The flock depends on the leader of the sheep, and if the head sheep falls off the cliff, the sheep will jump down. In fact, this is a strong sense of collectivity. The group consciousness can easily dominate the will of the individual, and even make the members of the group forget the instinct of fear of death. Even if some individuals are aware of the danger, they have no room for struggle, and can only be pushed by the group and jump into the abyss.

Social creatures are influenced by group consciousness, and highly social humans are no exception.

In a brutal war on Earth, 60,000 soldiers fell to the guns of heavy machine guns in one day, and behind the tragic casualties was a cognitive error made by the army commander, and this mistake was infinitely magnified by the group consciousness.

This is true of the wisest of humans, let alone centaurs.

In addition to the Blue-Eyed Clan, the newly appointed Great Khan Porta summoned the fierce commanders of the other tribes above the Silver Rank to jointly expand the escape route in the southeast corner. On the one hand, it did this so that the centaur army could break through from the southeast as soon as possible and avoid stampede and confusion. On the other hand, it has not yet secured the position of the Great Khan, and has the khans, commanders, and tyrannical commanders of the silver rank with it by its side, which has the meaning of coercing hostages.

Even if the centaur army successfully broke through, Porta and Alita did not want the tribal alliance to break up like this, otherwise Porta would only be the Great Khan for a day. The Khans and Commanders of the Tribes, delaying the end of the war, and leading the Sidon Centaurs to fight a few more battles with the humans, as long as they do not make serious mistakes, the Great Khan of Porta and Alita will be worthy of their reputation.

Only by kidnapping the heads of the tribes, hundreds of thousands of Sidon centaur warriors will run with the Great Khan.

Porta and Alita thought so and did so. But they missed the centaur commander of the Blue-Eyed tribe, which was also the head horse.

Waves of cow dung incendiary bombs fell from the sky, dragging thick smoke and smashing into the southeast corner of the centaur camp, although the power was small, but it ignited the animal skin tent on the back of the centaurs, bringing a choking foul smoke. The flamed centaurs jumped wildly, causing panic to spread, and the otherwise smooth evacuation operation suddenly became chaotic.

It's nothing, the range of the trebuchets on the eastern front of humanity is more than seven hundred meters, and it won't take much time for Porta and the commanders to knock out the trebuchets. As long as they destroy half of the trebuchets, the evacuation of the southeast passage can restore order.

The swarm of human knights overcame the Blue-Eyed Centaur and charged the centaur camp. It's not a big problem either. Although the centaur commanders above the silver rank are concentrated near the passage in the southeast corner, they will not be able to run back for a while and a half to compete with the extraordinary powerhouses of the human race. However, the usual brutal commanders of the tribes have already led ordinary centaur warriors to maneuver in a ring defense. The knightly cluster consisting of transcendent knights, knights, mid- and high-ranking paladins, and battle priests was only more than 3,000 people, and this number of human powerhouses could only be counted as a whole in a battle of this scale. Ordinary centaurs can't beat this group of human powerhouses, won't they run around them?

Duke Baselius opened the passage in the northeast corner of the defensive line, and some of the centaur warriors ran out of the gap in the northeast direction under pressure from the human knights. The Great Khan Porta looked quite happy, the heads of the tribes were all by his side, and the centaur warriors fled first from the other direction, going around in a big circle, getting rid of the pursuit of the human army, and still taking the initiative to run over and find the leaders of their respective tribes.

The Blue-Eyed Commander led the rest of the clan members to withdraw from the battlefield from the northeast corner, and everything changed.

More than 20,000 blue-eyed centaurs galloped across the battlefield, and the 160,000 elite soldiers on the western front really didn't dare to act rashly. In battle, it is not necessary to win the battle with more people, and the key to victory lies in the effective use of space. Everyone occupies a certain amount of space, and the 160,000 army is all gone, and more than half of them can't touch the centaurs at all, which will hinder the movement of the Templar army, which is equivalent to serving the centaurs as a shield.

Who says that a two-legged one can't run four-legged?

As soon as the centaurs in charge of the broken were gone, the 160,000-strong army attacked on all fronts, attacking the left and right flanks of the centaur camp. Due to the elongation of the battle line, almost every soldier showed his combat effectiveness, and with their excellent armor and the rain of arrows of the centaurs, they rushed forward, first threw two rounds of javelins, and then killed them, and fought the centaurs in hand-to-hand combat.

Compared to medium-sized humans, centaurs need more space to fight. They could have taunted with the knight cluster, but as the 160,000 elite infantry and 60,000 Templars squeezed their battle space, the knights' killing efficiency doubled, and the centaurs panicked. There were also some ferocious centaurs who led their circular arrow formations into cluster charges, and fought a few small counterattacks. However, they could not form a cluster size of tens of thousands, and only two or three thousand centaurs were quickly wiped out by the human army. Coupled with the fact that the Blue-Eyed Clan followed the Touma out of the encirclement, many centaurs almost instinctively followed the Blue-Eyed Clan.

