After all, Maximilian I was not an idiot, and he was considered to be a relatively powerful member of the Habsburg family (conversely, the rest of the Habsburg royal family were not too powerful), so after calming down, he wanted to try A caumarin…
"Ai Qing, how is the combat effectiveness of your mercenary group?"
"Okay, the tactics trained by the minister's mercenary group are specifically aimed at Swiss mercenaries!" Marin said confidently.
"Really?" Maximilian I cheered up.
You know, Swiss mercenaries are the main combat force in the French army. Although there are many French knights, the newly formed spearmen can also be restrained.
The Swiss spearmen are not only good at defending against the impact of knights, but also able to launch attacks, which can be called the top force in Europe in this era.
Moreover, the emperor himself had an enmity with the Swiss mercenaries. His father-in-law "Charlie the Bold" was killed by Swiss mercenaries. A large area of the Principality of Burgundy also fell into the hands of the French with the help of the Swiss. Even the birthplace of the Habsburg family - Eagle Castle in Aargau, Switzerland, fell into the hands of the Swiss.
In fact, the Swiss spearmen have been in Europe for decades since the Battle of Nancy, until they were trampled by German mercenaries who used muskets on a large scale and learned the Spanish phalanx (the specific commander was "German mercenaries") Father" Georg Frundsberg).
That is to say, the Swiss spearmen are very sharp in close combat, but afraid of long-range strikes. In particular, the musket guns of the Spanish phalanx are so powerful that even the Swiss can't stop them wearing plate armor.
Marin's temporary plan, although bows and arrows were used instead of more powerful muskets. However, most Swiss spearmen are basically a group of poor ghosts, and they can't afford expensive plate armor.
Therefore, the bow and arrow formation is very lethal to Swiss spearmen wearing cloth or leather armor. It doesn't matter when the Swiss spearmen are shot out, and after learning from the pain, they spend all their money on equipping the breastplate. At that time, Marin will just change to a big musket, and still bombard and crush...
In order to verify whether Marin was bragging, Earl Hohenzollern decided to come to an actual combat exercise to see if Marin was bragging.
So, Marin went to the recruiting office to get 80 long sticks, and took back his 20 hunting bows...
"Bow and arrow... isn't this thing about to be eliminated? It can't shoot through plate armor..." Earl Frederick was a little Spartan. In Europe, due to the emergence of plate armor, the lethality of bows and arrows has been greatly reduced. Therefore, bows and arrows are gradually not taken seriously. There are only battles between lowly civilians, and bows and arrows are still popular. Because low-level civilian soldiers are unable to equip plate armor and have low protection against bows and arrows. For nobles and knights, the threat of bows and arrows is really limited.
"My lord, our archers didn't shoot the French armored knights, but the Swiss mercenaries." Marin reminded.
"How?" The emperor was also curious.
"Your Majesty, most of the Swiss mercenaries are poor mountain people. Do they have money to buy plate armor?"
Both the emperor and the earl shook their heads...
"That's right, these poor Swiss, since they have no money to buy plate armor, can they withstand the blow of bows and arrows?"
The emperor and the earl shook their heads again...
"That's why I said that this formation is designed to restrain Swiss mercenaries."
The mercenaries under Marin all picked up wooden sticks as spears, and the arrows of bows and arrows used the arrows without arrows in the bullock cart. These headless arrows are usually used by Marin to train these guys in order to avoid casualties during training. Even, for safety, the arrows of these headless arrows are covered with rags to reduce the impact of shooting.
After the two sides lined up, Count Frederick frowned and said:
"Marin Knight, why is your battle formation so thin?" Including the archers, Marin's battle formation was only 3 rows, so Earl Frederick was naturally dissatisfied.
"My lord, I also want to make it thicker, but unfortunately I don't have enough money. You know, for more than a month, I have paid for these bastards with my own money..." Marin said speechlessly.
Because of the large amount of training, although Marin led people to hunt, he shared part of the meat pressure. However, this group of bastards still spent as much as 4 Marks on food every day, a total of 640 pfennigs, an average of 6.4 pfennigs per person per day. At this time, the daily income of civilians in the empire was only 2 pfennigs. In other words, this group of idiots spend more than three times the income of ordinary people on food and drink every day.
