Chapter 184: The Siege of Fort Elbuk (Part I)
In addition, in the rear of the enemy army, dozens of heavy catapults were constantly throwing stone projectiles at the city walls. Fortunately, these catapults are not very accurate, and few of them are able to accurately drop stone projectiles on the city walls.
However, even if those catapults are not very accurate, most of the stone bullets will miss, but it is always a threat to keep them, so Jiang You asked his subordinates to carry the artillery on the other city walls to the east city wall, and bombarded those enemy catapults with full firepower.
Under the fire of dozens of artillery pieces, most of the catapults were quickly destroyed, and the artillery also lost a lot, so the king of Yarogrk had no choice but to withdraw his own artillery and start repairing the damaged catapults while treating the wounded.
And Jiang You saw that he had repelled the enemy's artillery, so he immediately asked most of the artillery to stop firing, after all, these artillery pieces were all old-fashioned artillery produced before the founding of the Qinglong Empire, once the number of firing was too much, the barrel would overheat, and it was easy to explode.
Therefore, Jiang You plans to divide these cannons into several batches for use, so that these cannons can have time to dissipate heat.
Jiang You made this arrangement because he saw that the enemy army was attacking the city with more troops than yesterday, and it was still early today, so the enemy army should not only launch such a round of offensive, so he had to prepare for a protracted battle in advance.
Even the soldiers in the city were divided into two teams by him, one team was responsible for fighting in the morning, and the other team was responsible for continuing the relay battle in the afternoon.
Facts have proved that Jiang You's arrangements are very necessary, the enemy army stormed all morning, and when the first batch of more than 50,000 troops was almost consumed, they sent another 50,000 troops to attack in the afternoon, without giving the defenders the slightest respite.
Jiang You took advantage of the retreat of the first batch of enemy troops and the second wave of siege troops still advancing, so he hurriedly withdrew the first group of defenders on the city wall, and then transferred the second group of defenders who had been recuperating before that.
The first group of defenders, who had been fighting all morning, were all tired at this time, and many of them had minor wounds, but they were still fighting on the city walls. This may also be related to the fact that Jiang You, the coach, has been insisting on directing the battle on the city wall.
Those soldiers saw that even the main general had been fighting on the front line, and they were only slightly injured, so they were naturally embarrassed to withdraw and rest.
The second group of defenders hurried to the top of the city wall, and found that the enemy army was close to within 500 meters of the city wall, so they hurriedly controlled the artillery on the wall to fire at those enemy troops.
After fighting for such a long time, the enemy army also learned well at this time, and when they heard the sound of artillery, they immediately dispersed their troops, and no longer advanced in a group as before. This made Jiang You and them, even if they used high-explosive bombs to bombard the enemy, the casualties they could cause were not high.
Jiang You looked at this scene, and he was also quite worried in his heart, according to this posture, the ammunition hoarded in Fort Elbuk would definitely not be enough, even if they ran out all the shells and bullets, it was estimated that they would not be able to wipe out all the enemy regular soldiers outside the city. Luckily, he had already told his men to collect arrows after the battle, and even some of the stone bullets thrown into the city by enemy trebuchets were collected to be used as spare ammunition after the cannonballs and bullets ran out. The only problem now was that there were no big heavy trebuchets in Fort Elbuk, so those huge stone projectiles might only be able to be used as rolling stones and dropped directly from the city walls to smash people.
And just when Jiang You was fighting fiercely here, Ye Tianlong had already received the news that Fort Elbuk was besieged by the army of the Kingdom of Vekia, although his master Li Rufeng said that he didn't need his side to help, and he could get rid of the army of Vekia. But for the sake of insurance, Ye Tianlong still transferred 30,000 troops back to help. These 30,000 soldiers are all those units with better military discipline, and as for those troops with poor military discipline, they are all still staying here to rectify military discipline!
After transferring 30,000 troops at once, plus dealing with a large number of soldiers who violated military discipline before, Ye Tianlong now only has more than 60,000 troops left in his hands, less than 70,000 troops.
However, the reason why Ye Tianlong dared to transfer the 30,000 army was also because his side had already determined that the main army of the Swadia Kingdom had indeed been defeated by him, otherwise, he would not have divided his troops at will regardless of the safety of the main army.
Now Ye Tianlong has made it clear to Shi Qian, the more than 500,000 troops sent by King Haraus before are indeed almost all the elite troops of the Swadia Kingdom, after this army is destroyed, the rest of the Swadia Kingdom is some town militia with low combat effectiveness, and the remaining 60,000 troops in his hands should be more than enough to deal with these militias, and it will even evolve into the same armed march as when the Swanad Kingdom was destroyed in the later period, basically only need the army to rush to a town, The defenders of that town would surrender when they saw their own army.
At the same time, Li Rufeng began to urgently gather troops from all over the country in China, because she knew that the enemy army had a large number of troops, Li Rufeng decided to draw out all the regular soldiers from all over the country, leaving only the militia to defend the city in various places, so that she could have more than 40,000 troops on hand, although it was still not as many as the troops of the Kingdom of Vekia, it was estimated that it would be difficult to completely annihilate the hundreds of thousands of enemy troops, but it should still be possible to repel the other party and relieve the siege of Fort Elbuk.
