The battle, known as the Pickett Charge, ended in a small tactical victory for the Confederate Army, but strategically it failed.

Because the Southern Army did not occupy the important strategic point of the cemetery ridge as scheduled, and the other two heights were also not occupied, on the contrary, in order to obtain a phased tactical victory, the Southern Army also paid nearly 3,000 heavy casualties in just a few hours, which can be said to be a disastrous victory.

The high casualties in this attack on the Cemetery Ridge also alarmed Robert Brown. Li, after all, he couldn't help but be shocked by such a large number of casualties in a local battle.

Although the Southern Army also had a lot of casualties in the previous battles, they were all accumulated casualties in previous battles, and there were more minor casualties. Lee was also encountered for the first time.

You must know that if there is no accident of Li Yongji, there is no special case of the Chinese Empire, this era should actually be an era of smoothbore guns, although rifled guns and rear-loading guns have appeared, but limited to technology, cost and production technology, and have not been widely installed by countries around the world.

For example, the American Civil War in another time and space, although there are also many new weapons in it, such as rifled guns, rear-loading guns, etc., but they are not the protagonists, the real protagonists are still front-loading smoothbore guns, and the common tactics are still old-fashioned tactics of queuing to shoot.

But in this time and space, due to the rapid rise of Li Yongji, because Li Yongji was equipped with a large number of rear-loading rifled Sharps rifles at the beginning, and later exported a large number of gold and silver, so in a short period of time, the Hua 1 rifle, or the Chinese version of the Sharps rifle, became popular in the world.

In addition, the Hua 1 artillery, that is, the export of the Chinese version of the Napoleonic gun, not to mention anything else, at least changed the trend of many battles of the Civil War in disguise, is it the reason? Naturally, the new weapons are more powerful, cause more casualties, and have different impacts.

For example, in the previous battles of the Southern Army, the reason why it was able to win more and lose less was mainly because the Allied Army had a large number of Chinese versions of Sharps rifles and Chinese versions of Napoleon guns in reserve before the war, and the performance of the guided weapons far exceeded that of the Northern Army. In addition, the Southern Army was more prepared and had more professional soldiers, so the Northern Army, which had just been fighting, lost its temper.

However, the Sharps rifle and Napoleon guns exported by China, although they were more performant, were not a decisive improvement after all. Although it can improve combat effectiveness, it cannot be compared with weapons such as machine guns and rear-loading rapid-fire guns, and it has not caused a fundamental change in the nature of warfare, which means that although the Southern Army has a slight advantage, it cannot form an overwhelming advantage.

Moreover, it was precisely because of the excellent performance of the new weapons of the Southern Army that the Northern Army began to mass-produce the original Sharps rifles, such as the U.S. government, and personally approached Sharps himself. A large amount of money was given to rebuild the Sharps Arsenal and produce the Sharps rifles, which was very different from the original historical emphasis on Sharps.

Although the military junta of the North made a lot of investments in the Sharps rifle. But after all, the production process is there, there are too few qualified seamless steel pipes, and the basic ones are cast iron barrels, and the production is still handicraft. It's just that there are more people, so in terms of production and cost, it still can't be compared with the Chinese-made Sharps rifle.

So to speak. If it weren't for the fact that the price of China's export-oriented Sharps rifles was not cheap, and the Southern Army had been blockaded by the navy of the Northern Army before, and the volume of arms trade had shrunk sharply.

However, because China has flowed into the United States with a large number of Sharps rifles, the number of advanced weapons on both sides has increased significantly, so it has become more and more brutal on the battlefield.

In the previous battles, the Southern Army had a larger number of Sharps rifles, and the reason why they did not produce a large number of casualties like the Pixar Charge was also related to the outdated tactics.

In the past, Robert. Although Li organized an independent Sharps rifle brigade, he regarded this independent Sharps rifle brigade as a general reserve, and he did not put it into the battlefield lightly, and would only send it out when he could not achieve a breakthrough, so in the previous battles, this Sharps rifle brigade did not have many opportunities to go into battle.

Later, Robert. Lee received more Sharps rifles, and the Sharps Rifle Brigade expanded into a 10,000-strong Sharps Rifle Corps. Li still regarded this army as a treasure and turned it into a general reserve army, and he would not put this Sharps rifle army into the battlefield, just like the previous attack, he only invested in the ordinary smoothbore rifle infantry brigade, and did not invest in the Sharps rifle army.

However, the Northern Army is different in this regard, their Sharps rifles are insufficient, although they have also formed four Sharps rifle regiments, but in the past they have not had the opportunity to go into battle, and this time it is a defensive battle, so in terms of application, it has not been used centrally and has become a decentralized one.

In other words, the current commander of the Potomac Corps, no one like Robert . Lee, like that, gathered these four regiments together as reserves, but divided them into three parts, and distributed them equally among the three most important heights, in order to strengthen the garrison here.

