"Devil! Sorcery! They are demons in hell! There was also silence in the castle tower, from the time the other party fired the cannon to the last rider fell from his horse, the whole process took less than five minutes, and more than a hundred elite knights and more than nine hundred light cavalry were gone, not a single one was left! This made the Duke of Brittany unbearable, the only thing that can explain all this is that the other party used some kind of magic, and it is certainly not positive, God should be on his side, then the enemy must be the devil. Pen & Fun & Pavilion www.biquge.info

"Your Excellency, they use pistols, but I don't know why they can be fired several times in a row. He was not a devil in the East, but a god, a god-like emperor. Although he is my enemy, I have to say that he invented all these things, including the battleships and cannons we built, from where I learned them. Now that we've seen his power, can we evacuate? If you are surrounded by him, no one will be able to leave. Lord Jiang finally couldn't help it, although he always wanted revenge, but in essence, he was an engineer or a technician, and he was disgusted from the bottom of his heart for all behaviors that belittled science and technology.

"Nope! This is my castle, and we have two thousand musketeers and archers, and strong walls and cannons. Even if you can't fight in the field, you can hold this place! I'm going to send to the king, to the emperor, to the pope for help, we can't let aliens take over our land! We have the right and the duty to protect everything here from the pagans! Earl Nassau listened to Lord Jiang's words, and his eyes turned red. His fleet is over, twenty knights and more than two hundred light cavalry are gone, if the castle is lost again, even if he runs away, what's the point? An earl who has no soldiers, no territory, and has lost a battle, even if he is the emperor's own brother, will not be respected by other nobles.

"I'll stay, send my retinue to Paris at once to meet His Royal Highness Louis IX, we need his help!" The Duke of Brittany was related to the French royal family, and he felt that the Count of Nassau had a point. This castle is very strong, and as a base for going south, it is also well stocked, and it can definitely be defended by relying on the remaining thousands of soldiers. As soon as the Frankish reinforcements arrived, the enemy's more than 200 people had to retreat, no matter how powerful they were. If we could have five hundred more cavalry just now, we would really be able to break through the opponent's defense.

"I'll stay too, let my son go back, and ask the Duke of Normandy and Henry for help, and the church, they must come forward at this time." The Duke of Brabant also chose to stay, and it would be dishonorable to flee like this. Three dukes, seven or eight counts, it is forgivable that they can't beat others in naval battles, but on land, they were so frightened by more than 200 people that they left the castle and countless supplies and ran away, and spread the word about where to put their family's face.

"Well, I'll also send someone to gather my army and come over as soon as possible. However, I suggest that Lord Jiang be in command of the musketeers, the officers were all trained by him, and the muskets were made under his direction, and he knew better than anyone how to use this new army. Jiang, what do you mean? "The two dukes present chose to stay, and the Duke of Saxony alone was embarrassed to say that I had to escape. At this point, he didn't realize that the gap in equipment could not be resisted by numbers, and the mode of war had changed, and it was no longer an era of competition to see whose castle was stronger and whose soldiers were larger. In order to make the defensive battle more reasonable, he once again recommended Lord Jiang for the position of commander of the musketeers.

"I'm willing to give everything for you, Duke and the Alliance!" What can Lord Jiang say, although he has no bottom in his heart, he can only take over this hot position.

If you had listened to yourself and abandoned these supplies and castles, you would have neither lost people nor faced a siege. Now, even if reinforcements do come, will people come in vain? Here, the son has to pay to save his father, not that the son is obsessed with money, but the son's soldiers also have to spend money to hire, not to shout, you can take the peasants in the territory into battle. In the end, the loss may be even greater, and others will have to watch a bigger joke.

"If only there were a machine gun...... The shooting density is still not enough, and there are a little fewer people, so it's too big! The infantry of Flanders and Hanseasa received a notice from the castle and began to retreat towards the castle, but Hong Tao did not dare to pursue, because the other side not only had musketeers, but also artillery, and his own men could not resist the impact of several large iron balls.

And the cavalry attack just now, on the surface, their soldiers coped with it smoothly, but in fact it was already very dangerous, if it weren't for the fact that these Indian soldiers all regarded death as the beginning of rebirth, it was a kind of glory, and the last wave of pistol shooting would not have been completed at all. At that time, his legs were weak, but if he was harder, he was the first to turn around and run.

Anyway, the enemy's cavalry was reimbursed anyway, and Hong Tao was provided with dozens of war horses. Indians are friends with animals, and they can quickly build trust with any animal, let alone a tamed animal. If you don't look at the knightly insignia they wear, you would think that these horses were originally bred by Indian soldiers.

