The Last Frontier of Fire and Sword

Yakov Cherkaski was standing in front of the burned ashes, holding a blood-stained feather arrow in his hand. Beside him, dozens of corpses lay arrogantly. These are all soldiers in the food delivery team. More than an hour ago, they were still lively young men, but now they have lost their lives forever.

Since Yakov Cherkaski’s five thousand Russian troops entered Polotsk, his troops have been attacked more than ten times every day. On the edge of the swamp, behind the hills, in the dense forest, there seemed to be countless ghosts staring at them. As long as the soldiers of Tsarist Russia are a bit slack or far away from the large army, these ghosts will rush out and use the sky of arrows and brisk sabers to harvest lives. However, most of the cavalry led by Yakov Cherkaski were Boyer cavalry and pistol cavalry who were familiar with frontal combat. They are good at cavalry warfare and breaking through tight infantry phalanxes, but in the face of such tatar-style harassment, they tend to stay on the left and right and lose control.

"I knew I should bring a team of Don Cossacks. Damn Lithuanians." Yakov Cherkaski broke the feather arrow in his hand and thought bitterly.

Yakov Cherkaski and his officers knew that the "ghosts" in these soldiers were nothing more than Polish light cavalry units, but they had no way to deal with them. The only thing they can do is to bring a huge army of five thousand people together as much as possible, so as not to give the Cavalry of the Republic of Poland a chance.

But in this way, the speed of the army's advance has been greatly slowed down. The road from Smolensk to Polotsk was originally not wide and the bridges were in disrepair for a long time. Under the action of the 5,000-strong corps, many bridges collapsed overwhelmingly, crushing and wounding many soldiers.

Even more difficult is the supply of the army. At that time, the military forces of various European countries had basically zero logistical supply capabilities. Being able to fight on enemy territory for a long time depends on plundering local villages and towns to supplement one's own consumption, which is usually done by specialized search teams. Of course, Tsarist Russia is hardly an exception.

The only exception is the siege of Smolensk that ended not long ago. For the sudden "sex" of the battle, Prince Alexei chose to launch an attack on Smolensk in the winter. The supply of more than 60,000 Tsarist Russian troops was completely stored in advance in Moscow and Lezhev fortresses. Supported by inventory.

But now, the search team collecting supplies dare not leave the large group to collect food in the village a little far away, because they all know that there are a pair of eyes staring at them around, waiting for themselves to throw themselves into the net. It is impossible for any search team that has escaped the security range to be safe.

The transport team transporting grain and grass from the rear of Smolensk is also the focus of the Polish hussars. Just like this transport squadron that was wiped out by the army, five such transport squads in a row have been attacked. Army rations were burned and soldiers were hacked to death.

Yakov Cherkaski also sent bait to try to lure these light cavalry and then encircle them once and for all. But the commander in charge of the light cavalry can always easily distinguish the bait thrown by Yakov Cherkaski.

In this way, even if the army relies on its own food and grass, regardless of the ground soldiers approaching Polotsk, if the transportation line is cut off, if they cannot quickly capture the castle or get supplies from the local area, they will There is no food to retreat.

"You pigs, quickly think of a way for me. Do you want to attack Polotsk yourself hungry?"

Yakov Cherkaski shouted angrily at the officers around him. He tried to conceal his incompetence in this way.

Facing the anger of Yakov Cherkaski, the officers were silent. At that time, the noble officers of Tsarist Russia, most of them did not receive the kind of systematic military training in Western Europe, and they fought completely on the experience left by their ancestors for generations.

And their ancestors were also defeated by this Tatar-style light cavalry tactics, and they didn't have any good experience left to them.

"Petriula, you say." Yakov Cherkaski saw that no one was speaking, so he personally named an officer.

The young officer named Petriula shook as if he was electrocuted when Yakov Cherkaski called his name. And the officers around him all moved away from this hapless guy with a sharp heart.

"You said, how should we deal with these hussars so that they no longer pose a threat to our transportation line. If you can't say a way..." Yakov Cherkaski looked at Peter Leaving his trembling body like a pendulum, added another sentence.

Before Yakov Cherkaski could finish, the poor officer suddenly fell straight to the ground and fainted.

But this did not mean that Petriula could escape the anger of Yakov Cherkaski. The general's angry whip fell on Petriula. Twenty lashes were hit.

"General, I have an idea."

At this time, Yakov Cherkaski's adjutant, the lucky little Smolensk noble Pixar, stood up behind a group of Tsarist Russian officers and said.

"Oh, what can you do." Yakov Cherkaski turned his gaze to his "adjutant", with an unexpected expression in his eyes.

After Gregory's death, according to tradition, the so-called second lieutenant was supposed to take over Gregory's post. But originally Yakov Cherkaski’s opposition to public opinion and letting Beeks be his adjutant was to balance the Anzumov family and the Szchenko family. How could he hand over such an important position as his first adjutant? For a little Polish nobleman. Therefore, he directly promoted an officer from the old Boyer nobleman of Tsarist Russia to take over the post of the dead Gregory. For this arrangement, Bix had no emotions or complaints. He did his best to assist the newly promoted adjutant as he always did with Gregory.

Such a guy who only does things silently on weekdays, now even says that he has a way to deal with the light cavalry. Not only Yakov Cherkaski, but also the officers of Tsarist Russia were curious.

"General. We can use a clumsy way to deal with the threat of the Polish Hussars to our supply line." Bicks said.

"How stupid is it?" Some of the officers joked.

"Shut up to me. UU reading www.uukanshu.com"

Yakov Cherkaski said this to the officer hiding in the dark and laughing, not to Pixar. Obviously, he was very interested in the alternative mode of transportation mentioned by Bix.

"You keep talking."

"We can build a simple wooden bunker every ten to fifteen miles along the marching route, and arrange a small group of soldiers in it. Then use iron stakes and your Boye cavalry as an iron chain to connect our supply lines. Connected in series. Since the Dvina River is parallel to our marching route, we can even use rafts to transport cavalry to and fro patrol. In this way, even if the enemy's light cavalry wants to divide and intercept, there is no way to stop us. After all, the light cavalry is no more. Great, the horse can't swim."

Although Bix's method cannot eliminate the light cavalry, it can indeed effectively eliminate the threat of the Polish light cavalry to the transportation supply line and can greatly save manpower.

Yakov Cherkaski couldn't help but nodded, obviously extremely satisfied.

"Just do as you say." Yakov Cherkaski said. The last frontier of fire and sword