Chapter 87: Gallop, Chariot
This was the first time that the four-drawn chariots went to the battlefield. As the chariots roared towards the battlefield, the soldiers standing on the chariots fired in an orderly manner. Although the chariots were also overturned, they were definitely much more stable than horseback. The soldiers holding Henry rifles or Spencer rifles began shooting from about two hundred meters away. Although the accuracy was poor at this distance, the powerful firepower of hundreds of repeating rifles was still extremely deadly.
"Keep your distance and shoot like you did in training,"
Zhu Xianhai, who was at the rear of the convoy and commanding the team, kept reminding them loudly. His orders were repeated by other vehicles, and the convoy maintained a wedge-shaped attack, with a certain distance between vehicles, just like in past exercises, and the queues between the convoys were neat.
In fact, they had conducted training countless times in the past. Compared with equestrian training, driving training was much simpler. After all, for the coachman, all he needed to do was to maintain the queue, and when the warhorse was shot, he had to cut off the harness decisively and quickly to avoid injuring the horse and slowing down the speed.
Shoot like you train!
Xu Wentao, who was standing in the queue, tried his best to stand steady when holding the Spencer rifle, standing in a T-stance to control the angle. At the same time, he would rest his buttocks on the frame to keep his body stable. In past training, he had achieved a good result of 6 out of 7 shots.
"Wait a minute, wait a minute..."
Unlike the others, he was not in a hurry to shoot. Each of them had ten bullet tubes in the magazine on his waist, each tube was loaded with 7 bullets, a total of 77 bullets.
Although the 7-shot Spencer rifle had a longer range than the Henry rifle, Xu Wentao was well aware that the closer the distance, the higher the shooting accuracy.
"Wait a little longer, wait until you're a hundred meters away, then shoot right at his face!"
Once again, Xu Wentao shouted loudly to his comrades around him that in addition to the driver, there were four riflemen sitting in the back of a chariot. They were the equivalent of ancient archers on the chariot, but their rifles were more powerful and had a longer range.
“H-H-H-…”
While the crossbowmen were driving the carriage at full speed, several soldiers were operating a Gatling machine gun behind the chariot in front. When the riflemen started shooting, they did not shoot, but kept adjusting the angle and pointing the muzzle at the enemy.
Finally, when the distance was about a hundred meters, the two Gatling machine guns on the left and right sides opened fire.
"Boom, boom..."
Although the hand-cranked Gatling gun did not have a very fast firing rate, the situation on the battlefield changed instantly with its sound. The rapid sound of the machine gun was so special. One .58-inch bullet after another whizzed towards the gauchos. The bullets , instantly penetrated the abdomen of the warhorse and broke the horse's legs. The flying bullets swept the gauchos off their horses one after another.
At the same time, the riflemen immediately picked up their rifles, aimed and fired at the fastest rate. The firing rate of the lever rifles was quite amazing. In just a moment, the gauchos were shrouded in a hail of bullets from machine guns and rifles.
Such intensive firepower completely overturned the Gauchos' understanding, and they didn't even have time to pull the trigger - after all, the range of the revolver was too short.
At a distance of 100 meters, the gauchos could only passively take the beating, completely powerless to fight back, and the accuracy of the pistols on the bumpy horseback was a bit touching. The gaucho cavalry, who once relied on revolvers to run rampant, immediately became a target, and a very tall one at that.
One hundred meters!
Although a hundred meters seems very close, but in the hail of bullets, this hundred meters is a fatal distance. When the galloping chariots were rushing at high speed, the soldiers with bullets like rain kept aiming and shooting, and the gauchos kept falling in front of them.
As the commander of the gauchos, Matolo was straightforward. Without any hesitation, he immediately turned his horse around and shouted loudly.
"retreat!"
Matolo has never been a brave man. Born as an aide-de-camp, he is essentially a flatterer. He used to be a prominent figure in the officialdom of Buenos Aires. After all, he is General Mitre's most trusted confidant. Even this expedition was just to show off his military record.
Now, facing these enemies who came out of nowhere, facing a group of enemies who were charging in horse-drawn carriages and armed with Henry rifles, he decisively chose to escape.
“ Catch up!”
Everything was just like what was simulated in the simulator, with no suspense at all. Five hundred men, four hundred Henry rifles and Spencer rifles, plus two Gatling machine guns. Such powerful firepower was a devastating blow to the Gaucho cavalry.
After quickly finishing a tube of bullets, Xu Wentao immediately pulled out a tube of bullets from the magazine and quickly loaded it from the buttstock. After reloading again, he placed the "seven-shot rifle" directly into the carriage, then pulled out a grenade launcher, placed the curved tail of the bullet on the carriage frame, adjusted the angle to aim forward, and then stuffed the 2-inch shell into the muzzle.
With a "boom!", the shells whistled out.
In the blink of an eye, the shells fell into the middle of the fleeing gaucho cavalry. In the violent explosion, cast iron fragments whistled around, and the jagged fragments cut the abdomen of the warhorse like a sharp blade. Amid the wailing of the warhorse, both the man and the horse fell down, and five or six cavalrymen fell down in the diffuse smoke. When the riflemen on the periphery fired, the crew members in the middle all set up grenade launchers. Although the range of this 2-inch grenade launcher was only 300 meters, it was enough.
For a moment, artillery shells like raindrops kept falling among the gaucho cavalry. Among the galloping cavalry, columns of smoke rose into the sky, and whistling fragments emitted the cries of death, harvesting lives wantonly around them.
As for the fleeing gaucho cavalry, they had no chance to fight back. They were constantly blown into the sky by small cannonballs, hit by bullets, fell off their horses, and were trampled to death by the horses' hooves behind them, or had their bones crushed by the wheels of chariots.
Chariot!
The chariot from BC was resurrected once again. On this day, on this vast grassland...
