A group of officers stood in front of Gonzalo with gloomy faces, some of them in dirty armor and some wounded, and these Castilian people were in fierce competition with the Sicilian army during the attack on the city of Gaeure.

The almost textbook way of fighting of the Sicilians in the battle of Rometown deeply irritated the Castilian officers, who felt that they were threatened, not from the battlefield, but more of an injury to their dignity.

They felt the need to show the strength of the Castilian army in front of the Sicilians in order to save face, after all, they had been defeated by this army before, and although the two sides were now allies, this did not mean that everything was over.

However, to their annoyance, the Aragonese did not seem to want them to achieve this easily, and the seemingly precarious city of Gael not only cost the Castilian army a loss of face in front of the Sicilians because of its unusual balance of defense.

"260 men," a clerk whispered to Gonzalo, "these are soldiers killed in battle, and ...... who have been seriously wounded and can no longer fight."

Gonzalo raised his hand to stop the clerk's continued report, and he looked at the officers: "I know you are all tired and have just suffered a setback, but I want you to go back now and organize your troops to prepare for the attack." ”

"My lord, the wall is much stronger than we thought," one officer argued, "perhaps we should wait a little longer, and if we can bring in heavy artillery, we can avoid too many losses." ”

Gonzalo shook his head and directly rejected the officer's suggestion: "We must take Gawell as soon as possible, this is the regent, and this is what I mean, it is of great significance to do so, so you must carry out the order to the letter." ”

The officers looked at each other helplessly, then saluted and left, watching them whisper their backs as they walked, Gonzalo exhaled softly.

Alexander stepped out of a small door at the back, and looking at Gonzalo's also gloomy face, he picked up the casualty report left by the clerk and looked at it, frowning slightly.

"Ferdinand is much more difficult to deal with than we thought," he said, glancing at his general, "We need to settle the siege of Gawell as soon as possible." ”

"Your Highness, I must say that as a soldier I still agree with their point of view," Gonzalo tilted his head and gestured outside, "If there is a more powerful siege artillery, we can completely avoid this unnecessary loss, even if we capture Gawell, it will be difficult for us to capture Ferdinand alive here, then once he returns to Zaragoza, he will organize a new and stronger defense, then our losses here are somewhat ......"

"Stupid?" Alexander asked, seeing Gonzalo shrugging his shoulders but not denying it, he couldn't help but secretly think in his heart that this was really the style of the arrogant Gonzalo, and he had no scruples in the face of the monarch: "General, I chose to fight Ferdinand here not on a whim, you see the battlefield, and I see more things, so believe me that everything will have a result soon." ”

The coalition attack on the city of Gawell was unexpectedly fierce, and even shortly after the casualties were taken away, before the Aragonese could catch their breath, a new offensive had begun again.

The Aragonese soldiers had not to fight once, and they resisted desperately with the strong defenses of the walls, but their courage had been worn out in the previous battles, and they began to feel tired and afraid.

They knew that with such fierce resistance, once the city was breached, they would be met with the enemy's frenzied retaliation, which made the people in the city worried.

Ferdinand took advantage of this, and he took to the streets to condescend to convince the locals of the terrible prospect of what they were facing, and promised them that if he helped him hold Gawell, he would exempt the city from taxes for 10 years.

It was a very generous promise, and the Gawell people were instantly moved.

What's more, Ferdinand promised that this situation would not be long, as Zaragoza's reinforcements would arrive in a few days, and at that point the situation would be completely reversed.

Perhaps because he was not lying, Ferdinand's tone was sincere and firm, which deeply affected and moved the people of Gawell.

Someone finally stood up to meet the king's expectations, and they began to follow the army to the head of the city to guard the city walls, and for a time the morale of the army and the people of Gael were united.

Ferdinand was pleased with the situation, but as soon as he returned to his residence, he ordered his men to go to Zaragoza as soon as possible to urge reinforcements.

Although the idea of turning the tide of the tide, turning the defensiveness into an offensive, or even completely annihilating the enemy in Aragone, and then taking the opportunity to return to Castile, Ferdinand was not entirely greedy.

The fierce attack of the coalition army made him a little more realistic, so he felt that as long as he could repel the enemy in front of him, it would be a victory, so this time he asked his men to tell the archbishop of Zaragoza that the reinforcements could help him relieve the siege of Garwell, and the key was to send troops as soon as possible without further delay.

