"A brigade? But my husband has already commanded all the main forces in the country, and is heading further northwest! Anna frowned slightly, and then she began to ponder, and soon came up with an answer, "Well, after I pacified Rhodes, I gathered four thousand soldiers and sent them to Crete to help you in your righteous deeds." Pen? Interesting? Pavilion wWw. ｂiquge。 ｉｎfo”

"Grateful, great imperial Caesar and King of the Bloodline, true heir to Rome." All the delegates from Crete bowed collectively with joy after receiving such an affirmative and encouraging reply.

After they had left, Anna continued to lie on the couch for a while, looked at the dusty arena site below, and suddenly stretched her waist and shouted, "Idle, idle!" The big barbarian is not around, it's really ......"

At this time, Gawain had already commanded the right army that had set out from Iconium, and with the help of 2,000 Great Xia camels and more than 1,000 converted caravans, braved the early summer heat, all the way through the long canyon, from the city of Afyon as a springboard, and after only four days of galloping, it appeared like a divine soldier descending from the sky, and appeared under the city of Dolilaam, the node of the Bithynia and the Anatolian plateau.

At this moment, the horses of the five cavalry regiments had died and fell ill by nearly a third, which could not help but make Gawain regret, but the artillery cast in copper and iron was not affected by such weather, "Start attacking the fortifications, build artillery forts, and miners dig tunnels!" ”

Gawain's objective, as Tetisius had predicted, was that his Left Army, after capturing the center of Laudisia, would take the opportunity to annex and subjugate the Dominos of the Brenus, and then cut along the Sardis and Masikatus rivers (now the Symafu River in Turkey, that is, the Susurluk River) into the flank of the city of Prusa, the gateway to the straits of Constantinople, and cut off the passage between it and the city of Dolilaem (now around Eskişehir, Turkey), the gateway to the plateau; Gawain's right army advanced along the line of Ikonium-Afyon-Dollilaam (basically the opposite of the First Crusade), first uprooting Dollilaem, and then joining forces with the left army to besiege and capture Prusa.

And if the city of Prusa fails, Gawain can cross the sea directly to Gallipoli, or he can easily take Bithynia and Micia. Lydia was torn into two separate pieces, and then he could sweep the rich coastal plains of Micia on the left and the Bithynia region on the right, and once the latter fell, the more inland Paphragonia under John's rule would be completely cut off from the imperial capital, and could be regarded as "fish and meat on the chopping block".

Why did Gawain take Prusa on his own?

The reason is simple, this is determined by the geography of Asia Minor as a whole: there are many routes from the Anatolian plateau to the surrounding plains, but most of them are cliff-like, with a drop of basically one thousand meters upwards, and only the strip between Prusa and Dolila is a stepped one, which rises slowly from 300 to 500 meters and then to a thousand meters, which is particularly conducive to military movements.

Therefore, to drive directly from the plateau to Prusa is to have a springboard to jump to the bed of the empress of ten thousand cities.

This is also the path of the rise of the Ottomans in the real plane.

Dorila Aim is located in the middle of the main road to and from the plateau, but it is by no means rich and fertile, and it is essentially at the confluence of three gorges, backed by mountain peaks, and facing a small wilderness.

Although the garrison of the city had been strengthened by the previous plan of Tetisius, it was still very few in absolute numbers, after all, it was only a small castle, and the imperial army inside was less than 500 men, of which 200 were soldiers of the new army, armed with muskets and small bronze cannons, and the remaining 300 were hired Turks.

After finding out the confidence of his opponent, Gawain was not even interested in building siege fortifications, "set up two large camps on the field in front of the city, one to the west for cavalry and one for infantry on its side, and set up artillery forts and barracks on the high mons on both sides of the gorge. Three days later, the Defender Brigade was left to attack the city, and the rest of the team followed me directly to Prusa! ”

In order for the Left Army to coordinate with his pace as soon as possible, Gawain sent an urging message and handed it over to the fast horse to be sent to the Lydian region.

At this moment in the city of Prussa, Tetisius himself rushed here to supervise the defense and battle of the city as the duke of the region, and the scout cavalry who arrived told him that "the light cavalry of the Tarsus rebels has appeared on the plateau to the east, and their main force may arrive in a few days." ”

His deputy, Meriselos, who was also the original city defense commander of Prusa, asked, "Is Dolly Laem still rescued?" ”

General Nose shook his head directly, "Now we can only hope that it can hold out for one more day before falling." ”

General Meriselos was silent, and then asked a second question, "How do you defend against Gawain's surprise attack now?" ”

"I selected those of the new army who had been trained in firearms, and lined them up in the trenches outside the city walls, and erected barracks under my own command. Gawain was probably the first to rush at his cavalry troops, his kind of bombardment of the walls was our nightmare, but the kind of troops that marched too slowly could take a week to get here. Once Gawain's big gun is calmly bombarded, no one in Prusa City will be able to defend it. So we need to take this precious time to change the defense of this castle. ”

Now John had only about 10,000 mobile troops at hand, except for Mikhail's more than 1,000 outer palace guards who stayed in the imperial capital, and 3,000 people who built a new fortress in Gallipoli, and the remaining 6,000 people were all gathered in Prusa under the unified command of Tetisius.

"Open the storehouses in the city, take all the money out to reward the soldiers, and recruit Ding Jiaxiu!" In front of the Prussia duplex gate tower, General Sharpnose waved his hand and hurriedly ordered, "Now the walls and towers facing the east side shall be renovated - choose four or five towers, and build the earthen platform in the shape of petals, on which will be erected dog's foot wood (Titius imitated Gawain's field fortifications) and branches, and then lay on it the bronze large guns made in the great armory workshop of the imperial capital, and set up a cannon emplacement on each earthen platform, accompanied by three light cannon emplacements, and leave eighty men to defend it, and take down and dig out the cave of Tibetan soldiers, When the enemy fires artillery, we hide inside, and when the enemy attacks us, we come out and fire artillery. In addition, the moats were also widened, and the excavated earth was laid diagonally to the halfway point of the city wall. ”

No sooner had the order ended, and on the horizon east of Prussa, with the sound of trumpets and echoes, a black river-like cavalry of Tarsus appeared.

"Meriselos, you are responsible for building the fortifications according to my plan, I will go down and command the new army to repel this group of cavalry, don't panic, they are just sent by Gawain first to shake our position." With that, Tetisius rushed down the gates and began to direct the new army to march forward.