The struggle of the reborn prince

The Song army dug trenches and built fortifications around the camp, forming two semi-circular defense lines, with naval guns as long-range support, infantry artillery brigades as suppressive firepower, and infantry machine guns as the backbone of a three-layer firepower network.The Roma heavy cavalry army went to the camp five miles away to besiege the Song army in this narrow protrusion of the river bend.Tens of thousands of Qingqi from the Roma Kingdom on the east bank went to the village on the bank, and set up a wooden fence to prevent the Song army from landing and breaking through.

The two armies faced each other for several days to consolidate their front lines. Although there was contact, there was no major battle. On a night full of moonlight and few stars, more than ten naval warships of the Song Army quietly left the port and approached the east bank. The artillery bombarded the camp of the Roma Kingdom Qingqi, and the bullets fell like rain for a while, and the camp was blown into a sea of ​​flames.

At the same time, the infantry artillery brigade also shelled the Roma cavalry camp guarding the bridge. The sudden artillery fire caused heavy casualties and panic to the sleeping cavalry. The 'Atar' heavy cavalry took advantage of the situation to attack, quickly defeated the enemy guarding the bridge, seized the bridge, crossed the Tigris River with the Dragon Cavalry Brigade, and attacked the Kerman army camp on the east bank.The hussar brigade crossed the river at night from the lower reaches of the river by naval ships, circled to the back of the Kerman army camp, and formed an encirclement trend with the other two armies.

Although the Kerman State is a member state of the Great Seljuk Empire, it is in a state of independence and is not directly ruled by the empire.When they received the order of the "Leader" Sanjar to help Baghdad, they were not willing, but at this moment, the army attacking the Black Khanate is stationed on its border. If they do not follow the tens of thousands of troops, they may first send He is gone.After some bargaining, the Sultan of Kerman sent reinforcements, and this army was not elite. Most of them were slaves and criminals doing coolies. Although they had a large number of people, they could not be praised for their combat effectiveness.Therefore, the main force of this aid is the heavy cavalry of Roma, and they are only in an auxiliary position.

At this moment, the Kerman army was separated from the enemy army by a big river, and the other side was besieged by powerful allied forces. They never expected to be attacked by the enemy army, so their defenses were naturally lax.Therefore, the Kerman army suffered heavy losses in the first round of artillery surprise attack on Sleeping Dream.In their panic they discovered that the enemy had crossed the river.At night, he could vaguely see how many people there were, so he wanted to take advantage of the darkness to break out, but the two attacks were blocked back.

The shelling continued. The warships of the Song Army were like moving artillery groups on the river. They fired at wherever there were many people. Countless Kerman soldiers were bombarded and shattered into pieces.After the troops across the river narrowed the encirclement in the early morning, they switched to burning the enemy camp with incendiary bombs.At this time, the Kerman army, which had been shelled all night, suffered heavy casualties and had no desire to fight.Abandoned the camp and fled in a hurry.Li Quan, the leader of the army, was worried that the enemy would jump over the wall in a desperate attack, so he deliberately opened the net to let him escape, and then chased him with a large army.

Although the Kerman army that broke out suffered heavy casualties in the bombardment, it still had the power to fight. The leading general wanted to gather the remnant army and return to the army to fight again after escaping from the range of the artillery fire.But the army was defeated like a mountain, and the army with extremely poor military discipline had just escaped with its life.He didn't listen to orders at all, and just wanted to stay away from this horrible place.That's really killing Buddhas when they meet Buddhas, and killing gods when they meet gods. Even if Allah appears and blocks their way, they will be trampled like mud by horses.In this case, the authority of the general disappeared, and he was either taken away by the fleeing rebellious army or killed by the rebellious army.

The dragoons of the Song Army and the 'Blak' bandit army are best at quickly interspersed and detoured, and they followed closely on the two wings of the chaotic army.Seizing the opportunity, they inserted a phalanx into the enemy group, divided and surrounded the enemy army in the brigade, and the hussars rushed into the enemy group with unstoppable momentum.The already frightened enemy army is usually defeated in one blow, and the dragon riders took the opportunity to surround and kill this enemy army.

The west bank of the Tigris is the east bank of the Euphrates, and the distance between the two great rivers is no more than ten miles at its widest point and thirty miles at its narrowest point.The remnants of Kerman were like a bison trapped on the runway, whose flesh was torn off piece by piece under the pursuit of the wolves.No matter how hard he ran, he couldn't get rid of the pursuit.Two days later, the savage bull ran out of blood and flesh, exhausted its last bit of strength and collapsed, and was soon devoured by the relentless pack of wolves...

While the Kerman Army was shelled, Roma also launched an attack. They wanted to regain the bridge and restore the connection between the two armies, but they were still unable to break through the bridge blocked by artillery fire.Watching helplessly, the cavalry of the Song Army crossed the river to encircle the friendly army.But the Roma army also found that all the enemy's cavalry had crossed the river to encircle the Kerman army, and the camp was only defended by infantry.Reduce pressure on allies.

