"The whole army is on alert, change the shield wall array!"

The earth trembled, and the sound of horses' hooves was familiar, and there was no one more familiar with the movement of the three forces besieging Orleans, the French cavalry.

The siege has only been half a month, how could it be possible to reach the Orleans battlefield so quickly with the mobility of France.

"Damn, Charles VII is still hiding heavy cavalry," said the Burgundian commander through gritted teeth, and the dust was flying, and in a blink of an eye, the cavalry unit led by the Count of Dinoy had appeared in sight, worse than the Burgundian commander had imagined.

If it is an ordinary cavalry, he will not have any fear, light cavalry and infantry collide, and the advantage is not as great as imagined, especially the infantry phalanx lined up, it is difficult for light cavalry to disrupt the formation, once they fall into it, they will wait for death.

The question arises...... The French hoplites, the trump card among the cavalry, are supposed to have long been the tears of the times, and the shield wall array is like tissue paper in front of them.

The prevalence of cavalry in France is far beyond the imagination of normal people, don't think that the knight king is from England, just think that England is the strongest place for cavalry.

As a Frenchman, after seeing the English cavalry, he can despise the English cavalry very sarcastically, and when it comes to cavalry, there is no one in the current era to compare with the Upper France.

Once the main force of the war was the cavalry, and no matter how the defeat was, they never gave up the cavalry.

A hundred years ago, at the Battle of Crecy, less than 20,000 English invaders managed to kill nearly 30,000 French heavy and light cavalry, and more than 20,000 recruits.

The defeat did not make France regret it, but deepened the study of armor, so as to transform the whole body armor, that is, the peak of heavy cavalry.

Select high-quality war horses, only riders who meet the standard of body strength are allowed to wear them, the pinnacle of cavalry. Heavy cavalry.

A good warhorse is able to carry the armor of itself and its rider without losing speed, and the double weight makes the heavy cavalry not have a lasting combat effectiveness, but the impact power reaches its peak.

Only the French understood the horror of the hoplites, no class could confront the French hoplites on the battlefield, and the light infantry could not even withstand a round of charge.

And the decline of the French cavalry also began with the hoplites.

Nearly 20 years ago, in the Battle of Agincourt, 5,000 remnants of archers killed more than 5,000 French heavy cavalry. More than six thousand light cavalry.

To this day, he did not understand how to do it, the heavy cavalry was the pinnacle of the French cavalry, which was the pinnacle of the French cavalry, with full body armor and even the horses covered with battle armor, which was difficult to penetrate even with armor-piercing arrows.

The English longbowmen, despite their excellent range, were unlikely to do much damage.

It was also from that battle that the hoplites began to be abandoned in France, and even the tactics of the cavalry began to change.

The defeat made France realize that cavalry was not one of the all-powerful things, but more importantly, it was a cost. The time and money consumed by the heavy cavalry is unimaginable.

The war between the two countries lasted for a hundred years, and the humiliating treaty signed by Charles VI was a large indemnity, making it difficult for France to afford the heavy cavalry.

Now nearly half of the territory has been lost, and the country is even more unstable, let alone to support the hoplites.

In the past ten years, there have been almost no heavy cavalry, and light cavalry and simplified heavy cavalry will still appear, but I didn't expect one to appear here.

This is also the stuff at the bottom of the box of Charles VII, and the French royal family does not have a lot of money. Even some nobles are not inferior to him.

With only 2,000 hoplites, Charles VII was prepared for the final stage of the counterattack against England. But the Orleans affair is too important.

Once Orleans is breached, it is useless to reload cavalry, and he himself has to consider fleeing to a foreign country to take refuge, and there is no point in keeping it, so he simply sends it to the expeditionary force together.

"Cavalrymen, let the enemy see how powerful we are!" A roar rang out. In the blink of an eye, the hoplites were already in sight.

"Archer, shoot!" The commander of Burgundy was also gritting his teeth, and their troops were not equipped with too many archers, and the bows and arrows fired were relatively sparse, and they did not even cause any damage when they hit the heavy armor.

Heavy cavalry is more than just a whole body. Even the face is covered by a mask, which cannot be said to be without dead ends, but it is enough to protect against most bows and arrows.

The earth shook more and more obviously, and the faces of the Burgundian soldiers standing in the front row gradually turned pale, and no one could not change their faces in the face of the heavily armed hoplites.

"Kill!" With a roar that shook the sky, the foremost man was larger than the rest of the cavalry and the horses under him, and the most obvious was the knight without a helmet who was the first to break into the camp of the Burgundian soldiers.

A large hammer swung out, and in an instant, more than a dozen figures were hammered away, blood splattered on the faces of the other soldiers.

"Count of Dinoy" The Burgundian commander whispered, the ferocious fighting style, the knight who rushed to the front, would definitely not be the candidate for the commander in other periods, but in the current era, he was the most suitable candidate for the commander.

I didn't expect him to reappear on the battlefield after he disappeared.

"Hold on! As long as the first wave is withheld, the hoplites have nothing to fear! ”

The commander of Burgundy was shouting that the danger of heavy cavalry was the impact force, and as long as there was no speed, it would be much easier to deal with.

At a glance, you can see that the opponent's number is less than half of your own, and if you resist the impact and surround the opponent, you may not be able to annihilate the opponent.

But morale is an indescribable weapon on the battlefield, and as soon as it comes into contact, the Burgundian ranks tend to collapse.

High-quality and selected war horses, the position of the horse's back is close to two meters, the weight of the rider, the war horse, and the armor is more than 1,000 kilograms, what kind of terrifying impact will it achieve at a speed of 70 kilometers per hour?

As soon as the two armies came into contact, the shield wall of Burgundy was instantly destroyed, and it was difficult for them to effectively stop the heavily armored cavalry.

Blood splattered on the battlefield at all times, and knights in full body armor were able to slash and slash in defiance of attacks around them, but not absolutely.

With the exception of Count Denoy, even Demes and Bertrand did not understand the power of the hoplites, who had long since disappeared for various reasons by the time they appeared on the battlefield.

If Joan of Arc understood the power of the hoplites, he would not have asked Count Dinoir to bring reinforcements to support, but would have tried his best to hold back the troops who came to help.

Led by the Count of Dinenoy, the Burgundian army's front military formation was about to be cut through by hoplites soon after the battle began.

There is a reason for the impact of heavy cavalry, and there is also another part, the siege troops are mostly light infantry, and it is difficult to cause effective blocking in the face of heavy cavalry. (To be continued.) )

PS: Although it is an exaggeration, France was undoubtedly the strongest cavalry country in the Middle Ages, and before the Hundred Years' War, it was an era of cavalry