Chapter 456
When the slaves staggered to the front of the antlers, the soldiers on top of the city wall started firing arrows. Instantly, screams could be heard from below the city wall …
Just when Colombus and his men were about to draw their arrows and javelins again, the slaves below the city wall started shouting, "Don't shoot! I'm Syphonus, the son of Sypakus!"
"I'm Paralus! The neighbor of Ascamas! "
…
The Crotone soldiers were stunned. The people below the city wall were not slaves, but their compatriots who were captured after the previous battle!
"Damn you, Syracuse! You should go to hell, Dionysius! " Ascamas angrily punched the battlement. Blood instantly dyed his fist red. He did not expect Dionysius to ignore the Greek tradition and let the Greek captives be used as human shields during the siege.
At this time, Dionysius, who had already followed the archers up the earthen rampart, looked down at the situation below the city wall with a cold smile on his face. After the previous battle, Syracuse had captured nearly ten thousand captives. After going through threats, beatings, fasting, and other torture, more than two thousand people were willing to pull out the antlers below the city wall and fill up the moat for Syracuse in exchange for the promise that they would not be killed or sold as slaves. Among these two thousand people, there were not only Crotone soldiers, but also a few Siletinians and Triene people. However, there were no Diónia people. On one hand, the Diónia soldiers had the least number of captives, and more than half of them had been exchanged by Diónia. As for the remaining Bruti captives, Dionysius had other uses for them. On the other hand, most of the pure Greeks and Lucanians were stubborn …
Dionysius did not want to think about this annoying little problem. He was proud of the strategy he had used. He wanted to see how the Crotone people would deal with it. For this reason, he ordered the archers not to shoot first. He wanted to preserve their strength and arrows. When the whole army attacked, they would clear the obstacles on top of the city wall for the army.
On top of the city wall, the aide-de-camp asked anxiously, "General, what should we do?!"
Ascamas did not answer immediately. He let the guards bandage his left hand while he looked at the Crotone captives under the pressure of Syracuse. They walked to the moat and threw the soil bags they were carrying into the moat. Then, they turned back to destroy the antlers that the defenders had carefully placed.
Ascamas cursed these traitors in his heart, but he did not dare to order an attack on them because he remembered that the Crotone's former enemy, the Turií, their chief general, Cunogorata, had saved the city by closing the city gate. Although he had saved the city, it resulted in the deaths of some of the citizen soldiers. Not only did the people not forgive him, they not only expelled Cunogorata, but they also harmed his family. Now that he had ordered the Crotone captives to be killed, even if the enemy's attack was repelled, the families of the thousands of dead would hate him in the future. He was afraid that his fate would be worse than Cunogorata's!
Ascamas was not a general who only knew how to fight. To be able to be elected as a general in Crotone, a powerful Greek state with tens of thousands of citizens, his political knowledge was not low. After quickly weighing the pros and cons, he said to his adjutant, "Go to the city hall immediately and tell the council about the situation here. Let them make a decision."
After the adjutant left, Ascamas saw that a small section of the moat was about to be cut off. He could not help but sigh and ordered his men, "Quickly find some ropes and hang them under the city wall. Let them grab them and climb up."
He did not dare to open the city gate, afraid that the Syracuse people would take the opportunity to rush in.
The soldiers hurriedly found ropes and hung them under the city wall. Then, they shouted at their compatriots, "Come here! Grab the ropes and climb up! "
Some of the captives heard this and ran over the filled moat. However, the light infantry of Syracuse immediately fired arrows at them. These weak captives who had never eaten their fill were easily shot down.
The soldiers on the city wall retaliated angrily, but most of them could not hit the Syracuse people who hid behind the barricades. Instead, they accidentally injured their own compatriots.
The captives did not dare to act rashly anymore.
Seeing this, Ascamas had no choice but to give up on trying to save his compatriots.
The Crotone council was obviously not prepared for Syracuse to use the captives to attack the city. The debate was intense, but they could not come to a decision. This gave the people of Syracuse enough time to let the captives fill up a few sections of the moat and clear out the barricades on both sides of the moat.
Ascamas looked on gloomily, but he quickly forced himself to cheer up. If that's the case, then let's fight face to face!
As if they heard Ascamas's inner cry, the captives were chased back and did not appear again.
When Dionysius saw that everything was ready, he proudly gave the order from the high platform, "Attack!"
As soon as he finished speaking, he felt something cold on his face. He reached out and touched it. It was actually water.