In terms of distribution, the most important cemetery ridge in the center, that is, the troops led by General Mead, received two regiments of Sharps shooters with a total of two thousand men, while the other two heights, each equipped with one regiment, that is, a thousand Sharps marksmen.

So coincidentally, Robert. Lee's tactics were to break through in the center again, and they relied on a large number of artillery to storm the cemetery ridge in the center, only to meet Mead's head-on attack.

General Mead did not use the two thousand Sharps shooters as a reserve, but arranged them on the mountainside as soon as they came up, as a firepower platoon of the third echelon, and together with the position at the foot of the mountain, a stepped firepower network was formed, which strengthened the firepower density.

In addition to using the Sharps Rifle Regiment from the beginning, General Mead also organized a new method of warfare in view of the characteristics of his own soldiers who were mostly militiamen, poor in life, and low morale.

To put it simply, try to fight with the opponent and not play with the opponent, so that if it is only a counter-shot, then the disadvantage of your own poor morale will not be too obvious.

In order to increase the chance of winning the battle, General Mead made a new arrangement of the sniper positions of each smoothbore infantry, that is, the only row of shooters who stepped on the small stools in the trench was the best type of shooter. It is only responsible for shooting, and as for the action of reloading, it is handed over to the people in the back four rows.

That is to say, when there is a real engagement, only the row of people who step on the stool shoots, and when they finish firing, they throw the gun down, and then take a new gun that has been loaded with ammunition from the side, and continue to shoot to increase the rate of fire.

Therefore, there was only a platoon of people who shot in the trenches. There are four rows that can be responsible for loading, but the people responsible for loading are all under the trench, and they can't see the situation of the battlefield, and the safety is more guaranteed. The chance of error is also greatly reduced.

The loading process of a front-loading smoothbore gun is a very cumbersome process, with many steps, if you are not careful on the fierce battlefield. People with a lower psychological quality can easily make mistakes, and there are many people who have five or six bullets in one barrel, which naturally increases the danger of exploding.

The Northern Army was mostly a militia. The training time was short, and Su zhì could not be compared with the Southern Army at all, so they were required to calmly load and shoot on the battlefield. That's unrealistic, but if a very small number of elites are responsible for firing and others are only responsible for reloading in a safe place, this can greatly speed up the reload, reduce the error rate, and thus increase the density of fire in the shot.

However, this method of shooting with one person and four people assisting is not something that everyone can play, it must be a large enough number of people, and it is precisely that there are not many others in the Northern Army, that is, there are many people.

That's why General Mead played such a set, with the trench tactics, coupled with the firepower on the mountainside in the rear, the firepower density naturally far exceeded that of the Northern Army.

What I want to say here is that although the trench tactics have existed before, they appeared on a large scale only in this Pixar Charge campaign, and before, although the defenders also had cover, most of them set up a half-man high stone wall, and then the soldiers stood behind this half-human stone wall and stood and shot.

For example, the stone wall Jackson is nicknamed the stone wall because his troops are particularly tenacious, like the stone wall, and this stone wall refers to the kind of half-human high defensive wall.

In the past, in the face of this kind of stone wall defense, it was usually the two armies who came to the effective range of shooting, and then lined up in a row to play shooting at each other, which is commonly known as the method of lining up to shoot, generally after a shot at close range, the side with high morale will launch a white-knuckle charge, and then the side with weak morale will collapse and directly end the battle.

It is precisely because at this time that the north and the south are still continuing this method of warfare similar to a fair duel, so although there were many big battles and small battles in the past days, the casualties in a battle were not large, and most of them were captured or injured.

But this time, Mead arranged stepped firepower, dug trenches, arranged roadblocks in front, and added five rows of shooting methods, giving full play to his own firepower advantage and playing a dishonorable coward tactic.

Using this tactic, Meade's troops had a higher firepower density and more persistence per unit area, and because the trenches were close to the surface, their own targets were smaller, more concealed than stone walls, and the losses were smaller.

On the other hand, although the troops led by Pickett were valiant, they still used the old method, which was to walk through in a dense formation, first firing a volley of guns at the enemy position, and then charging with white knives.

In this way, the attacking troops of the Northern Army had already suffered heavy losses in the process of advancing, and more than eighty percent of the losses were losses when advancing in formation, but later when they were charging with white knives, because of their amazing momentum, they frightened the Northern Army in the trenches, but reduced their losses to a minimum.

That is to say, if the charging troops led by Pixar disperse at the beginning, or even if they are in a dense formation, but don't walk in a slow line at the beginning, but charge with white knives at the beginning, and don't play the trick of playing the guns, the losses may be reduced by half, after all, the Su zhì of the Northern Army is there, if you really charge as soon as you come up, they will be frightened, and they will definitely not be able to hit the previous firepower net.

