That night, Danishmund's cavalry stormed the camp, and Count Oude, who was on guard, and seven hundred of his elite soldiers held the fence and the entrance, and many armed pilgrims shouted and raised torches in cheer. Pen × fun × Pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 info It turned out that the Franks were able to easily repel the Turkic rangers with their dense infantry formations and strong chain mail in a head-to-head situation, and forty of Danishmund's warriors were beheaded, and the pilgrims' camp survived the night in peace.

The next night, the same battle took place again, but the Turks changed the direction of the night attack according to the scout's voyeurship, but they were still defeated by the soldiers under the command of Count "Miles of Bray" on duty and Vallo, the general counselor of the French royal palace, and the pulling of Latin crossbows and the whistling of crossbow arrows in the hands of the Frankish soldiers resounded in the night sky.

In this setback, Merrick's losses were even greater than the previous one, with one hundred and twenty men killed, and Merrick, who arrived in Gangara in anger, whipped all the Bey and Ghazi who were in command of the front.

At the same time, Armenian merchants who had infiltrated the ranks of the pilgrims sent spies to deliver secret letters:

Raymond, who had won two consecutive nights, was arrogant, and he became more and more arrogant, demanding unconditional obedience from the ranks of the Greek kingdom and other lords; Therefore, the Great Emir did not continue to clash with him head-on, but sent a small force to defend Gangara, and the main force hid in the surrounding valleys, fortified the wilderness, and took away all the grain around Gangara, destroyed all the canals and wells, and when the supply of the 200,000 pilgrims was cut off and dragged to exhaustion, the Great Emir launched another lightning raid to annihilate them.

Merrick took the advice of the merchants, and studied the information of the scouts and the surrounding terrain in detail with the Atarberg and Bey, and finally decided to send eight hundred men to defend the fortress of Gangara, while the rest of the infantry cut down all the ripe wheat around it, cut down all the fruit trees, and uprooted all the ditches and wells—and then hid them in the valleys leading from Gangara to Calabi, while Merrick and nearly 10,000 cavalry (mostly mercenaries from Sagetus) withdrew to the desert beyond the valley and waited for the attack.

Sure enough, in the rough mountain road to Gangara, the 200,000 pilgrims had great difficulty in supposing that they could not find food to eat, because most of the wheat fields had been cut down by the Turks and sent to the Gangara fortress, so that many poor pilgrims had to gather acorns and leaves to eat; To make matters worse, there was no water source, clean ditches and wells were either landfilled or poisoned, and the horses in the pilgrim procession were starved of water and dying in droves of disease.

Many of them began to flee, only to either disappear into the wilderness or to be captured and killed by Danishmund's rangers.

"Hold on." With no edge in sight, the crowd with difficult steps is like a dilapidated gray river, heading in the direction of Gangara, while the one-eyed Raymond keeps raising the holy spear and inspires everyone.

In addition, Raymond sent a herald to the Roman auxiliaries (about 6,000 men) who were following his party twenty miles away, also wandering among the gorges, "to provide us with supplies." ”

Mikhail, who received the letter, had a grim face and directly passed it to another herald beside him, "Send it to Sinop...... The whole army is temporarily stationed here, and we have to prepare...... His Excellency the Count of Clodisia is at your disposal. After saying this, Mikhail's eyes suddenly showed a clear light, and he looked at the very, very familiar scene of his hometown in front of him, and secretly thought, "It is okay, or not, it is not in vain to return to Paphragonia, and I will bury you here completely, so that I can obtain Yudoshia's forgiveness." ”

At this moment, on the navy blue hillside, several Danishmund scouts armed with swords and bows and arrows crawled among the waist-deep grass, and the horses in the distance were hunched under a tree, their eagle-like eyes looking at the vast terrain below:

The mighty and turbid Harris River traverses the rolling hills, in the middle of the Gangara Crossing of the various passes and valleys, and there is a sloping valley connected to the Calabi Hill Fort adjacent to the Harris River; Nearly 200,000 pilgrims have rushed to the outskirts of Gangara;

In the mountains of that sloping valley, nearly 10,000 elite infantry were cleverly hidden, and farther away, between the fort of Calabi Mountain, the Great Emir commanded the other 10,000 cavalry, serving as the successor;

And here, the army of the Kingdom of Greece, which originally served as the rearguard, was at least ten centuries away from the pilgrims, and the entire formation showed a large gap......

The mercenary named Sagetus, who was leading the scouts, suddenly patted the shoulders of the two accomplices around him, and then made an extended gesture with his finger in his eyes, and everyone looked further east—the scattered fires under Gangara were burning at the same time, and the pilgrims there began to set fire and loot everywhere.

So they climbed back up, jumped on their horses, and went around the familiar road to report to their Bey.

The desperate howls of the pilgrims shook the whole city of Gangara, because all the crops and fruit trees were destroyed, and they desperately needed to vent their anger, so they set fire to everything they could see, and then thousands of people, like evil spirits in hell, devoured the grass like ants and locusts, and cut down all the miscellaneous trees, made simple ladders, and stormed the gates of Gangara.

Several white flames swept out, and the defenders of Danishmund, at the head of the city, unleashed this terrifying flame, which instantly burned several ladders to powder, and countless bodies of pilgrims who were burned black fell in the air, but the rest of them ignored them, trampled on the corpses of their companions, and continued to climb towards the city wall, followed by countless rolling stones that had been tied by fence poles or nets, which were cut by the defenders and scattered, and rumbled down the slightly sloping wall. The pilgrims who stood in front of them and clinged to the wall were crushed one by one, and then rampage through the dense formation of the opponent on the ground with impunity, and finally tumbled into the deep ravine with countless indistinguishable corpses on the edge of the moat......

The siege was unfavorable, and at the meeting held at night, Raymond's face was pale, while Guillaume's face was full of astonishment, and he repeatedly said that it was about to be finished, and that 200,000 people were here, without food or water, and that they would collapse automatically in a few days.

At this time, a merchant accompanying the army proposed a plan, "The Emperor's aid will soon arrive by boat along the Harris River, and I am familiar with the topography of this area, where there is a very fertile basin in the sloping valley leading to the fort of Calaby, where most of the grain of Gangara is grown, according to custom, so we cannot fall into the hands of the Danishmunds - His Royal Highness the Marquis should send an elite army of soldiers and horses to occupy it as soon as possible, so as to find supplies and ensure the smooth passage of the Emperor's water transportation." ”

"Count Oude, tomorrow, tomorrow you will lead a thousand armored infantry to go, to the valley." Raymond didn't care about anything, and immediately ordered. (To be continued.) )