It's raining? Dionysius looked up at the sky. The previously clear sky had become gloomy. Although it was only a small raindrop, Dionysius was a little worried. The weight of the siege towers would cause the soil to soften after being soaked in the rain, causing the wheels to sink into the mud and not be able to move.
"Hurry up and attack!" He ordered again.
The bugle sounded.
Stone bullets whizzed past the sky above Ciudad Crotone, and the black mass of enemies slowly surged forward like a tide …
The sound of bugle horns, war drums, shouts, and footsteps mixed together, pounding against the eardrums of the defending soldiers, causing their breathing to quicken.
"It's starting," Ascamas whispered. He picked up the javelin and walked to the battlement.
At this moment, a black dot suddenly swept past the sky above his head, followed by another …
He suddenly widened his eyes and looked up. He heard the soldiers next to him shouting excitedly, "Our ballistae! Our ballistae are finally starting to show their power! … "
"That's not Crotone's ballistae …" Ascamas thought to himself. However, seeing that the soldiers' morale was rising, he did not mind. Instead, he felt lucky. Fortunately, Diónia and Crotone were on the same side!
The Crotone soldiers were excited, but the Syracuse soldiers were anxious, especially Dionysius. He saw with his own eyes that almost all the stone bullets that flew out of the city hit the siege towers not far away.
He heard Fasipesas say, "Diónia also has ballistae." Since he did not see Crotone use it for the past two days, he thought that Diónia did not lend this powerful weapon to Crotone. Instead, they used it to defend against Asprusstom. He did not expect Crotone to hide it until Syracuse attacked the city.
"Cunning Crotone people!" Dionysius cursed. He knew that the enemy's ballistae were aimed at the siege towers, but there was nothing he could do. "Inform our cannoneers to attack the areas inside the city where the ballistae could be!"
Although Dionysius had given the order, he knew that the accuracy of the ballistae was not high. It was too difficult to hit the enemy when they could not see where the enemy's ballistae were. However, the siege troops were already close to the city walls, and the ballistae could no longer attack the walls to avoid accidentally injuring their own people. It was good to make some attempts to disrupt Ciudad Crotone.
In front of the massive siege troops, the enemy only had a dozen ballistae. They could not do much. The key was to take the top of the city wall! Dionysius quickly made a decision. Under his command, hundreds of archers on the rampart began to fire arrows at the top of the city wall, suppressing the enemy's attack on the soldiers below.
The Crotone light infantry on the top of the city wall also began to rain arrows on the enemies approaching the moat.
The Syracuse soldiers crossed the moat and braved the javelins thrown by the Crotone soldiers. They carried the scaling ladders up the city wall. The scaling ladders were specially made by the Crotone people after many sieges. There were two curved iron hooks at the top of the ladders, which could be hooked onto the battlements so that the scaling ladders could not be easily pushed down.
The Crotone soldiers could not push down the scaling ladders quickly, so they could only throw javelins and stones to attack the enemies climbing the walls. They poured oil on them and burned the scaling ladders with fire.
The Syracuse light infantry also came out from behind the armored vehicles and rushed to the bottom of the city wall. They fired arrows at the top of the city wall to reduce the attacks from the defenders.
Syracuse's siege weapons were the slowest. The ones running at the front were wooden carts with canopies. With the help of the people in the carts, they finally reached the filled moat. Under the protection of the canopies, the people in the carts picked up the tools and began to tamp the ground again. They filled the gaps with soil and laid wooden planks to ensure that the heavy siege towers could pass through the moat.
The Diónia's ballistae were concentrated not far behind the western wall. They were spaced apart and surrounded by houses, so it was relatively safe. However, as the ballistae were scattered over a wide area, it was impossible to adjust the trajectory of the ballistae using the same data after calculating the target. There were not that many cannoneers from the Faculty of Mathematics. Therefore, Kurdorod made a suggestion: ten ballistae should bombard the same area or target at the same time to increase the accuracy. After the ballistae were fired, the other ballistae could adjust the shooting data according to the height and speed of the stone projectiles.
This suggestion was approved by the ballistae team. Their main target now was the siege tower that was approaching them.
Kurdorod kept his eyes on the observer who was holding a colorful flag on the city wall. The position he was standing at was the location of the siege tower. He used the flag to indicate the distance between the siege tower and the city wall. Then, the observer pointed the flag to the left and repeated the action twice. The next number was the direction and distance of the stone projectiles fired by Kurdorod.
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