However, just when Li Rufeng spent more than three days gathering his troops and preparing to set off, the 30,000 troops sent by Ye Tianlong also rushed back, so at this moment, Li Rufeng had more than 70,000 troops on hand, and he had a greater grasp of the army that repelled the Kingdom of Vekia.
During these three days, King Yarogrk had been sending troops to storm Fort Elbuk, and after discovering that the enemy's firearms were very lethal, from the next day, he launched an attack with a large number of regular soldiers and a large number of people, hoping to rely on these people who did not have much combat power to consume the enemy's ammunition.
Jiang You didn't notice this at first, but Di Ligang, an experienced veteran, quickly saw through King Yarogerke's tricks and reminded Jiang You, the main general.
After receiving Di Ligang's reminder, Jiang You immediately changed his tactics, he asked his soldiers to put away those muskets, and instead used bows and crossbows, using the arrows he had collected these days to shoot those enemy militiamen.
Those militias basically didn't have any decent armor, so even ordinary bows and crossbows that were not so strong in armor-piercing ability could effectively kill them, and as waves of arrows fell, the enemy militias who were sent to the battlefield as cannon fodder suddenly began to fall in pieces.
King Yarogark saw this scene in the rear, and there was nothing he could do, after all, if the enemy wanted to kill the enemy with muskets or with bows and crossbows, it was completely the freedom of the other party! He couldn't control it.
However, even if Jiang You saw through the enemy's plan and began to consciously save ammunition and try to use his bow and crossbow to injure those cannon fodder civilians, but by the afternoon of the sixth day of the enemy's attack, the shells and bullets still began to be consumed one after another.
Without the help of those powerful firearms, the enemy army began to have some elites who were able to successfully climb the city wall by virtue of their superiority in strength, and Jiang You had no choice but to lead his soldiers to start a brutal white-knuckle battle with these enemy troops who had climbed the city wall.
"Everyone, hold on, it's going to be dark soon!"
On the wall of Fort Elbuk, Jiang You roared while holding a steel knife and slashed at the neck of an enemy soldier who had just climbed the city wall.
However, this enemy soldier was obviously an elite, even though Jiang You had already made a huge wound in his neck, he still used his last strength to raise the moon blade axe in his hand and slash at Jiang You.
Seeing this, Jiang You hurriedly raised the steel shield in his other hand to block.
With a loud bang, Jiang You was shocked by the huge force coming from the steel shield and took a step back, after all, he had been fighting for several days in a row, and he was very tired, so even in the face of this enemy soldier who only had bright combat strength, he felt a little difficult to deal with.
After taking a breath of relief, Jiang You dragged his tired body and struck with a shield to knock the already seriously injured enemy soldier off the city wall.
However, as soon as he had eliminated one of the enemy soldiers, another enemy rushed from his left, holding a two-handed scimitar in his hand, and slashed at him.
"General be careful!"
Seeing that Jiang You didn't react at all for a while because he was too tired, a militiaman not far from Jiang You immediately yelled and pounced, knocking the enemy soldier to the ground.
The enemy soldier was angry that this guy had ruined his good deeds, and before he could get up from the ground, he slashed out with his backhand, which happened to the forearm of the militiaman in front of him, and severed his left forearm, and blood gushed out from the fracture.
However, the militiaman gradually became a qualified soldier after these days of fighting, and he did not scream after such a heavy blow, but had his own intact right arm and strangled the enemy's neck, so that he could not shake him off for a while and get back up.
Reyek, who had just arrived here, hurriedly stabbed his two-handed greatsword, piercing the enemy soldier in the chest with a single sword.
After Rejek killed the enemy, the attacking enemy troops suddenly began to retreat at the same time, it turned out that the sun was about to set, so King Yarogark gave the order to retreat.
Seeing that the enemy army began to retreat, Jiang You, who had long been tired and had sore hands and feet, ignored the fact that the ground was covered with blood, sat down and began to gasp violently.
"Jiang You, you're too tired, go down and rest! Here I and Diri just stared at it, and it will be fine! Seeing Jiang You's pale and tired face, Reyeke opened his mouth to persuade him.
He knew very well that the other party was entrusted with a heavy responsibility because of this, so he didn't dare to be careless, and even eating and sleeping were basically solved on the city wall these days, but how could he rest well here! Therefore, even though Jiang You himself was already a martial artist with dark energy cultivation, his body was still getting weaker and weaker day by day. If he continues like this, Jiang You's body will probably collapse completely soon.
After all, Jiang You is the main general of Fort Elbuk, and once his body fails, it will definitely greatly affect the morale of the defenders.
Jiang You also felt the weakness of his body, so he did not refuse Reyeke's proposal, and after a few words of explanation to Reyeke with his strong spirit, he walked down the city wall step by step with the support of several personal soldiers.