Then the king returned to his temporary abode and prayed to the Virgin again.

Ferdinand was a devout believer in God's justice and in the mercy of Jesus Christ, but he believed that his crown was the choice of the Trinity, so he liked to pray for revelation whenever he was in trouble.

Ferdinand was still very confident in the defense of Garwell City, but he also knew that this would not last long, after all, Garel was not a military fortress but just an ordinary small city, so the coalition army did not take advantage of Gawell's unprepared move to attack quickly, and Ferdinand saw it as God's favoritism to himself, so now he is thanking God for this gift.

Alexander walked on a slightly muddy road wrapped in a thick cloak, and it had rained the night before, and it was not big but it was very troublesome.

The musketeers' power was greatly reduced, the artillery was temporarily unusable, and even the crossbow was affected by the humidity, so the second siege battle, which was extremely fierce, had to be temporarily stopped.

Walking through a forest of thorns, Alexander saw a group of Sicilian soldiers sitting around the campfire to keep warm, because the wood was damp, and the fire was not big but the smoke was thick, and the soldiers couldn't stop coughing.

Alexander walked over, and the slightly dirty cloaks on his and Sher made them look like ordinary soldiers, so when they walked over and sat down by the campfire, a kind man handed him a tin cup with wine.

"Take a sip, this damn weather, this damn place," the Sicilian soldier cursed as he poured wine into his mouth, "I should be basking in the sun in Calsani at this time, not rolling in this muddy field." ”

"Sicilian?" Alexander asked.

"Yes, a native of Sicilian, aren't you?" The soldier asked rhetorically.

"Well," Alexander pondered, thinking that he was still half Sicilian, "but most of the time I was out there, in Naples, Rome, and whatever. ”

"Oh, you're one of those Segaia in the Queen's army?" The Sicilian soldier immediately looked surprised, and he said to the others in a slightly exaggerated tone, "Come and see, there's a Segaia!" ”

The soldiers immediately looked at Alexander with curiosity, and some of them stood up and looked at him from a distance.

Hearing this word, which had a distinctly native Neapolitan connotation, Alexander couldn't help but smile, knowing that in the Sicilian army the veterans who first followed Josa were called Segaia, which probably meant followers.

The main characteristic of these soldiers is that almost all of them participated in the Battle of Bucharest and the famous battles that followed, and some of these people have now been assigned to various units as low-level officers by Josa, while some of them who have no leadership skills and still serve in her army have become the elite of the Sicilian army.

However, whether they were promoted or ordinary soldiers, Segaia had a high status in the Sicilian army, and in the eyes of ordinary soldiers, these people who fought with the queen who was still a countess from the beginning were almost synonymous with legends.

"Let's have a toast to see Segaia," someone suggested, and there was a clinking of glasses, but then someone said, "It would be better if we didn't have those Castilians, it's terrible that we're trapped here." ”

The man's words immediately resonated, and many Sicilian soldiers began to complain, and some wondered why the queen had formed an alliance with the defeated generals.

Alexander listened quietly, knowing that such doubts had always existed, and even some Sicilian officers did not understand them.

In the eyes of the Sicilians, they were the most powerful armies in Europe, and perhaps in the whole world, after all, they had defeated the French, the Aragonese, and the Castilians, but now they were held back from a wall that looked like it would collapse at any moment, and their opponents were still defeated.

So they put the blame on the Castilians, believing that they were dragging themselves back.

Alexander listened quietly to the complaints, and from time to time he complied, until the mood of the soldiers finally eased a little, and then he said as if casually: "I heard that the queen insisted on an alliance with Castile, not only because she was brother and sister to the Duke of Rome Thesia, but also because of her children. ”

At the sound of this, the soldiers' eyes immediately lit up.

They all showed the characteristic faces of the hiccles, and gathered around to hear this Segaia talk about the "authoritative gossip" about the queen.

"Speaking of this child of the Queen, it is impossible not to mention the mother of the two of them, the Countess of Cosenza......"

Schell had been looking at Alexander who was walking slowly in front of him with strange eyes, and when he saw him stop in front of a mud pond and seemed to be looking for a way, he walked over to help the old man.

"Shel, do you think I'm stupid to slander myself?"

