Pedro soon found that his hope was dashed. He had noticed that the shells that were about to fall were not round solid bullets, but cylindrical conical bullets, which seemed to have flames burning the leads. Obviously, these shells did not attack the target through the huge kinetic energy contained in the iron bullet bodies, but...

"It's the damn flower bullet!" Pedro shouted sadly in his heart.

As a senior officer, he certainly knew that this special power shell was empty inside the shell, filled with projectiles and a fuse. Once fired, the flowering bullet exploded above the enemy's head, sprinkling projectiles into the crowd, which could efficiently sweep a large area of ​​target areas. Compared with the 20 projectiles flying in front of him, the only shape of the bullets was slightly different.

Pedro did not expect that in order to destroy his cavalry units in one fell swoop, the French prepared such expensive and extremely unstable performance in advance regardless of the safety of their gunners (it was easy to explode, with a probability of about 3 to 5%), but the powerful flowering shells were used, and howitzers specifically fired such shells (the howitzers had a short body and a larger barrel).

But in fact, Pedro did guess part of it correctly and misunderstand the other part.

French artillery fired flowering shells without using special howitzers, and still had ordinary 12-pound or 8-pound cannons that could fire solid shells. As the Spanish cavalry saw, the French engineers simply improved the shape of the projectile, changing from the original round shape to the current barrel-shaped ammunition design.

Previously, the flowering shell (invented by British artillery officer Henry Tolapnay) that was released at the end of the 19th century, despite its amazing power, in addition to its high cost, still had a fatal flaw: it was the circular shell filled with many projectiles. During its launch, due to the continuous and violent friction between the projectiles, the shells were easily exploded in advance, and the blasting of the chamber caused by accident to injure the gunners.

After 1804, although the British, French and other European artillery soldiers were equipped with such powerful flowering bullets one after another, many gunners and some commanders refused such dangerous weapons for their own safety. In order to solve the problem of blowing the chamber, European ordnance engineers took a rough detour. The first thing they considered was not how to improve the frame structure of the flowering shell, but to develop a cannon that specifically fired grenades and had a solid gun body to solve the problem of blowing the flowering shells in advance. Until 1840, the advent of conical shells, and the large-scale use of conical shells was decades later.

Thanks to the extraordinary insight of Duke Hruna, Catalan ordnance engineers took the lead in encapsulating gunpowder in a separate container (barrel), which not only effectively prevents friction between the projectiles from causing premature explosion of the shells and accidentally injuring their gunners, but also can be compatible with the original 8-pound and 12-pound cannons, and the cost of flowering shells has also been reduced a lot. The only flaw is that in order to ensure the accuracy of the strike, this type of flowering shell has its effective range from 2,000 meters to 1,000 meters, unless a rifled cannon is developed.

To be honest, the suggestions from Desai himself were only considered to be common sense for artillery soldiers in various countries in the last two hundred years. So he took it for granted that the artillery (bore and ammunition) of the ordnance centers would also develop in this regard, but unexpectedly solved the long-worship confusion of the ordnance engineers. Of course, afterwards, the Ministry of Military Police had listed such improved artillery shells as high-level military secrets.

...

With a burst of breathtaking whistling sounds, these flowering bullets (shredded bullets) quickly passed over Pedro and others' heads, and then landed in the air over the area 20 meters behind him. At this time, the fuse of the flowering bullet was burned out, and then it triggered the gunpowder encapsulated inside the shell. After a series of dull explosions, countless small iron balls burst out from the barrel-loaded bullet body. These small iron balls maintained the deadly speed of the shell shell and ruthlessly shot all creatures within a radius of 10 meters.

Among the 20 flowering bullets, 16 exploded over the dense formation of Spanish cavalry. After an instant, more than 10 unmanned areas were created in the cavalry phalanx. General Pedro, who was at the top, escaped for luck, but he was sad about the casualties and losses of the cavalry behind him.

Just looking back, Pedro knew clearly that at least 300 cavalrymen fell off their horses. Most of them were hit on the head and back by bursting flowering shrapnel or popping small iron balls. Many people had not had time to shout, but they fell heavily to the ground with their horses. The seriously injured rider and the war horse were lying in a pool of blood and twitching constantly, making their last struggle before they died.

"Accelerate, continue to accelerate, there are still 800 meters!" Pedro shouted with all his strength, encouraging the courage of the cavalry behind him. They must break through the covered area of ​​the large-caliber artillery before the French loaded the second flowering bullet. The officers and soldiers cooperated with the general and shouted wildly. Perhaps only in this way can they suppress their inner fear and avoid losing their fighting spirit in advance during the attack.

However, the damn Frenchmen made all their tricks. They laid a layer of thick but soft soil at 800 fronts of the pre-arranged positions in advance, so that the maximum sprint speed of the Spanish cavalry could only be maintained below 28 kilometers per hour (about 500 meters per minute). Once the horse speed was too fast, it would inevitably lead to the horse's stuttering and the horse's overturning.

