Chapter 237: Defeat
The destruction of the king's front army was only the bloody beginning of this encounter.
Ser Kevan Lannister received the news and was stumped as he had no backup.
The Stormlanders were unable to hold back the Reach army in the Kingswood.
While he cursed the stormland nobles in his heart for being unreliable, he also made a last-ditch effort.
Although he already knew that this temporarily recruited "army" was destined to be destroyed under the iron heel of the Reach army, Kevan felt that it would at least cause some trouble and casualties to them.
In this way, he and the rest of the royal nobles could take advantage of the chaos and escape back to King's Landing.
Therefore, Kevan immediately ordered the entire army to gather and arrange the mules and horses transporting baggage outside the army to form a simple defence line for a solid defence.
Unfortunately, the Reach army arrived too quickly.
In other words, the king's front army was defeated too quickly and was defeated almost in the blink of an eye, failing to buy any time for the main force in the rear.
Samwell's tactics put speed as the first priority and did not intend to give the enemy any chance to react and prepare.
When the black cavalry appeared like a tide, the earth began to tremble.
This horrific scene plunged these newly recruited recruits, who had not experienced much training and had never seen the cruelty of a real battlefield, into panic and confusion.
Some people simply gave up and started running back.
This chaos quickly spread. Soldiers pushed and trampled each other, carriages and horses rolled to the ground, screams came one after another, and the sky filled with rage.
Even if Kevan ordered the military heralds to strictly enforce the law and beheaded several people, it still could not be stopped.
The chaos spreads.
This situation is actually no different from a defeat.
The untrained new army met the elite cavalry on the vast wild plains and was basically declared destroyed.
Even if this new army has an absolute advantage in numbers.
No matter how many sheep there are, they are no match for the lions.
At this time, Samwell encountered some minor troubles.
In order to strive for speed, he ordered to continue moving forward without taking any rest after defeating the enemy's front line.
Under such circumstances, the formation of the Reach Cavalry Army had changed, and there was even some minor chaos.
But Samwell did not panic. He knew that some situations would inevitably arise in large-scale cavalry group operations.
At this time, making too many adjustments to the military may not be wise, but may easily lead to greater chaos.
Therefore, he simply followed the current formation and ordered the heavy cavalry to move forward slowly, while the light cavalry rushed in from both wings.
These adjustments were made while maintaining forward momentum. Samwell's strategy remained unchanged, which was to take advantage of the speed of the cavalry to rush over and defeat the enemy when they were too panicked to form formations.
A few miles passed in an instant, and the right wing of the Reach Light Cavalry was the first to make contact with the enemy.
The light cavalry was commanded by Sir Garth "Greysteel" Hightower, the second son of Lord Hightower of Oldtown.
Sir Garth inherited the calm character inherited of the Hightower family.
At this time, even when he saw a large-scale commotion among the enemy troops, he did not rush to charge into the battle. Instead, he took his bow and arrow first, raised it high above his head, and ordered:
"Riding and shooting harassment! Mounting shooting and harassment!"
At the same time, Sir Garth turned his horse's head and led the army to make a turn, thereby avoiding the front of the king's army, roaring through the fields beside the King's Road, and going around to the enemy's right.
During the gallop, the sound of bowstrings was heard, and a rain of arrows rose up from the right-wing formation of the River Cavalry and fell towards the enemy formation.
The ground turned so dark that it actually formed a large shadow.
The king's army suddenly suffered heavy casualties.
These temporary recruits lacked weapons and equipment. Not to mention leather armour, they did not even have uniforms. Coupled with the panic and chaos, the formations were also uneven.
They suddenly encountered the most classic mounted attack of the cavalry.
The casualties can be imagined.
Countless arrows continued to fall into the dense infantry camp with a terrifying whistling sound, leaving them with nowhere to hide.
The sound of arrows piercing flesh and blood was so intense that it stimulated the psychological defences of the already extremely fragile recruits.
Thousands of royal soldiers fell to the ground like ears of wheat in the wind.
Pieces of bright red blanks appeared in the military formation, and a large number of lives disappeared without a trace in an instant.
At the same time, the commander of the left cavalry of the Reach was Sir Aman of the Peake family. He also led the army to launch the same cavalry attack to test the situation of this royal army.
The result was naturally as Samwell said, that this army was almost entirely composed of newly recruited soldiers, and its combat effectiveness was extremely low.
So, after Sir Aman confirmed this, he decisively pulled out his long sword, raised it high above his head, and shouted:
"Charge! Charge with me!"
