After the war, the Wei army cleaned up the battlefield and counted the casualties of both the enemy and us.

Ran Min was surprised to find that the casualty ratio of the Wei army and the Persian army was one to two!

Are the Persians so strong?

You must know that the soldiers who can serve as the expeditionary force are all sharp soldiers who are one out of ten, and after so many years of war, the veterans who can survive are even stronger. Therefore, whether it was against the Gupta Dynasty or in the war against Tuyuhun, the ratio of casualties between the Wei army and the enemy was basically one to four or one to five.

What's more, it's one to ten!

But now the Persians are so powerful?

When I found the commander of the Persian army, Phildusi, I found out that the 50,000 Persian troops were all the elite of the Sassanid Dynasty, no wonder they were so capable of fighting.

"Your Majesty, what to do with these pawns?"

Ran Min thought about it, the slaughter was unnecessary, and now the logistics supply of the Wei army was still possible, and there was no need to do such a thing that would lose the conscience of heaven and be angry with the people. But it is absolutely impossible to release these pawns.

After thinking about it, he decided to bring these soldiers back to China to build bridges and pave roads, and serve as coolies.

If necessary, you can also migrate overseas, after all, Australia and the American continent are too small in population, and your sons may not be very happy to rule in these places where birds don't!

After annihilating the Persian army, Ran Min led his army to attack Fulousha City.

Under the ravages of the red-coated cannons, Fulou Shacheng was crumbling and was soon conquered by the Wei army.

Jidora dared to rebel, Ran Min did not let him go, directly delayed him, punished his nine clans, killed all the men, and left the women to confiscate. The women who were fortunate to be Ran Min or were beautiful could be brought back to the Forbidden City by him, while other women were to be auctioned off as goods.

This kind of royal woman with status, I believe that those scholars and merchants must be very interested.

Ran Min actually didn't want to start slavery, because this was driving a car backwards in history, but there was no way, otherwise, he could only kill these people. So in this way, Ran Min became the biggest slave trader!

Shapur II, who was far away in Ctesiphon, heard that the Kushan Empire had been destroyed by the Wei army, and the 50,000 elite soldiers of the Sassanid Dynasty sent over were all wiped out, and he couldn't help but be furious, but it didn't take long for Shapur II to feel even worse news came - Sima Xu killed the Persian envoy, and Khorezm completely fell to the side of the Wei Empire and submitted to the Wei Empire!

The current situation was very unfavorable for the Sassanids.

But Shapur II was a generation of heroes after all, and he quickly calmed down after the rage, and according to the informants, the Wei army had been frequently infested on the northeastern border of the Sassanid Empire, and such a large-scale military operation could not be concealed.

It seems that Ran Min is "not enough to swallow elephants", and after destroying the Kushan Empire, he also wanted to destroy the Sassanid Dynasty.

"I must let the Wei people know how powerful our Sassanid Dynasty is! Ran Min will pay a heavy price for his arrogance and ambition! Shapur II said.

The Wei Empire was no longer just a challenge to the hegemony of the Sassanid Empire in Central Asia, he wanted to conquer the Sassanid Empire, like Alexander, and establish a super-empire across the three continents of Asia, Africa and Europe.

So Shapur II quickly dispatched his troops and gathered an army of 400,000 to prepare for a life-and-death battle with the Wei army that came from afar.

The time has entered March of the twenty-fifth year of the emperor's reign, and after several months of military warfare and consolidation of the three major provinces of Kushan Province, Western Satrap Province and Vagataka Province that have just been conquered, Ran Min personally led an army of 300,000 to attack the Sassanid Dynasty.

The Wei army attacked the city all the way, and quickly moved south, where it met the Persian army at Nishapur.

Both the Wei and Persian armies set up phalanxes and were ready to fight. It's just that their phalanxes are very different.

In order to deal with the formation of the Persian army, the Wei army set up a kind of phalanx with a well-founded advance and retreat, and even used chariots.

The front row of the Wei army is a row of chariots, equipped with sharp knives, strong crossbows, two wheels, and individual soldiers. This kind of chariot is an assault vehicle, specially used to impact the enemy's formation, after 10,000 arrows are fired, the chariot rushes into formation, no matter how strict the formation is difficult to maintain.

This was followed by three rows of strong crossbow formations, followed by two phalanx of spears, each with a command chariot in the middle, then three rows of strong crossbow formations, then two spear formations, then four guerrilla formations, and finally the commander-in-chief and the general.

The two flanks of the phalanx were cavalry formations, which were responsible for raiding and attacking the two flanks of the enemy formation.

In this infantry phalanx of the Wei army, the spearmen played the role of repelling the enemy, using the advantage of length to kill and wound the enemy, and the spearmen were behind the spearmen, and when the formation of the spearmen was disrupted, they used the extremely strong thrust ability to push out the penetrating enemy in a smaller assault formation.

When the Phalanx is in a melee, the halberdier joins the battle as a single soldier to clear out the enemy in the array.

