After all, Maximilian I was not a fool, and he was a relatively powerful member of the Habsburg family (on the other hand, the rest of the Habsburg royal family were not very powerful), so after calming down, he wanted to take the exam for Marin...

"Love, how powerful is your mercenary group?"

"It's true that the tactics trained by Chen's mercenary group are specifically targeted at Swiss mercenaries!" Marin said confidently.

"Really?" Maximilian I was excited.

You know, Swiss mercenaries are the main combat force in the French army. Although there are many French knights, their newly formed spear soldiers can also be restrained.

The Swiss spearmen are not only good at defending the impact of the knights, but also able to launch attacks. They are the top power in Europe in this era.

Moreover, the emperor himself also had a grudge against the Swiss mercenaries. His father-in-law, "Bold Charles", died at the hands of Swiss mercenaries. The large tract of the territory of the Duchy of Burgundy fell into the hands of the French because of the help of the Swiss. Even the Habsburg family, the birthplace of the Habsburg family, fell into the hands of the Swiss.

In fact, the Swiss spearmen traveled across Europe for decades after the Battle of Nancy until they were largely using muskets, and learned that German mercenaries from the Spanish phalanx were trampled under their feet (the specific commander was George Frenzberg, the "father of German mercenaries").

In other words, the Swiss spearmen are very sharp in melee combat, but are afraid of long-range strikes. In particular, the Spanish square Mushket musket is powerful enough that even if the Swiss wear plate armor, they cannot stop it.

Although Marin's temporary plan was replaced by bows and arrows, most of the Swiss spearmen were basically poor people, and they could not afford expensive plate armor.

Therefore, the bow and arrow formation is very lethal when facing Swiss spearmen wearing cloth or leather armor. When the Swiss spearmen are shot out, they learn from their mistakes and spend a lot of money to equip their breastplate, it doesn't matter. At that time, Marin will change into a big musket and will still kill and crush...

In order to verify whether Marin was bragging, Earl Hohenzollern decided to have a live-fire confrontation exercise to see if Marin was bragging.

So, Malin went to the recruiting office to pick up 80 long sticks and retrieved his 20 hunting bows...

"Bow and arrow... aren't this thing almost eliminated? You can't shoot through the plate armor..." Count Frederick was a little Spartan. In Europe, because of the appearance of plate armor, the killing ability of the arrow was greatly reduced. Therefore, the arrow gradually became less valued. There was only the battle between lowly civilians, and the arrows were still popular. Because lowly civilian soldiers did not have the ability to equip plate armor and had low protection for the arrows. For the nobles and knights, the threat of bows and arrows was really limited.

"Our Lord Earl, our archers, are not shooting French plate knights, but Swiss mercenaries." Marin reminded.

"How to say it?" The emperor was also very curious.

"Your Majesty, most of the Swiss mercenaries are poor mountain people. Do they have the money to buy plate armor?"

The emperor and the earl both shook their heads...

"That's it, since these poor Swiss people don't have the money to buy plate armor, can they withstand the blow of bows and arrows?"

The emperor and the earl shook their heads again...

"So, Bei Zhi said that this formation is specifically designed to restrain Swiss mercenaries."

The mercenaries under Marin all picked up wooden sticks as spears, while the arrows of bows and arrows used arrows without arrows in the ox cart. These headless arrows are usually used by Marin to train these guys to avoid casualties during training. Even for safety, these headless arrows were covered with rags to reduce the impact during shooting.

When both sides lined up, Count Frederick frowned and said:

"Knight Marin, why is your battle formation so thin?" Marin's battle formation, including the archers, was only 3 rows, so Count Frederick was naturally dissatisfied.

"Sir, Bei Zhi wants to make it thicker, but unfortunately it's not enough money. You know, in the past month, Bei Zhi has paid for this group of bastards with his own pocket..." Marin said speechlessly.

Because of the large amount of training, although Marin brought people to hunt and shared some of the pressure of carnivorous food, this group of two people still consumed as much as 4 marks of Marin for meals every day, with a total of 640 Finneys, and an average of 6.4 Finneys per person per day. At this time, the civilians in the empire earned only 2 Finneys per day. In other words, the daily consumption of this group of people's food and drink was more than three times that of ordinary people.

