Specific commands like "change formation to avoid shelling," which had never been practiced before, were different from fixed deployment orders. They were not part of the signal system that used flags or musical instruments. Needless to say, they could only be conveyed by manpower. Thus, another peak period of work for the messengers began, and after running all morning, they did not even have time to change horses.
The morale of the Reach vanguard, after suffering several rounds of shelling, had been badly shaken and was barely holding above the breaking point. The new orders were dutifully passed down to the lower ranks according to procedure and were immediately carried out upon arrival. Everything seemed orderly, but a problem arose at the very first step, the delivery. Rowan had been thrown into confusion by the continuous bombardment, and in his haste to issue orders, he forgot to consider the speed of message transmission and the delay in effect. The parts of the horizontal line closer to him received the orders first because the messengers reached them sooner, and so they were the first to begin gathering their squads and moving toward the nearest sloped terrain. Such suitable terrain, of course, was not right beside them, but scattered to the left, to the right, a little farther ahead, and even some distance behind.
As a result, in the eyes of the troops on the wings, farther from the command post and still not yet ordered, the battlefield situation became this: the enemy's firepower remained constant, but the formation around the central command suddenly began to fall into disorder for no obvious reason. Some units moved toward them, some moved away in the opposite direction, and some even started to retreat.
Confusion instantly gave rise to panic in their hearts.
If that had been the only problem, their military training might have allowed them to hold on until the messengers arrived. But misfortune had it that the fourth round of shelling from the Gift Army artillery arrived at precisely this moment. The dense cannonballs and rolling thunder not only threw the front line into further chaos, but also interfered with the messengers, creating an effect similar to fire interdiction.
And so, amid the deafening roar of the cannons, the sandbag-sized iron balls bouncing across the ground, and the confusion caused by the central line's inexplicable breakdown, the rout Rowan feared most began in a muddled way.
...
The first to start running was a unit of peasant soldiers from the villages around Bitterbridge. Contrary to the speculation of many "experts" who analyzed this battle in later generations, these peasant soldiers, whose homes were "trampled beneath the invaders' hooves," were actually united in hatred and high in morale. The commander who ordered the retreat was not a coward either. Having taken over as acting commander after the regular commander was wounded by a cannonball, he had fought in several campaigns and had some battlefield experience. He gave the retreat order at that moment because the unit beside them had begun gathering its troops and was moving toward a small mound about five meters high and fifty meters behind them. Under the combined effects of enemy cannonballs, the booming sounds, and the drifting smoke, and seeing no clear flag signals or messengers on the chaotic battlefield, he "wisely and decisively" judged that the command post must have ordered the line to withdraw.
Not wanting the fellow villagers who had left home with him to keep taking hits for nothing within the enemy's firing range, he rather boldly issued the order to retreat.
Similar situations occurred simultaneously in two or three places along the several-mile-long front. The units that first followed the retreat did not know that the units they saw "retreating" were not actually fleeing, but merely repositioning. The units farther out on the wings, seeing them retreat, also began to run in confusion. The messengers desperately chased after them and managed to deliver the correct orders to the first batch of units in time, but they could no longer stop the rout of the units farther away. This strange retreat, in turn, affected the central units that had already received the correct orders. Faithfully carrying out their instructions, they moved to suitable positions, stopped, and stabilized their formation, only to look up and see the units on both wings fleeing for their lives, while they themselves had somehow become a salient.
Had there been some new development on the battlefield? Had the command post issued an order to retreat? Or had some unit's will collapsed and broken down?
One mistake leads to many. Confusion and panic are both contagious and cumulative. At first, no one wanted to run at all, but soon the situation deteriorated to the point where even if they did not want to run, they had no choice. By then, even if Matus Rowan were Sun Tzu reborn, he would have been powerless to stop the collapse of the entire front line. Only one option remained to him: run faster than his own troops, and while avoiding becoming prey to the enemy's pursuers, try to rally the fleeing soldiers in the rear.
Although the order from above had been for him to feign defeat and lure the enemy, after fleeing from just a few rounds of cannon fire, who would he lure?