Three Roma troops of [-] troops lined up for ten miles and launched an attack on the front of the Song Army camp.Seeing the slowly approaching enemy, Ma Wei was also a little nervous. Before the battle, when he was discussing with the generals how to defeat the sudden enemy reinforcements, everyone thought that with his limited strength, he would face an enemy force several times his own. Fighting is definitely not enough, especially the heavy cavalry of Roma is the biggest threat to them. Even if one's own hussars have firearms in hand, it is difficult to gain an advantage in the battle. Even if they can win, it will be a miserable victory.

This kind of war of attrition is fatal to the expeditionary force that is far away from the local troops and is difficult to replenish, and there is still a strong city waiting for them to capture. Excessive loss of troops will directly lead to the failure of the expedition.So someone proposed to avoid the enemy army and go directly northward to Baghdad to attack the capital by water, but this idea was quickly rejected. The military reinforcements have arrived one step ahead, and there is no way to hide.

Can't fight and fight, can't hide and hide, and complete the scheduled campaign goals, this is the most testing time for the commander of an army.According to the situation on the battlefield, Ma Wei made a decision to annihilate the current enemy first, and then march into the imperial capital.Facing the overwhelming enemy army, the Song army relied only on sharp firearms. Based on this, Ma Wei cleverly deployed the firepower configuration of his own troops:

On the one hand, it focused on giving full play to the formidable power of naval battleship gunfire, placing the camp within the range of the naval guns, and providing strong fire cover for the infantry; As the main force of this battle, the army used field fortifications to consume the enemy's vital strength by using defense as an offense. After inflicting heavy blows on the attacking enemy, the cavalry counterattacked.

So Ma Wei deployed two lines of defense in echelons with infantry, and rushed to repair solid field fortifications. The lines of defense communicated with each other through communication trenches, and they could come and go freely to support each other.The [-] infantry may seem weak on the ten-mile long defense line, but its firepower cannot be underestimated.Needless to say, there is only one Lianzhu gun in each hand. With the improvement of machine guns and the expansion of production capacity, the weight of four-barreled machine guns has been greatly reduced, and their portability has been greatly improved, so they can be deployed in groups.

This enables each group of the infantry to form a fire support point with the machine gun as the center, and the ships have a large load capacity and strong transportation capacity, which can provide them with sufficient ammunition, so they don't have to worry about the lack of ammunition, and they can let go.Nearly a thousand machine guns fired at the same time, just thinking about the scene is enough to make people excited.And its terrifying lethality, anyone who has experienced it will be haunted by nightmares for a lifetime.

However, the enemy did not follow Ma Wei's thinking. They actually divided their troops into two groups to encircle the expeditionary army, which made him see a new opportunity for combat.The two enemy armies faced each other across the river and were only connected by a pontoon bridge. The Song army could easily divide the enemy army into two as long as they captured the pontoon bridge.However, the Kerman army, who did not understand the tactics of the Song army at all, went down to the village near the river, giving them a good opportunity to use the firepower of the naval warships. Ma Wei immediately changed his plan and decided to wipe out the enemy first.

But doing so also entailed risks. The Song army was already weak, and even if all the cavalry came out, it would not be able to guarantee an advantage over the enemy who was hit by artillery fire.Forget about the infantry, their two legs can't catch up with the four legs that are determined to escape, so the task of sticking to the camp can only be undertaken by the infantry and marines.As long as the enemy army is not stupid, they will not fail to see that this moment is also an opportunity for them...

The rapid sound of war drums and tens of thousands of horseshoes hitting the ground could be clearly distinguished at first, but as the horses began to accelerate, it became difficult to distinguish. The thunderous hooves sounded like a single point, and the ground was raised and lowered and trembled. Trembling, and the sense of oppression produced by the heavy cavalry charge is simply suffocating.

"Target, the enemy is lined up in front, and the artillery is ready!" In the past, the artillery moved quickly after firing, but this time the artillery brigade could not retreat. They had to bear the enemy's attack together with the infantry, which made Joe's second Also a little nervous.Standing on the observation vehicle with binoculars in hand, he wiped the sweat from his palms as he watched the approaching enemy troops. He raised his left arm high and gave orders loudly.

"The mortar exploded, fired continuously!"

"Quick-firing gun, solid bullet, two quick shots!" Joe's second son did not wait for the enemy to fully enter the range before firing as in the past, but the enemy cavalry just entered the range and ordered the cannon to be blocked.

Qiao Shijun is very clear that only a hundred light artillery pieces of the artillery brigade deployed on such a long front are not enough to completely stop the enemy's attack, and now that the navy's warships are bombarding the Kerman army camp on the west bank, there is no need to worry about it for the time being. Here, it can only be supported by the artillery brigade for now.He knew that it would be difficult to cause heavy casualties to the enemy by firing artillery now, but it could reduce the impact speed of the enemy's cavalry, thereby relieving the pressure on the frontline infantry.Therefore, facing the overwhelming enemy cavalry, he immediately ordered the artillery to fire and hit the opponent at a longer distance, hoping to disrupt the enemy's offensive rhythm.

Sure enough, although the artillery brigade fired first, their light artillery coverage density and lethal power could not completely suppress the fast-moving cavalry.Soon, the Roma cavalry rushed to a place far away from the Song Army's defense line...