Wang Xiazi's cavalry only ran up to shoot a wave of arrows in a symbolic manner. Because they were afraid that the enemy would use long-range weapons such as rifles and muskets to counterattack, they did not even dare to get too close or stay long.
Instead, he took advantage of the short period of time before the enemy could react, hurried forward, passed by at high speed and fired arrows.
Because of the lack of time, of the three cavalry posts under Wang Xiazi's command, only the first cavalry post in front actually went up to shoot arrows, while the remaining two cavalry posts were still behind and could not catch up.
When the first cavalry sentry rushed to shoot arrows, the cavalry were on fast-moving horses and shooting arrows from a relatively long distance. Naturally, this accuracy was not good. Even if few people on the other side had armor, their protection was close to zero. , but there were only a dozen casualties.
But, just such casualties caused this Ming army formation, which was already weak in combat effectiveness, and at the same time continued to face cavalry pressure, causing the soldiers to be highly nervous, and whose morale was extremely low, to collapse directly...
The collapse of the Ming army's ordinary guards caught Wang Xiazi himself off guard. He never thought that he could directly defeat the enemy's infantry phalanx.
After all, his mission was not to directly defeat an infantry phalanx.
No matter how stupid Luo Zhixue is, he will not be able to attack the enemy infantry square head-on with a typical Eastern classical cavalry-style light cavalry such as the 1st Cavalry Brigade.
Not to mention whether the light infantry can win when attacking the infantry phalanx, even if it can win, even if the battle loss ratio is very high, it is still a loss!
The real mission of Wang Xiazi's cavalry is to force the enemy to constantly change their formations through continuous short-distance high-speed maneuvers on the battlefield in order to create loopholes in the enemy's formation. It is also to help the First Infantry Brigade contain more enemy troops.
This will create more favorable opportunities for your own infantry.
Of course, if the enemy army is not professional enough and exposes its loopholes when facing the mobilization of cavalry, then the cavalry will rush forward and kill them.
The previous step forward to shoot arrows was purely due to the lack of professionalism in the Ming army array opposite. Normal formation changes and short-distance maneuvers could cause problems, thus exposing their weaknesses.
Under such circumstances, Wang Xiazi thought that if he didn't go up and shoot a wave of arrows, he would be sorry for himself.
Besides, if you don't cause some casualties to the Ming army, and if you don't rush in when the opportunity arises, how can you continue to create pressure on the Ming army and then mobilize the Ming army's strength.
Therefore, he decisively asked his first cavalry sentry to rush forward.
But, the other side only withstood one round of cavalry fire from our side, and only a dozen people were killed or wounded, but in the end, they collapsed...
To be honest, Wang Xiazi did not expect this kind of thing. If he had known earlier, he would have directly asked the second cavalry sentry and the seventh cavalry sentry to rush up. In this way, the Ming army formation would not have been completely wiped out.
Blind Wang, who was involved, was caught off guard, and Lu Xiangsheng did not expect such a thing to happen.
This battle has just begun. Strictly speaking, it has not completely begun. After all, the infantry on both sides have not yet maneuvered into place, and there is still some distance between them.
As a result, one of our own infantry squares was destroyed first...
Even if this infantry phalanx is just a phalanx composed of ordinary guardsmen transferred from Yunyang, and there are only a few combat soldiers in it, it will not collapse as soon as they go into battle, and only a few people will die in total.
Is this your own bad luck?
Or is the bandit army just too strong?
Or maybe these guardsmen are just too bad?
With doubts and even more anger, Lu Xiangsheng ordered the other two infantry phalanxes on the right wing to turn around urgently, and formed a defensive formation facing Wang Xiazi's cavalry to prevent Wang Xiangzi's cavalry from continuing to advance and shake his right wing formation, which then evolved into An unstoppable total defeat.
Blind Wang saw that the other two Ming army arrays in front began to turn urgently, and when a large number of archers were waiting in formation, he decisively turned and retreated with his cavalry.
Although Wang Xiazi's cavalry temporarily retreated, Wang Xiazi's cavalry assault still achieved fruitful results this time.
Not only did it directly defeat a Ming army formation of three to four hundred people, it also caused the formation to collapse on a large scale, making it impossible to reorganize in a short period of time.
At the same time, two square formations were also mobilized. The Ming army, totaling about a thousand people, broke away from the frontal formation and urgently moved to the right edge to form a defensive cavalry formation.
As a result, at least 1,500 Ming troops were unable to participate in the frontal battle.
The pressure on the right army forces such as the 1st Infantry Brigade on the front was further reduced.
——
When Wang Xiazi's cavalry temporarily withdrew and prepared to continue roaming to create a favorable fighter opportunity, the artillery unit of the Baoxiang Army on the front line also let out the roar of the God of War!
The artillery unit of the Baoxiang Army, which had continued to maneuver on the battlefield before, arrived at the predetermined position and began intensive shelling under the command of Zhang Malin.
The combat method of the Baoxiang Army's artillery unit was different from that of the Ming Army and the Dongdu Army, which were also equipped with a large number of artillery.