Thinking that Marin was only from a knight family, it was really not easy to support 100 people, so the emperor and the earl were silent.
In order to show fairness, Earl Frederick also sent 100 old mercenary spearmen to form a Swiss phalanx, which was about the same thickness as Marin and the others.
But before the two sides played against each other, Marin asked for an hour delay...
Then, the emperor and the earl were surprised to see that Marin commanded his men to take out 40 engineering shovels (the emperor and the earl did not know this thing), and began to dig trenches in front of the battle...
The emperor and the earl rode to the front of the battle and asked Marin:
"Marlin Knight, are you digging a ditch?"
"Yes, Your Majesty, Lord Earl, trenches can hinder the charge of the enemy, whether it is knights or infantry, the charge will be hindered."
Then, the emperor and the earl saw two trenches just 2 meters apart in front of Marin's battle formation. The trench is not deep, but relatively wide. It can be expected that after the enemy rushed up, they could not jump over such two wide trenches at once.
Then, they saw that Marin commanded his men to plant wooden pickets leaning forward on the edge of the ditch near the battle formation...
"This is... the way the English fight against the French knights?" Maximilian I was more discerning, and at a glance, he could see that this was the way the English longbowmen blocked the French knights' charge. The difference is that the wooden pickets of the British were inserted directly into the ground in front of the battle. And Marin's wooden pickets were inserted in the trench. If the enemy wanted to charge, he not only had to jump over the ditch, but also had to avoid the sharp piles on the ditch, which greatly increased the difficulty.
Sure enough, before the exercise started, the German spearmen led by a Swiss mercenary officer were full of embarrassment looking at the two trenches and the piles of pickets in the distance.
In fact, what makes their scalps tingle is still behind...
When the exercise officially started, the two teams were separated by 100 meters. According to Marin's request, they are the defensive side, while the 100 spearmen on the opposite side are the offensive side. Their weapons are also wooden sticks without spearheads.
When the Swiss officer ordered the attack, this group of well-trained German spearmen lined up neatly and began to advance slowly, approaching the Hoffman mercenary group.
After entering a distance of 80 meters, it is estimated that the archer has a lethality and a hit rate. At the order of Marin, 20 archers set up their arrows and opened their bows one after another...
"Ah... ah... ah..."
Although there is no arrowhead, and the arrowhead is covered with rags, it still hurts when shot on a person. In particular, the German spearmen, like the Swiss spearmen, all wear very fancy civilian clothes, which cannot resist bows and arrows at all...
And if the bow and arrow fell on the body, unless it was in a very unimportant position, the soldier would be judged to be "killed" or "injured" and withdraw from the battle.
At a distance of 80 meters, the archer's hit rate is not high, so everyone doesn't think so. At a distance of 70-80 meters, the German spearmen lost only 5 people. But after entering within 60 meters, the "casualties" began to increase greatly. Because, at this distance, there is no need to projectile, and you can accurately shoot "point kills".
At a distance of about 60 meters, a round of bows and arrows came down, and the German spearmen lost 9 people at once. This is because the spearmen happened to block some of the "arrows" with their guns. After all, with so many gun barrels, there is also a little defensive area. And after entering 50 meters, it is simply giving away the head.
At a distance of 40 to 50 meters, the archers of Hoffman's mercenary group shot two rounds of arrows and knocked down 20 people.
When the German spearmen entered the 10-meter distance, only 40 of the 100 remained...
In other words, 60 people were "killed" or "out of battle due to injuries" on the way...
Moreover, many people were not "sentenced" as casualties, but were actually injured. After all, bows and arrows are also hard objects. Under the powerful kinetic energy, even if the arrow is wrapped in rags and hits a person, it will still hurt very much, comparable to hitting a person with a stone. Some unlucky ones were directly injured by arrows.
"This... is the archer so good?" Maximilian I and Count Frederick usually played knights. The knights wore Gothic plate armor and despised bows and arrows at all. However, infantry cannot ignore the threat of bows and arrows. Although Count Frederick had commanded the spearman, he was also poking against the opposite spearman. He had never encountered an established archer. Therefore, he has never seen such a strong bow and arrow kill.
