The forest was filled with densely packed Frankish troops. They let out deafening shouts, and after rushing out of the forest, they rushed towards the Ross army whose bucklers were stained with blood without hesitation.
There are people wearing gray-brown robes everywhere. Their weapons and equipment are relatively simple, and their passion for fighting cannot be denied.
The Ross army was quite surprised. Everyone speculated that a group of heavily armored warriors would appear next time, but what turned out to be a group of peasant troops came out?!
No matter who the enemy is, they seem to be just wearing old clothes. People without armor who charge so bravely are looking for death.
The snow-covered flat ground by the river was made porcelain by countless shoes, but the large areas of snow had become frighteningly bright red, and were strangely steaming.
It was the heat formed by the gushing out of hot blood, and it was filled with a terrible fishy smell.
At this moment, the fire support from the rear of the Ross Army has been suspended, and the brothers are in a rather disadvantageous position. If the heavy weapons on the ship activate support, they will inevitably injure their own side.
Clearly seeing a large number of grey-brown enemies pouring out, the friendly forces on the ship were in a panic and did not dare to take the initiative even if they wanted to support them.
Speaking of those peasant soldiers, most of them were fighting for the first time.
They are ignorant and ordinary farmers. Under normal circumstances, they will never have the opportunity to see the king in their lives. History has given them the basis that now ordinary farmers fight for the king.
This kind of warrior is either extremely cowardly or extremely violent. Their minds go blank while running and shouting, thus leaving all emotions, including fear, behind.
It was clear that the Normans were already waiting for work, but they still rushed forward without hesitation, and in the end they were beaten to a bloody pulp.
"Shield wall! Prepare!"
"Resist the impact! Prepare!"
"Halberdiers! Get ready!"
…
Each centurion commanded his brothers calmly, and each centurion team began to join together, with ten combat squares pieced together to form a solid wall.
The soldiers behind the broad round shields were all half-hunched, their heads protected by the iron helmets half sunk behind the shields, with only one eye exposed. Their steel swords were generally pressed against the right side of the shields, ready to stab fiercely at any time.
Now, the collision begins.
The Frankish peasant soldiers rushed into the shield wall with all kinds of weapons. The soldiers behind the shield simply buried their whole heads behind the shield, with their sharp swords sticking out from the gaps, and regardless of whether there was an enemy in front of them, they still stabbed with all their strength.
The steel swords kept stabbing the flesh and blood of the peasant soldiers, and their offensive could not break through the shield formation of the Russian army. Those who were stabbed to death and injured fell down one after another, and were immediately trampled by their own brothers who followed.
The Russian army was under great pressure. The thousand of them were unable to observe the entire battlefield on the front line. They just felt that something was wrong, as if there were enemies everywhere.
In fact, people standing in the distance could indeed see an astonishing number of Frank troops rushing out of the forest, and there were dark soldiers everywhere.
This is the final battle!
"Keep stabbing! Can't stop!"
"Hold on! Protect yourself!"
"Pull the injured brother to the back and fill in the empty space!"
"Haberdiers! Be careful not to hurt our brothers!"
The Russian army continued to persist, facing an all-out attack by an enemy force of 10,000 people.
Behind them is the cold Elbe River, a large number of ferries, and the pontoon bridge leading directly to Hamburg. They have a clear retreat, but the decisive battle should have begun, and no one can leave their post without permission.
Facing the shield wall of the Russian army, these Frankish peasant soldiers had no way to break through it.
The riverside plain from the forest to the river is still too narrow, and this army of ten thousand people cannot deploy its troops well at all. Therefore, on the front battlefield, the front line where thousands of Russian troops gathered was only 200 meters away, and the Frankish army had ten thousand soldiers empty.
With a human scale, the only real fighting was on the 200-meter front. The large number of soldiers who followed were unable to break in and could only wave flags and shout from the rear to replenish manpower.
Mortals are not killing machines with unlimited physical strength. Facing the endless waves of enemies, the Ross Shield Wall was still forced to retreat slowly under pressure.
Gradually, the balance of victory slowly tilted towards the Franks. As long as they continued to advance without any casualties, and as long as the Russian reinforcements did not arrive, these Frankish farmers would drive the Russians off the glacier after paying a huge price.
At this point, a reserve team of elite soldiers has arrived at the edge of the forest.
He is relatively satisfied with the current situation, so he needs his javelin troops to add fuel to the victory.
More than 300 men threw spears and went into battle. In order to build their momentum, they went into battle shirtless to show off their ridiculously strong upper body muscles. There was no essential difference between these fair-skinned Frankish men and the strong Russian men. They fired light javelins with spear throwers, knowing that this would
Be your own soldier who can hit the front line, but you can definitely hit the enemy.
