25Early in the morning, the tens of thousands of Spartan warriors besieging the city had eaten and drunk, and began to ...... Onlookers.

Ten large trebuchets were ready, and more than a thousand black-laborers circled around them; Huge boulders rose into the air and whistled towards the northern walls of Argos.

"Bang! Bang! ”

The stones, carrying powerful kinetic energy, slammed into the city wall, and suddenly the rubble splashed everywhere, and the ground shook the wall; The Argos warriors were terrified, did the Spartans have the help of the gods?

As the ultimate long-range weapon in the age of cold weapons, the trebuchet's great destruction is unimaginable to ordinary people; Hundreds of kilograms of stones flew down from the sky, not to mention people, even if it was an elephant, as long as it was smashed squarely, it would be like a crack and burp. The seemingly solid city head parapet wall, as long as it is directly hit by flying stones, after the loud noise and dust, it will be full of collapse and remnants of the wall; The debris splashed by the impact was like a shell exploding in later generations, and a dense and high-speed "bullet rain" swept around the impact site.

In front of the large and small stones flying at high speed, no matter how hard the muscle bumps are, they are still vulnerable; The human body, after all, is fragile. For the Argos warriors who served as guards on the city walls, hitting the stones of the outer city walls was just amazing, and it was not a big problem to shake them a few times under their feet; Those who fly over their heads to the city, who hit, who is unlucky, will not affect themselves anyway; But what falls on the parapet, what falls near the body, what falls on the top of the head...... These stones are extremely terrifying.

Have you ever seen a good house collapse in an instant?

Have you ever seen your head smashed straight into your chest?

Have you ever seen half of your body turn into meat sauce, and half of your body is still basically intact?

Come to the head of Argos! It's all heavy here.

The slow attacks of the 10 trebuchets continued, increasing in accuracy; More than 100 kilograms of stones flew up the city wall one by one, and the flesh and blood near the landing point were blurred.

Over time, the Argos warriors on the walls of the city have lost the courage to resist; The roar of the impact resounded throughout the northern city wall without stopping, and one after another unlucky Argos warriors were taken to heaven by stones. In terms of the actual number of soldiers killed, the damage caused by trebuchets is not very large; However, in terms of demoralizing the opponent and reducing the defensive value of the city walls, the trebuchet performed very competently.

Faced with the bombardment of trebuchets, the Argos warriors in the city said that they were very hard.

Bows and arrows could not shoot the Spartans, and these onlookers were more than 300 meters from the city wall, and even if the range was increased by the advantage of height, they still could not reach it; The towering towers and strong parapets of Argos can effectively defend against javelins and bows and arrows, but now it is of little sense to defend against large stones flying from high altitudes; Standing on the tower of the city and being beaten; Every time they were directly hit by a flying stone, several exclamations or screams were heard from the tower, and the onlookers of the Spartan warriors cheered.

The 10 trebuchets were concentrated in the north of Argos, besieged on three sides, and the Spartan warriors on both the east and west sides were now bored, and could only hear the bustle in the north, and their hearts were itching; However, no matter how boring the military order was, these Spartan soldiers still stuck to their posts and faithfully fulfilled the task of "blocking the door".

Outside the city of Argos, there is a lack of everything, that is, no stone; Big stones, small stones, in short, stones everywhere.

After a period of boulder attacks, the Argos warriors entered an even more bitter situation.

The Spartans have changed their weapons!

Well, in fact, it was replaced with small stones, a pile of fist-sized stones.

A trebuchet crashed once, and a small area of "stone rain" came; Compared with more than 100 kilograms of large stones, these fist-sized stones do not damage the broken city tower; The Argos warriors are even more pressed, this "stone rain" is playing with a small area of coverage, one is a wave of stones, which is more difficult to dodge than the previous large stones; Besides, the human body is not as hard as the city walls. In fact, for these grief-stricken Argos warriors, the result of meeting a high-speed flying stone with their heads is no different from a stone the size of a fist or a stone the size of a millstone; Of course, this is when the round shields peculiar to the Greek city-states finally came in handy.

However, the Argos warriors soon discovered that it was a very wrong thing to use shields to defend against stone rain; The round shield, which could easily resist the bows and arrows of the Persians, crumbled and cracked one after another under the crazy stone bombardment. The roaring stones were more powerful than these warriors could have imagined; The shield was made of thin copper and three layers of wooden plywood, which could withstand slashing slashes of swords, but could not resist violent hammer blows.

