When he heard the word "enemy attack", Peng Sanyu jumped out of the car subconsciously, and at the same time picked up the musket he had placed on the carriage.

At this time, he also heard the rhythmic sound of the horn coming from ahead.

Peng Sanyu, who has been in the army for many years and is familiar with military bugles, knew as soon as he heard it that it was the horn sound for urgent formation and preparation for war!

Peng Sanyu immediately looked at the captain not far away!

This young second lieutenant, who had just graduated from the Army Officer School for less than a year, felt a little stunned at this time. He sat in the carriage for a long time without giving any orders.

Peng Sanyu cursed secretly in his heart: "Young recruit, you look fine when you are not fighting, but when something happens, you immediately panic!"

But that was his immediate superior, so he couldn't just step forward and curse. He could only quickly walk to the captain: "Captain, it's time to give the order!"

After hearing this, the young lieutenant realized: "Yes, the enemy is attacking, stop immediately and form an emergency formation!"

At this time, the sentry officer in front also sent a messenger: "The sentry commander ordered all sentries to stop and form a square vehicle formation on the spot."

The young second lieutenant said: "Got it!"

And several of his main subordinates, namely three senior officers like Peng Sanyu, have already begun to take action!

As experienced non-commissioned officers who have served for many years, I dare not say anything else, but they are quite proficient in basic tactical movements and formations. They can actually form a formation even without the orders of the second lieutenant and platoon leader above.

Work.

Peng Sanyu ran quickly, calling on the other dozen soldiers under him to move quickly, remove the horses from the four-wheeled carriage full of grain, and then connect the carriages end to end.

In this way, multiple carriages can be built into a simple city wall to provide field protection for these heavy troops.

As other friendly carriages formed one after another, nearly a hundred carriages soon formed a huge hollow square array.

In front, there are two hollow square arrays of the same size.

As soon as this Chu army's baggage force discovered that the enemy was attacking, they used these carriages to form three hollow square formations. The distance between them was about 130 meters, just like the hollow square formations of the infantry.

The formation is the same.

It is worth noting that these empty square formations and vehicle formations are diagonally opposite to each other, roughly like ‘◇◇◇’, which does not mean directly facing each other, but diagonally opposite.

This multi-diamond hollow square formation seems to be just an adjustment in angle, but it is actually one of the results of the Chu Empire Army's years of exploration of line tactics.

Because if the hollow phalanx is deployed face to face, well, that is, it is not fighting the enemy, but playing line shooting with yourself. If you want to avoid accidental damage, you can only keep the distance

, and once the distance is increased, intensive firepower cannot be formed, and there is no support for each other.

But if it is switched from corner to corner, then there will be no accidental damage, and at the same time, cross fire can be formed from both sides, and more powerful firepower will be exerted when facing the enemy's impact.

Similarly, this is also the main reason why an empty square matrix is ​​used instead of a hollow circular matrix.

The formation of the army is still very particular, especially after entering the era of flintlock guns, the role of formation is even greater than that of the cold weapon era.

In the era of cold weapons, although formations were also important, they were far less important than in the era of lines.

This is because in the line era, individual combat capabilities have become less important, and it is impossible to rely on a small group of armored elites to kill the entire formation.

Because no matter how brave the soldiers are, they can't stop the guns and cannons. A row of muskets will hit them. Even if you, Zhao Zilong, are reincarnated, you will still suffer from lead bullets.

In the line era, what is important is the display of firepower, and if you want to display better firepower, appropriate formations are inevitable.

Or in other words, the formations in the line era were basically designed to exert more intensive firepower.

Even the hollow square formation used as a defensive cavalry still focused on the use of firepower. This was also the time when the Chu army conducted anti-cavalry operations. Unless the number of troops was too small, otherwise, it would never just play a solitary hollow.

Square array, but will deploy three or more hollow square arrays as much as possible.

With the same force, divided into multiple hollow square formations, it seems that each square formation has fewer troops and becomes thinner, but it can form cross firepower.

And crossfire is more important than the thickness of the formation.

This series of hollow phalanxes of the Chu army originated from the infantry, and evolved from the hollow large phalanxes of the earliest matchlock era.

The baggage troops also followed the infantry tactics and made certain improvements based on their own circumstances, such as using horse-drawn carriages as obstacles.

However, although the hollow vehicle formation of the baggage troop is based on carriages, strictly speaking it is also a hollow square formation, and there is not much difference in essence.

Now, the Chu army set up three hollow chariot formations, diagonally opposite each other, about 130 meters apart.

The outermost periphery of each hollow vehicle formation is a carriage, with musketeers standing ready behind the carriage. In addition, a 65mm field cannon is deployed between the gaps in the carriage facing the direction of the enemy cavalry attack.

Behind the musketeers were coachmen and grooms with a large number of draft horses, as well as ammunition temporarily transported from the ammunition vehicles.

It is worth noting that the reins of these draft horses were firmly fixed on the temporary iron stakes. This was to prevent the horses from running around due to the sound of gunfire during the battle, and to avoid being hit by enemy bullets or bows and arrows.

He was injured and ran around.

This is a draft horse. If a mule is used, it will be useless no matter how fast it is... because mules are more sensitive to the sound of gunfire.

When faced with the sound of gunfire, the horses can at most clutter their hooves, but the mules will roll all over the ground... as if they are crazy and can't even pull.

Maybe, before the enemy troops come in, the formation will be destroyed from within by these frightened mules.

This is also the reason why frontline troops basically do not use mules and only use draft horses to transport artillery and supplies.