But in any case, the casualties were indeed too heavy, and although the capture of the first trench was considered a small progress, it was actually a defeat for the Southern Army.

Robert. Lee personally came to Pickett's army, and after comforting the wounded, he also had a general understanding of the previous battle, especially after hearing Pickett's statement, and realized that the defenders of this cemetery ridge were hard bones.

Now put Robert. There are two choices before Lee:

The first option is to continue to storm here, the advantage is that one of the enemy's positions has been taken, which can be regarded as tearing open a hole in the opponent. And the previous deployment does not need to be changed much, and it is more prepared.

The second option is to abandon the hard bone of the cemetery ridge and attack in other directions, the advantage is that it can avoid the real and attack the weak, but it will be a waste of time to readjust the deployment, and there is no guarantee that it will be easy to fight in other places.

Follow Robert. Li's original intention, he hoped to fight in a different place, after all, the firepower here was somewhat unexpected. The casualties were also a little too great for Robert . Lee couldn't afford it.

However, General Pickett insisted on continuing the attack on the cemetery ridge, ostensibly because a great deal of effort had already been put into the area, and it was a pity to give up. But in reality, Pickett just wanted revenge, after all, he had too many of his comrades killed in the previous battle, and if he didn't get back to this field, he was really upset.

Considering that other places may not be easy to fight. In addition, the location of the cemetery ridge is really important, and if the attack is frustrated, giving up may have an impact on morale. Lee decided to continue storming the cemetery ridge.

Considering the tenacity of this place on the ridge of the cemetery. Robert. Lee decisively threw his Sharps army into the battlefield, transferred a brigade to Pickett's command, and continued to mobilize artillery to carry out a more intense artillery bombardment here.

That's it. After a full day of rest, at eight o'clock in the morning of the next day, 200 guns of the Union Army opened fire one after another. The three-hour assault on the Cemetery ridge position took out almost half of the shells of the entire Northern Virginia Regiment.

At eleven o'clock in the morning, the shelling stopped, and the infantry attack began.

This time, it was no longer an ordinary infantry brigade that was at the head, but an elite Sharps infantry brigade, which spread out row after row of battle formations, lined up in dense formations, and slowly pressed towards the second trench position under the beating of snare drums.

However, although this infantry brigade still marched in line, it did not go too close, but walked to the fence, that is, when it was about 300 meters away from the second trench position, it stopped advancing, and then began to shoot on the spot, taking advantage of the long range and high accuracy of its Sharps rifle, and shooting at a long distance.

It is true that General Mead arranged a stepped position, although it can form a staggered firepower network, but because it is divided into front and rear, the overall range is limited.

That is to say, although General Mead also had a Sharps rifle regiment, because they were arranged in the third layer of positions, plus the distance of the second layer of positions in front, in fact, the effective range of these Sharps rifles could only hit about 250 meters in front of the second trench position, and this distance was also the effective firing distance of those smoothbore guns in the second position.

In other words, General Mead's firepower network was arranged with 250 meters in front of the forward position as the death line, that is, he did not distribute the firepower evenly, but concentrated all of them in a few local locations, that is, on a few death lines, in order to maximize the density of firepower and increase the lethality.

Therefore, the real line of death is the distance between 250 and 100 meters in front of the defensive position, and if you do not reach this distance, you will not be able to reach the range of your own firepower net, and if you cross this distance of 100 meters, the power of the artillery will not be brought into play, because the range of General Mead's artillery is adjusted between 150 meters and 250 meters, and this distance is the best shooting distance for grenade shots.

It's a pity that the commander this time, General Pickett, was a little too conservative during the attack, and he had already seen the advantages and disadvantages of General Mead's arrangement, so he didn't attack as hard as before.

Therefore, Pickett asked the Sharps brigade to shoot at the opponent at a distance of 300 meters, using the range of his Sharps rifle to kill and injure the opponent in large numbers.

Pickett's idea was correct, but unfortunately he forgot one point, that is, although the range of the opponent's musket is not as good as his own, they are in a trench, and the exposed area is smaller, so even if his own range is enough, it will not be able to cause much effective damage to the enemy.

On the contrary, the Northern Army, although the range of muskets and scattered bullets is not enough, their artillery still has solid bullets, as well as flowering shells, and the range of flowering bullets and solid bullets is more than 400 meters, which is more than enough to deal with these troops.

As a result, the defenders began to use solid bullets and kept bombarding the Sharps Army of the Union Army, although the density was not enough, but once it was concentrated, it was a string, and the damage and deterrence caused were no less than the damage of the Southern Army to the Northern Army.

That's it. The two sides have become a situation of confrontation again, both the northern army and the southern army are constantly bleeding, but neither has a decisive advantage.