Leonidas stood by a trebuchet and looked out at the terrible scene on the wall ahead; Now it is only 10 trebuchets to wield their might, and the Argos, who could not hold on to the high walls of the city, are running around in a mess; If it's 20 or 100, what will happen like that?

Thinking about it, Leonidas suddenly thought of such a question; If there were a large number of trebuchets in the city of Argos, and he led tens of thousands of Spartan warriors to slowly approach the walls in a dense phalanx, the consequences would ...... Leonidas shuddered.

Turning his head and glancing deeply at the royal army that was commanding the black laborers, Leonidas was very happy; Now Wang Jun has been drawn into the Spartan camp, and he has also found a Spartan woman, who is half a Spartan.

How terrible the king's army was, Leonidas knew best; Bravery, strategy, not to mention, battleship modification, trebuchets alone, these are enough for Sparta to go sideways.

Leonidas figured out one thing, and at the same time decided on one thing.

The old tactical thinking must be eliminated.

Whether it is an ordinary Greek phalanx or a victorious Spartan phalanx, it can no longer continue to laugh at the battlefield; No matter how brave the warriors are, when a ** stone falls from the sky, the shield array will collapse in an instant, and the warriors will be slaughtered without resistance.

the king's army, which must remain in Sparta; Both in life and in death.

For a whole morning, 10 trebuchets did not stop, and the Greek craftsmen made things of just the right quality; The Spartan warriors were idle and panicked, and they watched the excitement for too long, and they lost the energy to start; The black laborers in charge of the trebuchet were tired and half dead, and using a large trebuchet was a hard job. Tired and tired, these carefully selected black laborers are in a very good mental state; The reason is simple and clear, after this battle, they will all be promoted to civilians, and their children and grandchildren will finally not have to be slaves forever.

Seeing that there were no more people on the scarred city wall, it is estimated that the Argos warriors had taken refuge in the inner side of the wall, and no one wanted to stay on it and be beaten in vain; Wang Jun commanded the trebuchet to adjust its position, and nearly a thousand black laborers were busy again.

There are many more stones, so many people are idle, and collecting a little stone is a trivial matter; If the requirements are strict, the stone must be polished into a spherical shape of standard weight, which is the so-called "stone bullet", so that it can hit farther and more accurately after being more accurate, and can also produce rolling damage; However, Wang Jun did not prepare the more labor-intensive "stone bombs" this time, but prepared some more labor-intensive "fire bombs".

Either ordinary stone blocks or polished "stone bullets" can destroy the walls head-on, unless you are lucky; The problem lies in the way the trebuchet shoots, the elevation angle of the thrown stone is relatively large when it is fired, and the vertical inclination angle of the stone when it lands is very small; Later artillery was convenient, and it was possible to directly attack frontal targets in a near-horizontal manner, which was really an excellent weapon for breaking into doors.

Wang Jun couldn't make artillery, and he didn't have the conditions to buy artillery in reality and put it in the space ring; However, since the trebuchet was drummed up, it is natural that the "fire bomb", the primitive killing weapon of the siege, cannot be spared.

Grease, pine wax, dead grass, branches, and strips of linen are the basic materials of "fire bombs"; In the center of the "fire bomb" of an oversized basketball, three layers of linen cloth are placed to wrap around the tightly weighted gravel. Fire attack, which is one of the important means in the era of cold weapons, and the use of trebuchets for long-range fire attack is the ultimate fire attack in the era of cold weapons; It may be more bullish to carry out a fire attack through the "Kong Ming Lantern", but that thing is too restricted, and the initiative and deterrence are not very good.

One by one, "fire bombs" were ignited, and one by one trebuchets crackled; Near the north gate of Argos, fireballs fell, some of which landed on the towers, tumbling and falling into the city; Some fell on houses in the city, causing fire after fire; Under Wang Jun's expectant gaze, part of the fireball landed in the open space in front of the North City Gate, and rolled to the edge of the wooden city gate with the help of his habitual bounce.

If the accuracy is not enough, the quantity will make up for it.

After more than ten rounds of projection, the north gate of Argos fell into a sea of fire, and the winter was dry and dry, which was a good time to set fires; The 10 trebuchets began to replace small fist-sized stones, slightly reducing the amount of ammunition released in order to have a longer range.

