"Woo————"
There was a loud sound of horns in the rogue army formation.
The shelling of the formation caused some people to collapse and flee everywhere like headless flies.
A group of elite cavalrymen guarding the formation had already drawn their weapons, drawn their swords and slashed at the fleeing soldiers.
The heavy artillery bombardment did not scare them, nor did it make them afraid.
They were all battle-hardened veterans, and they knew very well that the probability of being hit by artillery fire from such a long distance was extremely slim.
The most important thing is that the artillery has been firing for a while now. It is troublesome to load the heavy artillery. They will not encounter the threat of artillery fire in a short time.
How could a two-legged man outrun a four-legged horse? Moreover, except for the fine cavalry sent by Zhang Yuan, the leaders of each team also took cruel measures.
In the blink of an eye, hundreds of people were chopped down to the ground, and the painful wails and shrill cries were mixed together in the formation.
The strong and pungent smell of blood lingered in everyone's nostrils, but no one dared to move.
Many people in the formation were trembling and pale, but they still stood where they were.
Such harsh suppression methods can easily cause a backlash, but in extraordinary times, extraordinary measures should be used. Faced with such a critical situation on the battlefield, it is difficult to subdue the soldiers without heavy punishment.
Compassion cannot lead an army, kindness cannot control it, love cannot lead it, chaos cannot control it, just like a proud man, it cannot be used.
If the army cannot be subdued and the military formation cannot be stabilized, the benevolence of women will lead to defeat and death.
Hundreds of lives fell to the sword, and the blood brought the gangsters back to their senses.
Compared to the cannonballs that don't know when they will arrive, the steel knife against the back is undoubtedly more frightening.
Rogue bandits are accustomed to claiming that they have an army of tens of thousands, but in fact they never regard hungry soldiers as their own when they actually count their numbers.
Only those who are promoted to the team are eligible to be included in the statistics.
No one who can stay in the Chinese army is a hungry soldier. They are all members of the team, people who crawled out from the pile of dead people.
After a brief period of panic, they calmed down again.
"Raise your guns and form a formation!"
At the front of the central army, a tall guard wearing tattered silver armor and a full beard pressed the steel knife on his waist and gave orders in a deep voice.
】
"I recognize you, but the knife in my hand doesn't recognize you!"
"Escape, where can you escape?!"
The bearded guard looked deeply, and the three formations of nearly 10,000 hungry soldiers in front collapsed within a quarter of an hour of fighting.
He followed Zhang Yuan all the way from Shaanxi to Shanxi and then to Henan.
Finally, he went all the way to Hanzhong, fought against the Shaanxi soldiers, fought with the Datong Battalion, and fought with the Liaodong Cavalry.
He has seen this kind of formation too many times. A defeat is terrible, but as long as the formation can be stabilized to block the first wave of the collapse, the situation can be stabilized.
"Raise the gun! Form a gun formation"
The bearded guard raised the steel knife in his hand and ordered again.
Although the troops at the front were trembling with fear, they still did not dare to disobey orders.
They stood close together, put down the spears in their hands, raised them diagonally forward, and pointed the spear points forward.
As the spears emerged from the formation one after another, the formation gradually grew in size, blocking the field like a city wall.
The spears and spears were connected together and formed a line. Although they were sparse and uneven in some places and the spears were of different lengths, there was no one who could not break through such a military formation.
The rogues in the army are also divided into different levels. The elite of the army mainly practice swords, shields and bows, while the ordinary troops use long spears and practice spear formations.
When the logistics level is low and the quality of the soldiers is not high, the long gun is undoubtedly the most cost-effective.
Pikemen only need to learn two movements, one is stabbing and the other is slapping.
Stab to kill, slap to block, spear training is much easier than sword, shield and bow and arrow.
The Chinese army under Zhang Yuan's command totaled 8,000 men. The outermost parts of the front, left, and right divisions were formed by spearmen, with a certain amount of sword, shield, and archers mixed in as support.
