Among the gentle hills, rubble exploded all over the sky in the rumbling explosion. Seven or eight piles of rocks under dead branches and leaves exploded one after another. Driven by the shock wave, the rocks turned into rapidly beating arrows, which visibly hit the armor of the Lombard soldiers, smashed their helmets, penetrated their clothes, and smashed their bones.
Especially the cavalry on both sides of the road guarding the outer road. The majestic horses in the past have now become targets for arrows. Countless rocks flying in all directions hit these cavalry first. Many cavalry were directly thrown off their horses, and the poor horses were also They were beaten so hard that they neighed and ran around in panic, completely disrupting the already chaotic Lombardy food guard team...
Crawling on the gentle hillside, Angus and Jack from the weapons laboratory were also horrified and dumbfounded.
Angus is the senior general of the legion and Jack is from the weapons research laboratory. They have naturally seen the power of this kind of land mine, but this kind of thing was just trial-produced a few months ago. It has been tested three times before, and all of them were only imaginary enemies made of straw men and wooden boards.
wooden boards and weeds don't know how to cry, and they don't know fear, so the blow they received was only the physical damage of this weapon. But now, while the enemies in the gentle hills suffered physical damage, they also faced a psychological shock that was more terrifying than death. In the explosion just now, several rocks whizzed past the heads of Angus and others. The feeling was really frightening.
Although only seven of the ten pre-embedded mines exploded successfully, the damage and confusion caused to the enemy was unexpected. One-third of the cavalry were killed. Of course, not many were directly bombarded to death, but many were frightened by the loud noise and were separated from their horses, and were overturned by stones. The chaotic cavalry attacked the infantry formation, frightening the infantry who were already on the verge of collapse.
The reverberation of the explosion gradually stopped, and the dusty gentle hilly road gradually revealed a clear scene - injured mules and horses lying on the ground, broken oxcarts and carriages, wailing soldiers working at work, and the backs of scurrying men and horses...
All lives have only one thought at this moment - to escape from this devil's hell. In fact, about twenty soldiers and laborers have abandoned Xuqiu in the chaos, leaving the dangerous carriage road and running towards the open wilderness to the north of Xuqiu.
The red-haired Baron was lucky. He was at the end of the team. He was unscathed by the explosions just now. Even the flying stone on the horse's head was blocked by the horse's head armor.
But the soldier guarding him was not so lucky. A stone that was blown to pieces grazed his neck in an instant. This soldier was brought in temporarily to make up for the loss. He only had a half-helmet and no collar around his neck. However, the edge of the stone became extremely sharp during the explosion and turned into a stone knife.
Stone fragments flew by, and a sharp stone knife opened a deep wound on the soldier's neck. After a line of red seeped out, bright red blood spurted out.
The red-haired baron had no time to pay attention to the bloody soldiers lying on the horse beside him. He kicked the horse's belly hard, rushed into the chaotic team, drew his sword and slashed and suppressed them, trying to stop the rout, and tried his best to lead the baggage team and escort soldiers out of the gentle hill.
At this moment, the enemy ambush that had been blocking the hillside of the gentle hill suddenly, led by a man as strong as a wine barrel, attacked from a high place...
…........
Several explosions in front had already reached Lusignan's ears, and he knew that the real battle in the gentle hill had begun.
The seventy or so Welsh regiment cavalry behind them are still one man and two horses, and the morale of the cavalry who have just fought a beautiful annihilation battle at the south end of the wooden bridge is high.
Since they were marching in armor and had just experienced an impact battle and two long-distance sprints, Lusignan and Jafar Redd had to control the speed of their horses to let the horses under them walk and recover their strength. After a while, they had to rely on the horses under them that had already run seven or eight miles. They really did not dare to consume too much.
As for the other war horse they were holding next to them, it would be returned to them after reuniting with the ambush in the gentle hills. After leaving the gentle hills, their cavalry team would become a large team of 1,780 riders. They would no longer have to go around and ambush the fleeing enemy troops.
Approaching Xuqiu for more than two hundred steps, Lusignan could already hear the sound of iron weapons clashing and the screams of men and horses. He drew out the long sword from his waist, turned to Jafar and Red Ming behind him and said, "Jafar, lead two teams around Xuqiu to attack the enemy from the right wing."
"Red, you lead two squads to attack from the left wing."
"The rest of them rush into the gentle hills with me and stab the enemy in the butt."
The terrain between the gentle hills is narrow, and it is impossible for these seventy or eighty cavalry to squeeze in, so Lusignan divided the team into three and attacked the enemy from different directions.
At the end of the gentle hill, the Lombard army could no longer withstand the impact of the enemy ambush.
The enemy's ambush, which was just a casual attack, suddenly became fierce, and the offensive rushing down the gentle hillside was suddenly fierce.
The red-haired baron tried his best to deflect a thrusting spear, but was hit by another flail in the horse's belly. The horse under him neighed miserably and took a few steps back.
The enemy ambush had broken up the little formation he had just organized. Seeing that under the cover of his own formation, about two-thirds of the baggage and soldiers had escaped from the gentle hill and entered the road outside the gentle hill. The red-haired baron gave up the last struggle and took two infantrymen to cover the stalls. He left behind the soldiers who had fought the last fierce battle, the corpses of the wounded soldiers on the ground, and the grain carts and pack horses. He turned his horse head and ran north in hatred.
