Chapter 237 Destroyed
The destruction of the king's front army was only the **** beginning of this encounter.
After receiving the news of the king's central army, Sir Kevan Lannister, he no longer had any luck in his heart.
The Stormlanders couldn't hold back the Riverbend army in the royal forest at all.
While frantically cursing the nobles of the Storm Land as unreliable in his heart, he is also making the last effort.
Although he already knew that this temporarily recruited "big army" was doomed to perish under the iron heels of the people of Hewan, but Kefeng felt that at least they would cause some trouble and casualties to the people of Hewan.
In this way, he and the rest of the royal nobles can take advantage of the chaos and escape back to King's Landing.
Therefore, Kaifeng immediately ordered the entire army to gather, and arranged the mules and horses hauling the luggage around the army to form a simple line of defense for solid defense.
Unfortunately, the people from Hewan came too fast.
In other words, the king's front army was defeated too quickly, it was defeated almost in a blink of an eye, and there was no time for the main force in the rear.
And Samwell's tactics are based on speed as the first priority, and he does not intend to give the enemy a chance to react and prepare.
When the black cavalry spread like a tide, the ground began to tremble.
This horrific scene plunged these cruel recruits who had just been conscripted, had little training, and had never seen a real battlefield into panic and confusion.
Some people simply started running backwards.
This kind of chaos spread quickly, the soldiers pushed and trampled each other, the chariots and horses rolled and fell to the ground, screaming one after another, and the sky was full of screams. Even if Kaifeng asked the military judges to strictly enforce the law and cut off several heads, they still couldn't stop it This confusion spreads.
This situation is actually no different from a defeat.
The untrained new army met the elite cavalry on the wide wild plain, and basically declared their doom.
Even if this new army has an absolute advantage in numbers.
No matter how many sheep there are, they are no match for a lion.
At this time, Samwell encountered some small troubles.
In order to strive for speed, he did not take any rest after defeating the enemy's front army, so he ordered to move on.
Under such circumstances, the formation of the river bay cavalry army has changed, and even some small chaos occurred.
But Samwell did not panic. He knew that some situations would inevitably arise in large-scale cavalry group operations.
At this time, it may not be a wise choice to make too many adjustments to the army, but it will easily lead to greater chaos.
So, he simply followed the current formation and ordered the heavy cavalry to move forward slowly in the center of the town, while the light cavalry rushed in from the two wings.
These adjustments were made while maintaining the advance. Samwell’s strategy remained unchanged, which was to use the advantage of the speed of the cavalry to rush over and defeat the enemy when they were too flustered to line up.
A few miles away, the right flank of the Reach Cavalry was the first to touch the enemy line.
The light cavalry was commanded by Sir Garth Hightower, Lord of Old Town, the second son of Earl Hightower, Lord of Old Town.
Sir Garth inherited the calm personality of the Hightower family. Even though he saw the large-scale riots in the enemy army, he did not rush to charge. Instead, he took the bow and arrow first, held it high above his head, and ordered: :
"Riding and shooting harassment! Riding and shooting harassment!"
At the same time, Sir Garth turned his horse's head and led the army to make a turn, thus avoiding the front of the king's army, roaring through the fields beside the king's road, and circled to the enemy's right side.
During the gallop, the sound of bowstrings rang out, and arrows shot up from the right-wing formation of the Hewan Cavalry like a rainstorm, and fell towards the formation led by Wang.
The king's army immediately suffered heavy casualties.
These temporarily recruited recruits lacked weapons and equipment, not to mention leather armor, and did not even have uniform military uniforms. In addition, under the panic and chaos, the array was also uneven, and they suddenly encountered the most classic cavalry attack. Casualties can be imagined.
Countless arrows kept falling into the dense infantry camp with frightening howling sounds, leaving them nowhere to hide.
The puffing sound of arrows piercing into flesh and blood was so dense that it stimulated the psychological defense of the already extremely fragile recruits.
Pieces of royal soldiers fell to the ground like ears of wheat in a strong wind. Pieces of bright red blanks appeared in the army formation, and a large number of lives disappeared without a trace in an instant.
At the same time, Sir Oman of the Peck family was in command of the left-wing cavalry of the River Bend. He also led the army to launch the same cavalry and shooting attack to test the situation of the royal army.
As a result, it was naturally discovered that this army was really just like Samwell said, almost all of them were newly recruited recruits, and their combat effectiveness was extremely low.
"Rush! Rush up!"
He clamped the horse's belly tightly, and at the same time completely loosened the reins, allowing the horse to rush to the forefront of the army.
