"The trumpet of war has sounded again, brothers, hold the city, Rome is proud of you!"

A few days later, the flames of war on land were already ignited, and Antony's Roman and Egyptian armies gathered outside the city, throwing flints and crossbows at the city. Apis led four regiments of heavy infantry to defend the city.

Sparks and debris continued to fall from the sky, and soldiers held shields diagonally to defend against the menace from the sky, and then javelins and spears were armed with long-range strikes against any enemy who tried to climb the city. The Egyptian soldiers almost became Antony's cannon fodder troops, and after a few days of siege, their corpses piled up like ears of wheat from the autumn harvest under the walls of Rome. However, Anthony seemed to have no concern for their lives, and he sat at the back of the battlefield, leisurely munching on figs and watching the bloody and grand siege.

"If these Egyptians are not able to break through the city tomorrow, we will use our siege towers, and the third brigade of the Fifth Legion will go first, and the other legions, covering the attack from the various gates, will disperse the troops defending the city of Apis."

At dusk, watching the defeated Egyptian army retreat from the battlefield, Antony was expressionless and turned to convey his command to the commander of the legion, Lucerus, beside him. In this siege battle, Anthony did not plan to capture it in one day, there were many troops defending the city, and the city walls were also tall and generous, which could not be easily taken. A few days ago, the Allied forces were sent to attack the city just to test how strong the force of the guards was, and then formulate tactics against the defenders.

"Say, in the barracks, there is nothing to cringe into, not to be afraid to say, the Romans must have the backbone and demeanor of the Romans, and not be as indecisive as those desert people."

Anthony, who was watching the battle, readily told his subordinates to say anything if they had something to say.

"General Anthony, for the past few days, we have always used the Allied troops into battle, and they have suffered heavy casualties, and our army has not received any assistance, and I have heard that many soldiers of different races have begun to complain."

Lucerus hesitated, but reported the situation to Anthony truthfully. After all, the morale of the legions was extremely important, and even the allies, although their morale and combat effectiveness were not as strong as the regular Roman army, could sometimes affect the outcome of the war.

"What's the complaint? Complaining that I'm not giving them support? Let them go into battle alone? Oh, all right, these desert militias in the East, just a bunch of chattering and noisy minions, I paid them, and it was higher than usual, and there was always blood to be shed in war, and people sacrificed their money, but they didn't fight for me, what did I hire them for? Do you want to sit back and enjoy it? ”

After listening to the introduction of his subordinates, Anthony was not too surprised, and he didn't even care about the resistance of these allies, what he wanted was conquest, these soldiers were worthless in his eyes, except for harassing the enemy army and being scouts, their biggest role was that they could only be used as cannon fodder. In fact, in Antony's heart, he still very much identified with the Roman spirit, he admired the fighting power of the Roman legions, and he attached great importance to the citizen soldiers who followed him from Rome to fight Brutus and then to Egypt, and regarded them as his backbone.

…………

The next day, the siege continued.

Antony's 5th Corps, under the cover of other Allied forces and auxiliary legions, pushed the huge siege towers towards the walls of the city of Rome.

The tower, which was almost taller than the Roman walls, could hold five hundred Roman soldiers, and its bulky body seemed to carry tens of millions of tons with every step forward. At the top of the siege tower is a launch platform equipped with a small scorpion cannon and two siege mechanics.

While the wild donkey catapults outside the city hurled stone projectiles into the city, the massive Roman siege towers moved forward, and the defenders on the walls tried to set the behemoth on fire with rockets. However, it doesn't seem to work very well, and the powerful siege towers even have a fire system inside them, so that water will flow wherever the floor catches fire. The siege techniques of the Romans in this era were awesome.

However, there was also a set of defenses, the huge wall was divided into two layers, the lower level was where the archers, javelinmen and heavy infantry were stationed, and the upper level was the position of the garrison equipment, and the heavy crossbow machines were placed above the towers, firing flaming arrows at the enemy troops under the walls.

Anthony's huge siege tower continued to advance, and the heavy crossbow machine on the city tower also continued to fire heavy crossbow arrows at it, a large arrow with flames pierced the outer shell of the siege tower, the sharp arrow hit the fire floor, breaking the clay pot filled with fire water, and in an instant, the precious fire water flowed down, wetting the ladder inside the siege tower. Then, more arrows were fired into the gap, but by this time, the huge siege tower itself was also close to the wall, and the soldiers of Anthony's Fifth Corps, led by the centurion, rushed up, shouting for slaughter all over the tower.

The soldiers inside the siege tower were safe for the time being, because below them, the Roman soldiers defending the city were shooting the besieging troops with stones and javelins.

In a splash of blood, the first group of Antony's regular army of 100 men climbed the walls of Rome. Then, they had to face a counterattack from thousands of high-morale defenders. As soon as the siege ladder was lowered, a dozen heavy javelins and spears burst through the air, shooting head-on at the Antonine infantry who had broken through the city.

The soldiers of the Fifth Legion raised their shields to block, but a heavy javelin entered through the gap in the shield, and a hapless Fifth Legionnaire fell screaming, the javelin hit him in the shoulder, and half of the barrel of the gun had been broken, which was the standard Pirus javelin of the Roman legion, and the javelin would break when it hit the target, preventing the enemy from picking it up and throwing it back. This weapon invented by the Romans is now used against the Romans......

The centurion of the Fifth Legion took the lead in jumping into the city, knocking down the defenders beside him with his shield, and slashing another Roman citizen soldier defending the city with a swing of his sword. In an instant, soldiers on both sides rushed forward, huddled in the narrow space between the walls and the siege towers.

Soldiers on both sides used the same shields and weapons, and the brutal sword of the short sword stabbed into the enemy's body, causing blood to flow and screaming.

More and more Roman soldiers tried to climb the city wall through the siege tower, when the huge heavy crossbow machine on the tower fired a deadly incendiary arrow into the gap in the tower, and the siege tower could no longer extinguish the fire on its own, and then the huge siege tower began to burn from the inside. The soldiers above heard the sound of the fire burning from below, and the smoke kept rising, and began to panic, and they had no intention of fighting, either jumping off the tower with a fluke mentality, or being stabbed to death on the city wall by the defenders on the city wall.

In just a few minutes, the huge siege tower turned into a flaming tower of flames, and the Roman soldiers who had not had time to escape from the tower screamed and burned to the ground...... 2210