The human army was like a clenched fist, squeezing the sponge hard, and the centaur was like water in the sponge, flowing out of the gap in the fist.

Porta, the khans of the tribes, and the commanders were all pushed away by the centaurs. In this case, they had no choice but to run out with the centaur warriors.

Generals cannot control the army, but are coerced by the army, which is called defeat.

More and more centaurs fled, the pressure on the human army became less and less, and the soldiers on the north and south flanks once again blocked the escape route, and the remaining centaurs became turtles in the urn. The trebuchets and ballistae of the eastern front were in full swing, and the incendiary bombardment took turns, turning countless centaurs into fire horses, but terror and confusion were deadlier than fire. The chaos and fear spells that the battle priest used on the centaurs at this time had a surprisingly good effect, and a single spell could make a small group of centaurs kill indiscriminately.

Fear and despair spread in the army like a plague, so that the soldiers had to blindly slash and kill, this is called bombing the battalion.

After the rout, the centaurs came to bomb the camp again, and the centaurs were already weak, and a few sober centaurs sacrificed their lives to attack the tortoiseshell knife formation on the western front, which was also a suicide action without suspense.

Ordinary soldiers and paladins could not see the whole situation of the battlefield and only buried their heads in the battle. The High Knights and High Clergy saw the bombed camp on the battlefield for the first time, and while they were amazed, they did not forget to protect the flanks of the army.

The Knights of Radiance and the Knights of the Blood Wolves broke away from the battlefield and joined up with the Knights of the Gripon and the Knights of the Moon Bear on the side of Duke Barcelius, as well as the Knights of the Iron Wall of Dordor and the Knights of the Swift Dragon of Gombis, and hovered on the left flank of the battlefield to prevent the ferocious centaurs from leading their men to attack the flank and rear of the human army.

In fact, Porta and the Centaur Khan have no intention of counterattacking the human army right now. The Blue-Eyed tribe left the dust, abducting tens of thousands of centaur warriors from various tribes, apparently not intending to join the Great Khan of Polta. The centaur khans of the various tribes scolded the blue-eyed commander as a traitor, and at the same time encouraged the Great Khan of Porta to punish the blue-eyed traitor.

For them, the priority is to rein in the centaurs who have been abducted by the Blue-Eyed Clan, rather than fight the human knights to the end.

The blue-eyed commander knew that Porta would not let him go, and he fled north with the centaur army without stopping. Polta took the centaur Khans in a big circle, and in the end, instead of chasing the Blue-Eyed tribe, he chose to move east.

In short, the centaurs on both sides ran away without a trace, and the human army had no worries and went all out to kill the trapped centaurs.

In the evening, the last centaur fell in a pool of blood, and the soldiers let out a shout of victory.

In this battle, more than 7,000 coalition troops were killed, more than 3,000 were seriously injured and disabled, and more than 11,000 troops were lost. However, the human alliance annihilated more than 48,000 centaurs in total, which is a great victory that humans have never achieved over orcs in thousands of years.

Of course, the war was not over yet, but this victory meant that the Sassan Empire switched from strategic defense to strategic offensive, and the human coalition gained the initiative in the war.

The soldiers who participated in the battle returned to the barracks to recuperate and prepare to hunt down the centaurs who had fled the battlefield the next day, the garrisons of the castles, barracks, and sentry posts came out to clean the battlefield, and the knights were responsible for keeping vigil on the battlefield to prevent accidents.

The leaders of the coalition gathered around a bonfire to discuss the gains and losses of the battle and the subsequent changes in the war.

Pastor Kent's face was flushed by the firelight, and he said in a loud and uplifted voice, "Praise be to our lord! For millennia, we have been the only commander to command and win large-scale battles. To tell you the truth, neither I nor any of you here have any experience in the Great Battle, and it was the Supreme Lord of Light who guided us to victory!"

Patriarch Friedes applauded: "Brother Kent is right. In the past, human soldiers were always at a disadvantage when they clashed with centaurs. Without the support of high-ranking knights and high-ranking clergy, 1,000 cavalry against 1,000 centaurs would basically lose, and 8,000 cavalry against 80,000 centaurs, and soldiers would definitely lose. We always think that centaurs are inherently stronger than humans, that one centaur can be worth two soldiers, and that if you want to defeat a centaur, you have to put in more troops. And in this battle, both long-range fireball projection and psychic punishment magic played a vital role, and thousands of centaurs died from the attacks and trampedes of their companions. ”

"This is the Lord's punishment of the orcs through our hands, and it is also a precious revelation that the Lord has given us. ”

The Patriarch paused and asked with a smile, "Brother Kent, how did you come up with the idea of using trebuchets to throw incendiary bombs of cow dung into a concentrated centaur army?"