Thinking that Marin was only born into a knight family, it was indeed not easy to support 100 people, so the emperor and the Count stopped talking.

In order to show fairness, Count Frederick also sent 100 old mercenary spearmen to form a Swiss phalanx, with a thickness similar to that of Marin and the others.

But before the two sides faced off, Marin asked for an hour to postpone it...

Then, the emperor and the Count saw in surprise that Marin commanded his men and took out 40 engineer shovels (the emperor and the Count did not recognize this thing) and began to dig trenches in front of the formation...

The emperor and the Count came to the front of the formation and asked Marin:

"Knight Marin, are you digging a trenches?"

"Yes, your Majesty, Lord Earl, the trench can hinder the charge of the enemy, and both knights and infantry will be blocked."

Then, the emperor and the Count saw two trenches that were only 2 meters apart in front of Marin's battle formation. The trenches were not deep, but were relatively wide. It is expected that after the enemy rushed up, they could not jump through the two trenches that were so wide.

Then, they saw that Marin commanded his men, on the edge of the trench close to the battle formation, were filled with wooden stakes diagonally facing forward...

"Is this... the English way to fight against the French knights?" Maximilian I was more sensible and saw at a glance that this was the way for English longbowmen to stop the French knights from charging. The difference was that the British wooden pickets were directly inserted into the ground in front of the formation. Marin's wooden pickets were inserted into the trench. If the enemy wanted to charge, they not only had to jump over the trench, but also avoided the pickets on the trench, which greatly increased the difficulty.

Sure enough, before the exercise began, the German spearmen led by a Swiss mercenary officer looked at the two trenches and the piles of pickets in the distance, feeling embarrassed.

In fact, it's still behind them that makes their scalp numb...

When the exercise officially began, the teams of both sides were 100 meters apart. According to Marin's request, they were the defensive side, while the 100 spearmen on the opposite side were the offensive side. Their weapons were also wooden sticks without spearheads.

When the Swiss officer ordered the attack, the well-trained German spearmen lined up in an orderly manner and began to move forward slowly, forcing the Hoffmann mercenaries.

After entering the distance of 80 meters, I guess the archers had lethality and hit rate. With Marin's order, 20 archers all set off arrows and fired...

"Ah...ah...ah..."

Although there are no arrows and the arrows are covered with rags, it still hurts when shot on people. Especially, the German spearmen, like the Swiss spearmen, wear fancy cloth clothes and cannot resist bows and arrows at all...

If the bow and arrow fall on it, unless it is in a very unimportant position, the soldier will be judged to be "dead" or "injured" to withdraw from the battle.

The archers' hit rate at a distance of 80 meters is not high, so no one thinks. At a distance of 70 to 80 meters, the German spearmen only lost 5 people. However, after entering within 60 meters, the "care and casualties" began to increase greatly. Because, there is no need to shoot at this distance, you can accurately shoot "point kill" on the horizon.

At about 60 meters, a round of bows and arrows came down, and the German spearmen lost 9 people at once. This was because the spearmen used their guns to block some of the "arrows". After all, so many guns also had a little defensive area. After entering 50 meters, it was simply a waste of people.

At a distance of 40 to 50 meters, the archers of the Hoffman Mercenary Group shot two rounds of arrows in total, and 20 people were knocked down.

By the time the German spearmen entered a distance of 10 meters, there were only 40 left in 100 people...

In other words, 60 people were "dead" or "quit the battle due to injuries" halfway through...

Moreover, many people were not "sent" to casualties, but were really injured. After all, bows and arrows are also hard objects. With strong kinetic energy, even if the arrow wraps the rag and hits the person, it will be very painful, which is comparable to a stone hitting a person. Some unlucky guys were directly injured by the arrow.

"This... archers are so powerful?" Maximilian I and Count Frederick usually play knights. The knights wear Gothic plate armor and despise bows and arrows at all. However, infantry cannot ignore the threat of bows and arrows. Although Count Frederick has commanded the spearmen, he has also poked against the spearmen on the opposite side and has never encountered an established archer. Therefore, he has never seen such a powerful bow and arrow killing.

