Section 120: Battle of Dowofberg 2

readx;

Among scholars who study the historical battles of the three empires, there is a sharp sentence written in Lamanite and full of irony between literati and artists:

"Laymen talk about strategy, insiders talk about logistics. Pen %Fun %Pavilion www.biquge.info"

It is, as we have said, the biggest difference between a true expert in military strategy and those who are only on paper - the latter tend to ignore a series of marches, supplies, coordination between soldiers and officers, and so on, and simply talk about strategy, as if all soldiers were pre-arranged pawns on the chessboard, and everything can be solved as long as they are good at trickery and some unique strategy.

The soldiers and horses did not move, and the grain and grass went first. The real battlefield is far more boring and harder than these people on paper think, and it is already quite difficult to get a hundred people to fight together, and the 100,000 militiamen who are untrained -- let these people play any special tricks and do some ingenious tactics, and the result will only be full of loopholes and mess up everything.

There is an individual gap between people, and it is this individual gap that determines that they will never be able to carry out all the instructions perfectly like the pawns on the chessboard to achieve the results that the commander wants - this is also an extremely important reason why most of the young aristocratic officers and the like, who are always able to talk about the word in peacetime, die once they step into the battlefield and have no place to be buried.

They don't know anything more than the strategic stuff of counting numbers and arranging troop comparisons, they don't know their soldiers, they just give orders out and wait for them to execute them perfectly. Did the heralds deliver the news in a timely manner? Did the troops on the right flank know to go hand in hand with the left flank? -- the result of the whimsical strategy of always playing tricks and tricks was that the requirements of the soldiers were too strict, and the further consequence of this was that the margin for error at the strategic level was greatly reduced.

Overly clever and overly elaborate plans, if one part of the process is wrong, the whole will be lost, and this is what the phrase "always victorious will not need a miracle" refers to, although most ordinary people and even scholars will always talk about a few brilliant battles in which fewer victories and more miracles were made, but the history of warfare, which is almost equal to the length of its own history, is more likely to occur in the ordinary wars that are taking place in the south of Ecasta.

On the surface, it is ordinary, but in the details, you can see where its true chapter is.

A good commander like Archduke Lesky knew the soldiers under his command, and this old man of Loan, who had lived in Yavenella for 21 years, was truly integrated into the people. This not only refers to the enemy, but also the ability to understand their needs and the limitations of their abilities when facing the soldiers under their command, and to grasp the overall situation steadily.

If you want to ask these peasants-turned-Yavenella militia to do knightly work, they will definitely not be able to do it. In the same way, if you want a knight to deign to do the peasant's business, even if most of the nobles in the north of Avenella are closer to the commoners, they may be able to put down their own face, and let these pampered people do such a thing, it will be extremely inefficient.

Good steel should be used on the blade, and this huge army of more than 100,000 people is not just a simple number. Mixed with former slaves, mercenaries who came to earn a living, hunters of the Avenella mountains, converts of the Roans, fugitive Sivalier refugees, and noble cavalrymen and sergeants, all of whom have different cultural backgrounds, social statuses, and even language problems, it is extremely difficult to get them all to work together for the same goal - unless you know them well enough, speak their language, and understand what they are good at.

Hunters and longbowmen of mercenaries and mountain dwellers were assigned to act as scouts, playing their role as generalists and light and swift as they dispersed into a dozen small squadrons, forming the right and left flanks and even surrounding some villages as far as Bowlberg's territory. The noble knights and sergeants were scattered and divided into the leaders of the whole army of hundreds and thousands of men to maintain order, and the ordinary Avenela and the Sivalier refugees, who had little fighting ability, did all sorts of odd jobs in addition to being the main source of infantry - as for the obedient Luoans, the plains of Acasta may not have enough cavalry, but there were plenty of horses. The Luoans were also quite famous for their heavy cavalry, and as the oldest of the fighting races, almost all of them who had experienced the Great Patriotic War could ride horses, so the Grand Duke Lesky gave them a most important and arduous task - the heralds.

