Wild North America 1846

The attacking army of the Tang Empire continued its fierce shelling for 30 minutes, and poured more than 2 shells into the frontline positions of the Dutch defenders, which was simply inhumane.

Due to the insufficient range, the Dutch artillery positions only counterattacked sporadically. The Dutch soldiers on the front line suffered a large number of artillery fire injuries, with 4000 casualties.

If it weren't for the guns of the white supervisors on the second line, the indigenous servant soldiers on the first line would have collapsed long ago.

Many of these indigenous servants participated in the encirclement and suppression of the Asian rebels. They have varying combat experience, and many of them are veterans.

Even so, no one has ever experienced overwhelming artillery bombardment. It is simply the end of the world. They have been bombed and suffered heavy casualties without even touching a hair of the enemy.

Needless to say, it is already on the verge of collapse, and any disturbance will cause a big rout.

see this scene
After judging the situation, General Michels had to grit his teeth and add more than 2700 infantry regiments to the first-line parapet position in the interval between artillery fire, trying to stabilize the third-line defense situation.

Although the parapet positions on the first line have been destroyed by enemy artillery fire, and most of the barbed wire and parapet fences have been blown to pieces, they still have certain defensive capabilities.

After the reinforcements go up, they can basically stabilize the floating morale of the army.

who knows

After a lapse of 15 minutes, when the attacking Datang Empire army was about to move, it was stopped urgently, and the artillery positions roared again.

This move was so unexpected that it almost made General Michels spit out a mouthful of blood.

It's too bullying if you don't play like this.

It was originally expected that the infantry of the Tang Empire would not wait for a full-scale attack, and the hateful shelling began again. The sad front-line Dutch soldiers could only suffer in despair.

Groups of exploding flames, mixed with dust and stumps and broken arms, flew into the sky, interpreting the cruelty of war in an extremely real way.

Unsurprisingly, an accident happened...

The native officers and soldiers who were still sticking to the first line of defensive chests ran backwards under the heavy artillery bombardment. They could no longer bear this cruel place of death and collapsed instantly.

Now these indigenous officers and soldiers have only one thought in mind, to escape from this terrible hell.

The soldiers in front of them emerged from behind the parapets, shell craters and corners where they were hiding, and ran backwards. The rout soon became unstoppable.

The exploding shells still fell like raindrops. Every time there was a violent explosion, the splashing shrapnel whistling and sweeping, would instantly clear away the people within a radius of seven or eight meters around the explosion point.

The sudden large-scale rout caused the casualties of the Dutch soldiers to increase sharply.

"Damn it..." General Michels clenched his fists and slammed the wall hard. He could bear the loss of the native servants, but he couldn't bear such stupidity and defeat.

The naked eye can see that on the battlefield ahead, the officers and soldiers of the Dutch Army, who were fleeing densely, were beaten into sparse spots under the cover of dense artillery fire.

Compared with hiding in the position, the effect of artillery fire coverage is several times higher?
"Aim and shoot"

"Papa papa... papa papa..."

White soldiers from the second-line positions of the Dutch Army also performed the task of supervising the battle team on the battlefield.

Under the officer's order, they raised the muzzles of the black holes in unison, and pulled the guns without hesitation.

In the era of line infantry who lined up to be shot, the military law was extremely strict, and retreating without an order was a felony that must be killed, no matter how many people there were.

If they were all unable to fight and fled, then the second and third line defensive positions would be like paper, and the enemy would break through them as soon as they poked them.

Can only move forward, not backward.

It is okay to die in battle on the defensive front, but routs are absolutely not allowed. This has already stepped on the bottom line of the military.

Therefore, European armies generally set up supervisory teams, and the same is true for the Royal Dutch Army. When the fleeing soldiers approached the 150-meter red line of the second-line position, they did not hesitate to enforce battlefield discipline.

Just after escaping from the death area covered by artillery fire, the native officers and soldiers watched the Dutch soldiers raise their black muzzles, and their expressions of extreme panic added deep despair...

The dense volleys of guns rang out one after another, and the hot bullets knocked the figures of these retreating Dutch soldiers sharply, shooting out dazzling blood, and fell powerlessly in front of the second-line position, the nearest one was only seven or eighty meters away.

Covered by enemy artillery fire at the rear, the dense platoon of guns fired by the Dutch warlords in front fired round after round, which caused the fleeing native soldiers to be attacked on both sides, and they were knocked to the ground like cutting leeks.

