Solovyov in Tsarist Russia 1796.

When the eagle flag was raised, the soldiers' emotions surged.

Solovyov's behavior after arriving in Persia was somewhat different from before.

Today, he rode in front of the soldiers on horseback with his adjutants and attendants, and gave a speech.

The subject of the statement is the recent atrocities committed by the Persian Empire and its oppression of Christians and other peoples.

"A regime like this, which has been able to maintain its rule for so many years, occupying this land and oppressing the people, is guilty of sins against our God and their Allah!"

Although these two people are actually the same person, and their work often overlaps, the Orthodox Christians in the Middle East are somewhat lenient towards Christians.

But upon closer inspection, it seems that only the Arabs, and Saladin, that upright man who doesn't seem like a Kurd, appear to be relatively tolerant, mainly just collecting taxes.

But the last remnant of the Roman legions, the 5th Legion, were martyred in Gaza because they did not convert.

However, this is still much better than the Persian Shah, the Ottoman Sultan, and the Mughal Padishah.

The soldiers heard nothing but stories of Persian atrocities, and before the battle they saw burned villages, massacred people, abandoned fields, and devastation everywhere.

That's enough to build up anger.

Solovyov delivered his speech on horseback in front of the battle lines, also to inspire the soldiers.

They arrived here early in the morning and saw the Persians arrayed opposite them.

"Sir, shall we begin?"

"Now? Let the cannons go first, we'll fire them first to get them moving."

After seeing the battlefield environment, Solovyov noticed a problem.

Through the telescope, it could be seen that among the cannons used by these Persians, only the British cannons, which appeared to be 9-pounders from the gun carriage, were relatively new.

If these cannons were in a game, their stats would probably be quite poor; the rest were cannons that the Persians had accumulated over many years.

Solovyov found it rather strange that this World Expo, with its department store-like artillery positions, was really not a problem.

His side had a large number of 12-pound cannons, as well as half-putter and one-putter unicorn cannons.

The advantage in range was enough; Solovyov's order for the frontline artillery to fire first with 12-pound cannons was to tell the Persians that they were within range.

The battle began that morning.

Solovyov could still remember the first time he went to see General Krei of Austria as a messenger. He witnessed the battle between the Austrians and the French on the front lines. In the end, the French were defeated. That battle seemed unremarkable, but it was the real beginning of his military career.

However, that time was mostly spent watching the battles. Then came the Italian expedition, which ended in a retreat and defeat throughout the winter of 1805. After that, there were fierce battles from 1806 to 1807, followed by Sweden and Turkey, and then in 1812.

From then on, he became a general capable of leading independently.

However, it seems that the opponents in the "final exam" are far too weak compared to the opponents in the "mock exam".

After the artillery fired, the Persian ranks began to show slight disarray.

The grenades that followed did the same, exploding among the crowd before they finally advanced.

The weather was clear and sunny today, which was exactly the kind of clear, crisp autumn weather that Solovyov loved to see when he started the battle, so he ordered the left wing to move first.

The infantry advanced in neat rows, and even artillery fire only caused them minor disruption.

In comparison, the Persians were indeed somewhat inferior.

Many of the troops Solovyov led on this southern expedition were entirely light infantry units, because these infantrymen were more flexible in their tactical movements and easier to operate in mountainous terrain.

In addition, the opponent's strength was far inferior, so there was no need to commit so many elite troops to the battle.

The Persians fell in large numbers to the accurate fire of the Russian army. Some of them squatted down and tried to fight back, but once they squatted down, they were unwilling to get up again.

Russian artillery was also able to inflict casualties on these stopped enemy units.

"Looks good, such a wonderful start to the day. If the enemy doesn't get close, our artillery should move forward. Cavalry artillery, follow behind the Cossacks and dragoons to launch the attack, hussars to the flanks."

Solovyov then used his marshal's cane to point out several key locations on the map, indicating that the enemy was indeed outnumbered.

"Pompey and Caesar must have encountered many such opponents."

Solovyov sneered, knowing why great conquests always occur in the Middle East.

Each time, they were conquered; their performance on this piece of land was so poor that it was flattened by those who came later.

Even the mighty Mongols eventually lost their Ilkhanate, Timur perished, and fled to India.

The Middle East is a place where the locals are brave and warlike, but in the end, they are always veiled by thin veils.

After the Russian artillery barrage, the Persians became increasingly disorganized on the battlefield.

The Russian infantry, advancing along the entire front, have begun bayonet charges in some areas, with even light infantry charging the enemy ahead.

The Persian front began to falter and was even squeezed.

The Russian army had fewer troops and a higher proportion of cavalry than before, so the front-line troops were in two horizontal columns to maintain the width of the battle line and maximize firepower.

Although many in the Russian army disliked this tactic, Solovyov went ahead with it and ordered his infantry to continue advancing, compressing the enemy's front line.

In the graduation project, there need to be more factors. He first advanced diagonally, compressing the enemy to one side, and now he wants to form a semi-encirclement.

If the two armies were still engaged in hand-to-hand combat using primarily cold weapons, he would probably have fought a decisive battle today that surpasses even the Battle of Cannae.

The problem was that the Russian army's attack was too fierce. The Persians could fight one-on-one, but when there were many of them, they were useless.

Alexander the Great staged numerous epic battles against the Persians, which may have been partly due to this factor, but it was only because the Great himself defeated his opponents that the Persian army fell into disarray.

This time, the defeat was utter and devastating.

Solovyov hadn't even had time to deploy his reserves when the enemy was already scattered everywhere like sandstorms.

"The enemy has been defeated!"

"Sir, do you see? We have broken through the enemy's lines."

“I saw it, well done, brothers.”

Solovyov saw the dragoons break through the Persian lines. They did not form a square, perhaps that's how the Persians fought. They then scattered and fled under the cavalry charge, becoming excellent targets for the Cossacks.

