Capítulo 38: Chapter 38: Besieging Kayseri (Part 2)
The engineering core got to work immediately. I watched them begin the process of building these new siege weapons throughout the remainder of the day... The next morning the roofs were completed as well as the ladders which were built by the soldiers, also in the night two parts of the wall fell.
One opening was made on the east wall where the fortified camp is located, and the next one was in the north, this was because I ordered that the majority of our cannons focused on these areas. Following through with my plan made yesterday I had the assault squads ready to attack the north and west breakthroughs after the new exploding carts make another breakthrough.
At the southern gate, I will have smaller but equally elite soldiers launch assaults on the walls using ladders, and their newly fireproofed shields. I had this done in hopes that they can somewhat defend against naphtha or oil dropped upon them whilst they are assaulting the walls.
We also have large movable wooden shields to guard against their siege weapons on the wall until they reach the wall. I am not sure how many lives I can save by using these methods, but I want to see if they are useful for continued use.
I ordered the skirmisher units to ramp up their attacks on the wall, nearly emptying our stock of explosive arrows in the skirmishing this morning.
Cannons bombarded the walls with no regard to our black powder stock, the same applied to the musketeers. I feel I should have brought out my Hwacha stock as this would have damaged the enemies pretty efficiently, but I am saving the Hwacha for a later date, hoping to keep their existence somewhat of a secret.
We fired upon the enemy for the entire morning hoping to damage them with this extreme bombarding of them. But once the morning passed and noon rolled around, I ordered the use of our new killer cart. Soon the engineers rolled these new roofed carts out, and honestly, even though I had seen the beginning of the building process, the engineers got a little carried away.
They modified the carts to move faster whilst holding more weight, by making the cart lower to the ground. They also added extra wood shields to guard the barrels of powder against being directly hit by any projectiles. The roof was padded with flame-retardant wet furs requisitioned from the soldiers.
The roof was standard for rams, shaped to allow most heavy projectiles to roll off instead of crushing the men under its protection. Now the amazing part about this cart is how it moves, no horses are needed, just a few men.
Under the protection of the roof and cart, these men will push the cart to its top speed and then use the rear loading ramp to escape out the back of the cart. This will allow us to use these exploding carts to their full potential, not uselessly killing horses or making men suicide bomb the walls.
And so, it took about an hour to get these two weapons ready to go and to gather all the assault squads lined up for the attack. The enemies noticing our troops all lining up around the walls, begin to add more and more men to defend the walls.
Even before our assault, we begin to blast the defenders on the walls. So when I finally gave the assault order, and the carts took off towards the walls our skirmishers matched our tenacity hurling as many shots as possible upon the enemies.
Watching the men who were pushing the cart scurry out of the back of the cart and run into the archer's trenches I knew this would be a success. The cart began to inch close and closer to the enemy's wall, and just when everyone's excitement reached the full peak the cart stopped just before touching the wall. *BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM*
Following the first massive explosion, another rang off just to our side, needing no order the assault squads dashed forwards beginning our first true attack on the city. Watching the men rush forwards I began to gather many units together who will be leading the second wave of attack on the city.
The third wave will be made up entirely of cavalry. While I am gathering more men into a complete wave readying them to assault the city, our first wave finally made contact with the defenders. As I said before our Assault squads are a voluntary mixed unit made of up many different soldier types, from Kapikulu men to musketeers.
Our assault squads will fight on foot like infantry no horses involved as they would not help unless they are organized. Running into the fray like mad warriors our assault squad crashed into the enemy's new defense line of soldiers used to plug the new gap in the wall created by the cart's explosion.
The first breakthrough made by the cannons through the night was well plugged with rubble and defenders making it harder to attack this area. But a small assault was made on this area using mostly grenades and naphtha, not hand-to-hand combat. So for a while, I focused on the assault on the new breakthrough because we sent more men to that side and they have a less settled defense and fewer soldiers guarding that area as it just fell less than three minutes before we attacked it.
Our soldiers were mowing down the tribesmen who are attempting to guard the space, but the defense here was just ineffective. Allowing us to push the defenders back far enough for our skirmishers to move forwards adds more pressure on the defenders as they are being plucked away not only by melee but also by projectiles.
This was pretty much the process on both sides of the wall at this point. I also received messengers saying the other side of the assault is going well, as our soldiers have already placed their ladders on the wall and began a fight on that side... Though I heard the fighting was rather fierce and no one knows how many casualties we suffered before getting on the wall.