A rain of stones crossed the ruined city tower above the north gate and extended into the city, beating the Argos who were ready to carry water to fight the fire; Ten trebuchets worked hard, their thick arms and tough tendons, making all sorts of overwhelming sounds. Wang Jun put a lot of thought into designing these trebuchets, combining the respective advantages of the counterweight trebuchet and the tendon noose torsion trebuchet, and properly completed these treasures; The craftsmanship has only reached the average level, but it is sturdy and reliable, and it is basically satisfactory, and when the technicians can continue to improve the craftsmanship in the future, this composite trebuchet will exert even more terrifying power.

Theoretically, this kind of multi-power trebuchet must definitely surpass any kind of catapult that relies on a single power method in history; In this regard, Wang Jun said that he did not lose the face of the traverser.

When the fire at the gates began to subside, the long-awaited Spartan army finally launched an offensive.

The Spartan militia played in the forward, with 8 people in a platoon, and followed in turn; Like a long dragon, the team went straight to the north gate, which was devastated by the fire; Leonidas absorbed the knowledge of the royal army, and would no longer let the royal guards do everything, they were not many in number, they were the essence of the Spartan army, and it was extremely difficult to cultivate.

Hearing shouts of slaughter from outside the city, the Argos collapsed; Resistance was unrealistic, and without the arch guards of the fortified walls, no Argos thought they could do it over the Spartans; The soldiers defending the north, after being bullied by big and small stones for a long time, actually lost their courage and fighting spirit for a long time.

Run, turn around and run.

Isn't the south side blocked?

The fleeing crowd grew larger and larger, and people scrambled to the south.

Later, the Argos warriors, who were defending on the east and west sides, also realized that the situation was wrong, and ran down the tower one after another, joining the fleeing crowd; As for the guards in the south, when they saw that the people in the city were rushing to their side, they immediately understood that the city had been lost, and everyone was not slow to react, so they ran away, what should they do, no one wanted to stay anyway.

Running out of town?

There was no problem, the Spartan warriors who rushed in from the north gate faithfully carried out the orders of His Majesty Leonidas; They advanced slowly, making sure that there were no ambushes left in the city, and of course, there was some sporadic resistance, but they were soon overwhelmed by the Spartan army; Leonidas demanded that they drive the Argos instead of killing them in the city.

1,000 Royal Guardsmen, 2,000 Spartan Wehrmacht soldiers, and 10,000 Helots were left to guard the trebuchet, and 2,000 Spartan militiamen were arranged to sweep the city of Argos who might be left; The Spartan army, of 27,000 men, slowly drove more than 120,000 Argos to the vicinity of the port of Kios.

The officers and men of the Argos Navy who were trapped in the harbor stood on the battleship one by one, looking feebly at the swarming compatriots; The city was lost, the bay was blocked again, and the next ......

The Argosians, who ran to the shore in terror and fled from the city, slowly slowed down, and their faces were unusually ugly; The expression of horror turned to despair, which no longer belongs to the category of whoever runs fast will survive. The crowd slowly stopped, and the coast around the harbor was densely covered; The children and women began to cry, and the men's violent tendons silently conveyed the shadow of death.

Escape?

There is no need to escape, and there is nowhere to escape.

Everyone's eyes passed through the gap between the warships of their own navy, and they could clearly see that on the sparkling sea in the distance, a huge fleet stayed quietly on the sea; The port of Kios was blocked, and its own navy clearly did not dare to go to war, and all remained on the edge of the coast.

At this time, many Argos people reacted, and more than 100,000 people ran to the port, purely brainstorming!

Even if the port is not blocked, how many people can be loaded with 25 triremes at one time?

Pulling people back and forth?

There is no time; You know, behind the buttocks of hundreds of thousands of Argosians, there are tens of thousands of Spartan warriors, approaching step by step in a huge pincer-shaped queue!

For many years, the Argos preferred to maintain a neutral status; As a city-state that has not experienced war for a long time, the combat effectiveness of the warriors is definitely not high; The most crucial, unyielding will to fight, most of the Argos are gone.

A small number of Argos nobles who were still alive drew their swords and hacked their wives and children to death in grief and anger, and then rushed to the dense Spartan army without hesitation; Ending in a tragic and heroic way, perhaps, this is also a helpless relief......

More people, holding their wives and children, knelt on the cold and damp shore.

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