Kurt, if we shell their cannons, the last crew may leave too. We keep on shelling until the infantry charges, then we ahve to change the target anyway. During the infantry charge, the crews will return anyway.

Therefore I do not see any reason to shell the empty positions.

The main problem with artillery is, that the enemy has 15 cannons in total. We have to deal with the nine others later. Now we should be glad that we took some of the crews out of the game.

The charge: I agree that the rebels will attack as a wild bunch. Propably there will even be a combined charge of cavalry and infantry. The rebels will give up order.

Our front is not very wide. I don't think that the first two or three rows can be more than about 2,000 soldiers. We can stop those with one single volley of our rifles. Additionally we have 15 cannons that shell canisters into the rear lines.

After our first volley, the assaulting rebels will hesitate. They haven't expeted high casualties. The cries of the wounded and the panic of the horses will spread. Our second volley will increase the chaos.

If we are lucky and the rebel commander is more patriotic than clever, he will send to other waves into the fire. Then 4,000 rebels are dead, the moral is low and we won the battle.

The danger is, that he may learn faster than we can kill the rebels. Then he will stopp the assault and try something else, artillery bombardment or flanking. Therefore we have to kill as many rebels at once as possible.


Other scenario: we bombard the rebel deployment on the other side of the valley. We kill only few, but show that we are serious defending. The rebel captain becomes worried, he sends only 500 of his bandits, which we kill. Then he decided to change his tactic and to bypass the trench.
Not good!

Therefore, keep quiet until there are masses of rebels in front of our trench and then kill them all.