Chapter 1001
Margo had wanted to make up for this weakness with his advantage in numbers and eventually defeat the enemy, but when the number of casualties approached 2,000, he stopped sending troops into the tunnels.
Amyntas also hurriedly blocked the three tunnels. The First Legion and the reserve soldiers also paid the price of nearly 500 casualties. Fortunately, the Diónia soldiers won every battle, so they were able to rescue the injured soldiers and treat them.
… …
Margo sat in the big tent with a straight face, sulking at himself.
The people of Carthage thrived on the trade of precious metals, and many of their citizens were engaged in the mining industry. The Magonid family was no exception, especially after moving to the south of Iberia. The army he led occasionally worked as miners when they were not fighting, so his army was good at digging tunnels. The reason why he did not do this when he attacked Paragonia was because the town was located at the foot of the mountain, and the soil was too hard to dig, but Serinus could.
The last time he besieged the city of Serinus, he built the earth wall to attack through the tunnels, but not long after Hasdrubal's successful raid on the south coast, the situation changed, and he did not have time to carry out the plan. This time, after careful planning and enough time, the tunnel was successfully dug under the city wall without the Diónia people noticing. At this time, he had two choices: one was to dig horizontally, hollow out the foundation of the wall, and then pull out the wooden pillars supporting the tunnel, causing the wall to collapse and a gap to appear; the other was to continue digging forward into the city, and then wait until night, send troops to sneak into the city through the tunnel, directly attack the Diónia people, and occupy the whole city.
Margo chose the latter because he thought that this method could get rid of the defenders of Serinus more quickly and effectively, but he did not expect that it would be discovered by the Diónia people, and in the end, it turned out to be like this. From now on, the Diónia people would be more vigilant, and it would be difficult to dig a tunnel for a sneak attack.
While Margo was regretting, the messenger sent by Hasdrubal entered the big tent and gave him another blow: Hasdrubal wanted to sneak attack the Dionysian Army attacking Paleros, but they were ambushed, and all 4,000 Lusitanian soldiers were wiped out.
Mago roared Hasdrubal's name in the tent, scolding him for being so stupid that he didn't deserve to be a scion of the Magonid Family. He seemed to have forgotten that he had just failed a sneak attack, which frightened the messenger so much that he shivered in fear.
After venting his anger, Margo calmed down: Hasdrubal's army was blocked and could not rescue Paleros, so he could only hope that Paleros could defend itself. But now there were not many defenders in Paleros, so it was necessary to strengthen its defense, but now there was no road …
Margo thought for a while and decided to send reinforcements to Paleros by sea. It would not work during the day, as it would be easy to be discovered, so he could only do it at night, which was a bit risky.
Although Margo had just suffered a failure in the tunnel plan, it did not dull his spirit. He immediately asked his men to gather 3,000 people from Paleros in the army, and another 1,000 people from Sorus, for a total of 4,000 people, and immediately rushed to Lili. He asked Imisere to find a way to gather the cargo ships in the port and send them to Paleros as soon as possible.
For the last two days the soldiers had heard that their mother country was under attack, and they had been clamouring to return, which was exactly what they wished to do; so they pressed on, even in the dark of night, and arrived at Lili late at night.
But the sentries at the gate of Lili forbade them to enter the city, because the Sicilian fleet patrolled the western sea every day, and sometimes sent the fleet's infantry ashore to harass them. This made the cities of Carthage and Phoenicia very cautious, especially when so many soldiers wanted to enter the military town of Lili in the middle of the night. Of course, they had to be very careful, and the city lord, Imisere, had to personally go to the city to conduct a strict inspection before they could enter.
It took nearly an hour to verify the identity of the army and learn the purpose of the army. Imisere then hurriedly sent someone to the port to investigate, but it was too late.
It turned out that since the Dionysian fleet began to control the western sea, the number of ships that came to Lili gradually decreased, and now they had basically disappeared. Some of the ship owners in Lili did not want to keep their ships in this blocked port for no profit, so they found an opportunity to escape to Carthage. This left not many ships in the port, far from enough to transport 4,000 troops at one time (at least 100 large cargo ships were needed). The only opportunity was the fleet that came to transport supplies to the Carthage army at night.
Although Morbale had successfully organized a large-scale transport of military rations and supplies to Sicily by using the method of 'building a plank road in the open and moving the grain in the dark', he knew very well that the consumption of an army of 100,000 was huge, and it wasn't enough to rely on a single transport. Besides, after the Dionians learned their lesson, the same method wouldn't work the next time. Therefore, he came up with another idea.
