New Shun 1730

It was 5:30 the next morning.

The mist that always permeates Bengal in winter had not yet completely dissipated, and the scouts of the left column of the Dashun Army had already briefly exchanged fire with the Muslim light cavalry.

The Dashun scouts were usually composed of seven people in a team, and their standard equipment was a navy-style short-barreled flintlock rifle, a flintlock pistol, a spear, and a cavalry sword.

These scouts were generally composed of good family children, because this required a certain level of horsemanship cultivated since childhood.

Unlike those regular cavalrymen who were born as farmers and trained for two or three years on war horses, scouts needed good horsemanship.

The biggest advantage of being a scout is that you can grab a lot of spoils.

Generally speaking, the scouts on the opposite side have a lot of things on them. Especially the Muslim cavalry.

For example, the Bengal light cavalry on the opposite side that the Dashun scout team discovered at this time.

A Tawa scimitar can be sold for a sum of money; a tight-fitting "Chishilicado" cloth armor woven with wool and silk that may be damaged can also be sold for a sum of money; gold and silver jewelry on the body, Mongolian-style boots with toes hooked up to hook stirrups with some silver decorations... or women's scarves stolen from the body, etc., can all be sold for money.

This scout team has served in Nanyang for a long time and is very familiar with the decorations on these small Muslim landlords or nobles. So they are more willing to chop people. If they are lucky, sometimes they can pull an earring or touch a ring. As long as they are not dead, the money for eating, drinking, whoring and gambling for a year will come out.

The captain of the scout team looked at the six cavalrymen who emerged from the light mist on the opposite side, spit out the cigarette in his mouth, and revealed two shiny gold teeth. That was his trophy in Nanyang, pulled out from the mouth of a dead person.

After checking the muskets on his body, the partners who had fought several battles together did not need any verbal orders. They shook their heads and whistled, and then they tacitly understood each other.

His heels hit the stirrups, and the team began to jog towards the opposite side.

The Bengal light cavalry on the opposite side also discovered them, but did not run, but rushed towards them.

When there were more than 200 steps on both sides, he suddenly increased the speed of the horse, shouted, shook his shoulders, folded the navy short-barreled gun hanging on his back, moved his shoulders, and clamped the spear under his armpit, but it was not clamped tightly, and did not follow the standard movements stipulated in those weird drills that he thought, such as the elbow should be lower than the waist and the forearm should be tilted.

The Bengal cavalry on the opposite side also held a spear in his hand.

At this time, the captain of the scout team had no one else in his eyes, only the Bengal cavalry on the opposite side.

The horse began to speed up, and when the two were about fifty or sixty steps apart, the spear that was originally clamped under the armpit was raised by him.

He loosened the reins with his left hand, and controlled the horse with his legs, turning into a standard two-handed gun-holding posture.

The Bengal cavalry on the opposite side was obviously a little panicked, but he did not make the two-handed gun-holding posture after all. Instead, he gritted his teeth and pointed his spear diagonally at the face of Dashun, the scout captain.

At the moment when the two horses crossed, the captain raised his spear and pushed it, then retracted his arm and stabbed it, and stabbed the face of the other side in an instant.

His body subconsciously leaned to the side to avoid the spear on the opposite side that deviated from the direction after being separated by him.

The enemy behind him had fallen off his horse, he put away his spear, controlled the reins, and prepared to circle around and attack again, and heard gunshots coming from not far away.

He also threw the spear on the ground and pulled out the pistol from the bundle bag on the side.

When he pulled out the pistol, he felt very bad. It's not because of killing people. The gold teeth on his mouth were all pulled out from the mouths of dead people. Killing people has no inner waves for him.

He just held the pistol in his hand, lamenting that the era of his generation was over.

They might be the last batch of professional warriors of Dashun, or the professional soldiers of good family and small landlords.

Except for those who charged into battle with heavy armor and one-handed gun, the reason why most cavalrymen at this time actually held guns with one hand was very simple: because of their poor horsemanship, few people practiced horsemanship.

He was born in a typical "Marquis" family of good family. The Marquis of Dashun was not a title, but similar to an old soldier or the old fifth battalion. He had ridden horses since he was a child and had ridden for more than ten years. He could hold the gun with both hands at will, loosen the reins, and control the horse with only his legs and waist.

However, it was useless.

Few of the cavalry battalions formed by Dashun could hold the spear with both hands, and many of them might even be recruited from refugees or farmers.

It was almost impossible to expect them to hold the gun with both hands.

Just like the simplest action of stabbing with a spear back, it was too easy for him to do it with the gun held with both hands.

The regular lancers trained by the court did not have the ability to return the spurs with both hands.

They could return the spurs, and according to the drill training, they had to stab on the right side and on the left side, and each stab method had a standard decomposition action.

The first step was the standard armpit-holding gun posture.

The second step was to step on the stirrup, use the thigh to exert force, and slightly raise the body.

The third step was to point the spear tip downward and continue to stand up.

The fourth step was to use the height of standing up to circle the spear tip from below and turn the wrist.

The fifth step was to keep the spear under the armpit, twist the neck to the right, and hold the spear with the wrist level with the left ear.

The sixth step was to stab.

The seventh step was to put away the spear. After putting away the spear, the legs were relieved and sat back on the stirrup, and the posture of holding the spear under the armpit was maintained...

The left stab also has about seven or eight decomposed movements.

Those cavalrymen who may have never ridden a horse before do not need the ability to loosen the reins with both hands. They can also achieve the effect of spurring back by training day by day according to this decomposed step.