The two sides just played back and forth and shot each other, but the result was until five o'clock in the afternoon, and there was no winner or loser, and the battle line still could not be pushed further.

At this moment, a sudden news came, and that was Thomas. The Stonewall Brigade, the ace unit of the Second Corps led by General Jackson, had captured Cemetery Ridge half an hour earlier.

The news came. It made Pickett feel disgraced, because according to the plan, this is the main direction of attack, and a lot of artillery support is also given to Pickett. Jackson's Stonewall Brigade was nothing more than a diversionary attack. As a result, the diversion attack that did not receive much fire support made a breakthrough, and he was the main point of attack. But the situation has not improved so far.

Knowing this, Pickett decided to stop playing sparring slowly, but to launch a resolute and effective attack, to put it bluntly, a white-knuckle battle.

But. Pickett also knew that the Sharps Brigade was Robert. Lee's heart was so bad that he didn't order the brigade to charge, but transferred another ordinary infantry brigade up, and then divided the Sharps brigade into regiments. Provide fire cover for your own attacking forces.

In order to strengthen the offensive firepower, Pickett also transferred thirty artillery pieces from the rear and pushed them all the way to a distance of three hundred meters in front of the second trench. There's going to be a close-range shelling.

After arranging, Pickett gave an order, first with a cannon and a platoon of guns, and then again launched a regimental white-knuckle charge.

This time, Pickett learned the previous lesson, and instead of letting the troops line up and move forward slowly, and then first fire a row of guns before charging, but directly ordered them to charge at a distance of 300 meters.

Not to mention, he did this, it was really useful, although he still suffered a wave of losses, losing more than 200 people, but he still rushed forward in the end.

However, when they rushed to the position, the trench was long gone, and the soldiers who had been shooting in the trench were long gone.

It turned out that the commander in the second trench was timid, and after he found that the other party was so far away, he did not let anyone shoot, and directly ordered to escape.

At that time, the two sides were still separated by more than 300 meters, and if they ran away in advance, they still had time, so these soldiers pulled out from behind in an orderly manner, and they also had time to bring a small bench for their feet.

It was precisely because of the lack of firing from the trench troops that the losses of the attacking side were so small, and most of their losses were caused by the artillery in the rear and the Sharps marksman regiment, and the losses caused by the smoothbore guns were negligible.

Because the attack of the Southern Army was a back attack, and there were still a large number of traps in front of it, and it was still under artillery fire, the speed of the attack was not fast, and the result was that they laid a second trench position, but did not cause any actual losses to the Northern Army.

Upon discovering this, Pickett gritted his teeth and ordered to continue the charge, continuing to charge with a white knuckle, and be sure to capture this damn mountain.

Although it is said that there are five trenches in this place, it is the first three that really have the ability to block, that is, once the first three trenches are broken, the second two will be easier, because there are not too many traps between the back trenches.

That is to say, the two trenches in the rear are actually just playing the role of a firepower point, and the defensive capability cannot be compared with the first three trenches, so the real line of defense is only the first three, if the third line of defense is broken, the two lines of defense behind will lose room for maneuver and will be broken sooner or later.

Therefore, after the first two lines were breached, the third trench was the key, and General Mead also attached great importance to it, so to speak, a large number of troops were invested in this third trench, and also into the gendarmerie that enforced battlefield discipline, and it was necessary to block the enemy in the third line of defense.

In this way, when one side was determined to continue the attack, and the other side was also determined to defend, the two sides once again had a fierce collision on this third line of defense.

The cemetery ridge is actually not very large, and the extent of the deployment of troops is limited, especially after attacking halfway up the mountain, the width of the battle line begins to become smaller, and it is impossible to deploy too large troops.

In this way, the Southern Army could only attack one regiment at a time, but the third trench was very wide, and there was enough strength for another brigade in it, plus the firepower points of the two rear lines of defense could still cover 200 meters in front of the third line, which made the defensive strength of the third line of defense far greater than the front two lines of defense.

The biggest problem is that the range of artillery in the rear of the Southern Army is no longer enough for this third line of defense, so if it is reasonable, Pickett should wait for the artillery in the rear to adjust in place, and then launch an attack under the cover of artillery, but Pickett really didn't want to wait, he wanted to take the hill before dark, so he hurriedly threw himself into the infantry attack.

The soldiers of the Northern Virginia Regiment were worthy of heroic tenacity, and at the sound of an order, they charged forward in the face of the dense fire from the front, and after paying huge casualties, they rushed forward in the second wave of charge, and soon launched a brutal hand-to-hand combat with the defenders of the Northern Army on the third line of defense.

According to previous experience, once the hand-to-hand combat, the Northern Army will be defeated, but unfortunately, this time the Southern Army encountered hard stubble, because the main force of the Northern Army in the third line of defense is the same heroic and good "Brooklyn 14th Militia Regiment"! (To be continued......)