“Whether making the first move in battle was an advantage or a disadvantage depends entirely on the situation of the battle itself. Far too many people failed to understand this, and instead had it stuck in their minds that one or the other was true. Those people paid the price when they ran into situations where their belief proved false indeed.” - Liang Shi-Zu, famed tactician from the Huan Confederacy.
Perhaps it was because they were flustered when their elites almost broke during the first clash. Perhaps it was simply what they always planned. Perhaps it was a reaction to the shifting situation of the battle. Nobody knows the reason for certain, but the Imperial army ended up making the first move of the battle after the armies collided.
Reinhardt noticed it first, thanks to the bird’s eye view of the battle he had. His company was not engaged with the enemy for the time being so he could devote his attention to watching over the enemy’s forces, and he caught the waving flagpoles right as they happened. A short while later, he noticed movement amongst the soldiers located at the back rows of the enemy’s left and right flanks and made a quick judgement based on what he noticed so far.
“Enemy troops movement on both flanks. Suspecting that they are aiming for an envelopment,” he supplied to Nestor through the artifact, receiving two clicks of acknowledgement in quick succession to signal that the message was heard loud and clear soon afterwards. Not even a minute later, he heard the echoing, high-pitched sound of the signal horn being blown from behind.
Where the Imperial army used flag signals to relay commands over the battlefield, the Coalition army made use of enchanted horns that were designed to carry their sound over the din of battle to long distances. It was not like the horns became louder – doing so would have deafened those close to it – but the sound it emanated would carry much, much further instead, the air itself making way for its passage, in a manner of speaking.
A signal of four blows in quick succession meant that it was addressing the soldiers on both wings. That was followed by another signal in a two-three-two cadence that signaled for those troops to prepare to repel enemies coming from their side. The signal was then repeated two more times to make certain that it was heard by the commanders in question.
Since the command was already given, Reinhardt naturally helped coordinate the response of the Coalition army’s two wings through his artifact, reporting the enemy movements to the commanders on the respective wings. The Coalition army reacted swiftly, both wings having the soldiers on their outer flanks turning to face outwards, while troops from their back row marched out to the sides to face the enemies that would try to circle around them.
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By the time the Imperial army soldiers marched out and moved in an attempt to envelop the Coalition army’s wings from the outer flanks, they found themselves facing enemy soldiers who were already in position and awaiting their arrival, instead of a surprised enemy that was still in the midst of rearranging their lines to face them.
It was a given that commanders watching the battle from the rear, even if they could get a clear view of the battle that way, would have less of an idea of everything that was happening on the battlefield compared to someone who was watching from above. It was why the Imperial army failed to notice that the Coalition army was deploying their troops to counter their maneuver in time to make changes to their tactics.
Time was needed for a commander to realize the situation on the battlefield, make a decision on the matter, then pass down their order down the line. While enchanted tools and magic helped a lot with the speed of relaying those orders, it was still something that needed a bit of time. By the time Leung Hua-Jeong noticed the enemy’s maneuver, it was already too late to rescind his orders or to give out new commands to his troops.
Similarly, it took longer for him to notice how the Coalition army’s cavalry forces that waited behind their flanks until that moment suddenly rushed out from the sides just as the two armies’ wings engaged one another in close combat and were entangled by their opponents. The enemy cavalry was clearly aiming to loop around his troops’ sides and rear to strike them there, an envelopment strategy to counter their envelopment strategy.
Despite the frantic attempts on the Imperial army’s side to deploy a portion of their own cavalry to counter the Coalition army’s tactics, they were still too late in the end. Before the Imperial cavalry forces could race out to their rescue, the Imperial army’s flanks were already enveloped by a wave of cavalry assaults that targeted their flanks and rear, raining javelins down on them followed by devastating slashing attacks from the Coalition’s light cavalry.
By the time the Imperial cavalry managed to race out and drive away the Coalition’s cavalry forces by engaging them, the Imperial formation’s left and right wings were in tatters and on the verge of crumbling after the sudden assault they took from all sides. The Coalition army that was engaged with them still pushed hard in the meantime, clearly looking to accelerate that process even more.
Reinforcements from the back row of the Imperial center had just started moving to the wings when the sound of the command horn from the Coalition side being blown echoed over the battlefield once more, and the Coalition’s left and right wings revealed their hidden fangs that had been kept sheathed until then. The forces that had been kept out of the fighting so far were given a path to the front and immediately charged their way into the Imperial army’s formation, wreaking havoc and devastation wherever they went, their march seemingly unstoppable.