Unable to Achieve a Complete Victory
"How could it be so fast? Aren't the Blacklin family's private army quite strong?"
Jackson was surprised after hearing what James said.
James waved his hand triumphantly. "Luckily, we found one of their weaknesses and hit their Achilles' heel. Alright Jackson, you look so worried. What's wrong with the enemy over here?"
Upon hearing this, Jackson stopped worrying and pulled James to the front of the formation. Pointing to the Coalition of Nobles's formation, he said to James, "These guys are indeed not easy to deal with, they're like hedgehogs!"
James squinted and stroked his chin, observing everything before him.
"Indeed, we underestimated the nobles of Suffolk County. Just a few noble families could gather such an army. No wonder it is a noble group led by Count Black that resisted the invasion fleet of the East Sea Alliance."
James uttered words of praise, but there was a hint of amusement in his tone.
Jackson sensed that he had something else in mind and quickly asked, "Don't keep me in suspense. You must have some good ideas if you talk like this."
"Hurry up and tell us. Since these guys have voluntarily left their tortoise shells, we can take this opportunity to inflict heavy damage on them and relieve pressure on the next phase of the battle."
James pointed to the two small square formations in front of the army and the connection between them and the square formations behind them. "Jackson, you must be too impatient. Under normal circumstances, you should be able to see these things. Victor mentioned them in the command class we had."
Jackson looked in that direction, initially puzzled, but quickly realized something and looked somewhat annoyed.
"That's right, it's the rhythm. The two small square formations in the front row are indeed very good. The soldiers are well-trained, and their formation is very orderly during the march."
Such a formation is difficult for any of us to deal with, unless we use Victor's wagon formation or our Heavy Cavalry.
However, the chariots did not travel south with the fleet this time, and our Heavy Cavalry only had one horse. After the charge, the horse could not recover its strength in a short time and could not launch another powerful charge.
"Even if we win by using Heavy Cavalry to charge such a phalanx, Victor will curse us severely for letting our precious Heavy Cavalry sacrifice in vain."
After James finished explaining, he paused, as if waiting for Jackson to respond.
Jackson continued, following his words: "Victor also said that the Duchy's Direct Legion also like to fight in such infantry squares. With their superior weaponry and well-trained soldiers, they can often win with fewer troops."
The way to deal with such an army is to constantly disrupt their formation, deplete their arrows and stamina, and force them to slow down their formation changes.
However, this unit really doesn't need to do that; I was genuinely startled and didn't even notice.
Jackson felt somewhat ashamed.
"Of these six formations, only the first two are genuine; the remaining four are just for show. The two formations in the first row keep changing their marching rhythm in order to slow down their pace so that the troops behind them can catch up with their marching speed."
The training level of those four square formations was at best slightly better than that of an average noble's private army; they could barely maintain a formation, but they needed to adjust their ranks every ten steps—no, five steps—otherwise, the formation would fall apart.
James chuckled and patted Jackson on the shoulder, "Now that we've discovered their weakness, let's show them the power of the Golden Sunflower Family. Jackson, you devise the battle plan, and I'll follow your orders."
"Thank you, Regimental Commander James."
Jackson knew that James had given him the credit, and he was very grateful.
The subsequent operations went smoothly. After discovering the problem with the Allied Army formation, Jackson adjusted the seven Light Cavalry detachments under his command.
Divided into three squads, each with two detachments, they were directly dispatched to disrupt the two front phalanxes of the Allied Army. Jackson personally led the remaining three detachments to bypass the enemy and attack the two rear phalanxes.
Despite the efforts of the jamming forces, the most elite forward units were unable to change formation to support the rear.
The last two square formations had to fight against Jackson's troops on their own. Jackson led his Cavalry to circle around and use mounted archery to slow down these two square formations, causing them to become separated from the troops in front.
Just then, as the two square formations in the middle attempted to turn back to reinforce, Jackson timely dispatched fresh troops hidden behind the lines. They directly attacked the flank of one of the central square formations, disrupting its formation, and then Jackson led his troops in a flanking attack.
In just a few minutes, the two square formations were defeated. Seeing their comrades suffer a crushing defeat, the two square formations that had fallen behind stopped advancing and instead retreated to their camp.
Jackson and James completely ignored the two retreating squares, instead leading their Cavalry to drive the fleeing soldiers toward the two leading squares.
They wanted to use the large number of fleeing soldiers to disrupt the formation of the two squares, but these troops were indeed elite, and the commander was ruthless, directly ordering a volley of fire on the fleeing soldiers.
The routed soldiers, who had been running around haphazardly driven by the Cavalry, calmed down under the rain of arrows and ran to the flanks.
Jackson and James were also very unwilling to accept that they had not achieved their goal, but the Cavalry had been fighting for a long time. The soldiers still had strength, but the warhorses could not hold on any longer.
After several attempts, Jackson and James finally decided to give up and stop surrounding the two square formations.
The commander of this force realized that the Blacklin family's camp had been breached, so he had no choice but to lead his troops back to the Allied Army camp.