The key to the problem is cheapness. To train such a cavalryman, you need a warhorse and three years of military pay and food to complete the formation combat, and the effect is very good.

They may not be suitable for such small-team confrontation reconnaissance, harassment, sneak attacks, arson and other actions.

But when lining up to charge, 1,000 cavalrymen who can only hold spears with one hand due to horsemanship and 1,000 warrior landlords like him who have been trained since childhood have basically the same combat effectiveness.

This is not a problem for him alone, or it is not a problem unique to Dashun, but a problem of the decline of the warrior class that is common throughout the world.

Including these Bengal cavalrymen, the elite full-time horse warriors of the Mughal era have withdrawn from the stage of history. Most of the current cavalrymen are third-rate cavalrymen at the peak of the Mughal era, and the level of subordinate cavalrymen of local nobles.

His father also participated in the war in the northwest. At that time, the horsemanship of the Dzungars and other Mongols was no longer good. A lot of people who used muskets were musketeers who fought on the ground on horseback; the remaining ones also returned to the level of the Mongols in the middle and late periods of the previous dynasty, forgetting the horsemanship of the spear, and only knew how to use sabers and short bows. Some spearmen also used short things like hook sickle spears.

Even... after the founding of the Dashun Dynasty, even the martial arts examinations that were specially selected for those skilled in archery and horsemanship in the previous dynasty were cancelled.

It's just that his father is an old-fashioned person. His ancestors relied on horsemanship to fight, so it was passed down from generation to generation. When it came to his generation, he still received strict education in horsemanship.

Then, he had to think of his son-he didn't learn it at all. It's not that he didn't learn to ride a horse, but that he didn't work hard to learn those exquisite horsemanship with free reins. He turned around and asked him: Dad, you are so good at martial arts, why do you only have military ranks and military honors but no real job? If I can't even be a battalion commander, what's the point of learning all this? If I go back hundreds of years, I might be a lieutenant, a cavalryman, a troop, or even a general, but now I am just a soldier with honors but no real job...

The trend of the times is mighty, those who follow it will prosper, and those who go against it will perish.

This is an era in which traditional middle-class people such as craftsmen and handicraftsmen are gradually destroyed and replaced by workers and machines. It is also an era in which killing "craftsmen" like them are gradually replaced by cheap, mass-produced, peasant-trained cavalry who can't loosen their hands and charge in batches.

In the charge just now, he was just lamenting that even the martial arts of these Muslim warriors have been reduced to this. Cavalrymen who can't even use swords and shields, dual wields, or two-handed spears can also serve as elite scouts...

It can't be said that the rabbit dies and the fox mourns, it can only be said that this is a very sad sigh of the times.

He thought, perhaps, our generation is the last group of people in the Celestial Empire who can still do horse riding tricks such as shooting with a string of arrows, shooting with both hands, holding a spear with both hands, etc. This world is really changing too fast.

With such a feeling in his heart, he skillfully put the pistol that only needs one hand to hold on his left wrist that pulls the reins, and quickly went around to the side of a Bengal cavalryman who was about to escape and shot him off his horse with lead bullets instead of horse riding feathers.

Then he skillfully put the pistol back, drew out his saber, bent over and hit the head of the Bengal cavalryman who fell off his horse.

All six Bengal cavalrymen were hacked to death or shot to death, and they didn't leave any alive. This was not a strategic reconnaissance, so there was no need to leave any alive.

He called the names of the two uninjured people in the team and asked them to cross the woods in front and continue to look. According to the rules, they would keep a share of the spoils.

Then he jumped off the horse and searched through the personal belongings of these Bengal cavalrymen with his men, looking for earrings, silver, gems or scarves.

After collecting the spoils and collecting the horses on the opposite side, these people lit a cigarette and prepared to go to the front to support.

However, after running two steps, they heard a few gunshots from the woods in the distance. Then the two cavalrymen who had gone to the front appeared from the woods, riding their horses and waving the flags in their hands quickly.

"Cavalry! Their main cavalry force!"

The captain of the squad saw the meaning of the flag, but did not run immediately. Instead, he gathered his people and went to see it in person before running away.

…………

At 6:15.

The left wing of the Dashun Army began to prepare for the battle, but they were not in a hurry.

Those private soldiers of the Fubing Line just adjusted the position of the column to ensure that they could easily form a staggered square formation.

And those skirmishers with rifled guns, cavalry cannons, and the 6-jin howitzers that followed, as well as the professional recruits of the Java Military Town, relied on their daily high-intensity training and the actual combat of some small countries in Southeast Asia to carry out a maneuver that seemed incredible on the European battlefield twenty years ago.

The rifled skirmishers spread out in a semicircular arc formation in front of the artillery, without the need to form a formation, and used the arc formation to cover the artillery behind them. With a speed far faster than the line-line soldiers, 18 cavalry guns and 6-jin howitzers were deployed on the side of the visible range where the Bengalese might launch an attack.

Behind them were the recruits of the Nanyang military town marching in a column.

The Bengal cavalry had already started to move.

The rifled skirmishers received the order to fire freely at 400 steps.

The artillerymen covered by the skirmishers received the order to fire shotgun shells at close range.

The infantry companies of the military town formed a horizontal column and continued to fire, forcing the Bengal cavalry to turn and go around the gap on the side.

Behind them were the line soldiers and artillery positions deployed step by step in the battalion and company positions.