A closer look at the Ming army's artillery positions showed that the gunners had suffered heavy casualties. The remaining survivors either ran toward the rear, or simply lay on the ground, hiding behind artillery trucks and other bunkers without daring to move.
After seeing that most of the Ming army's artillery had misfired, Hao Bainian, who was commanding the battle on the front line, finally breathed a sigh of relief and said immediately: "Without these artillery, it will be easier to defeat them!"
Li Xuan, who was watching the battle from behind, saw that the Ming army's artillery unit had been completely suppressed, and nodded slightly. He was quite satisfied with the performance of the artillery unit.
Whether it was the ten cannons of the artillery battalion or the battalion cannon assigned to the infantry regiment, they all exerted their tactical value. During the advancement of the Ming army's artillery troops, they caused a large amount of damage and were completely suppressed.
Ming Army Artillery.
He did not live up to his hard work!
Not to mention that the artillery and large amounts of ammunition built by the Tang Dynasty through frugality were not wasted.
You know, in order to build this artillery force, the Tang Dynasty paid too much. If calculated in terms of cost, the cost of the artillery force was enough for the new army of the Tang Dynasty to build a cavalry force of thousands of people, or even several thousand cavalrymen.
Thousands of infantrymen.
But today's artillery unit's performance made these efforts fully rewarded!
If the Ming army does not have artillery troops to support the battle, then its own infantry troops will also be able to get
As the distance between the two sides shortened, archers from both sides also entered the battlefield. However, the number and quality of the archers on the New Army of the Tang Dynasty were obviously inferior to those on the Ming Army.
The Ming army had quite a few archers, the total number could reach almost a thousand people!
And to be honest, the quality is much better than the archers from the New Army of the Tang Dynasty!
Most of the archers in the Ming army were guardsmen, and although the guardsmen were scumbags, the archers in the guardsmen were all trained since childhood and had basic archery skills.
When the archers of the Ming army bent their bows and fired arrows, a large number of casualties were inevitable on the side of the new army of the Tang Dynasty!
The arrows in the sky seemed to be overwhelming and fell towards the phalanx of the new army of the Tang Dynasty. It was a good thing that they landed on the phalanx of spearmen, because the spearmen in the front row were all heavily armored spearmen. These long-distance projectile bows and arrows were against
They are not very lethal.
Even ordinary spearmen, many of them wear cotton armor or armor. Even worse, they still have shields in their hands.
But when faced with these bows and arrows, the musketeers obviously lacked protection capabilities, because the musketeers were typical light infantry.
Without armor or a shield, facing the enemy's dense fire with bows and arrows, a large number of heavy casualties will inevitably occur.
In comparison, the hundreds of archers on the New Army side of the Tang Dynasty were obviously weak. Although they worked hard to bend their bows and shoot arrows to provide long-range fire support to their own side, and achieved certain results, overall, they were not as good as
The effect of the archers on the Ming army was so great.
However, although they watched the soldiers of the Pseudo-Tang rebel army fall one after another under the attack of their own archers, they could not see the chaos in the formation of the Puppet-Tang rebel army, which made many Ming army generals in front
What is shocking and even scary is that after the soldiers in the front row of these pseudo-Tang rebels fall down, the soldiers in the back row will consciously step forward to fill the position. They will not even go to the soldiers lying on the ground and screaming.
Even if his comrades glance at him, he just steps forward like a wooden man, then mechanically loads, aims, and fires!
It was as if the one who fell was not his comrade, or even a human being!
This is what the New Army of the Tang Dynasty pays the most attention to and is most proud of. During the training process, it attaches great importance to battlefield discipline and strives to completely wipe out the humanity of the soldiers and turn them into a group of machines that command and obey orders. Soldier.
Let obedience to orders become a soldier's instinct and use strict battlefield discipline to dispel their fear of death and injury!
Of course, this kind of ability to withstand casualties will also have a limit. For today's Datang New Army, if the casualty rate exceeds 10%, it will greatly affect the morale and morale of the army, but it can still continue to fight. .
But if it reaches 20% or even 30%, no matter how strict the battlefield discipline is, it will not be able to eliminate the soldiers' instinctive fear, which will eventually lead to collapse.
Although the casualties seem to be very heavy now, if we look at the entire army, the overall number of casualties is also limited.
This can be seen from the fact that Hao Bainian watched his soldiers continue to fall without even blinking. The casualty rate of the troops is still within the tolerance of the New Army of the Tang Dynasty.
But can the Ming army withstand the same or even greater casualties?
Hao Bainian doesn’t think so!
The new army of the Tang Dynasty suffered heavy casualties under the covering fire of the Ming army's archers, but the situation faced by the Ming army on the opposite side was even worse!
When the artillery of the New Army of the Tang Dynasty completely suppressed the artillery of the Ming Army, it had already pointed its muzzle at the Ming Army's archer phalanx. When each artillery fire was fired, it could kill a large number of Ming Army soldiers!
Especially the ten heavy guns in the artillery battalion were even experimentally replaced with firing solid bullets at this time.
Because the Ming Army's archer phalanx is very dense and relatively deep, shotgun shells can only hit the Ming Army archers in the front row, but if solid shells are used, every solid ball shell can plow out A channel of blood came out, and the place where the cannonball passed was definitely filled with flesh and blood. Now when solid cannonballs are fired at close range, a cannonball can even penetrate the depth of the entire archer phalanx.