Focusing back on our primary assault we can see a few defenders looking to retreat, they just continued to be slaughtered here so obviously it makes sense to run. But before they collapsed, they were finally reinforced about 2000 more defenders arrived to reinforce the lines and honestly pushed us back a bit losing some of our gains in the process of the fight.
This high level of fighting continued for another 30 or 40 minutes and we still have not gained much of an upper hand and only maintained our place, I decided to send the second wave of ten thousand soldiers and have them focus on the first gap that is not free of rubble.
I believe this will make it easier for the assault squad to push the enemies back and allow both assault waves to fight more even numbers instead of being overwhelmed by hordes of enemies like our first wave is now. Plus adding these fresh soldiers will just reset the playing field as our soldiers will soon begin to tire from the first wave.
Upon reaching the breakthrough this new wave of soldiers were targeting the defenses with throwable items first like grenades, naphtha, and spears. This made the defenses crumble as no human would stand still even with a shield whilst others toss boom-boom bombs at them. Same with fire and even spears no one wants these to get either on or in their bodies leading to the enemies giving up their well-formed defense line.
Once we broke through the first line of defense and entered the gap in the wall, that is where our second wave met their true foes. Many armored defenders arrived to reinforce the defense on this side. Clearly, these men were elites and gave a different form of defense than the regular tribal warriors.
Though they were not the only reinforcements sent to defend, the enemy also sent about 1000 Greek mercenaries to help defend. These Greeks were well-experienced warriors while also being well-armed and armored. With these reinforcements the second wave slowly lost its momentum, suddenly becoming bogged down in hand-to-hand combat across the rubble-filled outskirts of the city.
After noticing another wave still not pushing the enemies back and forcing them to either surrender or attempt a defense further into the city. I decided to form another force, I want a few soldiers to follow me, and I will lead a small elite force of my Kapikulus to secure the walls giving my skirmishers a platform to target enemies from above leading to an easier battle.
Rounding up 200 Kapikulu Sipahi, and 100 Ulufeci (Horse archers... in this case used as foot archers) I moved this force toward the city, and we slowly entered the fray. Coming under attack from the walls almost immediately upon entering the archer's range. I knew I made a good decision as these archers are continuously pelting my soldiers with arrows either distracting, injuring, or sometimes killing them.
After a long sprint, we finally managed to enter the city. But this was not the end, we must fight our way up onto these walls, fighting in these tight hallways filled with steps that are basically killing zones. I formed our group into a single-file line all men walking behind one another with their shields blocking their bodies from harm coming from the top of the steps.
As we marched up this tight corridor the enemies at the top of this corridor began pelting the first man with arrows and even decently sized stones. Seeing the pressure, the enemies began to apply to the first man I gave the order to push up the corridor as fast as we can but stay in formation.
Before we reached the top of the steps I had the man ready themselves for a battle by saying "Men we approach a battle, in this battle, we will be outnumbered... But what does it matter if one, two, or three sheep come to fight a wolf? We the wolves shall always devour the sheep! TO BATTLE!"
Rushing out of the corridor the first man STABBED his ax into the neck of the defender who was previously pelting him with arrows and stones. As we all began to flood up onto the wall the enemies began to form up their defenses, lining up into a crowd.
The scene I am currently taking part in honestly looks like a scene I used to see pretty often before I was reborn. Pictures of the police lined up behind their shields and the rabble protestors crowded about chaotically. This was to me a funny correlation, but I was the only one to notice such a thing as the rest of the soldiers are extremely focused on the battle at hand.
Looking through the gap between our shield wall to see where I am moving toward, we marched to the enemy's position and there the battles began in earnest. Slamming into the enemy's already chaotic formation, all hell broke loose among the enemies... After a few minutes of brutal battling some men fearing death or capture flee the wall by way of jumping to their deaths or at least injury.
Watching these men jump to their deaths hurt my pride quite a bit, what slander was spread about me... I only enslave Christian captured men... and with Muslims, I only butchered one city so far... I was obviously slandered in some way for these men to rather jump to their deaths than seek capture in defeat.
Finishing off the remainder of the lightly armored skirmishers on the wall, we sent a signal to the skirmishers fighting in the area. Once they retreated to this area, I had them positioned upon the walls. I also ordered the placement of the smaller cannons on the walls, by doing this we should be able to gain an upper hand in this battle sooner than later.
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