Steel, gunpowder, and spellcasters

Chapter 184 The Reason for the Decisive Battle

Officers from the Army Academy all memorized a sentence: "The premise of a major battle is that both sides have the intention to fight a decisive battle."

The Hart-Platau Wars are the best illustration of this statement.

The Hed tribe fled ahead with all their possessions, while the Palatul army pursued them until the sphere of influence was redefined—this was the old pattern of warfare.

General Sackler dreamed of a major battle with the Red River tribe, but as long as the Red River tribe did not want to fight, the battle could not be fought.

The reason is simple: the side with greater mobility has the right to choose the battlefield.

The barbarians are extremely shrewd and cunning, and they are also capable of riding multiple horses and moving like the wind. They only want to fight battles they can win.

Once they sense any danger, they will flee without hesitation, and the battle will once again turn into a tedious chase.

But now the Parat people have seized on the Chihe tribe's weakness: Bianli City.

In earlier times, there were actually some urban settlements on the Great Wilderness.

At that time, the Heds were at their peak, defeating the Palatine nobles so badly that they could only cower in their castles, while the Hed cavalry plundered people, food, and wealth.

Some tribes even migrated entirely to Palatu in an attempt to seize control of the region.

The eagle tore and devoured the flesh and blood of the galloping horse, growing ever stronger.

The thriving Hart tribes built cities one after another. Although most people still lived a nomadic life following the water and pasture, it did not prevent the ruling class from living in the cities and enjoying themselves.

They decorated their palaces with the gold and silver jewels they had looted, and employed Palatine slaves to work for them. The nobles, both high and low, lived lives of extreme luxury.

No luxury goods are produced in the wilderness, but that doesn't matter.

Because as long as there is money, there will be Venetians.

Merchants from Venetta traveled a great distance to present the "Khans" of Hard with precious swords, fine horses, spices, silk, and wine.

The tribal chiefs competed with each other in wealth, resorting to all sorts of extreme measures.

If you use cotton to make a tent, I'll use silk. If you use one layer, I'll use two.

Even falcons and saddles had to be "imported," otherwise they would lose face.

Geographer Barry White once recorded: "...the leader was dressed in two layers of silk, surrounded by eunuchs, and a dwarf was responsible for making him laugh... He ordered three jeweled scimitars to be brought out for me to choose from, and when I shook my head, he gave me all three scimitars..."

Bai Bolu also left such a record: "While the chief lived a life more luxurious than that of the king, the lowest-ranking herdsmen among them had only a pitiful number of cattle and sheep."

With the publication of Bai Boluo's "Travel Notes to the West", "Chief Hart" gradually became a synonym for "luxury, wealth, and extravagance".

Of course, in the Venetian dialect, this word refers to those who are "unreserved and extravagant," carrying a slightly derogatory connotation... and a little bit of unacknowledged jealousy.

But all good things must come to an end, and those are all things of the past.

Since Queye Khan's great defeat thirty years ago, the various tribes have declined from their peak.

The tide turned, and the cities of Hart were gradually abandoned.

Firstly, the produce from the wasteland alone was insufficient to support the city; secondly, the revitalized Palatine people specifically targeted the Hed tribe, which was building the city.

Because cities represent the concentration of wealth, the Hede tribe consciously gathered their belongings in one place, which saved the Parat people a lot of trouble.

Some of the cities of Hed were captured, looted, and destroyed, while others were occupied by the Paratists, and the remaining cities were abandoned.

The Hart-Platau Wars turned into a cat-and-mouse game of mobile warfare.

Therefore, while the construction of the city by the Chihe tribe brought benefits, it also gave the Parat people a clear goal.

The Paratul army surrounded Bianli, just as if they had strangled the Chihe tribe's testicles.

If the Chihe tribe wants to relieve the siege of Bianli City, they must defeat Palatul's army.

Sackler was only worried about two things: first, that the Chihe tribe's reinforcements might simply abandon Bianli and Baishi; second, that the Chihe tribe's reinforcements might not dare to engage in a decisive battle and instead switch to harassment tactics to delay the siege.

The former now seems to be an overreaction; the Chihe tribe's reinforcements have a strong desire to attack and show no signs of abandoning Bianli.

As for the latter, it's a game between the two sides. The curtain hasn't been drawn yet, and it's still unknown who the hunter and who the prey are.

……

The night raid by the Jessica unit was a great success.

According to Lieutenant Colonel Jessica's original plan, the raid should have involved the entire army, smashing Teldun's command chain in one fell swoop.