"How so, sir, you must have a plan," Hearing Alexander ask, Schell quickly explained, but then he still whispered, "But this is a little strange, isn't it, sir, you know the queen's child...... I mean, the young master, maybe the young lady, if the queen knew in the future that you had revealed their backgrounds, she might be very annoyed. ”

"Schelle, tell me that there are some things that can be avoided if you don't want them to happen, just like the children of Jisha, you should know very well what kind of rumors there are, right?"

Schell hesitated slightly, then shrugged helplessly.

There have been too many speculations about who the father of the child is, and some of them are almost infinitely close to the truth, and perhaps the child's father is someone close to him.

And who this person really is, but it is almost impossible to say.

Of course, such a conjecture would not easily reach Alexander's ears, but that didn't mean he couldn't guess.

"It's just that it can damage your reputation." Sher whispered.

"My reputation is so good, it's time to be ruined."

Alexander said something that Schel found inexplicable, and then walked around the puddle in front of him and walked off into the distance.

After a short break, the coalition forces again launched a fierce attack on the city of Garwell.

Despite the lack of artillery support, Gonzalo organized several brave bands to enter the city, and these fierce soldiers, mostly from Catalonia, rushed towards the gap desperately, even though the stones and arrows could kill them at any time, but with a rich reward, the Catalans rushed forward with the courage to surprise the Aragonese army.

News from the other side of the city wall quickly reached Ferdinand, which made him a little nervous from his initial composure.

"Ferdinand was well aware of the ferocity and bravery of the Catalans, and there were some such mercenaries in his army who did not care about anything but bounties.

In fact, when it was decided to go to war with Alexander, Ferdinand considered recruiting a group of Catalans.

But it wasn't that easy, he already knew that there was a merchant with close ties to the Catalans who had a large source of mercenaries in his hands, and even the defeat of Seville had a lot to do with this person.

But the rapid changes in the situation of the war have left him with less time to think about how to choose a group of reliable mercenaries.

"Transfer the Catalans." Ferdinand hesitated to make his decision, he didn't have many Catalans under his command right now, but these should be enough to withstand an enemy who seemed to be storming the walls at any moment.

Next, Ferdinand began to wait anxiously for news from Zaragoza.

The battle raged fiercely, and from time to time someone screamed and rolled down the slope of the breach, the entire gap was almost blocked by a pile of corpses, and every step forward had to climb over the mountain of corpses.

The blood-soaked slopes were littered with dead bodies, mutilated corpses and the occasional short moans that sounded from them, making it a terrible hell.

The Catalans above and below the walls confronted each other, their eyes flashing with bloodthirsty cruelty, and instead of being compassionate because they were fellow countrymen, they tried to prove that they were Catalans in a more brutal way.

"At least these Catalans are much more reliable than the Swiss," Alexander said to Gonzalo next to him, looking at the scene under the walls, "otherwise we will be as troubled as Charles the Audrey." ”

Gonzalo nodded in agreement, he had feared that the mercenaries might refuse to fight his countrymen, but Alexander reassured him.

Now it seems that the regent did know these Catalans very well.

"For these people, most of the time the clan is more important than the countryman," explained Alexander to Gonzalo, the Castilian general, who was half a countryman and half a Catalans, but still didn't know enough about them. ”

Hearing Alexander's inquiry, an officer standing behind him immediately walked up quickly, he looked at the regent a little nervously, and after making sure that the regent's face was not the same, the officer was somewhat relieved, and then began to report.

Listening to the cautious report of the artillery officer, who had not satisfied him with his previous answer about the artillery, Alexander nodded slightly.

He knew that there would be a long and delicate relationship with these Castilian military aristocracy, and it was precisely because of this delicate relationship that he had begun to gradually change the military system that had existed for centuries in Castile and even in Spain in the future.

The military aristocracy, a product of the Middle Ages, was bound to die out, not by the will of any one person, but by the inevitable trend that arose as the situation of war changed.

Future wars will be larger in scale and more terrifying in destructiveness, and the mere traditional military aristocracy will no longer be enough to handle such wars, as happened in Rome Thesia, and the wars of the future will be truly national wars.

A faint cheer came from the direction of the city wall, Ferdinand looked back slightly at the door, and soon a squire ran excitedly to report to him that another large-scale attack by the coalition forces had been repulsed, and this time the enemy had suffered greater losses than before, and even their Catalan warriors had thrown down a lot of corpses in disarray.

