The sound of the horns echoed over the port of Kossoya, and all the horns were blown at the same time. Peace and serenity shattered in the shrill horns, and ominous omens hung over the city. Blacksmiths, sailors, carpenters, men, women, old people and children… all were distracted by the shrill sound of the trumpet.
"what happened?"
The woman who had finally put away her drying clothes before the torrential rain asked her husband in panic.
"problem occurs."
As a member of the city's self-defense force, her husband's face changed suddenly. He grabbed the sword hanging on the wall and was about to walk out the door.
"Russ!"
The woman cried out.
"Close the door! Hide!"
The rumbling sound was like the thunder before the rainstorm, overwhelming the sky. Among these loud noises, there was the sound of roofs being smashed by boulders. Outside the window, it was flickering and dark, and arrows with long tails of fire whizzed past.
"Mom! Mom, I'm scared!"
The little boy with the apple face cries and grabs his mother's clothes.
"Anthony, don't be afraid, don't be afraid."
The little girl who was a few years older than her brother already understood the meaning of the horn sound. Her eyes were red, and she hugged her brother tightly, pressing his head in her arms, preventing him from seeing the rocket outside the window.
"Don't be afraid, don't be afraid..."
A fire bomb [1] thrown into the city by a trebuchet crashed down, the girl raised her head in the scream of her mother, the roof shattered, and the burning projectile stone fell in the dust.
"Sally!!"
"Hold on! Hold on! No one fucking backs out!"
Chief Dawson ran up the wall, hissing.
He watched with horror at the countless fleets that appeared on the sea. The battleship at the forefront was flying a white cross flag. He was one of the former five-port alliance leaders, and now the director of the Free Chamber of Commerce. He knew about ships like a woman was familiar with her own face.
The tonnage of the first warships is more than 600 tons, and the three main ships at the front are likely to reach 1,000 tons.
It was the legendary Holy Court battleship.
Except for a behemoth with thousands of years of savings like the Holy Court, no country has the ability to build such a big ship!
The three-masted and multi-sailed warship broke through the waves on the sea, and the warship was full of heavily armed soldiers.
"What the hell is that?"
After Patriarch Dawson saw the device on the warship, he couldn't help but scolded.
On the front of the Holy Court warships, there were huge machine crossbows, and those organs shone with cold light in the sun. A dozen soldiers turned it, and rockets that were almost equivalent to city-breaking crossbows flew out, with a range far beyond human imagination. The sturdy city walls collapsed one by one between such iron spears, not to mention the ordinary merchant ships whose tonnage was much smaller than that of the Holy Court warships!
"We can't stand it!"
With the rocket scratches on Mrs. Spider's face, she found Patriarch Dawson who was directing the soldiers to counterattack.
"We can't take it!! We... let's surrender!"
Outside the wharf, the pirates of the Walway in the harbor rushed up with their warships, and the large-tonnage merchant ships rushed out with them. The number of the two sides differed by nearly a hundred times, and the flames continued, and the warships burned one after another. The agility of the Pirates of the Walway was meaningless at this time.
The entire sea is densely populated by enemy warships, as many as the ships of the whole world except Legrand are gathered here.
This is an overwhelming contrast in numbers.
The first three Holy See warships with thousands of tonnages were like tiger sharks rushing into the school of fish. Wherever they passed, all the merchant ships of Kossoya were easily knocked over by them. The sea water devoured these merchant ships little by little, and the Legrand sailors on the ship struggled and shouted on the sea, some waved flags, and surrendered with tears and tears for help.
They were greeted by a rain of arrows.
The Volway pirates jumped up from the sea, climbed on the enemy's warships, and roared and fought with hundreds of thousands of enemies. On the deck, the knights in full armor raised their bows and arrows.
One body after another was thrown from the boat, the boat burned, the sea turned red, and it was unclear whether it was fire or blood.
"Surrender! If you don't surrender, the entire Kossoya will die!"
Madame Spider shouted at Dawson and the Mayor.
According to the war practice of this era, if the defending side surrendered without resistance, the victor was not allowed to loot. If the defending side resists desperately, the victor will plunder and even... massacre the city after the city is broken! [2]
A fireball flew over their heads and hit the tower on the city wall.
Patriarch Dawson grabbed Mrs. Spider Spider with one hand, raised his shield with one hand, and blocked the stone that fell from above his head.
"Surrender?! Fuck, these bastards have no intention of making us surrender!"
He dragged Mrs. Spider to a safer place and shouted loudly, pointing to the warship in the harbor.
"They're here to loot! They won't accept surrender at all!"
The mayor's face paled.
After realizing that it was absolutely impossible to resist the attack of such a large army, he hoisted the white flag on the tower.
A boulder knocked down the tower.
They simply do not accept surrender!
…
"Cossoia, the golden city of Legrand."
On the sea, behind many battleships, Count Wilduane on a command ship looked at the city of Kossoa in the firelight, and saw that the tower with the white flag was blown down.
Wilduane is the leader of the Abyss Alliance countries for the Holy Army's maritime transport. He knew very well why this time the Holy Army movement was so enthusiastic about the Alliance of Small Nations in the Abyss. Saying "restore the glory of the Lord" and "cleanse heresy" are nothing but high-sounding excuses.
