Matthew's camp was defeated more than ten centuries away. Pen, fun, and www.biquge.info

The night before, the Emperor sent three rounds of messengers to inform General Matthew, and he was given the task of leaving the camp as soon as possible to monitor the city of Iconium to the east, in case the Guardian Brigade north of Gawain would use this road to join the battlefield of Firomero.

One of the messengers was intercepted by Gawain's Night Patrol, but the Emperor didn't pay much attention to it, "But just ignore the small-scale attack of the rebels, and do everything according to the predetermined deployment." ”

After receiving the order, Matthew immediately ordered the 8,000 Imperial soldiers in the battalion to prepare their vehicles and travel equipment, and divided them into three armies, the front, the middle and the rear, and marched eastward.

At this moment, the eight thousand horsemen of Branas, Monomachus, and Walter also made a frantic maneuver to the wilderness northwest of the city of Ikonium, when it was just dawn.

The scout cavalry of the two armies noticed each other almost at the same time, and the very tired Branas did not dare to slack off, and hurriedly asked the other two commanders to line up in front with the subordinate cavalry and the border cavalry, while he himself took all the infantry in the rear to build a temporary position in the caravan with his back, and his back to the city of Iconium. Then the earth shook - Monomachus noticed that many horsemen were galloping from the other direction, first with white horsetail gold flags, all of them fierce Oghuz cavalry regiments, followed by the Saint-Cyril cavalry regiment with the fish dragon banner.

Then the cavalry regiment of the New Baptized, holding the small golden hand, appeared further north from the Guardian Brigade and marched forward like the wind.

From the left and right, the three cavalry regiments crossed the positions of the Branas Army and headed directly towards the opposite position of General Matthew!

Matthew hurriedly ordered the front army to line up and refuse, but the news came: his rear army's baggage convoy had not yet been launched, and it was attacked by many cavalry and suffered heavy losses. The frightened Mahew ordered a general with a squadron of cavalry to the rear to find out what was going on - soon the general was lying in the saddle and returning with only a few horses, he and his men were covered in blood, two arrows were struck in the back, and a broken cavalry spear was stuck in the armor on his chest, and the brave cavalry officer only said when he saw Mahew, "It is the one who attacked the rear...... The thief's mounted cavalry Cataphract...... "After saying this, he fell off his horse and died.

Suddenly the front and middle armies of Mathew were in great confusion, and everywhere there were soldiers running in panic, and they had not yet turned from the marching column to the defensive formation, when they saw a large number of enemy cavalry maneuvering towards their flanks from the left and right directions, and the deafening horses' hooves and the smoke and dust were particularly terrifying - "We are surrounded in this field!" ”

"No matter how much, we'll go up too!" At this moment, Branas, who was about to stand up just now, simply climbed on his horse, drew his sword out of its sheath, pointed ahead and shouted to all the brigade soldiers, "Kill all these enemies and then eat, Shah Nami bless us!" The brigade soldiers drew their spears from the ground and followed General Temachi's slogan of "Shahnamy" (which they mistook for an all-out command) to burn the last of their strength and crush the enemy.

Soon Monomachus and Walter in front also took all the cavalry and pounced on them.

In the field, in the midst of the huge spiral of smoke, hundreds of Gawain cavalry surrounded the eight thousand imperial troops gathered tightly on the hedgehogs, trapping and biting them. Time was lost, dust, terror and thirst continued to erode the fighting spirit of General Matthew's soldiers, many of whom could not bear it, and they broke out of the tight and painful formation, and slaughtered the Oghuz cavalry that was constantly galloping back and forth on the opposite side, and then they were shot and slashed one by one.

Finally, in the most sweltering noon, when the brigade to which Branas belonged, the infantry of the border army and the Nikitas party attacked from the flank, the sound of trumpets shook the earth, and all the cavalry of the Guardian Army, armed with weapons and battle flags, shouted and began to charge from different directions, the men and horses were racing like meteors, and the horse's tail swept out smoke tracks, launching a fierce assault from three directions.

The battle ended in less than an hour, and Matthew's army was impacted, cut apart, and bitten and devoured, and the front army could still hold on to resistance, while the Chinese army soon broke and fled towards the side of Que.

However, Caesar's mounted cavalry regiment soon appeared on the other side, and they were heavily armed, lined up in a neat cone-shaped formation, carrying blood-stained maces and battle axes, and the independent feathers and manes on the top of the horses' neck armor shook violently, silently rolling towards the defeated soldiers all over the ground......

By the time the sun had set, all the 8,000 soldiers in the Emperor's camp had been annihilated: more than 1,000 had been killed, nearly 4,000 had been wounded or taken prisoner, and the rest had either broken up towards Afyon or fled to Emperor Philomeron's imperial camp. His Majesty the Emperor's loyal and courageous general Matthew. Gutilas fought to the last breath, and he and fifty of the Emperor's orphaned archers fought against the incoming cavalry on their backs until they were all killed.

They were all orphaned descendants of the Empire's war-dead soldiers, adopted by the Emperor, and now shed the last drop of blood for their father, Komnenos.

On the battlefield of Philomeron, Alexios, who learned the bad news, lowered his head, and his son-in-law Brenus next to him also turned pale, wondering if the emperor would issue an order to him to take over the right wing, in that case, would he be assassinated by the disgruntled Tetisius, or would he be attacked by Gawain and killed on the battlefield?

In that case, what will happen to his wife Dedo, and what will happen to his son Theodore?

Ahead, the wounded soldiers of the Emperor's army, frustrated in the offensive, retreated miserably to the rearguard, many of them refusing to continue the battle, especially the hired Bulgarians and Cumans, and many of the corpses were abandoned in front of the trenches and palisades in front of the Gawain fortress, without being recovered or retracted.

Atretis saw that the scene in front of him was becoming more and more chaotic, while he and his comrades around him stood in rows on the battle line, unable to do anything useful for the entire battlefield, "The sun has set, and no one thinks that His Majesty's army can break through the enemy's defenses. We fought hard for a long time, without any encouraging results on any of the flanks, and although half of our soldiers remained in the barricades to prepare for it, the noble emperor's offensive had already failed miserably. As one of the great nobles in the army predicted, whoever strikes first loses - unfortunately, it is our Majesty who strikes first. Years later, Atretis wrote in his diary memoirs.

The Imperial Ink Officer on the command tower, Myles, was also depressed and haggard: the emperor's army had nearly 40,000 horses, and the first-line army had 20,000, and even if Gawain did not leave the two brigades, the total number of soldiers and horses defending the army was only 15,000, and the only solution to the problem today was that the right flank of Tetisius should be pressed, and all the reserves in the fortress were also exhausted, so that it was possible to crush the inferior Gawain army - because now his troops were also suffering heavy losses, and the soldiers were also exhausted.

So Myles sent a herald to wait for the Imperial Emperor's response. (To be continued.) )