However, the daytime battle had exhausted the Paratians.

The Terdun troops had just retreated when many Paratu soldiers collapsed to the ground, unable to be shaken awake.

Only the cavalry who had not participated in the defense of the city remained capable of fighting.

Forty-four Dussac light cavalry, sixty-eight borrowed hussars, plus Winters and Andrei.

With only 114 riders in total, they turned Teldun's camp upside down.

The victory would have been even more glorious if the Teldenans had slept in their tents—because tents are very flammable.

The Keteldun camp had been burned to the ground, and now they had hardly any belongings left that could be lit.

Ironically, the ignition source Winters had prepared turned out to be of little use.

Those who were warming themselves by the fire probably never imagined that their camp would be attacked for two consecutive nights.

After baking the top side, flip it over and bake the other side.

Amid the chaos, some daring Heds took advantage of the confusion to simply go home. Although they didn't manage to steal any spoils, it was better than losing their lives.

Some centurions and chiliarchs from other branches even fled with their own troops. They had no desire to further deplete their clan's resources for the Teldun tribe's sacrificial golden statue.

I imagine that when we meet again, they won't be Teldun people anymore.

With too few troops, their capabilities were destined to be limited. Therefore, Lieutenant Colonel Jessica was disheartened and didn't even come.

"Scare the Heds, then come back. I don't expect you to do anything extraordinary, just make sure they don't dare to camp within ten miles." Jessica said to the two centurions as he assigned them the task. "Be careful not to get yourselves caught in the crossfire."

As the lieutenant colonel had predicted, Winters and Andrei's men were able to create chaos, but not enough to completely crush Teldun's forces.

Even if there were 20,000 pigs, a hundred or so cavalrymen couldn't kill them all.

……

There was fog this morning.

The scouts reported that several thousand Hart cavalrymen were gathering their forces along the way and were heading east.

The scouts also reported that they had spotted a large blue horse-tail banner among the cavalry.

Clearly, the Fire-Burning Army's core forces had not been defeated, and the Fire-Burning Army itself had not admitted defeat.

This battle is not over yet.

……

The battlefield is like a haphazardly stacked pile of building blocks; removing any one of them can trigger unpredictable changes.

The night before, the Jessica Squadron seized the golden statue used for sacrificial offerings.

Yesterday, Teldun's forces besieged the bridgehead.

While a causal relationship can be discerned between these two events, the chain reaction they triggered spread in a subtle way to [Beizhai], twenty kilometers away.
Colonel Bode Gates, the commander of Beizhai, could never have imagined that the reason why the Chihe tribe outside was fighting desperately to attack the city was that an artillery officer from the United Provinces got lost by accident.

Beizhai has two infantry battalions and one cavalry company, plus an auxiliary force of one hundred men, with a total strength of nearly 1,300.

The camp was small in size but sturdy enough, and it was stocked with a large amount of food and ammunition.

The only problem is "water".

To gain a higher vantage point, the camp was located on a hillside.

The camp is about 300 meters away from the Beihui River, so it cannot directly access a water source.

This shouldn't have been a problem, because the original purpose of setting up a stockade here was to prevent the city's defenders from crossing the river and breaking out, as a high vantage point would allow for better control of the riverbank.

But now the Chihe tribe's reinforcements have arrived—this was unexpected by the Palat people, and the northern village was the first to bear the brunt.

The reinforcements from the Chihe tribe were led by Bai Shiyaxin's uncle and brother. They surrounded the northern village without attacking, clearly having seen through the village's weakness of being unable to obtain water.

Outside, the Chihe tribe's men were busy intercepting and killing the Palattu soldiers who were fetching water, while inside, Colonel Bode was busy digging a well, and the battle thus reached a stalemate.

But just yesterday morning, the Chihe tribe seemed to have received some kind of signal and suddenly launched a general attack on Beizhai.

Colonel Bode was unaware that, twenty kilometers away—on the other side of the battlefield—Teldon's forces were also besieging Jessica's battalion.

Winters had no idea that the fire they set would lead to the Chihe tribe launching a fierce attack on the northern village.

No one can see the whole picture of the battlefield, because there is no high vantage point to overlook the thousands of people fighting, suffering, and dying. For most people, the war is confined to within fifty meters of their own surroundings.

The pieces cannot see the chessboard. The soldier is a piece, Winters is a piece, and Jessica is also a piece.