The reason why the Abyss Alliance is willing to make this effort to transport the Holy Army is because the Legrand merchants have always been a strong competitor of the Abyss Alliance in the trade from the Hopeless Inner Sea of the Abyss. When the Five-Port Alliance had not yet been replaced by the Free Chamber of Commerce, the Five-Port Alliance once relied on the secret support of the Holy Court and almost pushed the Abyss Alliance out of the hopeless inland sea trade. [3]
For this purpose, Wilduane was of course unwilling to accept Kothsoya's surrender.
However, he was slightly taken aback when he saw that Kossoya's flag was shot down.
He is not qualified to do this order.
After thinking about it, Wilduane quickly understood why - of all the troops who arrived here, none of the troops wanted to accept the surrender of Kosthoa.
Fanatics will come from far away because of the instigation of the Holy See and the so-called will of the Lord, but more people are for profit. The Abyss Alliance is eager to fight its rivals, and other countries are also trying to tear a piece of flesh from the Legrand Empire. Landless knights and impoverished peasant serfs sought to make their fortunes by plundering.
No one would accept Kossoya's surrender.
The three main battleships of the Holy Court sailed into the harbor, followed by more ships. The gates of the city were smashed open, and the soldiers scrambled to get off the ships.
"rush ahead!"
The carnival of villains.
…
"Sally!"
The boy Anthony was curled up in the closet of the house, his eyes tightly closed.
The mother hugged the boy and hid in the cupboard, staring at the floor of the room through the gap in the cupboard door. That was her Sally, and her Sally pushed her brother away subconsciously when the fireball fell.
"Sally!"
The boy cried out his sister's name, and the mother put her hand over his mouth.
The wooden door was kicked open, and soldiers in armor and swords rushed in. The pots and jars were thrown on the ground by them and smashed, and all the valuables were scraped clean.
A soldier stepped on the girl's blood on the ground, walked to the cabinet, and pulled it open.
Blood.
There was blood everywhere.
In order to protect his wife, a blacksmith took out a red iron bar from the furnace and inserted it into the enemy's abdomen. Another Holy Army knight from the Abyss Alliance stabbed him in the chest with a backhand knife. A half-year-old boy awkwardly raised a plank to protect his sister, an old blind man hugged his granddaughter tightly...
The war horses trod past, and the world was bloody.
Crazy, crazy, the world is crazy.
The elegant and handsome Patriarch Dawson was clad in ill-fitting armor and fought hard on the street with swords in both hands. He calls all the men of the city hoarsely across the streets:
"Guard Kosthoa! Guard our brothers and sisters! Guard our wives, children, parents!"
"Guard Legrand!"
People are fighting in the streets, and enemies are pouring into the city like sand and sea.
The merchant ships on the pier have already been set ablaze, and the fire burned from the sea into the city walls. For thousands of years, Kossoa, a city where merchant ships were constantly coming and going and gold rushing in the merchant ship's net, was burning in the flames.
In a street full of corpses, a child stood blankly in the center of the street holding a doll.
Dawson passed by in blood. He restrained his horse and shouted to the child, "Hide! Hide!"
The sound of the bowstring being pulled.
The child looked up and saw the arrow sticking out of the throat of the man in the armor talking to her, and she cried. The man fell from the horse, blood gurgled from his throat, he looked at the child, and said vaguely: "...hide...hide..."
In the distance, someone is still shouting:
"Guard Legrand!"
"Guard Kosthoa..."
"Here's what they say: Let those who have recently been hired on meager wages be paid for eternity. Let those who are worn out physically and mentally, go to work and be paid for eternity. What can I say? Misfortune on one side will turn into happiness there, poverty on one side will turn into wealth on the other side... [4]
So tens of thousands of people were armed and flocked here, to Kossoya.
… Now here I am, drowning my feet bare by the slain.
What can I say
They don't even spare women and children! [5]”
The last Kosthoa poet wrote his last words on the wall, dipped in blood and indignation.
The world is crazy.
…
In Kothsoya Bay, on the command ship of the Holy Army of the Sea.
The captain's reception room was renovated magnificently, and the candles on the silver candlesticks were like clouds and mist. High-ranking officers and nobles who participated in the war sat on either side of the long table, and musicians played to the rumble of gunfire.
The storm just passed, everything went well, it was a good weather.
Everyone on both sides of the long table raised their glasses:
"To the Holy Master, cheers!"
"To the glory, cheers!"
cheers! ! !
The author has something to say: [1] Note: The catapult in the Middle Ages was not only used to launch boulders, but also to launch "fireballs", "fire bottles" and "fire pots". In addition, the use of gunpowder in the Middle Ages and other related issues have been discussed in Chapter 41, Chapter 115, and Chapter 116. The relevant bibliography has been released in the above chapters. If you are interested, you can look it up and I will not explain it here. .
[2] "The practice at that time was that if the defending side surrendered without resistance, or surrendered after a little resistance, the victor would not be allowed to loot. plunder." Xu Jin. On looting and its disappearance in modern European war history[J]. Military History Research, 2009(04):62-73.
[3] Wars fought against rivals abound in history. In the Fourth Crusade, Venetian merchants provided sea transport for the Crusaders in part because they wanted to use the Crusades against their rivals.
[4] Address of Pope Urban II Clements
[5] Xu Jin. On looting and its disappearance in modern European war history [J]. Military History Research, 2009(04): 62-73.