Having lived in the two places of Avenella and Sivalier for so many years, they basically speak the language of the region, and with the perseverance of the Roan people, it is clear that they are used as heralds to direct the advance of the troops and to report back in time about the movements of the troops and civilians in the county from the outposts, as we have said before.

The fact that the preparations were only preliminary, and the fact that the overall situation was laid out and that the information could be disseminated in a timely manner proved to a considerable extent the experience of the Archduke Lesky in commanding the strategic level of the corps war, and that, with our Sage Man, the army on Edward's side had a natural advantage over Kia Hiebern II's side in the command of tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of men - provided that Ottoro's side did not send an equally good commander.

This possibility should never be dismissed lightly, although in order to maintain the sovereignty of Avenella from being exposed to the Padrosi and that Ottolo's secret force is equivalent to abandonment, it is doubtful that there will be a good commander among them, as the uncertainty of the intelligence is still in question. It is a must not underestimate the arrogance of one's opponents, and neither Archduke Lesky nor our Sage Sage are long past the age at which they would make such a lowly mistake, and the wisdom accumulated over the years has benefited them a lot, including Mira and Edward, Minna Lina, and others, and after that, these young generation of Arvenella and Loan's new forces have quickly absorbed and learned, and will surely be able to cope with the setbacks and challenges that will arise again in the future.

But let's get back to the point, it is not easy to mobilize an army of 100,000 people, and how to make good use of this advantage so that they do not become a disadvantage Archduke Lesky naturally has his own set of plans. The logistical burden required to support these armies is extremely enormous, and the purchase of good supplies and supplies before departure can only last for about a month -- although it is planned to seize the time to attack quickly, it is likely to develop into a siege battle.

Therefore, at the joint suggestion of Archduke Lesky and Henry, Prince Edward decided to send 25,000 militiamen to work directly as professional logisticians for all kinds of work.

- They didn't need to do this when Acasta was facing the Sivalier army in the past, but this time it might be directly to the southernmost edge of the kingdom, and the long-distance expedition professional logistics personnel are extremely important. Rather than wait until the time comes, it is better to arrange now for the cooks, grooms, and cook-born militiamen to do what they do best, to feed a growing army.

In addition to this powerful professional logistics force, Edward's heavy cavalry and elite archers were placed in the middle as the main force of the formation, and their infantry array of more than 10,000 junior mercenaries and ordinary militia with some combat experience was the real vanguard. As the men stood on the alert for a possible attack from Dowofberg in the distance, pulling the wagons and ox-carts, the rest of the peasants ran to the forest of Protasia to the east and began to cut down the trees.

The siege required large equipment, and they were preparing for catapults and ladders, and all this was noticed by the Earl who was in the castle, and the orderly movement of an army of this size proved that they had a fairly good group of leaders, officers, and non-commissioned officers - a pattern of warfare that none of the West Coasters had ever seen, and a true professional war that the Loans had learned and summed up in their struggle against the Kingdom of Raman and the Ottolo Empire.

It is not a traditional small kingdom war in which the nobles crush the enemy by force and equipment, but only the cavalry charge and a certain degree of frontal confrontation tactical and strategic skills, and the rest is all based on the individual ability of the warrior. This division of the army into elaborate squadrons, squadrons, brigades, regiments, and the dispatch of competent men to command it was only seen in the past of the Lamanite Empire and in the three great empires of the present day - a regular army, not a predominantly aristocratic knightly style of warfare.

This is the future of Avenella.

Count Wolf Berg watched all this from afar, and something was shaking in his heart, but at the same time the old family discipline and education controlled him like the castle itself.

"Hope, responsibility...... the middle-aged man with a stiff expression let out a long sigh, while the army under Edward's command on the other side quickly continued to make their pre-battle preparations.