Only a handful of people could be called chess players: Yassin the White Lion, Sackler, Alpard... but even they could not see the whole chessboard.

Everyone is just struggling within the limits of what they can see, know, and do.

Take Colonel Bode, for example. He was only thinking about how to defend the northern village. He neither knew about nor cared about the grand plan.

With a sudden surge of force from the Chihe tribe, the casualties of the garrison in Beizhai increased dramatically.

Colonel Bode was surprised to find that the Red River tribe outside had a considerable number of musketeers, while some of the Hed tribes were still using bone arrows and stone arrows.

Even the garrison at Beizhai did not have artillery, while the Chihe army besieging Beizhai actually brought out four cannons—although they were not very accurate.

The battle raged all day. Taking advantage of the lack of heavy firepower among the defenders of Beizhai, the Chihe tribe pushed their shield carts closer and methodically filled in the trenches.

Colonel Bode then led his men over the stockade at night to dig out the soil that had been filled into the trench.

When the Chihe army discovered that the Palat people had left their camp, they immediately dispatched cavalry to attack.

The two sides fought back and forth in the dark, engaging in a chaotic battle before retreating, each leaving behind about a hundred corpses.

……

At dawn today, a thin mist rose over the wasteland.

Nearly 10,000 soldiers of the Chihe tribe once again lined up outside the North Village, most of whom chose to dismount and fight on foot.

Most of the Chihe soldiers carried horn-based recurve composite bows, while a small number carried heavy muskets.

Fog is bad for both weapons; it will cause the compound bow to come unglued, and the matchlock will be more easily extinguished.

But the thought that the enemy was also suffering from the same harsh conditions made the fog seem less unbearable.

Through the thin mist, Colonel Bode couldn't see the enemy's deployment, but he knew very well what it would be like.

There will obviously be shield wagons, which are the family heirlooms of the Hed people.

There should be some more ladders. Yesterday, the Hede people filled in several trenches and even removed a lot of the timber from the stockade walls.

There are also shovels and pickaxes; these two seemingly insignificant tools are quite telling.

What troubled Colonel Bode the most was the artillery. The commander of the Red River tribe outside had already discovered that his men's artillery skills were poor and posed no real threat.

Therefore, the commander of the Chihe tribe quickly changed tactics and stopped using solid shot to bombard from 200 meters away.

Instead, they loaded the cannons onto shield carts and dragged them within forty meters to use grapeshot to clean the stockade walls.

Inside and outside the village, all was silent.

“You’re not bad.” Colonel Bode stood expressionlessly by the stockade wall, muttering to himself, “But I’m not bad either. Don’t even think about taking North Stockade without paying a price.”

"Yahachi! Yahachi!" the Hed people outside the wall began to shout in unison.

"Yahach?" Colonel Bode grabbed a clump of dry grass, wiped his hands, and casually asked the interpreter beside him, "What does that mean? Is it the name of the enemy's commander?"

Dennell—formerly a merchant, now a translator, and a bilingual talent forcibly conscripted into the army—replied with a mournful face: “Yahachi should mean young lion. [Hachi] means child, [Yah] means lion, and Yasin means white lion. As for whether it is the name of the enemy's commander, I don’t know.”

“A lion cub?” Colonel Bode raised an eyebrow. “Could it be the barbarian chieftain Yassin’s brother? But I’ve never heard of him having a younger brother…”

As the bugle sounded, the Hed people outside began to advance towards the camp.

Colonel Bode waved.

With the military flag waving, the Paratu musketeers went up the stockade wall, each choosing a position to set up their muskets and attach the matchlocks to the fuses.

The Heds advanced to 100 meters.

The drummer began to beat rapidly, the musketeer gently blew on the red-hot match cord, and then opened the gunpowder bath cover.

Everyone held their breath, waiting for the first gunshot to signal the start of today's killing spree.

Suddenly, a series of urgent gong sounds came from outside.

The Hed people surged in like a tidal wave, and then retreated just as quickly.

The Paratians looked at each other, completely bewildered.

"Have everyone put the lid on the gunpowder vat," Colonel Bode ordered the messenger.

There was no order to "close the gunpowder pool" in any of the commands, flag signals, or drumbeats.

Upon receiving the order, the messenger ran in circles along the stockade wall, relaying the message in turn.

"Look to the west!" someone exclaimed. "What's that?"

"Anyone who makes a fuss in battle will be executed! Shut up!" a soldier immediately shouted.