They are just a group of peasant soldiers. Such people can be recruited in large numbers. Ludwig does not care about them.
There was a whooshing sound in the sky, and a large number of "black lines" rose into the sky.
Suddenly, a rain of arrows attacked the Russian soldiers in the fierce battle. The brothers never imagined that only their own arrows had killed the enemy on a large scale, but when they themselves became the victims.
The Russian army began to suffer unexpectedly large casualties, and the Frankish peasant soldiers also suffered even more significant casualties due to their general lack of armor.
The Russian troops behind the front line began to hold their round shields against their heads, enduring the javelins that smashed through the shields. They were still resisting, showing their tenacity in this way, and they were also putting their own lives to put pressure on Rurik himself.
"Ah! This is not the decisive battle I wanted!"
In desperation, Rurik covered his head with both hands. After a brief moment of astonishment, he realized that the decisive battle was no longer bound by his own will and broke out mercilessly!
Liudov couldn't stand it anymore and told Rurik: "I can't wait any longer! My Saxons will immediately cross the river to support."
It was impossible for Rurik to hesitate any longer at this moment, because the army assembled in Hamburg had already set its sights on life, like a powder keg that had reached the critical point of exploding.
"Attack! We attack!"
The golden lion Yang Tian roared.
Rurik, who was standing on the city wall, turned to the warriors lower down behind him. He drew his sword: "Cross the Elbe River! Attack with all your strength!"
Therefore, Liu Dofu did not hesitate to cooperate, and the closed door was completely opened.
The horns and drums were beating loudly, and all the soldiers were roaring.
Ross, Danish soldiers rushed out, jumped on the moored boats and rowed hard. The Elbe River, which was more than 200 meters wide, passed quickly. The soldiers got off the boats and immediately threw themselves into the fighting.
Those Saxon warriors also received Liudov's order, and the elite warriors among them had to bear the brunt and had to cross the river. For this reason, Liudov decided to lead a thousand elites to cross the pontoon in person.
But his determination was temporarily blocked by Rurik.
"Wait!"
"Why?"
"Your people are still not elite! Slow down and let my thousand Eastern Legion cross the pontoon first! Don't worry, this elite force will move very quickly."
In theory, the coalition forces were already operating with all their strength. Counting the twelve-year-old Saxon boy, the nominal number of troops devoted to this decisive battle on the Elbe River was close to 20,000.
But the battlefield almost all took place on a large riverside plain on the south bank of the river. Previously, the coalition forces fought a bloody battle with 3,000 Frankish heavy cavalry here. This time it was the second battle and the decisive battle.
Medvet's Slavic Legion was Rurik's trump card. Individually, their combat effectiveness was poor, but together they could have terrifying combat effectiveness.
The Slavic soldiers had finished assembling their halberds, and in the eyes of Northumbrian King Aynred who was watching the battle, a group of unsightly warriors suddenly created a forest.
The soldiers at the forefront were all wearing heavy armor, and many of them were actually captured Frank armor.
These people do not need to use shields. Thousands of people are organized into a "hedgehog formation", which will fulfill the strategy that offense is the best defense. Now, Medved led the Slavic army to line up and began to calmly pass through the pontoon bridge.
At the front, the Danes, Rus, Götalans, Mellarons, Balmoks, and other various Vikings launched a general attack on the Frankish army.
This was a powerful shock wave with a scale of more than 3,000 people! At the same time, the big ships also pulled anchors one after another. They moved their positions as close to the southern river as possible, and installed ordinary arrows in the slides of the torsion slingshots, just to provide fire support as much as possible.
.
The decisive battle was now. Ludwig wanted a decisive battle, but he didn't expect the enemy's strength to be so large.
There were rowing boats everywhere on the river, and the number of Norman pirates was endless.
"When did they become so fierce?" Ludwig finally felt the terror, even though he still had five thousand elite troops in his hands who were very capable of fighting.
The cramped war made it impossible for him to put his elite troops into battle for the time being. His own peasant soldiers became an obstacle, and the enemy was still adding troops.
Ludwig saw an army passing quickly on the pontoon. These people were all carrying very long spears. He had never seen this kind of army in his life, and his subconscious fear made him feel that they were a bad group.
The guy to mess with.
Today's Saxon warriors are the same in nature as Frankish peasant warriors. They are both farmers and lack training.
The Russian-Danish coalition is at the same level as the Frankish heavy troops.
However, now the Frankish elite has been unable to fight due to the cramped battlefield environment, while the Russian and Danish elites are still landing one after another.
With a strong army against a weak brigade, even if it is an army of ten thousand people, the soldiers of the Frank Army have already begun...
Medved walked in front of the team and took the lead to land on the other side. In front of him were the fighting friendly forces. Their appearance made the friendly forces overjoyed.