Under his suggestion, the Carthage Senate passed a decision: to let Carthage and the nearby Phoenician city-states, who had been trading with Sicily for years, were familiar with the sea conditions there, and had rich experience in sailing, form three small fleets with dozens of cargo ships. They would take turns to load food and supplies during the day, set off at dusk, and arrive at Lili, Mazara, or Eryx late at night … (The destination was decided at the time of departure, to prevent the Diónia from noticing if the route was too fixed, and thus waiting for them to arrive at Lili, Mazara, or Eryx in the middle of the night.) After unloading the goods, the fleet had to immediately leave the port and return to avoid bumping into the warships of the Diónia.
Therefore, the port laborers of these cities rested during the day and were on standby at night. The flames in the lighthouses were unusually bright. Of course, if the weather was bad at night, these small fleets would stop transporting goods.
So far, the fleet had successfully transported goods a few times. Although the amount of goods transported each time was not much, it was better in the long run.
Coincidentally, the ship's destination that night was Lilybay. Unfortunately, by the time Imisere sent his men to the port, the ship had already left.
While Imisere sighed, he decided to send someone to inform the cities of Mazara and Eryx tomorrow morning. No matter which port the Carthaginian fleet arrived at tomorrow night, he had to inform them to help transport the soldiers.
In addition, he would also ask the two cities to send all the idle cargo ships in the ports to Lili, so that there would be a sufficient number of ships to transport all the soldiers to Palemos in one go.
After making these decisions and settling the soldiers in the barracks, Imisere finally felt relieved and went back to sleep.
… …
Not long after Margo sent the reinforcements away, he received a messenger from Lili, bringing an order from the Senate: Because the Dionysian fleet had attacked the Phoenician allies in Afrika several times, the Senate decided to transfer the fleet back to defend the coastline of the mainland. They also hoped that Margo could speed up the progress of the siege and capture the city of Selinus as soon as possible.
Margo was enraged again after reading the order. Ever since Morbar won the naval battle, there had been no other results. The Dionian fleet was still patrolling the western seas, but the Carthaginian fleet's presence in the western seas made it so that the Dionian fleet did not dare to attack the rear of the Carthaginian fleet on a large scale. The number of attacks was significantly reduced. Margo was able to concentrate on building the inner and outer walls and hills of the camp and concentrate his forces on attacking Serinus City. Now that the fleet had been transferred back to Carthage, the Dionysian fleet could unscrupulously attack the rear of the army, forcing Margo to be distracted. Moreover, the defense of the Diónia army was tight. If the Carthage army attacked by force, even if they took Selinus in the end, they would inevitably suffer heavy casualties. How could they achieve their intention of fighting the main force of Diónia?
Margo strongly suspected that this order from the Senate was instigated by the Hanoverian faction. While he cursed Hanno in his heart, he also decided to ignore this order and attack the city in an orderly manner according to the original plan.
The next day, the soldiers of Carthage continued to build the earthen hill. They had already begun to tamp the wooden frame with soil.
The Balearic soldiers on the inner wall kept throwing lead pellets to suppress the long-range attacks of the defenders of Selinus, so that the construction of the earthen hill could be carried out in an orderly manner.
On the other hand, Amyntas ordered the light infantry at the top of the city and the ballista troops to attack the busy Carthage soldiers in front of the city with all their might to disrupt and delay the enemy's construction of the earthen hill. At the same time, he also ordered the soldiers of the Mountain Reconnaissance Team to be distributed throughout the trenches in the city, carefully listening to the movements underground to prevent the enemy from digging another tunnel. In addition, he also separated some soldiers to assist the engineering battalion in building the wooden wall.
… …
In the evening, the Carthaginian fleet and the cargo ships of Mazara and Eryx arrived at Lilith as promised. After loading up 4000 reinforcements, the cargo ships quietly sailed north and finally entered the port of Palermos.
When the soldiers jumped off the ship excitedly and boarded the dock, they were ready to rush back home to enjoy the warmth of their wives and children. But in front of them, countless soldiers in black helmets and armor appeared and surrounded them.
The hearts of the reinforcements suddenly fell to the bottom of the valley. Palermos had already been occupied by the Diónia?!
The truth was that Palermos had surrendered to the Dionysian Army.
The reason why Leotychides appeared to be more confident when he discussed the attack on Palermos with the Midolades was because he had a team of hundreds of engineers left behind by the Devers to assist him in attacking the city of Syracuse. When they left Syracuse, they also dismantled as much of the siege equipment used to attack Syracuse as possible and placed them on the cargo ships to be transported over.
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