"Get me one too, the fastest one!" With war horses, there is a mobile force, which is very beneficial to the battle situation, and it is also very beneficial to Hong Tao's great cause of saving his life. He specially chose a warm-blooded horse to use as a mount, leaving the cold-blooded horse, which was taller and had better strength and endurance, for the cavalry.

Two hours later, the cavalry had surveyed the castle from front to back, to the right and to the left. The castle is a typical Norman building, with the main building being flat-roofed, a bit like an enlarged version of the Chinese castle tower, except with four more round towers at the four corners. It is built on a high slope of a rock structure, which looks quite high, but in fact the highest point is just over 30 meters, and the terrain is very steep to the east of the castle, and the further west it goes, the more gentle it becomes. The slope extends to the west, and by the time you reach the wall in front of the castle, it is close to ground level. The city wall here is the highest and thickest, and there is a moat more than ten meters wide outside the wall, which extends to the northwest and southwest corners of the city wall at both ends, and cuts off at the place where the mountain is four or five meters high, making good use of the terrain here.

If you want to cross the moat, it is very difficult from both sides, even if you cross it, there is nowhere to stand, there is a steep stone wall on the opposite side, and there is a city wall on top of the stone wall, just throwing stones is enough for the attacking side, and there is no place to hide. The only option is to attack from the place of the wooden bridge in front of it, occupy and pass the drawbridge, and then smash the iron gate and gate in the gate hole to enter the door hole more than ten meters long in order to break through the first layer of the castle's defense.

Hong Tao is no stranger to medieval castles, and this knowledge is not learned from books, but seen with his own eyes. In the Italian Peninsula, the Iberian Peninsula, England and France, there are all kinds of castle buildings, and almost all the kings and lords of this era lived in castles, and even the monks built castles to protect themselves. Some castles are very small, just a large artillery tower; Some castles are so large that they are small towns; Some castles are more of a status symbol and a function of life management, while others are purely fortresses, built entirely for defensive functions.

The castle in front of you belongs to a relatively large type of castle that organically combines life and fortress functions. The high ground on which it sits is the only vantage point in the vicinity, surrounded by flat land, and the only place where you can see the stones, made it easy to build the castle. A lot of stone was needed to build a strong castle, and if it had to be transported from a relatively distant place, the lords would have to go bankrupt just for the shipping costs, which is why most of the ancient castles left over from later generations were built on the hills.

The region of Flanders is a lowland, there are no mountains to take advantage of, and it is already a gift from God to have such a small rocky plateau. The entire castle is about a little more than a square kilometer, not that the castle is so big, but the city walls. It encloses the entire western side of the highland along the undulations of the highlands, and is built of large stones, which are tall and heavy, and do not look like they are crudely made. In addition, most of the highlands did not have castle walls, but used the rock foundation of the highlands to chisel away the sloping places, and replaced the castle walls with mountain cliffs, and the chiseled stones were just right for the construction of castles and castles.

The real castle is built at the top of the highland, that is, on the east side of the highland, plus the height of the highland itself and the surrounding terrain level, which makes it look more majestic.

"Are you sure there's only one door?" On this plan of the castle drawn by the soldiers, Hong Tao quickly discovered a problem.

"There is only one in the west, and there is no door in the rest of the place." The officer in charge of commanding this small cavalry team was 100% sure of Hong Tao's problem.

"Hah...... Hahaha...... Now we're rich! As soon as it gets dark, you go to lay mines near the drawbridge, lay out a few more layers, and we will catch turtles in the urn! "If luck comes, you can't stop it.

Hong Tao was already about to retreat, throwing a few incendiary bombs into the city to scare and scare people, dragging it out for five or six days, and after Karl's sailors had taken those sailboats away, he burned the shipyard, and by the way, set fire to the nearby woods, and relieved the hatred and withdrawal of the army.

This time the troops were sent against the Flemish Hansea, and they did not expect any income, but the sea forces and shipyards that destroyed this organization were the focus. Instead of attacking the fortified castle here, it would be worthwhile to take the fleet straight north and take a spin around Lübeck.

With such a large area of castle, it is said that the more than 200 people in his own hands could not be captured at all, and the siege could not be done, even if all the sailors on the ship were armed, it would be useless. Even if it could be besieged, the castle would have enough to feed for several months, and there were fields and a lot of livestock, as well as wells, and the whole city was a large fortress of self-sufficiency. Unless they can capture it in a short time, their own fleet will not be able to consume them, not to mention that they must have reinforcements, and when a large number of reinforcements arrive, they will have to retreat.

(To be continued.) )