He clamped the horse's belly tightly and at the same time completely released the reins, allowing the horse to charge forward at the forefront of the army.
The shouts of killing soared into the sky, almost drowning out the rumble of horse hooves.
Under the brave leadership of Sir Aman, the sturdy Reach cavalry drew their sharp swords one after another.
As the general's flag was suddenly inserted into the formation of the king's army, the following Reach cavalry also surged forward.
At this time, the king's left-wing army formation was already in chaos. Faced with the sudden impact of the Reach cavalry, even if it was just the light cavalry, they were completely unable to deal with it.
In a series of collisions, a large number of enemy soldiers were knocked down.
The raised scimitars fell like waves, blood spurted, heads rolled, and broken limbs flew everywhere.
The screams were heard one after another, but they were drowned in the various noisy sounds on the battlefield.
At this time, Samwell finally led his heavy cavalry to kill.
Seeing that both wings of the king's army had collapsed, he no longer hesitated and led his army directly into the enemy's front position without any testing.
Rows of heavy armoured cavalry were like steel monsters, tearing apart the frontal defence of the king's army with an extremely arrogant attitude, crushing all obstacles in front of them.
In an instant, the entire royal army collapsed completely.
It was less than half an hour from the time the two armies met until the king's soldiers abandoned their formation and fled in groups in the opposite direction.
In just two rounds of charges, the king's army was defeated.
And once it started to collapse, it triggered a chain avalanche reaction, and no one could save it.
In fact, in such a short period of time, the casualties caused by the Reach Cavalry were only a few hundred people at most, which was not significant damage to an army of more than 50,000 people.
If they could truly stabilize their formation and resist desperately, perhaps they could force the Reach cavalry back.
But this was clearly impossible.
The hastily assembled recruits lacked the courage and quality for such a feat, unaware that the consequences of fleeing at this time were actually worse.
After the Reach Cavalry defeated the royal army's formation, they pursued and killed the deserters like shepherds driving a flock of sheep.
These driven deserters took advantage of the situation and broke through the rear army's military formation, eventually forming an unorganized rout.
Like headless flies, they dropped pieces of corpses and all kinds of messy weapons, fleeing in all directions.
As far as the eye could see, the entire King's Road had been dyed a dazzling blood-red.
Samwell slowed down his horse and ordered his cavalry to be divided into small groups of a hundred people to chase the defeated army, demanding that the king's army be annihilated in the Stormlands.
And he himself set up camp in the nearby wilderness to receive the captured soldiers.
By the time the sun went down, the number of surrendered troops exceeded 20,000. At the same time, nearly a hundred knights from the royal families, such as Lake, Stokeworth, Harvard, and Staunton, were captured, and this number was still increasing.
Obviously, King's army had begun to surrender in an organized manner.
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After waiting in place for two days, Earl Randyll also led the main force of the Reach North Route Army to join them.
By this time, the number of prisoners had reached more than 30,000.
"It's a pity that we couldn't capture Kevan Lannister," Samwell said with some regret.
This man was Duke Tywin's younger brother and the second-in-command of the Lion family. Although he was not well-known, his abilities were actually quite outstanding.
"If Kevan could be captured, the old lion would probably offer an extremely generous ransom,"
Earl Randyll didn't care and said, "There are enough captives of these royal nobles. If we send someone to negotiate, we should be able to get you a lot of ransom."
Because this annihilation battle was commanded by Samwell, those prisoners strictly belonged to him, and he could take a large portion of the ransom in exchange.
"Well, what about the other soldiers? Especially those new recruits from King's Landing. I'm quite sure Lannister's family will not pay a dime for them."
"Then send them back," Lord Randyll said.
"But first, negotiate with the Lannister family about these people. Then tell the captives the news and release them."
Samwell nodded thoughtfully. "You want to make the people of King's Landing hate the Lannisters to death."
"Yes," Lord Randyll admitted frankly, "In fact, the reputation of Lannister in King's Landing is very bad. The King's Landing citizens have not forgotten when Tywin captured King's Landing and allowed his men to burn, loot and kill them ."
"Okay, I'll arrange for someone to do it right away," Samwell agreed 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 a pretty good strategy.
He remembered that in the original book, a public riot broke out in King's Landing, and the nobles in the Red Keep were almost beaten to death by the rioters on the streets.
He hoped that this time, the King's Landing citizens wouldn't disappoint him.
[END]