Kent habitually touched his neat short beard and said with a smile: "I have lived in Raven Town for a long time, and I have a friendship with His Highness Randall. The ant plague is a major problem in the Centaur Hills, and His Highness Randall often discusses with me tactics to deal with the ant tide. Because Ant-Man is afraid of fire, the fortifications of the Centaur Hills pay more attention to fire attack. Cow dung incendiary bomb is the standing war material of the three anti-ant city walls, it is light in weight, easy to transport, the projection distance is much farther than stones, it is very effective in dealing with ant tides, and it is a centaur...... If you hit your head, you will be stunned by the smell of cow dung at most, but who wants centaurs to like to carry tents?"

Emperor Frederick, the two Dukes of Barcelius, and His Royal Highness the Knights of Radiance all looked at Kent in silence, and they fully expressed their intentions with patiently waiting eyes.

Throwing rocks and incendiary grenades should have a similar effect on centaurs. On the battlefield, the number of centaurs burned to death is actually very limited, and if you replace the incendiary bombs with stone shells, the centaurs killed directly by the trebuchet may be more. But the negative effects of an incendiary bomb are far more terrible than its lethality. The Centaurs kill each other, starting with their burning companions and ending with all the centaurs in the rear. Initially, the centaurs tried their best to extinguish the flames on their companions' backs, and they could endure being kicked twice. When the front of the camp was oppressed by the human line, the space became narrow, because of the fear of the flames burning on their bodies, the frightened centaurs killed their companions, whether they were burned or not, they caught the centaurs around them and killed them indiscriminately, leading to the final bombing of the camp.

The idea of a Kent priest using a cow dung incendiary bomb was truly brilliant. However, it is not a brilliant idea that His Highness values, but the principles of the battle, or the know-how that must be mastered.

Since the vassal system, there have been very few large-scale battles between the human kingdom and the orcs. There are two internal and external factors in this, on the one hand, the long-term conflict between the Pope's line and the power of the knights and nobles, the clerical legions and the secular lords cannot unite to fight, and on the other hand, except for the goblin kings, the vast majority of orc kings do not have the objective conditions to launch a general battle. The infiltration, destruction, reproduction, and expulsion of small orcs are the main causes of humanity's continuous loss of land. According to the needs of the real situation, the human war mode basically applies the two methods of knight squad anti-infiltration and castle joint defense. It has been likened to a wolf pack plus a wolf's nest tactic.

The knight squad of the Sassan Empire is equipped with 1 knight, 4 trainee knights, 1 battle priest, 6 paladins and 20 elite cavalry, a total of 32 people, and can be expanded by 68 cavalry to a full strength of 100 people. The 8,000-strong legion of 800 people is already the largest combat cluster in the human realm, led by a golden knight.

Once a legion of the Sassan Empire was wiped out by the legendary centaur Orogar, and the entire human kingdom was shocked.

If it weren't for the Sidon Centaurs' brains pumping and collectively attacking the Eastern Frontier Territory, the Radiant Knights and the Sassan Empire would not have gathered the 400,000 troops of the human kingdom to fight a decisive battle.

It now appears that the Centaurs launched an ill-advised all-out war as a conspiracy by the Centaur Gods to unify the Sidon Khanate, by the way, to clean up the surplus goblin slaves in their territory.

In any case, Centaurs and humans have never fought a large-scale battle.

Centaurs' poor logistics make them have no chance of winning, in fact, centaurs are not ready to fight humans, they should give birth to cubs, they should grab tents, and after all these things, they are ready to go home for the winter. They relied on their four legs to run fast, and they didn't pay attention to the short-legged human army at all, but the Sassan Empire would not let the centaurs escape easily.

The strategy proposed by the Reverend Kent was new and bold. He organized the middle and high-level transcendents into separate groups of knights, with the Templar army as the main offensive force, and the elite cavalry as a reserve, which was put into the battlefield in batches. This style of play completely overturned the traditional wolf pack and wolf den tactics, but everyone listened carefully to Kent's opinion, and after careful study, no loopholes were found, and then they agreed to adopt his combat strategy.

Kent's tactics proved to be effective, and very effective, with coalition casualties far lower than the centaurs.

Defeating the centaurs was what everyone expected, but why did they win so beautifully?

"Big Mouth," Kent asked, eyebrows fluttering, "You've all heard of the Grand Army strategy that Victor has been pondering, right?"

Everyone has heard of Victor's tinkering with the strategy of the Grand Army. The Randall family recruited mercenaries to enlist the support of Pope Clement first, and the major forces initially regarded this matter as an after-dinner conversation, until Victor's prestige grew, and he really paid attention to his Grand Army strategy.

However, the Grand Lords generally believed that the political significance of the Grand Legion was higher than its actual combat value. Because the Grand Army itself represented the prelude to the era of the Great Exploration, the displaced groups were legally included in the development process.

As for how much combat effectiveness the mercenary corps can have? No one can say this question without being tested in actual combat.

Emperor Frederick turned his face and asked incredulously, "Kent, you mean...... His Highness Randall has perfected the principles of battle of the Grand Legion?"