"Spear Wall! Start!"
The words were spoken in Slavic. This army, composed entirely of Ilmen Slavs, formed a hedgehog formation with extremely long-handled halberds and began to advance forward.
The Slavic Legion first supported its own Rus sword-and-shielders with halberds, and then as the people in the fierce battle felt, a large number of long-handled weapons suddenly protruded from their shoulders.
The spear head is equipped with a spiked axe, which is a war halberd. It can stab, cut and pound, and has various attack methods.
Thus, the horrific killings began on the battlefield at the bridgehead.
How did the Frankish army see such a situation?
The peasant soldiers were either killed or hacked. They had no power to fight back. The long-handled halberd killed the enemy at a distance, and wherever the halberd head swept across, there were dead and wounded.
As a result, the Ross Sword and Shieldmen's armed forces at this position moved away and voluntarily gave up the battle line to Medvedt's legion.
The avalanche of Frankish peasant soldiers started, and the unarmored people were swept away directly. Even wearing armor was of no help. The heavy halberd head hit the enemy's helmet, and the enemy's skull was shattered with one blow, causing him to die suddenly.
The first three rows are responsible for desperately assassinating, and the soldiers behind are responsible for pounding. The most important thing for such a phalanx is to ensure the safety of the flanks, but this is something they do not need to consider in this battle.
Both wings of the Slavic legion were Rus' sword and shield bearers. This arrangement of troops was really a tactic that Rurik had tried many times, even though the battlefield was cramped and slender.
The strength advantage of the Frankish peasant soldiers was gone. They had suffered more than 2,000 casualties. Once the soldiers fell, they had no chance to stand up. They could only be trampled to death or hit by their own side or the enemy.
The Frankish army's casualties could only expand sharply as time went on. The bad situation of the battle could not be reversed by just 300 spear throwers. It was precisely these muscle-bursting spear throwers that began to encounter key blows from Ross's ships.
If it weren't for Ludwig's heavily armored troops suppressing the rear and armored soldiers ordered to kill some retreaters, the collapse would have occurred long ago.
However, in the face of the continuous reinforcements of the Normans, the total collapse of those peasant soldiers began.
The peasant soldiers fled across the board. They threw away their weapons and ran away. They remained unmoved in the face of heavy infantry pressure.
Because, the latter also fell into deep fear.
Ludwig felt that there were enemies everywhere, and perhaps he could win by investing his reserves in a general attack now.
No! It’s simply impossible!
There were shouts of killing everywhere, and there were fleeing warriors everywhere. They were like wild deer scurrying in the forest, and in front of them was the advancing barbarian army.
"Withdraw! Let's withdraw! Withdraw to Bremen!"
The limited time did not allow Ludwig to think too much. His army did not get effective rest at all, and rushed into the decisive battle. As a result, he was defeated before the sun set.
The East Frankish Army still has more than 15,000 troops at this moment, but the problem is that the morale of the army is broken, and fear is spreading like a chain reaction.
When the king gave the order to retreat, retreat was no longer shameful. The heavy infantry who were unwilling to admit their fear out of honor began to flee to the rear.
Some people even threw off their armor and even stopped dragging their own sleds.
They fled the same way they came, and more than 15,000 people escaped into the woods.
The allied forces in the rear were in hot pursuit, and the exhausted Frankish peasant soldiers began to be killed or captured on a large scale.
The bright red blood soaked this heather forest.
Fifty years ago, Charlemagne's Frankish army defeated the Saxons here, and now the northerners have achieved even crazier results here.
The pursuit continued until nightfall, when the entire pursuit came to an end.
Now Rurik had to face a rather bizarre fact - the East Frankish army became a group of poor bandits, and the coalition forces achieved a great victory.
The prisoners immediately reported the fact that this battle was indeed a personal expedition of King Ludwig.
However, after simply interrogating the prisoners to find out where the peasant soldiers were from, some rather embarrassing things happened.
Individual prisoners were immediately released, and even transformed from enemies into allies.
For no other reason than these prisoners of war came from the Barony of Nassau, and now these prisoners became Henry's allies in the Netherlands.
For Rurik and other nobles, the next thing is not to continue the pursuit, count the casualties, try their best to treat the wounded, clean the battlefield, and continue to maintain a defensive posture.
Rurik was not worried about Ludwig, whom he had never met, fleeing with his follow-up troops. No! They couldn't escape.
The enemy's route of retreat will be cut off. In the vast space, this Frankish army will be trapped in an embarrassing situation. The cold in the north will bring them further death.
Next, we only need to wait for the situation to ferment, and time will continue to be delayed. The longer it is delayed, the more detrimental it will be to the Frankish army.