This time, except for a small group who continued to move along the carriage road, a large number of baggage, laborers and soldiers left the road and circled towards the open and flat wilderness.
Facing the Lombards who had escaped from the hills, the ambush in the hills suddenly stopped pursuing them because they saw Lusignan galloping from the south.
By the time Lusignan arrived at the end of the hill, the enemy's figure had almost disappeared into the wilderness. Jafar and Red, who were chasing around the hill from both sides, had no success.
He knew that he had missed the opportunity because he was worried about the damage to his horse. He was so frightened that he jumped off his horse and ran to Angus in a cold sweat.
"Lord Angus, we are late and have delayed the opportunity to fight." After saying this, he wiped the sweat from his forehead. This time, Angus and his officers spent a lot of effort to lay out a series of traps. Originally, they wanted to annihilate most of the remaining enemies in the gentle hills, and chase the remaining small ones with cavalry.
But because Lusignan despised the horse power, he let most of them go.
Angus is not a weak officer. He usually kills decisively and is very strict with his soldiers, but at this time he did not blame Lusignan at all.
The Welsh Army lacked excellent horses, but it also lacked qualified cavalry. Although there were more than two hundred cavalry teams assembled temporarily for this southern expedition, the only ones that were really useful were the hundreds of cavalry companies in Lusignan.
Hence, Angus regards cavalry as very valuable. These cavalry who can withstand battlefield training are the seedlings of the future cavalry expansion. How can he be willing to let them exchange lives one-on-one with the enemy?
Hence, he had been suppressing the ambush and not attacking in order to reduce losses.
"The enemy suffered two disastrous defeats. Their morale was completely lost and their fighting strength was greatly reduced. This is a good opportunity for our cavalry to pursue us."
Angus ordered to several officers who had gathered around him, "Jafar, you choose forty cavalry and horses that are not capable of fighting, and stay here to clean up the battlefield. Take away everything you can, and burn whatever you can't take away immediately, including the horse corpses." Don't leave any of them behind for the enemy. "
"Lusignan, Red, and Reyek, let the rest of the cavalry rest for a while, and then follow me to continue the pursuit, and try to kill them before the baggage joins the majority of the enemy. "
An hour later, a group of surviving cavalry received a warning that our own baggage convoy was ambushed at the wooden bridge in the south. After the bad news that one-third of the baggage and most of the infantry were annihilated by the enemy, the Lombard Guards Army, which had been besieging the city of Santia for three days, hurriedly assembled 250 light cavalry and rode south along the carriage road to meet the baggage force.
Four thousand troops besieged the isolated city, and the surrounding area was surrounded by enemy forces. They were in a dangerous situation of running out of ammunition and food. The baggage team in the south was the last hope of the four thousand Patriot Army.
However, all the way south, I felt chilled all the way.
At first, we encountered several cavalrymen who fled in advance. They said incoherently that the southern brigade had been struck by lightning and most of them were killed.
The commander of the rescue cavalry led the team and ordered on the spot to kill the fleeing cavalry.
Continue to go south, just four miles away from the city of Santia, they found a blazing fire and the corpses of men and horses on the ground.
Several wounded soldiers who were still alive cried out about the tragic battle that had just ended. The red-haired baron fled for his life with a dozen broken soldiers. The remaining twenty or thirty carts of grain, along with the horse and ox carts, turned into a pile of raging smoke and fire.
When the rescue cavalry team arrived at the gentle hill and the wooden bridge with the last glimmer of hope, there were no fires or corpses in the two ambush battlefields. The corpses of the soldiers who died in the battle had turned into charred black bodies that curled up and deformed in the ashes...
…..
It was late at night on the third Monday of October, the wind was high and the air was cold, and the bright white sky and earth under the full moon were filled with chills.
Handia City, there was a rapid knocking on the wooden door of a bedroom in the lord's mansion.
Odo, the deputy commander of the Welsh Army and the commander of the Santia City garrison who was sleeping lightly, immediately opened his eyes, jumped up from the wooden bed, picked up the long sword placed beside the bed, and shouted: "Is the enemy attacking at night?"
In the past two days, the enemy army failed to successfully attack outside the city, so they fell in love with the night attack by a small team. They were familiar with Santia's city defense terrain and almost allowed the enemy night attack to succeed several times.
The person who walked through the door was Odo's captain of the bodyguard, a young man who had graduated from the military academy.
He made a military salute and said, "Lord Odo, Sir Angus has urgent military information. The North City sentry found out that it was tied to a crossbow and shot in."
He glanced suspiciously at the note handed over by the captain of the guard. It was written in secret symbols. In the upper right corner of the note was the English letter A, which was the mark of Angus.
"Translate it quickly." Odo handed the secret message to the young guard captain.
The captain of the guard immediately walked to the wooden table in the corner of the bedroom, took out a small notebook from the iron box on the table, looked through it, and converted the numerical symbols into common text.
After a moment, the captain of the guard handed another note to Odo.
"The enemy's baggage train was wiped out at noon the day before yesterday. The enemy's baggage was extremely scarce and there were signs of retreat, so it was time to plan an attack."
Odo's eyes widened as he read the translated note, and excitement gradually appeared on his face, "I said that the enemy's army had almost no serious attacks in the past two days. It turns out that there is no baggage for the offensive. "
"The enemy is out of food, now it is our turn to counterattack."
Odo held the note tightly in his hand, raised his head and said to the guard, "Immediately summon the officers above the flag captain for a military meeting..."