The Reachmen's strategy for dealing with the Western Expeditionary Army could be summed up simply: trade space for time, actively prepare for a decisive battle, and strive to seize the best possible time and place for it.
After gaining majority approval, this strategy was quickly put into effect. Most of the Reach began extreme cavalry mobilization and round-the-clock collection and refinement of niter. The sound of test explosions outside Highgarden boomed almost without pause from morning till night. The feverish atmosphere of preparation even moved Oldtown, which had planned to repeat its old trick. Margaery's mother, Alerie Hightower, personally wrote to her maiden family, explaining in detail the principles of gunpowder and thermal weapons to her father, Margaery's maternal grandfather, Lord Leyton Hightower, the "Old Man of Oldtown," and analyzing the pros and cons of joining this war. She successfully persuaded the old recluse, who had originally planned to remain neutral and focus on scholarship, to loosen his grip on power and allow his son to lead the Hightower bannermen in providing the Reach Allied Forces with "all support short of military deployment."
Unfortunately, none of this encouraging news swayed the black-clad devil who had come from the Wall. The Western Expeditionary Army advanced steadily along the Rose Road as if undisturbed, marching, camping, and marching again without fail. In the end, it crossed the eastern border of Highgarden's lands two days earlier than the Reachmen had expected, officially entering the direct domain of the ruling family of the Reach.
For Aegor and the Reachmen, they were already facing Daenerys's Western Expeditionary Army at their gates, with Highgarden behind them, truly with no room to retreat. For Aegor, who led the royal army, the Reachmen had chosen the wisest scorched-earth and "lure them deep" policy, stretching the supply lines to unsustainable lengths and hindering any attempt to live off the land. This also placed immense logistical pressure on the more than thirty thousand main troops of the Western Expeditionary Army under his command.
The decisive battle could no longer be delayed, for either side.
And the result of this urgency taking shape in reality was this: the frequency of skirmishes between the scouts of both sides suddenly increased by an order of magnitude, and the traces of enemy forces in significant numbers finally appeared at the edge of the Western Expeditionary Army's restricted reconnaissance range. The smell of gunpowder in the air rose step by step until it reached a suffocating level.
...
While maintaining a certain defensive force in the south against Dorne and in the north against the Westerlands, the Reachmen ultimately gathered more than eighty thousand troops along the Highgarden front, including slightly over twenty thousand cavalry. With the remnants of the Golden Company added, they claimed a hundred thousand men strong.
The defeat at the Blackwater Rush not only showed the Golden Company-Reach Allied Forces the power of thermal weapons, it also made them realize the danger of decentralized command and feudal lords acting independently. Facing unprecedented external pressure, and in order to avoid internal disputes and losses while preventing command chaos caused by disunity, the Reach nobles and Aegor's supporters unanimously approved a proposal at another war council not long after the strategy had been decided: imitate the enemy's military system, temporarily reorganize and centralize military power, and entrust all Reach armies together with the Golden Company to a Command made up of a few decision-makers for unified control.
House Tyrell had never imagined that the immense power they had dreamed of holding for more than three hundred years as rulers of the Reach would, through a bitter defeat, become a blessing in disguise and be forced upon them by the enemy. For the sake of internal unity, and to make up for the psychological imbalance caused by the Golden Company's losses while covering the retreat of the allied forces at the Blackwater, Lord Tyrell, on the advice of his daughter Margaery, brought Jon, Aegor's Hand, and the commander of the Golden Company into the core decision-making circle of the Command, transferring military authority in name, and to a certain extent in fact, to King Aegor. Under the True Dragon banner of the latter, true unified command of the entire army was finally achieved.
Once command authority was settled, everything else proceeded smoothly.
After carefully studying the characteristics of gunpowder weapons and the troop structure of the Western Expeditionary Army, the Command determined the core idea for this defensive battle: leverage strengths and avoid weaknesses.
The "strengths" were these: fighting on home ground, and possessing overwhelming numerical superiority.
The "weaknesses" were these: Daenerys's army had high morale, thermal weapons, and possibly a dragon, which might appear.