In fact, in this era, except for the wretched United Kingdom, which has a large number of archers, other countries have not actually owned archers on a large scale. Because the training difficulty of archers is no lower than that of knights. With that free time, it is better to train more knights. Therefore, there are relatively few countries that engage in archers. After the plate armor replaced the lock armor, the protection against bows and arrows has been greatly improved. Therefore, no one is willing to train archers in large numbers.
Originally, in the early stage of the Anglo-French War, because of the outstanding performance of the English longbowmen, many countries imitated the formation of bow and arrow troops. But after the defeat of the English, everyone stopped learning, and the temporarily formed bow and arrow troops were also disbanded.
The 40 surviving spearmen, led by Swiss officers who also survived because they were wearing breastplate armor, began to charge the front of the Hoffmann mercenary regiment.
However, when they rushed forward, they were a little dumbfounded. Two very wide trenches blocked them. It doesn't look like anything from a distance, but it's troublesome when you really come to attack.
The trench dug by Marin was not deep, only 40 centimeters deep, but 2 meters wide. Two trenches 2 meters wide, plus a distance of 2 meters between trenches. As a result, within 6 meters in front of Hoffman's mercenary group, there is "abnormal ground". If you want to rush over, you have to go down the first ditch first, and then climb up.
However, the length of the spears (long sticks) of both sides is 6 meters. When the people on their side had just climbed over the second ditch and stood on the 2-meter-wide ground between the two ditches, their footing was not stable, and the "spears" on the opposite side stabbed them one after another...
The soldiers on our side went to block and push away the spears on the opposite side one after another, but the people on our side had just climbed a ditch and hadn't stood still yet, while the spearmen on the other side were already waiting for work. The base is unstable, how to stab the opponent? Therefore, there have been a large number of downsizing...
Well, when the Swiss officer took the surviving 30 people to a firm foothold on the 2-meter-wide ground, the Hoffman mercenary group took two steps back as a whole, not giving the German spearmen who had settled down a chance to stab each other . Then, the archer, who had rested for a while, began to "spot kill" the opponent again in the gap between the people in the front row deliberately getting out of the way...
And the German spearmen have nothing to do with the wooden pickets all over the ground. Go pull the pickets, the spearman on the other side will definitely take the opportunity to stab you. Not only that, but if you want to pull out the pickets, you have to go down to the second ditch first. You are in the ditch, and the opposite side is condescending to stab you and shoot you...
If the pickets are not removed, our troops will definitely not be able to move forward. The Swiss military officer who reacted hurriedly led the team and went around to the left. However, there are only 20 people left in his hands...
He went around to the left, but the number of people on both sides was already seriously unequal. At this time, Marin waved his hand directly, and all members of the Hoffman mercenary group quickly turned the team, using a beautiful formation change, to face the remaining more than 20 German spearmen. Then, everyone maintained the formation and swarmed up, stabbing the remaining troops of the opponent... In the end, there were only 10 people on Marin's side who were stabbed by the opponent's wooden stick and were sentenced to casualties because their martial arts were not as good as the veterans on the opposite side. …
"It's a massacre!" The emperor exclaimed.
"Yes, soldiers without plate armor are indeed difficult to resist the bow and arrow array. But if they rush to the front, the archers are useless."
"Hehe, Frederick, didn't you see? It's impossible for your spearmen to kill the archers. Because there are two rows of spearmen standing in front of them."
"That's true. However, Your Majesty, in a real battle, the strength of the troops is far more than this. There are only two rows of spearmen in front, which is far from enough to protect the archers."
"Marin also said that he has no money, so he only recruited such a few people. If there are enough people, I don't think he will put such a few people in front, right?"
"Maybe."
"The defensive tactics of the two trenches are also quite good, and it is difficult to break through head-on. Even if the knight charges, it is extremely difficult to break through."
"That's true, but go around the flank. Like the Swiss did at the end."
"Well, that's right. But let's ask Marin Knight first to see how he responds to the enemy's outflanking!"
…