The shouts of killing soared into the sky, almost overshadowing the sound of rumbling horseshoes.
Under the brave leadership of Sir Oman, the sturdy river bay cavalry drew sharp steel knives one after another.
As the flag was suddenly inserted into the formation of the king's army, the follow-up river bay cavalry also rolled up.
At this time, the king's left-wing army formation was already in disarray, and it was completely unable to cope with the sudden onslaught of the Hewan cavalry, even if it was only the light cavalry.
During a series of collisions, a large number of royal soldiers were knocked down, and the raised scimitars fell like waves, blood spattered, heads rolled around, and stumps and broken arms flew around.
The shrill screams merged into one piece, but they were drowned out by all kinds of noisy voices on the battlefield.
Samwell finally led the heavy cavalry to kill at this time.
Seeing that the two wings of the king's army had collapsed, he no longer hesitated, and without making any temptations, he directly led the army to rush in from the front of the enemy's position.
Rows of heavy armored cavalry, like steel monsters, tore through the frontal defense of the king's army with an incomparably tyrannical posture, crushing all obstacles in front of them.
In an instant, the entire royal army completely collapsed.
It was less than half an hour from the time the two armies met to the time when the royal soldiers abandoned their formation and fled in groups in the opposite direction.
It was almost two rounds of charging, and the king's army was declared defeated.
Once it starts to collapse, it will trigger a chain avalanche reaction, and no one can save it.
In fact, in such a short period of time, the casualties caused by the Hewan cavalry are at most a few thousand people, which is not too much damage to an army of more than 50,000 people. If they can really stabilize their formation and resist desperately, maybe Can force the river bay cavalry back.
But this is obviously impossible.
The recruits who have assembled in a hurry do not have this kind of courage and quality. They don't know that at such a time, the end of escaping is actually even worse.
After defeating the king's army, the Hewan Iron Cavalry chased and killed the deserters like driving a flock of sheep.
And these driven deserters took advantage of the situation to break through the rear army's formation, and finally formed an unorganized rout. Like headless flies, they left pieces of corpses and all kinds of messy weapons and fled in all directions.
As far as the eye can see, the entire King's Road has been dyed dazzling blood red.
Samwell slowed down the speed of the horse, and ordered the cavalry under his command to form a small team of a hundred people to disperse and chase the defeated army, demanding that the king's army must be completely wiped out within the territory of the storm.
And he himself pitched camp in the nearby fields.
Teams of king-led soldiers were sent here one after another.
By the time the sun set, the number of surrendered troops exceeded 20,000, and nearly a hundred knights from royal families such as Lake, Stokeworth, Harvard, and Staunton were captured at the same time, and this number is still increasing among.
Obviously, Wang Lingjun has begun to surrender in an organized manner.
After waiting in place for two days, Earl Landau also led the main force of the Hewan North Route Army to join them. At this time, the number of prisoners had reached more than 30,000.
"Unfortunately, Kevan Lannister was not captured." Samwell said with some regret.
This person is the younger brother of Duke Tywin, the number two figure in the Lion family. Although he is not well-known, he is actually quite capable.
If Kefeng can be caught, the old lion will probably give an extremely generous ransom.
Earl Randall didn't care, and said: "These royal nobles have taken enough captives. Send someone to negotiate, and they should be able to get you a lot of ransom."
Because this annihilation battle was commanded by Samwell, strictly speaking, those captives also belonged to him, and he could take the bulk of the ransom in exchange.
"Well. What about the other soldiers? Especially those recruits from King's Landing, it is estimated that the Lannister family will not give them a copper coin."
"Then release them back." Earl Randall said, "However, we must first negotiate with the Lannister family and let the other party expressly refuse to redeem these people. Then tell the news to those captives before releasing them."
Samwell nodded thoughtfully: "You are trying to make the people of King's Landing hate the Lannister family."
"Yes." Earl Randall admitted frankly, "In fact, Lannister's reputation in King's Landing is already very bad. When Tywin captured King's Landing and condoned his subordinates to burn, kill and loot, the people in King's Landing have not forgotten it."
"Okay. I'll arrange someone to do it now." Samwell responded with a smile.
He suddenly felt that using this method to incite the people of King's Landing to be hostile to the Lannister family was quite a good method. He remembered that in the original book, there was a public riot in King's Landing, and those gentlemen in the Red Castle were almost beaten to death on the street by the rioters.
I hope that this time, the people of King's Landing will not let him down.
(end of this chapter)