It's just that Song Yan's idea was good, but the key is that his subordinates must also work hard. Facing the cavalry that was getting closer and closer, the Chinese army, despite the desperate urging of military attachés at all levels, managed to form a formation to deal with the cavalry. But from the ordinary soldiers below to the generals at all levels, they all looked fearful. Just as Song Yan had judged, it was the first time to fight against such a large-scale cavalry of the official army, and there was no one who was not afraid of it.
Just when Song Yan's central army was barely forming a formation to deal with the big battle. The official cavalry that had already rushed in front of them suddenly split towards their two wings. The two thousand horse archers following in the middle quickly gathered their horses and divided them into three teams. Taking turns, they fired dense rain of arrows at Song Yanzhong's army. Dozens of iron cannons weighing only hundreds or thousands of kilograms had been removed from the backs of mules.
He also turned the muzzle of the gun and fired at the rebel center. Although the range of these iron cannons is not as good as that of the rebel equipment, the cannons of 3,000 to 10,000 kilograms can hit as far. But these iron cannons were light in weight and could be pulled by a mule. The heaviest one only weighed more than a thousand kilograms. When placed on a cart pulled by two mules, it did not even affect the marching speed at all. The light one even weighs less than a hundred kilograms.
The range of these guns is indeed not very far, but at this time, the advantage in weight is reflected. The twenty heaviest cannons, weighing more than 1,000 kilograms, were deployed at the back. The remaining more than one hundred cannons were deployed in three layers according to their range. The iron cannon weighing more than 1,000 kilograms fires solid bullets, and the rest of the artillery fires explosives, which are shrapnel shells. The first to fire was the cannon firing solid bullets.
In order to resist the impact of the cavalry, this kind of phalanx is usually arranged extremely densely. The first few rows are shield bearers and spear bearers, and the middle rows are crossbowmen and sword bearers. With the cooperation of archers, these cannons that fire solid bullets are the best weapon to break this kind of infantry formation. A cannonball weighing seven to eight kilograms was fired, enough to penetrate a square formation, leaving behind limbs and broken arms.
And when the official cavalry on the opposite side suddenly moved quickly towards the two wings, and the archers and cannons were exposed behind them, Song Yan knew that something was wrong at a glance. He did not expect that Cao Rui could use cavalry to attack him, but he could also bring cannons with him. But at this time, it was too late to change the formation. In desperation, Song Yan could only bite the bullet and command his 50,000 Chinese troops to attack the entire front.
If you continue to stand still, I'm afraid your formation will be thrown into chaos when the cannon fires. Anyway, it was too late to change the formation, so he simply stopped changing the formation and directly commanded the phalanx to attack the whole line. He wanted to take advantage of his own strength to overwhelm the army's artillery array before the officers and soldiers in front of him caused too many casualties to him. Although the officers and soldiers carried cannons, they were not unable to deal with them at all.
It was not like he had never captured the iron cannons in the hands of the officers and soldiers when they were in Jiujiang Prefecture. In his opinion, although those iron cannons are light in weight, compared with the several thousand kilogram cannon in his hand, one is that the range is too close. The farthest range is only a few hundred steps. In addition, compared with the cannons in his hands, which were all made of copper, the quality of those iron cannons that were too light was really poor.
Don't dare to fire quickly, otherwise the chance of these artillery blasting is far greater than that of copper cannons. The most critical thing is that the bowl-mouth blunderbuss and double-deck blunderbuss used by the army can only be struck with iron sand. That thing is better against light infantry, but useless against heavy infantry. Even those light infantry who lack heavy armor are not completely unable to cope with the iron sand as long as they are equipped with enough shields.
Therefore, although he had captured the government's iron cannons more than once during the Battle of Jiujiang, he had never looked down upon them. After all, the infantry in his hands are mainly light infantry. However, in order to deal with the official cavalry, many heavy infantry troops wearing iron armor imported from Dali were also equipped. The combination of heavy infantry and light infantry is enough to deal with the iron cannons of the official army.
After discovering that Cao Rui's cavalry was pressing forward, he used all heavy infantry in front when forming the formation. Now he ordered all the infantry to press forward, just to use heavy infantry and shields to block the lead fired by the cannons brought up by Cao Rui. The light infantry behind the cover went up and first defeated the horse archers and artillery of the official army. Then capture these cannons and deal with the official cavalry.
But when faced with this today, he had never liked the iron cannon before, but he found that he had been wrong. Those bowl-mouth blunderbuss and alphabet blunderbuss in front were indeed of no use to his heavy-armed infantry fighting in the pre-war. But the shells fired by the row of iron-core copper-bodied cannons behind them were not as big as his precision-cast several-kilogram cannons, but they were still very damaging to the heavy infantry.
Although the destructive power of artillery shells weighing five or six kilograms against heavy infantry is not as good as those of heavy artillery that weighs more than ten kilograms or dozens of kilograms, its power cannot be underestimated. Especially when he formed such a dense formation to deal with the cavalry, the five-pound heavy shells fired by these cannons could still penetrate his formation. Moreover, the heavy infantry in his hands moved very slowly.
It also gave those cannons enough time to fire. After one round of artillery shells, even if there were only more than twenty rounds, the formation composed of his platoon of heavy infantry was already full of casualties and many gaps were made. Although under the pressure of military attachés at all levels, the first line of heavy infantry was still barely maintaining its pace, but its speed was much slower. And the rate of fire of the more than twenty cannons was beyond Song Yan's expectation.
