In the battle formation era before the era of trench warfare, artillery bombardment was a very cruel process. Because the armies of both sides are standing there in a dense formation, which is very suitable for artillery shell damage. This is why Napoleon's "Great Artillery Doctrine" shines.
Marin, who was watching with a telescope on the high platform behind, saw the terrible results immediately after the artillery fired...
At the beginning, Marin's artillery were still adjusting, so the first round of shelling was mediocre. But even so, it brought terrible damage to the Saxon army...
Because, the three-pound iron ball flew into the formation of the Saxon army, although the first round was poorly aimed. However, the 20,000 Saxon army is so densely packed that some unlucky ones will be hit by shells...
So, in Marin's binoculars, there appeared a terrifying scene where the knights in the front row of the Saxon army were pierced through four horses by a three-pound iron ball at once...
Because the artillery under Marin's command is all flat-fired, and they use powerful granular gunpowder. If it is used against infantry, it may penetrate 15 people. However, the war horse has a long body, and when the cannonball passes through the war horse's body, the long body of the war horse hinders the cannonball more than a human. Therefore, a three-pound iron ball that can penetrate 15 people can only penetrate 4 horses.
But even so, the Saxon knights were terrified...
The iron ball of the three-pound gun roared and rushed to the front of the Saxon formation. One shell could penetrate four horses. After the horse was pierced, it was stunned for a moment, and then the blood hole that was smashed through spurted out warm blood. Then, the war horse fell to the ground whining, threw off the knights on the horse, and rolled on the ground...
And for some artillery with a higher firing angle, the shells directly hit the knight on horseback by chance. Although the knight wears a full set of plate armor, however, it is useless. In front of the ferocious three-pound iron ball, an unlucky knight with a helmet on his head was directly thrown into the air by the three-pound iron ball. Then, the headless neck spewed out a lot of blood, splashing the knights around him... This was more than that, the shells that continued to fly hit the next knight, smashing his plate armor and killing him on the spot...
This terrible sight made the Saxon knights who saw it tremble with fear, fearing that they would be the next one to be unlucky. They really wanted to steer their horses aside, so as to avoid the range of artillery strikes. However, the strict military discipline and the glory of the knights made them bite the bullet and stay where they were, praying that the shells would not come to them next time. It was the knights whose horses were killed and fell to the ground, who panicked and used the excuse of changing horses, and ran to the back of the battle to find the horses. However, these people have also made up their minds - the change of horses must be delayed, and it is best to delay returning until the artillery battle is over...
Next, the Marlin artillery focused more on the artillery on the opposite side. Because the artillery commander Gao Qi said that attacking the opponent's artillery is the main task of the artillery. Because the enemy's artillery can also bring great danger to our side.
So, after the adjustment, after the gunners loaded the shells, the artilleryman in charge of aiming squatted down to observe the Wangshan behind the artillery so that it was facing the opposing artilleryman. Of course, Wangshan aimed at the head of the enemy artillery. But when the shell flew past, it had already lowered to the chest position...
After the observation was over, another gunner held up a wooden stick tied with a matchlock, blew on the matchlock to make the matchstick burn more vigorously, and then ignited the fuze on the fire hole...
"Boom—boom—boom—" 50 three-pound guns roared one after another...
Because they have practiced more flat shooting, the shooting accuracy of the artillerymen is not bad. All of a sudden, among the Saxon gunners who were still adjusting the gun positions, more than a dozen artillerymen were killed by iron balls on the spot, and the death conditions were very tragic. Either the head was blown away, or the arms and legs were smashed by the iron ball... Anyway, the artillery can no longer be used...
After being so frightened, the Saxony artillerymen shrank their heads in fright. However, under the order of the officer, reloading and firing began...
The Saxons' artillery is different from Marin's. Marin's three-pound guns are front-loading guns with better air-holding performance, but the rate of fire is slightly slower. Generally speaking, Marin's artillery can only fire one shot in 45 seconds. The Saxons use the "Fran cannon" with multiple "sub-guns", which has a relatively fast rate of fire, and can fire a cannon in an average of 20 to 30 seconds. However, Marin's artillery uses granulated gunpowder that has been bonded and treated with fish skin glue boiled from fish skin, while the Saxon artillery uses ordinary powdered black gunpowder. Therefore, the power of Saxony's artillery is naturally smaller than that of Marin's.
However, Saxony's artillery has a relatively long barrel length, exceeding 1 meter. Marin's three-pound gun has a barrel length of only 0.65 meters. Generally speaking, the longer the barrel, the greater the range should be. However, in the Saxon artillery, there is a gap between the breech gun and the barrel, and the air-tightness is not good. Plus powdered gunpowder is used. Therefore, in the end, the effective range of the Saxon artillery is only 200 meters. Marin's three-pound gun has an effective range of 365 meters and is even more powerful.
After Marin's artillery fired three rounds, Saxony's artillery finally started to shell...