This seemingly cruel battlefield discipline guaranteed the tenacious fighting style of the European army. Since the 17th century, it has become the golden rule of the army and has been vividly reflected in all major wars.

The European army powers Germany, France, and Russia are the countries with the most resolute enforcement of battlefield discipline, and they are also the countries with the most powerful armies.

The second round of shelling lasted about 2 minutes and then came to an abrupt end.

A strong smell of blood wafted from the battlefield. Between the front line and the second line of the Dutch army, there were densely packed corpses everywhere. The field was stained red with bright red blood. The scene was extremely miserable.

After dawn, the main army of the Tang Empire gathered, still forming a large formation 3.5 kilometers away, while the Dutch army's position on this side was already devastated, and there were many dead and wounded.

Needless to say, the first parapet defense line was completely destroyed by enemy artillery fire, and the officers and soldiers were also killed.

The Dutch army filled in nearly 1.3 people. Under the enemy's second round of artillery strangling and the Dutch army's intensive volley of guns, nearly [-] people were killed and injured, which can be described as a devastating blow.

The remaining clever people were either still hiding behind the parapet defense line, or hiding in the pile of dead bodies, or fled to the edge of the flank, and it was difficult to take care of them for a while.

Under the bombardment of the Tang Empire's superior artillery fire, the three-line defensive position arranged by General Michelle has now only two defensive lines left.

At this moment

The resounding sound of the bugle sounded, and the army of the Great Tang Empire began to press on...

strangely

After the official offensive was launched, the originally neatly arranged queues became loose. Some of the advancing soldiers fell behind during the attack, and some protruded. From a distance, it was no longer a clear horizontal "one" queue.

As the soldiers' attack formation advanced, the distance between them also widened, presenting countless loose triangular formations. This was the latest skirmish line attack tactic of the Datang Empire.

This skirmish line attack tactic allows soldiers to be separated from each other more when encountering enemy artillery fire, without having to maintain a strict formation.

There is no doubt that this new tactic is more flexible.

The artillery regiments of the Tang Empire were led by mules and horses, and quickly shifted their artillery positions forward. The artillery of both the enemy and our side quickly entered the range of covering each other.

General Michels, commander-in-chief of the Dutch army, held his binoculars with a livid face, and did not order the artillery positions to fire hastily, but patiently waited for the enemy artillery positions to settle down.

The Dutch army is generally equipped with front-loading steel hoop guns, with 6-pound, 9-pound, 12-pound and 18-pound Napoleon field guns of various calibers.

This is a relatively advanced artillery popular in the 19s and 70s. It was born out of the early bronze Napoleon artillery, and the two are in the same line.

The technical means of steel pipe and steel hoop is used to reduce weight and can withstand higher chamber pressure. It has been equipped in large quantities in the Royal Navy.

The famous Armstrong artillery equipped by the British Royal Navy is a very representative manufacturer of muzzle-loading guns in the world. The steel hoop gun developed by it in the late 60s inevitably affected the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark and other European countries.

The famous Colt artillery of the Tang Empire represents another major school of world army equipment, that is, the breech loading school, which uses a wedge or screw breech block, and is a representative of the world's advanced artillery.

General Michels was patiently waiting for the artillery regiments of the Tang Empire to settle down. With the level of artillery currently equipped by the Dutch army, the accuracy of shelling fixed targets was an order of magnitude higher than that of shelling moving targets.

The Dutch army doesn't have so many shells to waste, so it must be used sparingly.

On the battlefield

The advancing Datang Empire army set out from a place 3.5 kilometers away from the first-line parapet position of the Dutch defenders in an all-round attack, and slowly approached at a normal pace.

ten minutes later

When the attacking soldiers entered the 2.5-kilometer optimal range of artillery strikes, more than 6 artillery pieces from 220 artillery positions of the Dutch army opened fire one after another, attacking the officers and soldiers of the Royal Guards of the Tang Empire.

For a while, dense shells fell, causing varying degrees of damage to the attacking officers and soldiers.

As a result, the attacking skirmish line became looser, and the imperial soldiers braved the artillery fire.

at the same time
The field artillery of the Expeditionary Corps of the Tang Empire, who arrived at the new artillery positions one after another, quickly fired back, and focused on the Dutch artillery with more violent and hot artillery fire.