To deal with the dragon, dragon-hunting scorpions had to be prepared. Even if they failed to hit it, they could still provide morale support and psychological comfort. That went without saying. However, when it came to facing the main force of the Western Expeditionary Army, they had no prior experience or history to draw upon. After several rounds of brainstorming and discussion, the Allied Forces Command translated the core idea into concrete, workable details, which could be summarized in roughly three aspects.
First, appropriately extend the width of the front line.
As the former direct domain of the Kings of the Reach, Highgarden undoubtedly occupied the most geographically superior position on the plains of the Reach. It was not only vast and fertile, but also flat. The terrain, where one could see all the way to the horizon, left the locals with no natural defenses, but it also just as fairly left outside enemies with no terrain to exploit, reducing the invaders' room for maneuver. With the decisive battle taking place in this region, the Reach Allied Forces could deploy and maneuver freely, while Daenerys's army had no terrain features to protect its flanks or rear. The Reachmen could therefore arrange their formation as they pleased, extending or shortening the front line at will.
What was front-line width?
Simply put, it was the distance from the farthest left flank to the farthest right flank of the army. In deeper terms, it involved the balance between contact area and depth, the compromise between mobility and commandability, and the choice between offensive and defensive posture. When arranging a formation, favoring one aspect would inevitably affect the others.
In this situation, the Reach Allied Forces had roughly three times the strength of Daenerys's army. What did that mean?
This was an elementary school math problem, and the clearest answer was this: when the front-line width was the same, the Reach army's depth would be three times that of Daenerys's army. When the depth was the same, the Reach army's front-line width would be three times that of Daenerys's army. The former meant that the side with more men was stronger and more durable in a head-on clash, while the latter meant that the side with more men could simply outflank and encircle the side with fewer men.
This was precisely the fundamental reason why wars were usually won by the side with more men, and why victories of the few over the many were so loudly boasted of and celebrated.
In a situation where Daenerys's army had cannons and could not be faced head-on, the correct choice was naturally to rely on overwhelming numerical superiority to extend the front line, using the advantage of greater width to bully the enemy with a larger contact area.
The artillery of the Gift Army was enough to create an overwhelming advantage on a medium-sized battlefield of ten thousand men. But as long as the front line was stretched beyond that threshold, Aegor would face two difficult choices:
[If the front line is not extended proportionally, the flanks will fall into the danger of being outflanked. But if the front line is extended as well, the numerical inferiority will lead to insufficient depth, making it easy to be broken through and wiped out in one stroke.]
[If firearms are concentrated in one place, it is equivalent to abandoning the units not equipped with artillery. But if they are dispersed, the astonishing power of firearms will be greatly diluted.]
More men, this was in some ways the military version of "one force overcomes ten techniques." Extending the front line, which seemed like a simple-minded move, instantly encompassed both leveraging strengths and avoiding weaknesses, simultaneously achieving "making use of numerical superiority" and "weakening the threat of thermal weapons."
Second, face reality and weigh the trade-offs.
An extended front line could influence the balance of victory to a certain degree, but it only pulled them slightly away from defeat. No matter whether Aegor dispersed the artillery or concentrated it, cannons were still cannons, an existence in Westeros at this stage that could kill gods and slay Buddhas. Front-line troops without equivalent weapon suppression would inevitably suffer casualties and morale damage under bombardment, which would reduce their combat effectiveness and ultimately affect the outcome of the battle.
In response to this grim reality, Randyll Tarly, who could no longer lead troops because of his injuries and could only serve as a staff officer, put forward a refreshing idea: Since the power of gunpowder was irresistible, why try to block it at all? If victory was impossible on the frontal battlefield, then simply give up on it and look for opportunities on the flanks and rear.
Take the troops with the poorest training and equipment from the allied forces and place them directly opposite Daenerys's front line. Then deploy the remaining elites on the left and right wings, far from artillery fire, and directly behind the first line. That way, when Daenerys's army used cannon fire to rout the front-line troops of the Reach Allied Forces, the intact flanks, wider than the enemy front, and the untouched elites in the rear could form a natural pincer movement, swallowing up any troops Aegor sent forward in pursuit.
Cannons had only just appeared on the battlefields of this world, so the word and concept of "cannon fodder" naturally had not yet emerged. But regardless, the unlucky group in Lord Tarly's proposal were, in fact, cannon fodder. If Aegor himself had taken part in this meeting discussing how to defeat him, he surely would have been astonished and applauded on the spot.
