Xu Dinghe returned to his brigade, and his four infantry battalions formed the central front of the attack formation.

The soldiers stood straight in three rows, the enemy occasionally hit the shells, and large iron balls bouncing on the ground, crushing the legs, feet and torsos of men, and the battle line of the 1st Brigade was breached.

"Steady!"

"Tighten the formation!"

Cold orders from the officers came one after another, and the soldiers in the back row took a few steps forward to fill the vacancy in the front row.

Two regimental flags were waving in the wind in front of the battle line, and the eye-catching military flags seemed to have become cannonball magnets, attracting a considerable part of the enemy's firepower.

Xu Dinghe walked up to the flag officer, smiled and asked, "Are you afraid?" ”

The flag bearer replied loudly: "Mr. Colonel, the Tatar artillery is hitting crookedly, and there is no need to worry about being targeted by them. ”

There was a burst of unbridled laughter from the soldiers.

Xu Dinghe also smiled.

On the right flank of the front, the loud singing of "Men Should Be Self-Improvement" came, which was the position of the Electric White Brigade.

Lu Zhan hired a Macao drum king as the chief musician of the brigade headquarters, and the sonorous and passionate war drums were like roaring cannons, beating the heartstrings of officers and soldiers.

The Electric White Brigade was the first to attack.

In the years when the main force of the Federal Army did not participate in the continental hegemony, the troops of Dianbai fought day and night, they were once surrounded in a small seaside fortress for a long time, and perseverance and will were the unique characteristics of the Dianbai Brigade.

Perhaps the platoon discipline and tactical formation change of the Dianbai Brigade were inferior to Xu Dinghe's troops, but when they launched a bayonet charge, the resolute assassination action of the soldiers was difficult to compare with several other brigades.

Xu Dinghe listened quietly for a while.

Flag Bearer: "Sir? ”

The officers and men looked at their brigade commander in unison.

The 1st Brigade is a typical Union Army, with most soldiers under the age of 20, and the latest recruits are only 17 years old.

Young soldiers are convinced that they are the strongest army in the world, that their army is invincible, and their faces are filled with a desire for honor and a yearning for wealth.

The enemy artillery fired another commanded salvo, a tactical maneuver that the Tatars could do well, and they had long relied on European hired gunners and artillery technicians.

The shells stirred up a cloud of dust, and another soldier was shot.

The infantry was in front of the enemy, which meant that they would definitely face enemy shelling, the Tatars could not fire accurately, but the rapid sound of the cannon and the iron bullets that jumped on the ground still had an impact on the soldiers, and now they were most eager to leave the damned starting position and attack.

The General Staff Headquarters discovered this in actual combat in previous years.

In the general class of the National Defense University, there is a small method of pre-war warm-up among the senior officers, that is, to let the soldiers face the enemy artillery bombardment on the front for a period of time without moving, the sound of the artillery stimulates the excitement of the soldiers, the nervousness prompts the soldiers to speed up their movements, and the sense of fear makes the soldiers eager to smash the enemy's artillery positions.

Xu Dinghe knew that he didn't need to mobilize anymore, and the soldiers were in a hurry.

Military music played, and the offensive began.

The infantry had not yet fired a salvo, standing on the hill in order, with decent visibility and a panoramic view of the advancing infantry line.

Because the morale is very high, there are grenadiers to lead the attack in this battle, and there is no need for these backbone veterans to stabilize the morale of the army in the back row and be the overseers.

The brigades launched their attacks at intervals, from right to left, with the right-wing Electric White Brigade taking precedence.

This slightly slanted posture is not deliberately created by order.

Most of the battles in history that have come down to skewed tactical victories are either coincidental or have other important reasons.

The Holy Legion of Thebes or Frederick II were exaggerated by the European literati, and the mythical accounts were not reliable.

The tilting tactics that were deliberately imitated mostly failed, and if they were to work, they were to be fought unless they were opposite to the undisciplined barbarians.

Suppose the two armies open parallel fronts 1 km wide, with a range of 200 meters from each other.

If one of the flanks takes an oblique formation towards the other, one wing is only 200 meters away from the enemy, and the other wing is far away from the enemy, beyond the enemy's reach.

What will happen?

When the team moves in order to take an inclined formation, the flanks will always be the first to be exposed.

At this time, if it is attacked, the army will lose the battle. As for the threatened flanks of the enemy, it is easy to defend them with second-line forces or reserves, because the enemy forces have less distance to maneuver and exert less physical strength.

Units in inclined battle formations are often forced to abandon the axis of battle, which poses a mortal danger.

In both senses, the Schlieffen plan was a plan that was inherently failing.

Thus, in the operational regulations of the General Staff, the principle was set that unless the terrain had a great advantage in maneuvering, the following principles:

1. At no time should there be an open flanking movement in front of enemy forces in battle formation.

2. It is necessary to always maintain one's own line of battle and not automatically abandon it.

In fact, this is the space that restricts most infantry officers from opening their brains on the battlefield.

