A proud man cannot be a servant.

- Plautus (the most important comedy writer of ancient Rome)

After the first round of exploratory firing, the ballista, which had little success, immediately shifted its focus and began firing at the gates of the northern wall of Tulbo; The catapult, which had achieved great results, did not adjust the angle to shoot at the city wall, but continued to use this attack strength and angle to attack the northern wall of Thurbo, after all, the main purpose of using the stone crossbow was to destroy the wall of Tulbo.

Except for the attack on the side of Gnaeus, the attack of the other two armies did not go very well; Nero's army, after arranging its formation, was attacked by a thousand-strong enemy force before it could reach eight o'clock. Although the enemy's goal of completely destroying Nero's ballista artillery queue was not achieved, it also disrupted the arrangement of Nero's army.

In the end, Nero's army was very easily annihilated by the thousand-strong raiding army; But Nero also paid a great price. At least twenty ballistas were destroyed by the enemy, and the disorganized formation was not adjusted until half-past eight; That is, at half-past eight, Nero's army of southern wall attackers had just begun to attack the southern wall of Turbo with their weapons.

As for the main army of Tiberius, it was a complete tragedy; After arranging the standard phalanx of three legions, Tiberius ordered the 144 ballistas of the Armed Assault Force to advance to a distance of 200 meters from the walls of Turbo. This was also a normal order, unfortunately two thousand of the three thousand defenders on the walls were elite Cretan archers.

The range of Cretan archers was already much greater than that of ordinary archers, and with the height of the city walls as support, their range could reach an astonishing 200 meters! Moreover, these archers hired by Pylos himself from Crete were very elite archers; Bow art is naturally extraordinary.

Thus, a very tragic scene appeared; After the one hundred and forty-four ballista guns were pushed two hundred meters away from the city wall by the ballista men who controlled them, they began to adjust the position of the ballista without any sense of prevention. The Cretan archers on the city walls began the first round of arrows when the ballista crews were unprepared!

The attack power of the rain of arrows composed of two thousand sharp arrows is naturally good, but those crossbowmen have suffered a catastrophe; At least a third of the ballistamen were hit hard by the rain of arrows. After all, the ballistamen of the Brutus family were not wearing armor, and their only weapon was a short sword at their waist; In the face of a rain of arrows, there is no point.

After the first round of arrows, the first reaction of the ballista crews was not to retreat immediately, but to retreat with their ballista; Unfortunately, before they could drag their ballistas, the second round of arrows from the Cretan archers came. This time, more than two hundred and fifty ballista crews were killed on the spot, and less than half of the ballista crews were not injured.

Tiberius, who reacted, immediately shouted an order to the ballista men to give up the ballista and withdraw immediately, and the ballista men also understood at this time that it was impossible for him and the others to retreat with the ballista; So they hurriedly dragged their wounded brethren back with them. At this time, the third round of arrow rain came again; After surviving this rain of arrows, the ballista men withdrew to their formation.

In just three rounds of arrows, the ballistamen of the Brutus family paid the price of a quarter of the dead and the remaining soldiers wounded; In this way, there were heavy casualties before the war began, and Tiberius's eyes were red as a direct irritation. But red-eyed was useless, the bloody corpses next to the ballista were enough for Tiberius to dispel any desire to fight back.

Finally, when the time reached eight o'clock, Tiberius immediately ordered thirty-six stone catapults to open up and begin the first round of attack; The momentum of the thirty-six stone catapults is much greater than that of the twenty-four stone catapults. Although the Cretan archers on the city walls tried their best to hide, they suffered heavy casualties from these powerful stone bullets.

The enemy troops on the city wall suppressed by round after round of stone bullet attacks could not raise their heads at all, and the number of casualties of the defenders on the city wall also skyrocketed; After only ten minutes of firing and four rounds of stone shells, dense cracks began to appear in the wall west of Tulbo, and it seemed that it was only one step away from the collapse of the wall.

Pylos, who was personally in charge of the western wall, began to get anxious when he found that his wall was in danger of being blown down; Once Tulbo's walls were destroyed by the catapults of the Brutus army, it was impossible for the Tulbo defenders, who were at an absolute disadvantage, to hold Tulbo, which meant that the Tulbo defenders only held on for less than half an hour, and there was a possibility that the enemy would capture Tulbo.