The heavy infantry that had just withstood the first round of artillery fire immediately came over with the second round, without even caring whether these iron cannons would explode. The heavy infantry did have strong protection, and the formations they formed were specially drilled to deal with the court's cavalry. But these armors, which often weigh more than 20 kilograms, or even thirty or forty kilograms, are quite physically demanding for the infantry.
Coupled with these heavy infantry, except for some spearmen, most of them also had to carry shields and swords, which made it even more laborious. A row of artillery shells came over, and there was no way to dodge. Don't look at the thousand kilograms of cannons that Cao Rui carries, there are only more than twenty. But these more than twenty thousand-pound cannons fired rows of solid bullets, causing huge casualties to Song Yan's heavy infantry.
The shells fired by these cannons, which weighed no more than a thousand kilograms, weighed only five kilograms, but the shells they fired were only as thick as a bowl. But one artillery shell can hit more than ten heavy infantry troops in a row. A shell was fired, and there were stumps and broken arms everywhere along the way. Those armors can hold bows and arrows, but they can't hold the big cannonballs. However, after several rounds of shooting, several square formations were already suffering heavy casualties.
If it weren't for the armor on these rebel soldiers, they would not be able to run at all. They could only pray that the shells would not fall on them, while bracing themselves and using all their strength, under the coercion of military attachés at all levels. go forward. After these rounds of artillery fire, after seeing their comrades whose limbs were shattered after being beaten, these rebel soldiers probably collapsed and fled in all directions.
The rebel heavy infantry troops who took the lead suffered nearly 30% casualties. Finally, they reached less than a hundred steps away from Cao Rui's artillery position. Although they had been set up before, they had never fired. The light iron cannons also fired at this time. Especially those light bowl-mouth blunderbuss and multi-shot cannons, the lead bullets fired can be said to be as dense as rain.
But at this time, Song Yan was shocked to find that those iron cannons that he didn't look down on at all, with slender barrels but could only shoot lead, fired lead at close range, which had no impact on his body. Even the bows and arrows cannot penetrate the heavy infantry. The lethality is almost astonishing. Those iron armors bought at high prices from Dali Kingdom could not withstand the fire of these lead bullets at all.
After two rounds of artillery fire, his heavy infantry was decimated with casualties. At this time, these heavy infantry troops, which already had very little courage left, could no longer withstand this double blow. Including the low-level military attachés, they all turned around and ran away. Not only was his own formation disrupted, but the formation of the infantry behind him was also disrupted. Although they couldn't run fast because of the heavy armor on their bodies, they had no problem attacking their own people.
, and the cavalry that had retreated to the two wings over there became chaotic when they saw the rebel army. Under Cao Rui's mobilization, he immediately pounced on him. Suddenly, Song Yan's central army was rushed into chaos. Although they had the advantage in strength, they were in chaos under the attack of Cao Rui's cavalry. Seeing that the Chinese army was in chaos, Cao Rui's cavalry almost massacred his own men one-sidedly.
His subordinates could only passively resist while retreating towards the bank of Zhangshui. The entire formation was basically in chaos. Those high-priced heavy armors from the Dali Kingdom that were once blown up to the sky by that Shan Chanhou were vulnerable to cannons. I had high hopes that when facing the imperial cavalry, I could at least fight the heavy infantry, but it failed to have any effect at all.
On the contrary, it completely destroyed his own formation, and now he can't even run. Tens of thousands of troops ran back and forth between Zhangshui and Hualinshui to avoid the pursuit of the cavalry. He knew that if this situation was allowed to continue, this hilly area between Zhangshui and Hualinshui would become the burial ground for his fifty thousand Chinese troops. Song Xuan couldn't care about anything else at this time.
He gritted his teeth and moved all the only one thousand cavalry around him to the left wing. His only thought now is to open up the connection with the defender as soon as possible. Even he knew that in the eyes of the official cavalry, those cavalry were just a group of farmers riding donkeys. But Song Yan had no choice but to at least open up contact with the thousands of cavalry in the rear guard and mobilize them to block the enemy in front of him.
It was just his thousand cavalry on short Dali horses. Who would be the opponent of Cao Rui's cavalry? Faced with such an opponent, Cao Rui, who had been closely observing the battlefield, did not send two battalions of elite soldiers, but only five. Part of the Qianxin Army cavalry went to meet the enemy. Even before the time for two sticks of incense arrived, the thousand cavalrymen whom Song Xuan had placed high hopes on were killed and fled in all directions.
However, these thousands of waves did not stir up the cavalry's misery, which made Song Yan close his eyes in pain. He saw with his own eyes that when one of his cavalry faced the official cavalry, he did not even drop his raised saber. The cavalryman who was riding a short Dali horse was knocked out by the party horse under the official cavalry, and he and the horse were knocked out and fell to the ground in pain.
The cavalry on both sides, whether it is war horses or cavalry elites, are not at the same level at all. There is no way to fight this battle. Thinking of this, Song Yan couldn't help but curse loudly in his heart. The master in Nanxiong Mansion at this time really couldn't change his businessman's habits. Sitting on the largest wealth in the world, but when it comes to investing in armaments, it only makes small calculations.
It is indeed more expensive to buy Tianzhu horses from overseas. But in terms of endurance and speed, it surpasses the best party horse in the imperial court. The Jurchen horses and Khitan horses from the bitter cold areas did arrive on Guangnan West Road. They were not adapted to the climate here. Every ten horses or even one or two horses could hardly survive. But Tianzhu horses from hotter areas are extremely adaptable to the climate of Guangnan West Road.
