章 696: The Siege of Thesalie (Part-3)

During the first week, Alexander had launched his attack with the greatest amount of force at his disposal, deploying close to fifteen thousand men as missile troops, intending to shock and awe the enemy.

But such high intensity fight was of course unsustainable over a long period of time.

So over the following weeks, that number was troops participating was almost cut to a third, to about six thousand men per day.

This was roughly about one legion worth of men, with five thousand of them being archers, while the other thousand manned the scorpion and catapults.

In this way, the men could rotate each day so that each man had to fight only once every eight to nine days. 

This greatly improved morale and kept the army alert but never exhausted or tired.

Now, although this low intensity conflict was good for soldier survivability, such a small force attacking the walls would be nowhere enough to strain the defenders.