It is not impossible for infantry to move on the flanks of the battlefield, except for the terrain, if the battle line is longer than the enemy, then of course it can be encircled.

The main point of flanking operations is to change formation without hiding from the enemy in order to surprise the enemy and catch the enemy by surprise. The way to conceal the enemy is to change formation at night or under the cover of smoke, or under the cover of a series of forward posts.

This action is not a tactical formation, and the force is not in itself, but in its suddenness and surprise, and should be included in ambushes, raids, and covert movements.

The Federal Army is a machine, and it does not require the individual performance of most of the officers, but only that they need to shoot the allocated ammunition in the right range step by step.

The accuracy rate of flintlock musket units against Tatars ranged from 1% to 3%. In a battle, the average soldier will fire 20 to 30 rounds, and 40,000 rifles can fire about 1 million rounds, which can cause about 10,000 enemy casualties.

And in Asia, no army can afford to lose 10,000 men in the hand-to-hand phase of a battle. Therefore, the choice of order and land is simple, force the enemy to accept the battle with actions within the scope of the campaign, and then fire as many shells and bullets as possible in the right battlefield, without any tricks.

The three brigades starting from the riverside were lined up in two lines of battle infantry, and in front of them was a line of skirmishers, like a moving barrage of gunpowder.

The 3rd Brigade on the far left was a little different, with only two battalions in a horizontal formation and two battalions in reserve.

The two reserve battalions were divided into battalions and arranged in columns with a width of about 30 meters and a thickness of about 80 meters, so that the reserves could quickly deploy into a phalanx to defend against cavalry and maneuver more quickly under any circumstances.

The attacking troops stopped one after another at a distance of 500 meters from the enemy, and the whole team began to shoot at the enemy.

Long-range salvo is a tactic developed by the Qiongzhou Brigade in actual combat, and it is now being promoted to the whole army.

Army discipline prohibits a salvo within 100 meters of the enemy, but supports firing at a distance of 500 meters, in fact, firing at a 45-degree angle, the maximum landing distance of the flintlock smoothbore gun is 974 meters.

The Army's original approach to this was that the smoothbore gun had a hit rate of less than 3% at a distance of 100 meters, and it increased dramatically within 100 meters, and the hit rate quickly approached 10%. The horizontal squad maintained a formation and advanced at a cadence of 75 paces per minute, advancing to within 50 meters as recommended by some staff officers, and would be hit by thousands of men in the face of enemy arquebus volleys.

In fact, if they are all disciplined troops, the side that takes the initiative to provoke close combat will either misjudge the battlefield situation or be forced to be helpless, because the side that takes the initiative to approach and launch a surprise attack will face a sudden volley carefully prepared by the enemy army, and there is a high probability that it will be shot down.

Therefore, the army code of conduct also stipulates that in a battle, before artillery or rifle fire shakes the enemy's formation, it is not allowed to shoot at close range, except in the case of forced action such as breaking through the encirclement.

Guarding the order pouted, the Federal Army tried its best to make the battle template and mathematical, although the level is very low, but in this world, it is the most advanced combat mode on the earth.

After having basically standardized weapons, standardized military schools and standardized staff officers became practical.

What the commanders, staff officers, and officers have to do is first of all to make no mistakes, and then apply the template routines given by the military academy to the battlefield in front of them.

What if I can't get it?

It's simple, choose a favorable firing position to fight a battle.

The requirement of an infantry officer is to arrange and combine these routines based on the weather/terrain, and in comparison, the cavalry officer has some room to take the initiative.

The smoke of the rifle salvo filled the air, and the fog of war hung heavily over the battlefield.

The rate of fire and aiming often show an opposite relationship, long-range hanging shooting does not need to aim, and medium-distance shooting requires aiming. It is a huge mistake to pursue only the rate of fire without aiming, and this misunderstanding has existed for 100 years in the history of warfare.

In a long-range shot with almost no damage of his own, the soldier fired the fastest rate of fire.

Continuing to advance 200 meters, the whole battalion salvo was changed to column firing, that is, the whole battalion fired in turn, and within 1 minute, one battalion fired nearly 2,000 rounds, and then the battalions entered free fire. This time the soldiers lowered their guns slightly and aimed above the heads of the enemy line compared to the previous curved shots.

The veterans used a trick of quickly reloading their bullets and then striking the butt twice to the ground in place of the ram lever.

The cost of this will lead to an increase in the failure rate of the rifle, which will greatly reduce the accuracy of the shot over time, and the benefit is that the time required to reload ammunition will be greatly reduced.

Rifles are cheap consumables, as long as they can kill enemy soldiers, future damage is not considered by soldiers on the battlefield.