192 – Defense of the Yellow Plains (5)
The dawn of the day after the Marquis Simon and the Marquis Creutel faced each other and scolded each other.
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Marquis Simon, commander of the eastern French garrison, drew his sword and gave orders to his men.
“All troops, we are going to kill the evil invader Marquis Creutel. charge!!”
At the same time, the military band of Franzi’s allies sounded drums and horns, and the flag bearers waved the flags ordering the march dizzyingly.
Upon receiving the signal, the lower commanders and messengers of the French Legion wandered around ordering their units.
“Assault with Calius troops!! I’m going to break the wooden fence guarded by the damn marquis!”
“Long live the Baron of Spades! Charge the Hilton troops!!”
Like that, the commanders and messengers of each unit showed a confident appearance like those who had already won victory…
The serf soldiers under him had expressions and attitudes that were far from enthusiastic, tired and fearful.
However, even in the midst of this, the serfs were sharing only ‘the story after the victory’, as if they did not think that the French army, which had three times as many troops, would lose.
“I don’t think I’ll lose… Can we really go back alive?”
“If you can’t go back now, as the damned Marquis of Creutel said… It’s a plan to miss the harvest season. And if you ask me to pay taxes… ”
“Stop it, the damn dictators in the back listen. Also, if you win, you’ll have to secretly bring your armor on the way back. Instead of paying taxes, I should sell the armor worn by those pigs… ”
As the soldiers of the Marquis Simon grumbled and headed for the wooden castle across the river, the Marquis Creutel ordered the musketry regiment to go out of the castle and intercept the enemy.
Someone will ask if it would be better to fight in a well-built fort if you are going to fight against the enemy.
But that’s only true if you have to fight far away from a fort and there’s no element that won’t hinder your opponent’s march, like plains or low hills.
If fortifications are close by and the opponent must pass through terrain that makes marching difficult, such as steep mountains and wide rivers, the strategies available are multiplied.
The strategy is to reduce the number of soldiers as much as possible from a distance by mobilizing as much soldiers as possible while the enemy forces break through the obstacle, and quickly break away.
Colonel Frost’s arquebusier regiment went to the riverbank in an orderly manner, unlike France’s allied forces, to carry out the operation.
When Franchi’s army and the Marquis of Creutel’s army marched and arrived at the river, the colonel, who could be called the vanguard, gave an order first.
“If the enemy comes within range, we will immediately fire all at once!! Shoot like that, and when the enemy soldiers approach, just get on your horse and enter the north gate of Mochaek Fortress and join the interception force.”
Soon after, the Marquis Simon also saw the Prost regiment on the other side of the river and gave orders to the French garrison under his command.
“There are at most 1,000 opponents. So they will run away in fear if we even get close! Also, a matchlock isn’t a good fit, so don’t worry and cross the river!!”
Franzi’s commander, the Marquis Simon, went to great lengths to disparage the enemy’s matchlock, but that was half right and half wrong.
Because when shooting a matchlock in a melee or urgent situation, the chance of missing is extremely high because you can’t aim properly, so there are many cases where only one or two shots out of 10 hit…
When crossing a river and sniping slowly approaching soldiers, it boasts a high accuracy rate that can hit 7-8 out of 10 shots.
So, in the corps of the Marquis Simon, 7 to 8 percent of the soldiers who were the targets of the volley fire from the matchlock guns in the front line were killed in the first shot.
“All of these are orders from your Excellency Commander! Cross the river!!”
Allied infantry and knights led by the Marquis Simon began to cross the shallow part of the river with a click and a click.
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Meanwhile, some of the serfs trembled and hesitated when they saw the horsemen pointing their matchlocks at them from across the river.
“under… I’m really scared… help me… I might die if I cross over there… Can’t we just go to the back?”
“There is a cavalryman aiming a matchlock or something right in front of me, and at least one of me… ”
However, such soldiers were soon killed by single-handed troops mixed in with the legions crossing the river.
And the soldiers of the single combat team shouted every time they killed the soldiers who trembled and hesitated like that.
“If you go forward and fight and win, His Excellency the Marquis will share wealth and honor, and those caught running away will die miserably like this!”
In this way, the French allied forces urged the advance by killing soldiers sometimes, and by the time they crossed the river before they knew it.
Lead bullets began to pour from the guns of the dragoons who were aiming their matchlocks on their horses.
The shower of bullets pierced the bodies of the unarmored soldiers, and the blood of the dead and wounded soldiers flowed into the river.
“Ah!”
“If I had known it would be like this, I would have just deserted yesterday… I couldn’t run away because I was scared for nothing, so I ended up like this… ”
So Frost’s Regiment opened fire on their enemies as they crossed the river four times, then quickly turned wide to the right and returned to the gates of the Fortress.
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Marquis Simon, who saw this, had expected it to some extent after seeing the enemy stationed before crossing the river, but he could not stand his anger and spoke loudly.
“It’s like the damned Marquis of Creutel… It wasn’t enough to build such a large wooden fence in a month, so he did such a sly thing to his allies crossing the river… ”
However, the Marquis Simon said from a young age that ‘a lord who goes to war must remain calm.’ Because he was taught, he soon calmed down his anger.
Then, I looked at the wooden castle of the Marquis of Creutel, which was about 3 to 400 meters away.
It is so wide that it seems to be 3 km in length and width, but it is only about 2 meters in height and has jagged walls.
In the middle, there are oddly shaped holes between the watchtower and the wall made to attack the soldiers clinging to the wall.
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More unusually, the soldiers were not seen at all, perhaps because the walls were made in a strange shape.
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Marquis Simon, who saw the castle wall in such a shape, pondered for a while whether he should make more proper siege equipment and attack the enemy.
However, he soon shook his head to and fro and hardened his thoughts.
‘If you withdraw from here, your status and honor as the commander of the garrison will fall to the ground. If that happens, even if I can protect the defense forces, my family and I will come to an end. Also, with that castle, if the allies use their superiority in numbers… If you install a ladder and push it, you will be able to attack.’
Then Marquis Simon pointed to the wooden fence made by Marquis Creutel with the baton in his hand and said.
“Listen to the French army. The Marquis said that he built the castle because he was afraid of us, but it was a poor castle built in just one month. So, even if we, who have a lot of troops, only bring ladders, the enemies will collapse in no time. All troops, attack begins.”
The Marquis’ judgment was mixed with anxiety about the danger that would come if this expedition failed, but his order was not completely wrong.
Also, if it’s actually a wooden castle without any special defense facilities…
Even if it is possible to force Marquis Simon’s army to inflict much greater damage than nothing, it is because it can be penetrated by constantly pushing using numerical superiority.
No, if you consider that the fundamental principle of almost all siege warfare recorded in history is to use ladders to climb over the walls with more troops than the enemy?
It’s not entirely wrong, but it could be said that it was the only option to annihilate Marquis Creutel’s army.
By the time the Marquis Simon was slowly approaching to implement the tactic of mobilizing 80,000 soldiers and breaking through the wooden castle with mass.
The soldiers of the Marquis of Creutel were doing their best in their respective positions.
The arquebusiers loaded their bullets from their respective positions, and the spearmen engaged in close combat moved to a place where they could run away at any time when the enemy approached.
In addition, the soldiers who handle the cannon put the cannon that was loaded into the cannon hole drilled in the middle of the floor over 1m.
The Marquis of Creutel and his sappers saw the enemy infantry coming within range of their cannons from the top of the ramparts, and signaled to their riders.
As soon as the gunners received the signal, they lit the igniters and fired their cannons.
The cannon was pushed back with a popping sound, and the several kilograms of iron inside the cannon flew toward the French army.