it was impossible for the Mongol cavalry to storm the Song army's pike, such a detour would force the Song army to disperse its forces on its own flanks and rear. It is even possible to put up a huge hollow phalanx. In this way, the forces they can use in the front are insufficient, maybe only 2,500 people, and in the face of the attack of 10,000 Persian undead troops, 2,500 Song troops will not be able to resist no matter what.

But Tuo Lei missed the count of 2,000 sneaky gunmen who were half-kneeling in the grass.

In the daytime battle on the 17th, they once again became the deciding factor in victory or defeat.

……

When the Mongol offensive began, the Song army's reaction seemed to follow the script of Tuolei. The large phalanx really turned into a huge hollow phalanx. A small number of cavalry gathered into a large group and rushed towards the perimeter of the Mongol cavalry's right flank - this was to allow the cavalry to jump to the perimeter and wait for an opportunity to launch an assault on the Mongol artillery positions or the back of the Persian undead army.

As for the cavalry duel, it was not in Yang Tiexin's plan. His cavalry was too small in number, with only one battalion. And not heavy cavalry, but light cavalry on reconnaissance missions.

Moreover, their war horses are not as good as their opponents - the Mongols have a lot of time and space, and they ride not short Mongolian horses (now called Xi horses), but Ural hippos bred from Persian horses, Arabian horses, Mongolian horses and some European horses.

The war horses used in the Western Song Dynasty were based on the West Pole Horse, the Qingtang Horse (Hequ Horse), and the Huashan Horse formed by the mixed blood of Tianjin horses. Although it is also a good breed horse, it is still a big step behind the Ural hippopotamus.

Therefore, the cavalry of the Western Song Dynasty could only be lightly armed as possible to ensure speed. Therefore, it was equipped only with cuirasses, helmets, sabers and a short-barreled smoothbore gun. Not at all an opponent of the Mongol cavalry, armed with full body armor, bows and arrows and spears.

Therefore, when the cavalry of the Western Song Dynasty jumped out of the encirclement of the Mongol cavalry and rushed to the outer line, Tuo Lei did not realize any danger at all.

He also has a Mongolian thousand-man team by his side, and he can protect his thoughtfulness.

Therefore, the attention of Tuo Lei was focused on the frontal attack launched by the Persian undead army.

Now it's 10,000 people fighting more than 2,000 people, it's impossible to lose, right?

……

Bang!

A gunshot rang out, and in front of the Persian undead army, which was still more than 200 steps away from the hollow phalanx of the Song army, a bearded strong man wearing exquisite cold-forged armor suddenly fell forward.

The Persians who walked around him were stunned: what was going on? So far away, what hit him?

Bang!

Another shot!

The rifled gun of the murderous Jin Shi Wei Wenweng was fired again, and more than a hundred paces away, an officer of the Persian undead army fell in response.

When the undead army meets a murderous jinshi, it is difficult not to die!

However, only two people died, and the undead army did not take it seriously, so they continued to advance.

At the forefront of the undead were the Persian musketeers, who wielded heavy arquebuses from Tabriz and Ahvaz. It is an imitation of the Republican eight-year heavy arquebus, which uses a heavy projectile and has a theoretical range of not small.

However, in actual use, in order to speed up the loading speed, the Persians like to use projectiles with large clearance, so there is air leakage, which reduces the effective range of the projectile to less than 50 steps.

If you use a projectile with a small clearance, it will be more troublesome to reload, and the gunmen can take their time, but the line infantry with a platoon of guns should not be too slow.

Therefore, the projectiles and muskets used by the line infantry must meet the requirements of easy loading.

The effective range requirement is not high, usually within 50 steps, so preventing indiscriminate fire has always been key to the command of the musketeer.

But just when the Persian musketeers were still 100 paces away from the Song army's hollow phalanx, something unexpected happened to the Persians.

Suddenly there was a flicker of fire in the grass ahead, and the smoke of gunpowder spewed out, and then a large area fell in front of the Persians!

The gunners of the Song people were able to accurately hit targets 100 paces away!

This is not one or two arquebuses firing, but almost 2,000 arquebuses! The first wave of shots alone knocked out hundreds of Persians.

In front of the Persian undead army, there was a mess all of a sudden.

And the gun doctors of the Song army quickly completed the reloading, followed by another wave of shooting!

The undead Persian army, which had been hit continuously, was completely in disarray, and the frightened musketeers, regardless of the distance and the lack of aim, blindly pulled the trigger and fired the projectiles from the smoothbore guns.

Just when the Persians were in chaos, the front of the hollow phalanx of the Song army suddenly began to stride forward, forcing the Persian undead army step by step.

At the same time, the artillery of the Song army also opened fire, not at the undead army in front, but shifted to the flanks, opening fire to dispel the Mongol cavalry that was trying to approach.

The offensive launched by Tuo Lei was completely defused by the Song army. The situation on the battlefield suddenly became extremely unfavorable for the Mongols!