The two sides launched a fierce artillery battle. Amidst the rumble of artillery, one Dutch artillery position after another was covered by fierce artillery fire. The powerful air waves generated by the explosion swept across, killing a large number of officers and soldiers in the Dutch artillery positions.

In the head-on confrontation of the artillery, the attacking nine artillery regiments belonging to the Royal Guards of the Tang Empire, with a total of more than 320 artillery pieces, had an overwhelming advantage.

With the passage of time, the intensity of the Dutch army's artillery fire declined rapidly, and it obviously suffered a big loss.

Comparing the artillery of the Tang and Dutch armies, the artillery of the Tang Empire was at an advanced level in the 19s, representing the highest level of advanced artillery equipment in the world today.

In particular, it is equipped with a full breech loading artillery system, and the shells are filled with advanced double-base gunpowder produced by Colt Chemical Company.That is, a new type of high-explosive gunpowder developed with 60% nitroglycerin and 40% low-nitrogen nitrocellulose, which is extremely lethal.

The artillery of the Royal Netherlands Army is at the level of the 19s. The shells are filled with early picric acid explosives, which are much less powerful and less reliable.

Many shells hit the battlefield fiercely and did not explode, which scared the imperial officers and soldiers who had escaped their lives into a cold sweat.

After a rough calculation, about 1/3 of the shells of the Dutch artillery did not explode.

This is because the ammunition stored by the Dutch army has been stored in tropical warehouses for more than 10 years. Due to the strong hygroscopicity of picric acid, low explosion energy, and poor physical stability, many stored ammunition has failed.

Even if it is hit by a shell, it will be like a dull fart when it lands on the battlefield. It can only explode, but it doesn't have much lethality.

It's not at all like the extremely lethal shells of the Tang Empire, which exploded violently after falling, exploding a large area, and then rising a mushroom cloud composed of fire and dust.

More than 10 minutes after the artillery fired each other, the 6 artillery positions of the Dutch army failed to fire one after another. Most of them were blown to pieces. Most of the 220 artillery pieces were destroyed, and only less than 70 were still firing tenaciously.

This is the No. 2 and No. 5 artillery positions of the Dutch army located in the dense forest. Due to the difficulty of observing the specific positions, the Artillery Force of the Datang Empire can only divide into two artillery regiments, and use artillery fire to carry out probabilistic coverage and suppression.

The remaining 7 artillery regiments turned their muzzles and began to bombard the second parapet defense position again, firmly controlling the dominance of the war.

In the past ten minutes, the skirmish line of the advancing Datang Empire army has approached from 2.5 kilometers to within 1.5 kilometers.

The imperial soldiers with sharp spears pressed up like a wave, and the artillery fire could not stop their advance, which put great pressure on the Dutch soldiers.

at this time
A loud charge horn sounded from one side of the battlefield, and soon a large cloud of smoke and dust filled the air, and a large number of armored chariots appeared from the flank 4.5 kilometers away from the battlefield, and they were approaching the Hejun position at high speed.

in the wilderness
These armored chariots approaching at high speed were simply stabbed in the waist of the precarious Dutch army, which greatly destroyed the morale of the Dutch army.

Moreover, these armored chariots were fast, and the distance between the two had been shortened by half in just five or six minutes, and it was possible to attack the second-line parapet position earlier than the infantry, which caused great panic among the Dutch soldiers.

Under the dual effects of artillery coverage and armor impact, many Dutch soldiers have already turned around and fled in fright. This may quickly form a herd effect and trigger another major defeat.

under crisis

General Michels had to send the only cavalry regiment in his hand to meet it. This cavalry regiment with a total of more than 1100 people was the only cavalry force of the Dutch army.

In order to stabilize the line of defense, he had to take it out.

A Dutch cavalry came out from the rear of the third-line defensive position. The cavalry regiment quickly changed formation while galloping, spread out from both wings like the wings of a wild goose, and charged towards the armored chariot at high speed.

The appearance of such a cavalry regiment on the battlefield greatly boosted the morale of the Dutch officers and soldiers, and also stabilized the precarious line of defense.

amidst cheers

The Dutch cavalry, who intercepted the armored convoy head-on, once again instigated their horses to gallop at high speed, and charged at the armored convoy. The cavalry drew out their shining sabers and waved them above their heads, not losing the momentum at all.

Thousands of horseshoes trampled on the ground, like thunder rolling across the field, and the charging cavalry marched forward bravely, their eyes full of desire for victory and honor.

Cavalry, charge!