There are not many gunmen in the rogue army, so it is difficult to properly preserve gunpowder on the way to escape, and the maintenance of firearms is also a big problem.
Therefore, in the rogue army, the medium and long-range support weapons are generally bows and arrows and throwing spears. Although there are firearms, there are not many.
"Archers at the ready!"
The bearded guard team retreated to the high slope at the rear and raised the command flag in their hands.
Hundreds of rogue archers held their bows and arrows diagonally, clasping the strings and drawing the bows, ready to go, waiting for an order to draw the bows and release the arrows.
Not far away from the formation, a large wave of defeated troops composed of more than 7,000 people from the three front formations was already rolling back and was about to hit the central formation.
The soldiers of the Chinese army have not yet recovered from the previous shelling, and the panic-stricken troops in front are about to rush towards the general.
The distance between the two sides was only sixty or seventy steps. Noisy noises came from the front, and commotion broke out again in the originally calm military formation.
The bearded guard's eyes were slightly stern, he clenched the command flag in his hand, suddenly raised it down, and roared angrily.
"put!"
The next moment after receiving the order, the long-awaited archers drew their bows without any hesitation.
In the great formation, countless bow strings vibrating sounds sounded like playing cotton in an instant.
A large number of arrows flew into the sky in an instant, and the dense arrows rose into the sky almost at the same time, flying forward like a huge swarm of locusts.
Hundreds of feather arrows flew out of the bowstring, piercing the low sky and causing sharp whistling sounds.
Ordinary bows and arrows are less powerful than crossbows and firearms, but the rate of fire of bows and arrows is far superior to these two weapons.
Just as a burst of arrows rose, another burst of arrows rose again. Countless feather arrows intertwined in the air, falling like a huge net bag towards the swarming soldiers.
The archers in the rogue army are not sharpshooters. Most of them are actually very poor at shooting.
But collective shooting does not require the support of superb archery skills. It only needs to be able to pull the bow string and shoot the arrow.
The light arrows thrown like this are difficult to cause damage to soldiers wearing armor, but now their targets are hungry soldiers in ragged clothes and no armor.
The locust-like feather arrows were shot into the wave of retreating troops accompanied by the whistling wind. In an instant, dozens of people were hit by the feather arrows and fell to the ground.
There were bursts of wailing in the rout, which were the screams of the injured.
However, the screams did not last long and were soon drowned out by the crowd.
A hundred or so people fell under the feather arrows, which was just a drop in the bucket compared to the nearly ten thousand troops. It did not have much impact, and it did not even create much of a wave.
"Woo——————"
The low sound of the horn echoed in the formation, which was the sound of the horn to prevent impact.
"Raise the gun!"
The bandit commanders and guards at the front were shouting loudly.
"Array up!"
Right or wrong, success or failure, all depends on this!
At this time, the archers had stopped shooting after firing several showers of arrows.
"锵——————"
But after hearing an extremely loud gong sound, two passages were instantly revealed on the left and right sides of the front of the rogue formation.
Before anyone could react, hundreds of cavalry were already galloping out from between the two passages.
"Rumble--"
The sound of horse hooves is loud, like a dense drum beat.
Two cavalry troops galloped out, one on the left and the other on the right, like two sharp blades falling on flesh and blood, cutting through the surging wave of broken troops in an instant.
The defeated soldiers who rolled over had no time to react. They were either knocked to the ground by the tall war horses and thrown aside heavily, or they fell under the sharp sabers in the hands of the knights on the horses.
Fortunately, those who escaped without being killed were immediately killed by the cavalry who followed.
The bloody rain suddenly started, the fishy wind filled the air, and the broken limbs were scattered all over the ground.
The horses' hooves rolled wildly, trampling the corpses or the half-breathed people into a pulp.
The dark black flag fluttered in the strong wind.