Depriving the defenders of food and water is the best way to fight sieges and sieges, but although it is true that the Wolfburg is located in the lower reaches of the Garrille, it is even more of a challenge to cut off the largest river, which runs at its widest point up to nine kilometers to the west coast of the Southern City-State Alliance, or to lay enough poison in it that would contaminate the defenders' water and make it unusable.

Not to mention that there are still tens of thousands of civilians in the territory of Wolfberg, and if Edward does such a thing, they will inevitably be implicated, not to mention that this matter will inevitably make him lose the support of the current army militia, first of all, he himself cannot do such a thing.

However, the Garril River could not be cut off, and they would not let go of this excellent environmental resource - the people of Avenella have known how to use the flowing water of the Garril River since ancient times to transport felled wood and some materials and catch aquatic products, and Henry and Lesky, who are well aware of the industrious nature of these people, naturally chose to make good use of the resources, in addition to the logs that were cut down to make siege equipment were transported down the river to save manpower and quickly, they even began to build ships.

This was an eye-opener for Charles and Edward and a number of other Arvenella nobles, as we mentioned earlier, the Garriel River meandered down from the foothills of the Tambur Mountains deep in the Ekasta Plains, and turned underground near Ashinir to become a visible river, and it went all the way to the southernmost point of Avenella, where it was turned back underground near the Broken Gorge, and if some of the items could be placed on ships and carried down the river, the burden on the logistics and personnel of an army of this size would be much less。

Old-timers are old-timers, keen to observe and make good use of resources, and the young and inexperienced Avenella people in this area only have a share of learning. All the other people in the whole main account are just students, and the only one who can communicate with Lesky on a par is our Sage Mr. Sage, and every move of the two of them is remembered by all of them and studied seriously.

This upright and modest attitude was admired by the Grand Duke Lesky, who was a legend in his name, but that was what had happened on the other side of the Tambur Mountains twenty-one years earlier. Now that he had weakened much in physical strength, he looked like an old man who was just dying, and with the bad reputation of the Roans, these Arvenella nobles were able to learn new things with a proper attitude, and did not put on a high-minded appearance and began to raise objections before they had learned to do so, which made him more and more fond of it.

"Trebuchets are a necessary presence, as are the giant shields of the log positions, which are an important defense to cover the longbowmen and infantry as they continue to advance, and must be produced in sufficient quantities as manpower and time permit. Lesky said this, Edward and the others nodded, and Henry pointed to the northeast of Wolfsburg on the map, and said, "If I were an earl, I would choose to send cavalry from here, using the town in front of me as cover, to make a detour to the flank, to invade the infantry array on the left, to crush, and to stop our advance." ”

He said, this time Lesky and the others nodded, and the Archduke, who had a fearless but very steady and cautious reputation, added: "Their purpose is not to completely defeat us, the Earl of Wolfsburg is good at defensive warfare and has a reputation for being conservative, even if he is old, and with such an advantage as a castle, it is impossible for him to throw off these precious troops to waste outside, after all, no matter how elite the cavalry, they have an overwhelming disadvantage in numbers." ”

"Therefore, the purpose of the cavalry he sent was only to repel us and avoid approaching the castle, and to hold out until the reinforcements of Ashbern II arrived with the powerful firepower and defense of the castle. Archduke Lesky said this, and Edward and Charles, the high-ranking nobles of Avenella, who knew the Earl of Wolfsburg, nodded: "Then just send out cavalry to block the left flank and avoid their cavalry attack?"

"Well, that's right," Henry nodded, and continued, "but that's the easy part. ”

"The difficulty lies in how to seize Wolfsburg without causing the castle to be too damaged and the losses of troops are serious. ”

"yes, that's all I have to do. The old and thin, yellow-nailed fingers of the Grand Duke of Lesky pointed at the large open space that had been deliberately left at the main entrance of the Wolf Castle in order to allow the cavalry in the city to assault.

"Let's give them one, and we're going to hit the whole thing. (To be continued.) )