In order to avoid this from happening, Pylos immediately decided to kill the nine-headed war elephants near the western wall; Pylos was not naïve enough to think that these nine-headed war elephants could change the huge difference in strength between the enemy and us. Pylos's idea was simply to rely on these nine-headed war elephants to disrupt the enemy's arrangement and destroy all the enemy's dozens of stone crossbows; Being able to accomplish this task is the value of the War Elephant!

Pylos was right, and sending out war elephants at this time was indeed the right thing to do; Because the army of the Brutus family has lost all their ballistae, and it is impossible for the attacking catapults to attack too close, as long as the nine-headed war elephants under his command can quickly leave the vicinity of the city wall, they can successfully destroy the stone catapults that the Brutus family has difficulty carrying.

Now, it's Pylos who suffers; Vimyna's surprise victory in North Africa did not reach the distant Greek peninsula, and Pylos did not understand why Tiberius had placed so many torches near the 6,000 archers, which doomed the army of war elephants he had sent out.

Taking advantage of the interval after the end of the sixth round of stone attacks, Pylos immediately asked his defenders to open the gates and let the nine-headed war elephants out of the city; After leaving the city, the war elephants rushed in the direction of the catapult phalanx under the command of the controller on their backs. After discovering the enemy war elephants leaving the city, the 6,000 archers in front of Tiberius immediately started firing with arrows stained with black oil!

After a rocket salvo from 6,000 archers, all the controllers on the backs of the nine war elephants were killed, and the only war elephants that could survive were only three, and the other six war elephants were also killed directly in such a rocket salvo. You must know that the attack power and lethality of a rocket ignited with black oil are not comparable to ordinary arrows or rockets, it is a real killer!

Even the remaining three war elephants were just scurrying wildly with rockets stuck all over their bodies; After all, the rocket that is still burning is also unbearable in pain for war elephants. Soon, the three war elephants also fell to the ground with a wail; All this made Pylos on the city wall stunned, he really didn't expect that the Brutus family already had a way to deal with war elephants!

The attack on the three walls lasted for a full hour, and the main army of Tiberius destroyed a wall about ten meters long in twenty minutes; However, these collapsed walls were piled up by the chaos of times, and it was impossible for the army to enter the city from there.

However, the stone bomb attack, which lasted for an hour, caused extremely staggering casualties to the defenders on the city walls; By this time, there were less than a thousand defenders on the western wall of Tulbo. Nero's army on the southern wall did not even collapse the city wall after an hour, and could only prepare to use the siege ladder to forcibly attack the city when nine o'clock came.

Of course, this hour of indiscriminate bombardment was not without results; Except for the 1,000 enemy troops who rushed out at the beginning and were completely annihilated, the defenders on the southern wall an hour later were only about 800 men. The attack went most smoothly with the army of Gnaeus to the north; Although Gnaeus was only able to collapse a section of the wall, his ballista unit managed to break through the gates of the northern wall!

So, at nine o'clock when the trumpet sounded again; Gnaeus immediately ordered all the ballistae and catapults under his command to stop attacking, and Rex also led his four thousand brothers to charge frantically in the direction of the city gate. At the same time, the soldiers of the First Legion and the First Brigade of the Ninth Legion also carried ladders and launched an attack on the city wall that had not been destroyed.

Rex's charge was unusually smooth, and not only was the gate of the northern wall of Turbo completely damaged by the ballista under the command of Gnaeus, but even the city gate was densely packed with the corpses of a large number of defenders, which seemed to be enemy troops trying to repair the city gate. After leading the army into the city, Rex did not care about the remaining enemy troops on the city walls, but continued to attack the city.

All the enemy troops on the walls, Rex was left to the first brigade of the two legions; He himself led his 4,000 soldiers to destroy all the enemy troops under the city wall, and immediately divided his troops into two routes and went straight to the west and south walls. Assisting Tiberius' army to the west and Nero's army to the south to capture the city walls from behind was also the task that Ganeus gave to Rex.

Rex, who had been separated, personally led two thousand soldiers to the west; On the way, Rex passed by a military camp and found a large number of troops wearing the weapons and equipment of the Kingdom of Epirus! Rex suddenly felt that this army might be an ambush for the kingdom of Epirus; So, he directly changed his original plan and took his 2,000 soldiers to block the gate of the barracks.

Tiberius faced the western wall, on which there were less than a thousand defenders, almost all of them were wounded, how could they resist the assault of Tiberius' elite brigade? The battle on the southern wall was also easy; After all, the enemy only had 800 defenders, and after the reinforcements sent by Rex arrived, they directly annihilated this defender under the front and rear attacks. (To be continued.) )