The artillery were his best horses, and the cannon fodder were the Reachmen's worst horses.
And cannon fodder should not be underestimated, for their tasks and uses were many.
First came their "primary duty." Since casualties and morale damage were unavoidable, it was better simply to designate one portion of the army to bear all the negative effects. By isolating the cannon fodder from the elite troops, the Allied Forces Command could effectively keep the panic of being shelled within a limited range, preventing it from affecting the fighting strength of the whole army. Furthermore, retreat routes deliberately left open between the elite units in the second line to the rear could keep the routed soldiers from the first engagement from sweeping across the whole field and causing the collapse of the entire army.
Second, they served for screening and concealment. The front line of the cannon fodder troops, even if it was only a thin line, was more than enough to block the penetration of Daenerys's scouts. Together with the cannon fodder in front raising banners while the main forces behind them kept a low profile, it was no problem for ten thousand cannon fodder to pretend to be a hundred thousand main troops. Besides drawing artillery fire, they could also distract the enemy commander and significantly lower Aegor's alertness toward other directions. If fortune favored them, they might even consume the dragon's already limited breath and bombardment, if Daenerys took the field on dragonback.
Finally, they served as bait. If Daenerys's army obediently fell for it and used their cannons for a mad bombardment, that would naturally be best. But if Aegor kept his composure and refused to move first, this layer of cannon fodder would also launch an active charge under the orders and leadership of their commanders. Of course, the final result would certainly be a rout. And a genuine rout was the situation most likely to entice the enemy into launching a full-scale attack. Once Daenerys's army charged in an attempt to end the battle in one blow, the true main forces, arrayed and waiting about a mile behind the cannon fodder, would cooperate with the left and right wings and swallow them whole like a great pocket.
Use the trump card well.
If the cannon fodder were the worst horses, and the elite infantry were the middle horses, then the Reachmen's best horses were, without a doubt, the more than twenty thousand cavalry.
Given the equipment, quality, and morale of Daenerys's Western Expeditionary Army, which had not suffered a single defeat on its march, if they relied only on a pincer formed by more than sixty thousand infantry working together, then the extreme possibility of "successfully surrounding the enemy, only to be broken through at the center and have victory turned into defeat" could very easily come to pass. At that point, the more than twenty thousand cavalry, who had undergone emergency "desensitization training" and had initially adapted to the roar of firearms, became the trump card that would decide the outcome.
The Command divided the cavalry into two forces. One force was evenly split into two detachments and deployed on the flanks of the infantry line, serving a defensive role. They were under the unified command of the main Command, and their task was to ensure that Daenerys's small number of cavalry could not win by surprise and cooperate with artillery to rout their own main forces. The other force hovered not too far from the side of the battlefield, seeking the best opportunity to intervene under the leadership of an independent commander.
The battle plan was divided into two broad possibilities:
If Aegor extended the front line, making it difficult for the Reach cavalry to outflank and encircle, then the independent cavalry would return to the main battlefield to act as a flank, while the cavalry stationed on the wings would move toward the center and lead the infantry in a direct assault on the enemy's central army, taking advantage of Daenerys's army's weakness of insufficient depth for a frontal attack and cooperating with the two wings in a pitched battle.
And if Aegor wisely abandoned the "front-line width contest" with the Reach Allied Forces, then the stationed cavalry would firmly guard their formation and merge with the sixty thousand infantry to form an anvil. The independent cavalry would swing around the side toward the enemy's flank and rear, launching their attack at the most opportune moment. Like a heavy hammer, they would smash the arrogant Western Expeditionary Army flat upon the anvil.
...
Once these three targeted tactics were put into effect, the Reachmen would have carried the core idea of leveraging strengths and avoiding weaknesses to the utmost. As the complete plans and directives were successively issued to every lowest-ranking general of the "hundred-thousand-strong army," and passed from their mouths into the ears of every soldier, the vast camp of the allied army actually cast off its air of gloom and tension and ignited a measure of fighting spirit.
This was a battle that would decide their fate. Even Mace Tyrell, who was always seen as incompetent, made an uncharacteristically public threat.
"The Reach is sacred and inviolable. This time, we will make sure that damned man of the Night's Watch comes and never returns!"
(To be continued.)