Zhang Yuan rode his horse and stood on the high ground, looking at the entire formation with an expressionless face. He had a panoramic view of everything in the front and left and right parts.
In order to stabilize the morale of the army, he led a group of personal guards to the front in order to stabilize the formation.
Previously, most of the heavy artillery of the officers and soldiers fell on the front. The people in the front were panicked for a while, and the front had to bear the brunt of the defeated troops.
Those broken troops were not only hungry soldiers, but also many troops. Some cavalry troops were unable to escape and were also involved.
The more than 2,000 troops at the front alone may not be able to stop those crazy rout troops, so Zhang Yuan not only dispatched thousands more troops from the Chinese Army, but also sent two teams of elite cavalry under his command to attack first to contain them. A broken army.
Zhang Yuan was very familiar with how to contain the rout. To be precise, the leader of the 72nd Battalion knew exactly what method should be adopted.
To drive away hungry soldiers, the human sea tactic was not used by one family only, but by all seventy-two families.
They have no way to compete with the officers and soldiers in terms of skills, nor can they compete with the officers and soldiers in armament. All they can rely on is the strength of numbers!
Zhang Yuan's eyes were deep, staring at the wave of troops that had rolled back and collapsed.
The speed of the rout has slowed down, the arrow rain has stopped their steps, and the gun array has forced them to turn. Those rout soldiers who had no time to turn fell to the gun array without exception.
But Zhang Yuan could not relax at all, because he knew very well that the real test had not yet come - the second round of shelling by the officers and soldiers had not yet come.
"Forty more steps."
Zhang Yuan's eyes were cold and his voice was calm.
"Forty more steps?"
All the guards looked at each other in confusion, and the deputy general following Zaizhang Yuan's side changed his expression and said.
"If we advance another forty steps, there will only be two formations left in front of us, and..."
More than half of the artillery shells fired by the officers and soldiers just now landed in the front. If we take another forty steps, what if the artillery shells...
"I said, take another forty steps!"
Zhang Yuan's expression was slightly cold, his eyes sharpened, and his voice dropped.
There are only seven or eight heavy artillery among the officers and soldiers, so the probability of being directly hit by artillery in a large formation is actually very low.
The gunners of the officers and soldiers are not immortals and cannot hit where they point.
If it is only a few hundred meters away, the artillery can still have accuracy, but after more than a mile, most artillery has no accuracy at all, and where the shells land depends entirely on luck.
Zhang Yuan had heard the sound of artillery in the formation of officers and soldiers before, and it must have been the firing of artillery.
There was a copper cannon in the fort he was guarding, so he knew the range and power of the cannon very well.
Zhang Yuan rode forward, and the guards did not dare to neglect. The lieutenant general who was scolded also quickly ordered the generals of the Chinese army to follow.
As the dark black banner moved forward again, the morale of the soldiers in the front of the rogue bandits gradually improved.
Zhang Yuan's purpose of moving forward forty steps was precisely to boost the morale of the army.
"Boom!" "Boom!"
The fire appeared first, and then the thunderous sound came from the distance again.
Zhang Yuan looked solemn as at least three artillery shells hit the front military formation.
This time, due to the tight formation of the soldiers in the front line, the killing was even greater, and more people fell in a pool of blood.
What's even more serious is that a cannonball happened to land in front of a military formation.
After the cannonball knocked over two defeated hungry soldiers, it rolled into the military formation, broke countless spears, and directly opened a huge gap in the originally tight spear formation.
It was this gap that gave the hungry soldiers who fled an opportunity.
The fleeing hungry soldiers saw a gap in the originally tight gun array and saw the hope of survival. They all rushed towards the gap like crazy...
But now Zhang Yuan's mind is not focused on the gap.
Because not far away, there is something more important than that gap.
Among the vast mass of defeated troops, countless dark red flags were rushing towards his direction - those were the armored cavalry of the Ming army!