But everyone still couldn't help but look westward, as if there was a grove of trees approaching Beizhai.

A large army emerged from the thin mist; it was a truly massive army.

The standard-bearer, riding a white horse, held aloft the eagle flag and walked at the very front of the column.

Behind him, rows of spearmen emerged from the mist, seemingly without end.

The neat rows of spears moved slowly to the beat of the drums, like a forest rustling in the wind.

"Eagle Flag! Reinforcements!" shouted an excited soldier from the North Village. "Reinforcements are here!"

Only legions possess the eagle banner, and the appearance of the eagle banner signifies the presence of the legion commander on the battlefield.

This time, no sergeant stopped the reckless soldier, because everyone was cheering wildly.

The Chihe tribe also began to move; they retreated slightly but did not leave the battlefield.

They simply adjusted their direction, leaving the position where they were attacked from both sides, and changed the front of their formation to face the newly arrived Platul Legion.

Thousands of cavalry broke away from the main force of the Chihe tribe and circled around to the flank of the Palatul legion.

Under the watchful eyes of both sides, the newly arrived army of Palatine deployed its formation with a series of impressive maneuvers.

As the thin mist gradually dissipated, the wasteland, the confluence of rivers, and the borderlands on the opposite bank became increasingly clear.

What appeared before everyone's eyes were four formations of a thousand people lined up in a row.

Instead of entering the camp, Palatul's army formed ranks on the wasteland, as if they were challenging the Chihe tribe to battle from afar.

As the fog cleared, Colonel Bode's heart tightened instantly.

The reinforcements were far fewer than he had imagined, and at first glance, there were no more than four thousand men, which is eight battalions.

"What's that old man doing?" Colonel Bode couldn't help but kick the stockade wall hard and yell at the messenger, "Tell all the centurions to prepare for attack."

The Chihe tribe's cavalry had a numerical advantage of at least twice that of the main force, but apart from sending some cavalry to flank them, the main force made no major moves, and it is unclear what their plans were.

The Plato phalanx stood still, seemingly certain that the Heds would attack.

"boom!"

It was the sound of cannons, but it was very low and must have come from a distance.

Colonel Bode looked around and saw plumes of white smoke billowing from Bianli City behind him.

The white smoke quickly turned black, and thick smoke rose from Bianli, soaring into the sky.

Colonel Bode's pupils dilated, his eyes widening: "Has the old man gone mad?"

At this very moment, in Bianlixiwei City.

The six infantry battalions besieging the city were using makeshift catapults to hurl iron rings and wooden blocks covered in asphalt, pine resin, and licorice into the inner city.

This was inspired by the fire set by the Hed people themselves—the Acropolis had wooden walls and thatched roofs, and the inner city probably relied on the same two elements.

Winter is dry and windy, with westerly winds blowing towards the inner city, and a fire is just what's needed.

Along with the simple catapult, cannons, battering rams, and "gunpowder coffins" were also carried out.

Judging from their posture, Palatine's army was planning to break through Bianli in one fell swoop.

Sackler had already set up the chessboard and was patiently waiting for the White Lion Yassin to make his move.

[The previous chapter was rewritten, starting from the attack on the campers. Because the cavalry involved in the raid included not only the hussars borrowed from Sackler, but also Dusak from the Jesska battalion. Therefore, it was rewritten. Also, regarding debugging: Palatine's standing army had a total of twenty infantry battalions; Sackler had six, six participated in the siege, two in the north camp, two in the south camp, and two returned to the Styx to build a pontoon bridge, leaving only two, not four.]
[The end of the chapter before last was also rewritten, but only the very last sentence.]
[The elderly people in my neighborhood seem to be having a singing competition, singing "Blue sky, white clouds, horses galloping beneath the clouds," and "Ah, this person is my mother, this person is my mom, she's worked hard for over twenty years, giving me a home." They're using all sorts of bel canto styles, singing all day long, from morning till afternoon, and even using an amplifier. I'm speechless. I don't know if they only sing on weekends or every day.]
[Thank you to all the readers for reading, subscribing, recommending, voting, and donating! Thank you everyone!]
Thank you to readers Xiaofan, Fourteen Lines, Pear Blossom Alley, Mass-Produced Magic War Tool, Noble Village Lord, and Shield Cat on Ice for your generous donations.
Finally, thank you again to all the readers who voted for the book today.
[Author's note: Due to word count limitations, I will thank all the readers who voted for me in the next chapter.]
Sending heart emojis.

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(End of this chapter)