"Damn it, in 1 minute, there will be a round of flowering bullets about 300 meters ahead!" Pedro thought in his mind about the second round of attacks he was about to suffer. In addition, the grape bullets or shotguns fired by the 8 4-pound small-caliber cannons should also be included.

At this time, Pedro began to regret that he should not be so impulsive and reckless, falling into the enemy's traps one by one. However, no matter whether it is regret or reflection, it is meaningless. Once the cavalry is out of a densely scattered attack formation, no matter what kind of blows he encounters on the way, he can only continue to charge forward. Any hesitation and slow pace will make him overturned to the ground by his companions passing by. Even if he is not dead, he will be trampled into mud by countless horse hooves quickly inserted behind him.

As the Spanish general expected, when 350 meters away from the French position, 20 flowering bullets and countless grape bullets, and shotguns arrived as scheduled, attacking violently in front of the cavalry, or exploded above their heads. For a moment, war horses neighed and flesh flew in a mess. After one or two rounds of ruthless bombardment of 30 artillery pieces, only more than a thousand remained of the 1,008 Spanish cavalry.

After paying a heavy price, the Spanish cavalry finally escaped from the covered area of ​​French artillery. Under General Pedro, the cavalry continued to work hard and rushed forward bravely. At least in the next minute, they could rush to the French infantry, unless the French artillery was willing to shoot together with their comrades.

The cavalry all showed extraordinary fear, but with unwilling expressions of surrender. Even under the continuous attack of nearly 3,000 French infantry, they still used their belief and courage to forget all the fears before their death, followed the attack trajectory of their front row comrades before they fell, and entered the abyss of death without regrets.

When the last row of Spanish cavalry, with the courage to die, successfully crossed a barbed wire mesh, and luckily avoided countless lead bullets fired by thousands of smoothbore or Minnie guns, and was about to hit the second barbed wire mesh, the French gunner quickly pushed up 10 artillery pieces and cooperated with the previous 8 4-pound cannons. In an instant, countless grape bullets or shotguns fired from the barrels of the 18 artillery pieces.

When all the French guns and cannons gradually stopped and all the smoke dissipated, the final result of the 1,800 Spanish cavalry only stopped at the third barbed wire. At this time, they were only 40 meters away from the first chest wall that the French infantry defended, but this became an insurmountable barrier for all Spanish soldiers. What remains on the battlefield were war horses lying on the ground with bullet holes all over the ground making painful cry, making creepy neighing sounds, echoing over the wilderness at the front of the position for a long time.

At the same time, the two Spanish cavalry who were doing the left and right wings of Caishi Town were also hit hard. Because they were only responsible for feint attacks, the officers dared to order retreat and avoid the attack range of Minnie bombs and enemy artillery. But even so, nearly one-third of their troops were still lost. Many people fell off their horses and died in the flowering bullets fired by large-caliber artillery during the retreat.

The third and last attack of the Spanish army completely failed.

When he witnessed his entire cavalry brigade almost suffering a catastrophe and there were only 800 survivors of more than 3,000 cavalrymen, Galicia couldn't help but beat his chest and stamped his feet. He actually shouted hysterically in front of all the soldiers, "Damn Pedro, return my cavalry brigade to me!" Just like the Roman emperor who was once heartbroken after learning of the miserable defeat of the Teutonic Forest, Augustus.

Just as Galicia was crying, disaster did not go alone, and a series of bad news followed one after another.

The officers who were doing field observations were convinced that the French army was not the 2,000 people judged by the previous 2,000, but at least 5,000 people. This did not include more than 30 artillery pieces equipped with 12-pound artillery. In addition, in the woods 2 kilometers behind the town of Caishi, there seemed to be signs of French cavalry activities. The specific number was unknown, and it should be more than 2,000 people.

At this time, the Spanish army under Galicia, including the 700 remaining cavalry who were still doing feint attacks, had a total strength of less than 2,000. The forces and morale of both sides reversed, and the French had more than 30 artillery pieces. This battle was a big defeat and a crushing defeat. In order to avoid being encircled and annihilated, Galicia immediately ordered the entire army to retreat to the southern foot of the canyon.

But before Galicia could issue the retreat order, the biggest bad news had already come to his ears.

A cavalry with a head wound rushed over from the side of the canyon. He was panicked and kept shouting loudly: "French, French, have blocked the slanting valley, and our back road has been cut off!"

...

Ten minutes ago, just as the Spanish cavalry offensive was about to end, Chief of Staff Rusti had issued a series of orders to counterattack at the division command post:

"Send a report to General Desnuet: Let his cavalry troops launch an attack immediately, follow and pursue the remaining two enemy cavalry, but stop at the enemy's defensive positions on the northern foot of the canyon; send a report to General Barbanegel: Let the Spanish army's offensive be completely failed and will retreat to the canyon, and order the Third Brigade to intercept and block, and not let one man and one horse go; as for General Hugo, let his Fourth Brigade clear the battlefield at the front of the position in 20 minutes.
Chapter completed!