In fact, in this era, except for the vulgar Britain, there were a large number of archers, other countries had never had archers on a large scale. Because the difficulty of archers training is no less than that of knights. If you have free time, it is better to train a group of knights. Therefore, there are fewer countries that engage in archers. After the plate armor replaced the mail, the protection of archers was greatly improved. Therefore, no one was willing to train archers in large quantities.

Originally, in the early stage of the British-French War, due to the outstanding performance of the English longbow soldiers, many countries imitated the archery troops. However, after the English were defeated, everyone stopped learning and the temporary archery troops were disbanded.

The 40 surviving spearmen, led by Swiss officers who also survived because of their chest armor, began to attack the Hoffman Mercenary Corps' front.

However, when they rushed to the front, they were a little stunned. Two very wide trenches blocked them. They didn't think anything from a distance, but they felt troubles when they really attacked.

The trenches dug by Marin were not deep, only 40 cm deep, but 2 meters wide. Two trenches of 2 meters wide, plus the 2 meters distance between the trenches, made the 6 meters in front of the Hoffman Mercenary Group "abnormal ground". If you want to rush over, you have to go down the first trench first and then climb up.

However, the spears (long sticks) on both sides were 6 meters long. When the people on their side had just climbed through the second trench and stood on the 2-meter-wide ground between the two trenches, they had not yet stood firm, and the "spears" on the opposite side stabbed them one after another...

The soldiers of this side went to block and spread the spears opposite one after another, but the people on their side had just climbed a ditch and had not yet stood firm yet, and the spearmen on the other side had been waiting for their work. If the lower plate was unstable, how could they stab each other? Therefore, a large number of personnel reductions occurred...

Well, when the Swiss officers and the remaining 30 people stood firm on the 2-meter-wide ground, the Hoffmann mercenary group took two steps as a whole, not giving the German spearmen who had settled down the foot to stab each other. Then, the archers who had rested for a while, began to "kill" their opponents in the cracks of the people who deliberately made way out of the front row...

And the German spearmen are also very helpless with the wooden pickets all over the ground. You go to pull the pickets, and the spearmen on the opposite side will definitely take the opportunity to stab you. Not only that, if you want to pull the pickets, you have to go down to the second trench first. If you go down the trench, the opposite side will stab you from a high point and shoot you...

But if the pickets were removed, the troops on his side would definitely not be able to continue moving forward. The Swiss officer who reacted hurriedly led the team to the left. However, there were only more than 20 people left in his hand...

He went around to the left, but the number of people on both sides was seriously unequal. At this time, Marin waved his hand and all members of the Hoffman Mercenary Group quickly turned the team, using a very good queue to change, facing the remaining more than 20 German spearmen. Then, everyone kept their formation and rushed over and poked the remaining troops of the opponent... In the end, there were only 10 people on Marin's side who were stabbed by the opponent's wooden stick because their martial arts were not as good as the veterans on the other side. They were sentenced to casualties...

"It's simply a massacre!" the emperor sighed.

"Yes, soldiers without plate armor are indeed difficult to resist the bow and arrow formation. But if they rush closer, the archers will be useless."

"Haha, Frederick, haven't you seen it? Your spearmen cannot kill the archers. Because there are two rows of spearmen standing in front of them."

"That's true, but, Your Majesty, in the real battle, the troops are far more than that. There are only two rows of spearmen in front, which is far from enough to protect the archers."

"Marin also said that he had no money, so he only recruited such a few people. If there were enough staff, I think he would definitely not have such a few people in front of him, right?"

"Maybe."

"The defensive tactics of those two ditches are also pretty good, and it is difficult to break through head-on. Even if the Cavaliers charge, it is extremely difficult to break through."

"That's right, but you can go around the flank. Just like the Swiss did at the end."

"Well, that's right. But let's ask the Knight Marin first and see how he deals with the enemy's flank encirclement!"
Chapter completed!