Stomping his foot, Rowan, full of frustration and unwillingness, mounted his warhorse at the urging of his staff and retreated with a crack of the whip.
---
One mile to the east, Aegor, positioned at the center of Daenerys' trapezoidal formation, had a clear grasp of the actual situation behind Rowan's vanguard's disintegration thanks to the aerial reconnaissance reports from the wargs, but he had no intention of ordering a pursuit.
Not only could he "see" that the enemy's rout was genuine, he also had a full view of the main Riverlands cavalry force lurking to the south at the edge of sight. Through the clumsy but diligent reports of the bird wargs, he learned that this cavalry force had roughly divided into three parts and was ready to launch a full assault at any moment. In the first clash with the Reach infantry vanguard, he had indeed won a greater and faster victory than expected, but such a victory was not decisive. Next came the real main course.
Remaining in a defensive formation without moving was certainly safe, but they would never reach Highgarden. However, if he dared to dispatch any infantry square or cavalry unit to pursue Rowan's vanguard at this moment, the detached troops would be surrounded and wiped out. Even if he stayed calm, did not underestimate the enemy, and did not advance rashly, but continued pressing forward as a whole, they would soon face the fiercest infantry-cavalry coordinated assault in the history of Westeros.
And frankly, Aegor was not entirely confident he could still win easily in a battle of that intensity.
At this point, he had to show his true skill.
Taking a deep breath, Aegor calmly and concisely issued the order, "Artillery cease fire. Command and control, pay attention to coordination and communication. The whole army begins to roll!"
Amid the blare of horns and the clang of gongs, it seemed as if the entire bank of the Mander was engulfed by the shouts of the command system of Daenerys' Western Expeditionary Army. Garlan Tyrell, who saw the enemy army begin to move from afar, was startled and almost waved his hand to order a preparatory attack. It was true that the enemy's formation, with its back to the river and its depth and width in balance, could stop and organize a defense at any time. But no matter how quickly the physical transition from marching to defense could be completed, the psychological panic and urgency brought by an emergency could not be dispelled so quickly. Because of this, even a formation specifically designed to deal with attacks while on the move would never be as strong in actual defense when attacked as it would be when standing still and waiting for the enemy.
As long as one round of three waves of charges scattered half the enemy formation, and the main infantry force then followed the momentum to slaughter them, the hammer and anvil would instantly take shape.
With such a plan in mind, the Western Expeditionary Army before his eyes began to perform an unbelievable maneuver. Under Garlan's gaze, a brief commotion broke out inside Daenerys' trapezoidal formation. Without any overall movement, the eastern slanted side of the trapezoid suddenly folded inward without warning.
What was incomprehensible from the ground became clear from above. Of the nine great infantry squares that formed the trapezoid, the three that made up the eastern slanted side, the No. 1 square nearest the riverbank base, contracted into the interior of the trapezoid through the gap between the base and the riverbank, marched the full length of the base along the river, then returned from the west to the western end of the first line of squares. Likewise, the No. 2 square moved west through the gap between the base and the second line, passed the two large squares in its own line, and also reached the western end. Finally, the No. 3 square brushed past the cavalry unit through the gap between the second and third lines, passed the other square in its third line, and completed a positional exchange with it.
Viewed from above, the entire process of changing formation looked like this: the eastern slanted side of the formation briefly contracted into the interior of the main formation, then soon emerged from the other side, seamlessly transforming into the western slanted side of the trapezoid. Throughout the entire process, a full two-thirds of the nine great infantry squares, six of them, remained standing in place in a complete defensive posture, covering the three infantry squares undergoing the change and the central command post, leaving the restless Riverlands cavalry with no opportunity to exploit any opening.
Thus, eastern slanted side to western slanted side, eastern slanted side to western slanted side. With continuous inward contraction and transformation based on the same principle, the entire trapezoidal formation slowly but irresistibly rolled toward Highgarden like the tread of a tank, at one-third the speed of a normal full-army march.
This is the fundamental reason why this great formation with its back to the Mander is called the "Rolling Formation" rather than the "Trapezoidal Defensive Formation."
(To be continued.)
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