For example, the same Hongyi artillery is equipped by the above three companies. The 600-jin long artillery of the Baoxiang Army is actually a small Hongyi artillery, but the diameter is shorter.
However, the small Hongyi artillery of the Baoxiang Army is more active and mobile and pays more attention to the rate of fire.
In order to obtain sufficient mobility, not only a more advanced large two-wheeled gun mount was used, but the weight was also strictly controlled, so that the caliber was relatively small and the magnification was also relatively low.
In order to increase the rate of fire, integrated ammunition was used.
With these technical improvements, the Baoxiang Army was able to directly bring the heavy and difficult-to-maneuver cannon-type artillery onto the battlefield to accompany the infantry in field operations.
If these are just technical improvements, then there is another tactical change.
That is, the artillery of the Baoxiang Army has always adhered to the principle of concentrated use.
Unlike the Ming Army and the Dongluo Army, where artillery was only a part of the infantry, the artillery of the Baoxiang Army was an independent arm. It was one of the four independent arms of the Baoxiang Army, like the infantry, cavalry, and baggage troops.
Use it independently in combat, and use it intensively during battle to carry out intensive bombardment covering a certain target.
This is a very obvious feature of the field artillery unit of the Baoxiang Army.
Now on the battlefield of Sanyuanzhuang, the same is true for the artillery troops of the Baoxiang Army!
Zhang Malin led the artillery troops to maneuver quickly, even faster than the infantry when advancing. While the infantry was still slowly lining up behind, Zhang Malin's two artillery sentries had already maneuvered into place, and The artillery bombardment began against the Ming army's front phalanx five or six hundred meters away.
And both artillery posts aimed at the frontmost Ming army array for artillery fire.
With the rumbling sound of artillery, the shells fired by the artillery of the Baoxiang Army crossed the sky and fell into an array of about seven or eight hundred Ming troops at the front.
After these artillery shells landed, because the ground was relatively solid, many of the shells bounced multiple times, which caused a bloody storm among the enemy troops!
In just the first round of shelling, there were at least thirty or forty people killed or injured in a Ming army formation of about seven to eight hundred people directly in front, and the formation even collapsed at one point.
Many soldiers involuntarily took a few steps back after seeing that even the heavily armored soldiers next to them were either dead or maimed under the shelling from the opposite side.
The Hongyi cannon of the bandit army is really too terrifying. It is at least more than two hundred feet away, and it can actually cause such heavy damage to one's own side.
If the Ming army generals in the formation had not tried their best to maintain the formation, they would have collapsed after the first round of shelling.
But this was not done yet. Just twenty or thirty seconds later, the artillery unit of the Baoxiang Army, which had completed emergency reloading, began the second round of shelling.
Under rapid fire, the 600-pound long gun with fully loaded ammunition can achieve a rate of fire of two to three rounds per minute under the operation of a skilled gunner. Its rate of fire is directly comparable to that of a matchlock gun.
After another round of shelling, the Ming army arrayed several hundred meters away and once again dozens of people lay down.
Twenty or thirty seconds later, the third round of shelling came as scheduled, once again causing at least thirty casualties to the Ming army formation.
One minute
Three rounds of bombardment!
Twelve cannons!
Thirty-six rounds!
It directly caused more than a hundred casualties to the Ming army formation that was still more than 500 meters away!
The surviving soldiers of the Ming army who were among them all looked panic-stricken.
At first, they just moved back without the initiative, but after the third round of shelling, many Ming soldiers in the front row could no longer stand the pressure of being unilaterally massacred, and turned around one by one and headed towards the back. run.
They collapsed without any surprise.
Lu Xiangsheng, who was at the rear of the battlefield, looked at the Chinese army array in front. When a recruitment phalanx that he had high hopes for was destroyed by the rebel artillery in a short time, his expression remained as calm as water on the surface, and no change could be seen. .
But in fact, there was already a storm in his heart!
The thieves' guns and artillery are so terrifying!
What happened in front of him was completely different from the battle situation he had expected before!
He had never thought that the artillery of these rebels could run so fast, and even maneuver into position before the infantry could launch a bombardment.
What's more, they didn't expect that the dozen long-barreled artillery pieces of the rebel army were not scattered throughout the battlefield to accompany the infantry in combat, but were directly concentrated and launched a long-distance bombardment directly towards one of their own arrays.
The hit is particularly accurate.
Following the bandit's artillery fire, the recruiting array at the front was unilaterally massacred!
Yes, this was a one-sided massacre!
The distance between the two sides is still five to six hundred meters. At this time, the infantry arrays on both sides have not yet maneuvered into place, let alone entered the stage of close combat.
However, in the face of such large-scale cluster targets, the artillery units of the Baoxiang Army can completely distance themselves from each other and carry out artillery bombardment, and can also cause a large amount of damage to such cluster targets.
When the Baoxiang Army began to use artillery tactics that were almost beyond this era for bombardment, the battle in Sanyuanzhuang was also incomprehensible to Lu Xiangsheng, and he didn't even know how to deal with it.
The war in front of him was beyond his cognition!