Ferdinand breathed a sigh of relief, he once again dismissed the idea of retreating to the other side of the Ebro, and at the same time gave the order to throw all his troops into the walls and defend resolutely.

"Two days, just two more days for Zaragoza's reinforcements to arrive, so it's time for everyone to defend the city with all their might."

Ferdinand cheered up his men, who knew that the king was not comforting them, but the truth.

The smooth road between Zaragoza and Gawell ensured that reinforcements would indeed arrive in two days, which convinced the Aragonese that the king's words were fully realizable.

The last of the Aragonese army was also engaged in the defense of the walls, and they had to ensure that the city of Gael was impregnable before reinforcements arrived, so that when they arrived, they could launch a counterattack against the enemy with the reinforcements.

As the sun gradually set, night quickly covered the land, heralding the end of the second day of the siege of Garwell.

Bonfires were lit on the walls, and the unbridled laughter of the Aragonese soldiers reached the coalition camp far away.

Because of the weather, the artillery was unusable and the threat was much smaller, and the Aragonese simply stopped closing the gap.

They had used it as a decoy to lure coalition soldiers to their deaths, and the results of the battle had proven to be effective.

In the early morning of October 22, 1502, while the dew was still dripping on the drooping leaves, a sudden tremor from the ground shook the branches.

The dew dripped down and fell to the ground, and was trampled by a pair of powerful feet mixed with the dirt.

The heavy carriage struggled forward, and with shouting a group of soldiers pushing a behemoth closer and closer to the city walls.

"The Ebro season is a real problem," a man grumbled, looking at the big fellow proudly, "and it took us a lot of effort to get it from the river." ”

Alexander ignored the man, and looked at the massive cannon that was gradually being pushed into the gun position with satisfaction.

He knew that this man had been recommended by Tiego, who was said to have been a French artilleryman he had encountered on his way to Seville to assemble the Catalan mercenaries, though he was slightly skeptical of Alexander's suitability.

When the decision was made to invade Aragon, the first consideration was not to allow the prepared army to cross the border quickly, but to prepare the most powerful battlefield protector for his troops.

It was only because of the flood season that ships transporting artillery from the upper Ebro had to dock several times, and even had to carry artillery ashore to avoid the flood.

So much so that in the battle of Rometown, there was no time to see the shadow of these artillery.

The movement of the coalition alarmed the Aragonese soldiers in the city of Garwell, who watched through the mist at the busy enemy below, and for a moment did not know what tricks they were playing.

Until one of them had good eyesight and noticed something strange in the distance.

"Artillery!" The soldier shouted, and he pushed and shoved through the crowd and ran to his captain, pointing out of the city and shouting, "It's artillery!" ”

The captain impatiently pushed the soldier, although the power of the coalition artillery was not small, but it was not able to pose any more threats in the previous two days, which made the Aragonese nervous at the beginning have relaxed, and now this soldier is so shouting naturally causing the officer's dissatisfaction.

"What's wrong with the artillery?" The officer said impatiently and jumped up to the city to look outside, at this distance he didn't have to worry about someone would shoot his cold gun, but gradually the officer's face became ugly, and then he suddenly jumped off the city wall and ran towards the city without his life, while shouting "Artillery!" It's artillery! ”

The man's shouts caused a flurry until he ran outside Ferdinand's quarters where he was dragged down by the king's attendants.

When Ferdinand heard the news, the officer had almost calmed down, and he knew how to salute the king, but then he immediately hurried and said, "Your Majesty, the Castilian have brought a large cannon!" ”

Ferdinand's heart jumped, the previous setbacks of the coalition army had made Ferdinand's confidence double, and now he suddenly heard that the enemy had a cannon that might threaten the fortifications of Gawell, Ferdinand couldn't help but get nervous!

He immediately ordered the attendant next to him to go to the city wall to check the situation of the cannon, but just as the attendant had just taken the order to turn around and walk a few steps, an earth-shattering loud bang suddenly came from outside the city!

Then, many people saw a black shadow pass through the sky and fall into the city in an arc.

In an instant, the people near that place felt as if the ground had been stepped on by a giant, and an obvious vibration was heard immediately!

Outside the city of Gawell, looking at the smoke rising from the city, Schell, who was in a daze, heard Alexander whisper to himself: "It's over......"