When the solid ball shells collided in the Ming army's archer formation, the killing effect was more effective than that of simple shot.
In addition to the ten heavy guns of the artillery battalion, Hao Bainian's direct command, as well as other battalions of artillery in various infantry regiments, also continued to fire at these Ming army archers. The shotguns they fired were also very powerful. In the past, the Ming Army archers in the front row on the opposite side would often fall in large numbers.
The casualties caused by one such medium and close range shot are comparable to the casualties caused by a volley of musketeers!
In addition to the artillery fire, the musketeers continued to fire back tenaciously even when they were being hit by bows and arrows!
In order to counterattack to the greatest extent, the musketeers have started firing freely in pursuit of the maximum shooting speed!
The archers also continued to bend their bows and shoot arrows!
Even the spearmen and sword and shield men launched an active attack in order to provide support to the musketeers!
They continued to advance rapidly and approached, putting great pressure on the Ming army!
Because the bows and arrows fired by the Ming army's archers caused very limited casualties to these heavily armored soldiers.
The front row soldiers of these melee troops are all wearing heavy armor. The heavy armor on their bodies can effectively reduce the casualties caused by arrows.
Moreover, the dense spearmen's rapid charge and the bright spear forest also put great pressure on the Ming army's archer phalanx and even other ordinary infantry phalanxes!
Facing such a dense forest of spears, and these spearmen were all wearing heavy armor, and it seemed absolutely difficult to deal with them, one can imagine the mental pressure these Ming soldiers were under.
Of course, they didn't know that only the spearmen in the front row of the new army of the Tang Dynasty they saw were wearing heavy armor, while the spearmen in the back row were all in light armor.
In their eyes, the many spearmen and sword and shield men who rushed up were all wearing heavy armor!
They had no time to think about how the Pseudo-Tang rebels could have such heavy armor. They only believed the facts they saw. These Puppet-Tang rebels were all wearing heavy armor.
In their opinion, these heavily armored Puppet Tang Thief Army were more terrifying than the Puppet Tang Thief Army's musketeers and gunners!
No wonder Song Zhiwen's tens of thousands of troops were defeated miserably at the hands of these pseudo-Tang thieves, and no wonder the three thousand forward troops in Tonggu Acropolis were besieged in Tonggu Acropolis.
These puppet Tang rebels have such a heavily armored force. The world is so vast that they can't go anywhere!
Of course, there will be people who look at this 'heavy armored' unit of the pseudo-Tang thief army with a rational eye.
Thousands of people are wearing heavy armor? Are you kidding? A quarter or even a fifth of them are wearing heavy armor. It's not bad. The pseudo-Tang bandit army in front of you will definitely not have more than 500 soldiers wearing armor.
!
But even these five hundred heavily armored soldiers, when they acted as the vanguard and led the ordinary spearmen and sword and shield men in the rear to charge, their momentum was still irresistible!
At this time, the archers who were bending their bows and shooting arrows dared to stay where they were and continue shooting arrows. They all quickly retreated. The next battle was not something they could participate in. It was a hand-to-hand battle between their own soldiers.
But if you count the number of Ming army archers at this time, you will find that they are already at least a quarter less than before the war.
It is no exaggeration to say that the current retreat is a collapse!
After seeing the enemy archers retreating, the frontline generals of the New Army of the Tang Dynasty in the rear, especially the battalion commanders who actually commanded the battle, all issued the same order in unison: each musketeer team used progressive shooting, firing while catching up.
Spears, swords and shields at the pace of the phalanx!
Behind this order, it means that in the end the musketeers will launch a bayonet charge and participate in hand-to-hand combat with the spearmen and sword and shield men!
The bayonet charge is the best fighting method of the musketeers of the New Army of the Tang Dynasty!
In all previous battles, the musketeers of the New Army of the Tang Dynasty actually won by charging with bayonets in the end. There were very few examples of victory achieved purely by musket shooting.
The two infantry battalions of the First Infantry Regiment, the entire Fourth Infantry Regiment, and the Sixth Infantry Battalion of the Second Infantry Regiment on the front line of the New Army of the Tang Dynasty launched a counterattack almost at the same time.
At the same time, the Fifth Infantry Battalion also launched a bayonet countercharge against Qiu Yu's troops!
For a moment, the fighting between the two sides on the entire front was about to enter the bloodiest and most brutal stage of hand-to-hand combat!
And at this moment, the Ming army's cavalry finally moved!
More than 1,500 Ming Army cavalry trotted around from the rear to the left wing. It seemed that the direction was towards the left wing of the New Army of the Tang Dynasty, which was the direction of the 1st Infantry Battalion of the 1st Infantry Regiment!
Seeing this scene, Hao Bainian personally ordered the artillery team of his subordinate battalion to stop firing, then turned the muzzle of the guns, loaded them, and prepared to deal with the Ming army cavalry.
Xie Ziwei of the artillery battalion also ordered to stop firing to support the infantry on the front line. Instead, he shouted for the artillerymen to quickly turn their guns and launch artillery fire on the trotting Ming cavalry.
At the same time, Li Xuan, who was stationed in the rear of the Chinese army, also raised the gold-plated dragon-patterned sword in his hand and said softly: "The Guards Battalion and the Cavalry Battalion are ready to meet the enemy!"