It's just that the Saxons' artillery doesn't have a lookout, so it's inconvenient to aim. Therefore, even though the Saxon artillery aimed at Marin's artillery as much as possible, it was still not very accurate. However, after several rounds of shooting, Marin still lost a dozen artillerymen. But during this time, Marin's artillery caused dozens of casualties to the opponent's artillery. Because, Marin's artillery is expected to mount the sights, making it easier to target the opponent's artillery.
As the shelling continued, many people on both sides died under the shells, and the deaths were miserable. It's just that Marin's artillery, because of its great power, has a stronger "piercing" effect and brings greater damage. However, when the Saxons' shells originally hit the position of the Marin phalanx, their kinetic energy was insufficient, and they could penetrate at most two or three people in the front row. After that, it will not be able to penetrate. And the shells of Marin's three-pound gun, when they hit it, can either penetrate a few horses, or penetrate a dozen people...
The Duke of Saxony saw it—it was okay, so if the shelling continued like this, he must be the one who suffered the most casualties in the end. Therefore, he ordered to suspend the shelling, and prepared to send knights to attack Marin's artillery position, and kill all the artillerymen under Marin's command first...
As a result, thousands of knights began to gather under the signal of the Duke of Saxony, and began to speed up slowly...
Seeing that the other party finally lost his temper, Marin was also very happy. He ordered aloud:
"Gunners keep firing, musketeers get ready!"
Then, a few loud voices used soil horns to pass Marin's order to the front...
The musketeers clamped the head of the matchlock wrapped around the left arm to the musket trigger system. As for the ammunition, it has already been loaded, and it is just waiting to be fired. After getting ready, the musketeers put their muskets flat on the wooden bracket inserted in front of them for easy aiming...
However, they cannot shoot without an order...
When the Saxon knight rushed to a distance of 50 meters, the shooting was already relatively sure. So the musketeer commanders shouted:
"Fire!"
"Fire!"
…
"Crack-crack-crack-crack-"
The gunshots came and went, and in front of the Marin army, there were bursts of white smoke and a pungent smell of burning sulfur...
After shooting, the musketeers in the first row quickly retracted their matchlock guns, retreated to the rear and began to reload. The shooters in the second row put the muskets that had been prepared a long time ago on the brackets arranged in front, and began to aim...
After the first round of shooting, seventy or eighty Saxon knights were knocked off their horses by projectiles weighing 50 grams. Some were seriously injured on the spot, some were not seriously injured, but were knocked off the horse by the huge impact, and stared at the stars, and some fell directly and passed out...
Immediately afterwards, the second round of shooting came again...
This time, because of the closer distance, the accuracy of the musketeers is higher. After a round of shooting, more than 150 Saxon knights fell from their horses...
Then came the third round of shooting...
In this round, 200 Saxon knights fell...
Of course, at this time, the Saxon knights also rushed to the front of the Marin army...
However, even if they were killed, they would never have imagined that on the seemingly flat ground in front of them, there were two covered trenches full of traps and malice...
As a result, there were less than 600 Saxon knights left, and the people in the front row fell into the pit together with their horses. The wooden picket pokes the...
Moreover, when the knights rushed up, they couldn't stop the car at all. Even if the knights in the back row saw the people in the front row falling into the pit full of wooden pickets, they had no time to rein in their horses, so they had to fall into the pit with them...
Even the luckiest knight did not fall into the pit only because his own horse stepped on his comrade's horse or himself. However, under the two big pits, the knights lost their balance one after another and fell in and out of the pit... In the end, no knight could cross the two trenches. Even if there were war horses and gods, after crossing two trenches, they still could not escape the tragic end of being blocked or even stabbed to death by the wooden pickets inserted diagonally into the ground in front of Marin's formation...
For a while, most of the 1,000 Saxon knights and their horses who charged in the first round were lying in or near the two trenches, looking miserable...
However, this is not the worst...
Those musketeers in front of Marin's formation, some of them with great strength, picked up the long-handled sledgehammer that was originally placed in front of the formation, and began to smash into the second ditch next to Marin's battle formation through wooden pickets. Saxon knights...
The dull sound of "bang bang—" came frequently. Many Saxon knights were not killed by the wooden pickets or fell to death, but they were smashed to death by the sledgehammer...
That's not to say, when the group of musketeers with hammers saw that there were no more living people in Erdaogou, they backed up and let the first row of musketeers who had retreated to the back to reload and had already reloaded back to the formation. Before, start aiming at a Saxon knight lying near a ditch...
"Pa-pa-pa-pa-" A large number of unlucky Saxon knights died again...
…
In this way, the first batch of a thousand Saxon knights who charged over were easily damaged before Marin's phalanx, and not many survived. In the end, the ones who survived were the injured knights who were knocked off their horses by the muskets in the first batch and the second batch... As for the more than 500 knights who rushed to the front of the battle, most of them were killed on the spot. Even if there were some alive, under the blows of heavy hammers and muskets, they were seriously injured, and they were not far from death...