No matter what happens, these soldiers have to move forward with their spears in their arms, the front row falls, and the back row immediately fills up, keeping the phalanx unchanged. It is conceivable that in order to turn thousands, tens of thousands of people into an impregnable phalanx, the soldiers had to undergo rigorous training. In terms of weapons and combat methods, spearmen are the most lethal infantry unit.

The head of the gun is like a forest, the phalanx is like a mountain, and the huge impact is unstoppable.

And the Macedonian phalanx on the side of the Persian army is not bad at all.

The infantry phalanx of the Persians was arranged in a long horizontal formation, 16 men in depth, with large gaps between the soldiers, the Macedonian spears were usually held 3 to 6 feet from the end of the handle, the spearheads of the 4 to 6 rows of soldiers at the head of the phalanx were pointed forward, and the back rows of soldiers held their spears in a different posture, some inclined to the ground.

The first three and the last one in each column were in key positions, so brave and skilled soldiers were selected.

In battle, the entire phalanx often ran forward in a sturdy and dense formation, like a battering ram ramming the enemy's ranks.

In order to protect the flanks and rear, the lightly armed spearmen were lined up in a horizontal line of about eight men at the back of the phalanx before the battle began, while the auxiliaries (mostly heavy infantry orderlies and grain collectors) were lined up in stragglers in front of the phalanx, with cavalry and a certain number of lightly armed spearmen on the flanks.

This kind of phalanx had to work closely with the cavalry, and it was not easy to win by relying on the phalanx alone, and the Persians would line up the phalanx in an oblique formation, that is, a right-angled triangle or right-angled body shape, with the oblique face outward, so that they would encircle the enemy from a certain side according to specific needs.

In front of such a Macedonian phalanx, the enemy would not be killed immediately and would flee in all directions, as sharp as a lawnmower, unless the Macedonian phalanx was charged.

The Macedonian phalanx can be united as a whole, push the back to the front, and then rush through it like a wall, most of the enemy will be trapped by it, and do their best to avoid many spearheads, and this is exactly what the Macedonian general wants!

The enemy was placed on a large board, and the knife was the Macedonian cavalry.

And the historical Macedonian cavalry was very strong, better than the Roman Republic on the whole, which gave them the ability to confront and defeat (drag) the enemy's cavalry, and then go around the head and always hit hard in the back, like chopping meat on a cutting board with a knife.

This requires a coordinated ride on foot, neither late nor early.

Seeing the strict phalanx on the side of the Persian army, Ran Cao, the king of Chu who followed Ran Min, couldn't help but sigh with emotion: "These Persian phalanxes are really different." Our iron horsemen rushed over, but they were all hedgehogs! ”

", do you know how to crack this phalanx of the Persians?"

"This ......" Ran Cao smiled dumbly and said: "Father, the son knows that this infantry phalanx set up by the Persians is a Macedonian phalanx. But the specific method of cracking the problem really doesn't know. It is said that the army of the Romans cracked this Macedonian phalanx! ”

Ran Min stood on the carriage, pointed to the infantry phalanx of the Persians on the opposite side and said with a smile: "The Macedonian phalanx of the Persians is indeed powerful. It is highly mobile and can charge at the enemy with a full horizontal formation, dealing a heavier blow to the enemy who has not yet recovered from the cavalry attack. ”

"However, compared to the heavy infantry phalanx, the Macedonian phalanx was slightly inferior in defense, but the attack was much sharper. As far as I know, the Athenians, who had been defeated in the Macedonian phalanx, described it this way: Every soldier who attacked the Macedonians had to deal with at least ten spearheads at the same time! ”

"It is not difficult to understand why the Athenians were quickly routed by the Macedonians, and they could not escape the pursuit of the Macedonian phalanx, whose heavily armored soldiers could not move as fast as the Macedonians in formation."

Not long after, Ran Cao suddenly had an idea and said, "Father, the son knows!" ”

"What do you know?"

"Restrain this Macedonian phalanx!"

"Oh? Let's talk about it. ”

"Father, you see, this Macedonian phalanx of the Persians is obviously flawed! It is that once the flank is broken through by our army, it is difficult for the spearmen in the spear formation to resist the attack of the swordsmen. Moreover, the ability of this phalanx to deal with dense arrow formations is weak, whether it is a light cavalry archery or an infantry group, as long as it can disperse the light infantry, the spearmen in the array are almost at the mercy of shooting! ”

Hearing this, Ran Min's eyes couldn't help but shine: ", you can be a handsome talent!" ”

Ran Min is well aware of the fatal flaw of this Macedonian phalanx.

But not long after Ran Cao came into contact with this Macedonian phalanx, he was able to gain insight into its flaws, and I have to say that this kid is really a military genius!

First of all, this kind of phalanx is not an all-round formation, and if you have an all-round defense of an all-round formation, how do you think about it?

Everyone stood around a center facing all sides. But what can you do but stand still?

The battlefield should constantly adjust the direction according to the form, and the attack can only face one direction, and the all-round spear phalanx was also used by the Swedish spearmen in the late Middle Ages, but the war at that time was different from this time, and the Swedes consciously retreated when they encountered the attack of the crossbow, because the all-round defense could only stand still.

It will also take a long time to arrange all the troops, and who will arrange the troops like this at the beginning of the battle?