But with them scattered all over the mountains and fields, it would be impossible to capture many enemies. "They've broken up. My deployment could have led to a glorious annihilation battle."

"However, sir, if you want to wage a war of annihilation, you also need the enemy to have a certain degree of resilience."

"Gorchakov, how do you know that?"

"That's how it was when we were fighting the Turks. But at that time, the Turks, under Marmont's command, were still able to organize resistance. But we had captured the Sultan at that time, so we didn't manage to win a decisive battle."

"What about this time?"

“We probably didn’t even see the Shah’s retinue before he ran away.”

"But it's no longer appropriate for us to send light cavalry to pursue them."

"Yes, sir. After we win here, we should turn back to Tehran."

In the blink of an eye, the Persian army had almost collapsed by the end of the morning.

Caesar's famous quote, "I came, I saw, I conquered," perfectly illustrates this point, and the enemy was quickly defeated.

The Cossacks' pursuit of the fleeing Persian troops continued into the afternoon.

The Russian army did not suffer heavy losses; Solovyov fought a battle that did not require much micromanagement from him.

If the opponent were a European general, he would have to make some extreme adjustments, but the Persians didn't give him that opportunity.

Now that he has won, he can even send the vanguard of the Cossacks into Tabriz.

As it turned out, the Shah ran very fast. Even the Russian cavalry pursuing him, after capturing and interrogating the Persian prisoners, could not figure out where the Shah had gone.

If Sudan had that kind of escape ability, Solovyov would probably have to wage a siege in Constantinople, and might even have played the role of Dandolo and Maimaiti, enraging the Soviet Union as well.

Frankly, Solovyov doesn't think there's anything worth mentioning about the Eastern Roman Empire between 1204 and 1453; it was a completely rubbish era.

If he were still in the modern era, when Rome was truly at its peak, few people would pay attention; instead, the focus would be on the rage of those who admired Rome.

Now that he is a Threstal prince, having personally liberated Constantinople and thrashed the Ottoman Empire, he doesn't seem to feel anything special.

This is probably because my uncle's strength was too high, which caused him to have an overwhelming and devastating presence when he fought battles later on.

Now the Persians have also failed; such a victory came too easily.

Solovyov began to worry that every time he fought against Persia, it would trigger either a defeat, a plague, or some other misfortune.
Therefore, after the victory in the battle, he issued an order to pay attention to hygiene.

As it turns out, his idea was very forward-thinking.

In the past few years, a cholera epidemic has broken out in India. It spread from there to Persia only by land, and because of the barriers of mountains and deserts, it took longer to reach the Persian Empire.

However, once it spreads to the European continent via sea, it becomes impossible to prevent.

This wave of the plague may bring huge trouble to Europe.

However, Solovyov is still very confident in the epidemic prevention measures. He had experience in Odessa and later arranged a system when he was the governor of Crimea.

In addition, people have been arranged to clean the water source.

His opinion is that the plague in Russia will probably not be too serious, and that should be the final outcome.

In Western Europe, think about Paris. Napoleon said that Paris was short of water and that the water supply should be continuously increased. Then Catherine, according to her own preferences, brought Solovyov's system in Russia to Paris.

If something really goes wrong, it'll probably be with the British.

The Russian army has now stopped its pursuit; they have captured far too many prisoners.

“In the past, we could have sold them to Bukhara. They needed slaves there and could have made a lot of money.”

“Sir, you don’t usually make jokes like this.”

“I’m not joking. The Emperor freed the slaves of the Khanate of Kokand and also asked Bukhara to do the same, to let those Persians go home.”

Therefore, the Russians actually had some goodwill towards the people of eastern Persia. Compared to the Shah, even the Tsar who might have wiped them out was a decent monarch, even though he was a pagan, he did not interfere with their beliefs and lives.

Solovyov was also unsure whether the Eastern Route Army's cavalry had already taken action. If Essen were to advance from that direction, it wouldn't be surprising if many places surrendered without the help of the Persian army.

The Russian troops remained on the battlefield, cleaning up the battlefield, burying and burning the corpses to prevent any potential outbreaks of plague.

"How many were killed?"

“The enemy may have numbered 120,000, and we killed 30,000 in one day. The number of prisoners we captured is still being tallied because there are too many.”

"They may outnumber us, but they're utterly useless. What do you say, Vanya?"

Paskovic glanced at Solovyov, but he didn't say much.

"It was indeed useless. This victory probably wiped out more people than we had in the previous three years."

"This can be considered a clever strategy. We need to feign weakness first, making the enemy think they have a chance to win, and then deliver a fatal blow."

"That's unnecessary."

“A decisive victory is needed to frighten the Persians. If it were Timur’s time, it would have been a tower of human heads, a complete act of terror.”

Paskovic shook his head immediately upon hearing this.

Solovyov's method was straightforward: he loaded the coats of the Persians who had been killed onto large carts, piled them up, and planned to stack them outside Tehran and then burn them.

Those prisoners will also be taken to Tehran.

Because there simply weren't enough rations to feed them, those whose homes weren't too far from the battlefield were given travel expenses to go home. Otherwise, they would have been buried alive along the way, which would have been terrifying enough.

Although Solovyov wanted the Persians to be afraid, he would not massacre prisoners or annihilate the city.

He mainly wants to sanction those who instigated the trouble.

The Tatars all agreed with this.

However, they still expressed regret that they couldn't have a proper visit to Tehran.

However, Solovyov was also the leader of the group under Nicholas Khan, and he was a Noyan whose words carried great weight, so the Tatars were still willing to listen to him.

This also included the Kalmyks, who maintained discipline and lined up outside Tehran, awaiting orders at any moment. (End of Chapter)