Although mules are stronger, have good endurance, and are easier to feed, they are prone to panic, and their tendency to scream and roll immediately after panic makes them unsuitable for fighting close to the front line.

In today's Chu army, mules are basically used only in the rear areas and when large-scale material transportation is carried out.

After all, since the empire regained Monan and Northeast China, there has been no shortage of Mongolian horses.

Even for Central Asian horses of better quality, with the introduction of stallions and its own breeding for many years, the Dachu Empire has continued to cultivate a number of Central Asian horses of high quality.

The Central Asian horses carefully bred by the Dachu Empire's Dama Camp Army Ma Cheng are different from the Central Asian horses directly introduced from the Yarkand Khanate and other Western Regions.

The horse administration personnel of the Great Chu Empire finally obtained a brand new Central Asian horse after selective breeding of imported Arabian horses, Central Asian horses, and local Hequ horses.

If you pay more attention to it, this thing actually has a very complex pedigree, with many bloodlines including Mongolian horses, Arabian horses, Kazakh horses, and Qinghai horses.

The carefully bred Central Asian horses have an average shoulder height of 1.4 meters. This shoulder height far exceeds that of Mongolian horses, but they also inherit the excellent characteristics of Mongolian horses, that is, they have particularly good endurance and are easy to raise.

Correspondingly, the short-distance speed can only be said to be good, but the explosive power is not good.

But it also depends on what kind of horse it is compared with. If it is compared with a Mongolian horse, its explosive power will be completely over the top... If it is compared with an Arabian horse, it will only be inferior. If compared with a purebred horse, it will be completely overpowered...

From the perspective of later generations, this kind of Central Asian horse is actually more suitable for use as a light draft horse and a horse for medium and long-distance riding.

However, for the Chu army, this is already the best military horse that the Chu Empire's army can get so far, and to a certain extent, it is even more suitable for military use than the Arabian horses that were also introduced and bred.

Because this thing has good endurance and is suitable for riding, it also means that it is suitable for use by light cavalry, and it can allow light cavalry to start running into the battlefield at a longer distance, which means higher battlefield mobility.<

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Nowadays, many of the main cavalry units of the Chu Army have begun to replace them with Central Asian horses. However, the number of Central Asian horses is not enough. Most of the Chu Army's cavalry units can still only use Mongolian horses.

Today's Damanying Military Horse Farm is a military horse farm in the Great Chu Empire that specializes in breeding Central Asian horses. In order to ensure the purity of the bloodline and avoid being contaminated by inferior horses, the army directly transferred all the original Mongolian horses in the Damanying Military Horse Farm.

Migrated away.

At the same time, in order to cultivate more Central Asian horses, the Da Chu Empire Army has set up special Central Asian horse army horse farms in Monan and several other horse farms, especially on Jeju Island.

I just want to breed more Central Asian horses.

In the Army of the Great Chu Empire, independently bred Central Asian horses have gradually entered military service and are used as cavalry riding horses.

The logistics force uses Mongolian horses on a large scale. In places in the south where Mongolian horses are not suitable, the bred Southwest horses are used. Although Southwest horses are short, they can use the climate and terrain of the South. This alone

It is enough for this seemingly short horse breed to serve as the main force of the Chu army's southern troops.

The Dachu Empire chose horses. Troops in different regions used different horses, just like weapons. Even artillery of the same caliber was divided into several types to adapt to different combat environments.

There is no way, the territory of the Chu Empire is too large, thousands of kilometers from north to south, and thousands of kilometers from east to west, from the ice fields in the north to the tropical rainforests in the south, from the coast in the east to the deserts in the west.

From the low-altitude plains to the plateau in the west, it covers almost all terrains and all climates.

Troops fighting in different regions have different requirements for weapons and mules and horses, making it difficult to unify.

Therefore, most of the time, the Chu Army cares more about adaptability than performance.

This is true for weapons, and it is also true for mules and horses.

This is also the reason why among the units of the Fourth Cavalry Army on the northwest front, most of the cavalry are equipped with Central Asian horses, the infantry and logistics troops are equipped with Mongolian horses, and there are no mules to be seen.

This also prevents the First Baggage Battalion under the Second Baggage Regiment from having to worry about its mules being disturbed by artillery when conducting defensive operations, because they do not have mules assigned to them...

Peng Sanyu turned his head and glanced behind him. The groom, coachman and other auxiliary personnel had already arranged the draft horses. There should be no problems in the rear.

Now, what they need to face is the enemy cavalry.

At this time, Peng Sanyu also heard a rumble in the distance, which was the sound caused by the hoofs of a large number of war horses trampling the ground.

The sound made by a small number of war horses is not loud, but the sound of thousands or even more horses running is earth-shattering, and can be heard even from a long distance.

Not long after, Peng Sanyu saw a puff of smoke and dust billowing up in the northwest sky!

Not long after the smoke appeared, enemy cavalry appeared on the top of a low hill. Even though it was far away, it could be seen from the scattered formations and messy costumes on the opposite side that it was a cavalry unit.

The traditional cavalry unit of the nomadic people.

In these days, it is easy to distinguish the Chu cavalry from the cavalry of other armies.

The Chu cavalry either wears gray uniforms or bright steel plate armor, and they are all uniformed in uniform, and their formations are often very neat. At a glance, you can tell that these are the cavalry of the Chu Empire.

"Here we come!" Peng Sanyu withdrew his gaze and then focused on his men again: "Hurry up and check the equipment!"

Peng Sanyu saw that some of his soldiers seemed a little nervous, and immediately said: "Don't worry, they can't rush in, we are very safe!"
To be continued...