As the horn sounded, Castel's coalition forces began to move slowly.
Looking from the hills, the mighty coalition army was divided into five military formations by Baron Angus, and marched towards the rebel camp in a "2+3" T-shaped formation.
The coalition's formation was not as good as Charlotte had imagined. It was even worse than the medieval military formations she had seen in movies and TV shows in her previous life. From a distance, it looked like five huge, slowly moving gray-black rectangles that were constantly deforming. At most, they could just barely be identified as a military formation.
If the nobles at the front of the army had not maintained a relatively neat formation, Charlotte really doubted that such a large army might have become chaotic as it marched.
But there was nothing that could be done about it. Castel's coalition forces were not well-trained and standing troops. In the final analysis, they were just a group of nobles, nobles' private soldiers, and conscripted peasants gathered from all over the place.
Maybe many conscripts were still doing farm work in the fields or hunting in the woods three months ago, and their training time was only a little over a month at most. To have such discipline and execution now, we have to admire the efficiency of the northern nobles and the ability of Baron Angus.
Of course, even so, the sense of crisis of the approaching army still enveloped the entire rebel camp. Relying on the excellent eyesight of the vampires, Charlotte could clearly see that after Castel's horn sounded, the soldiers in the rebel camp quickly took action.
Archers rushed onto the wooden walls and high towers. The crossbows and small stone-shooting cannons on the watchtowers moved slowly under the operation of the soldiers, aiming the crossbows and cannons at the distant army. More soldiers poured out of the tents, forming battle formations and gathering under the orders of the mounted nobles.
After being stationed there for two or three months, the rebels have turned the camp into a sizable fortress. Even Charlotte had to praise the rebels' efficiency.
In this different world where extraordinary powers exist, the efficiency of many things cannot be compared with that of Blue Star in a similar era in the previous life.
Not to mention that after communicating with the local villagers, Charlotte learned that the camp where the rebels were stationed was originally a town with walls, and now it has been further transformed by the rebels on the original basis.
The coalition forces moved slowly, like an approaching wave.
The vanguard troops stopped when they were about 500 meters away from the rebel camp.
A slightly low horn sounded on the battlefield, and Charlotte saw the nobles leading the two frontmost army formations taking action. They raised their swords and gave orders, while the soldiers in the army formations moved to both sides, and black gun barrels were pushed out by the soldiers.
Those were stone-throwing cannons, also a powerful weapon for siege in the Miria world. Even though they were facing only a temporarily reinforced wooden fortress, the coalition forces still brought these firearms over, a total of twenty.
The main providers of stone-throwing cannons were the Charlotte Territory and the Len-Castell family; smaller noble families could not afford such siege weapons.
As an early artillery, its barrel was relatively short and was usually cast from bronze or iron, and sometimes made of copper and brass. Castel's stone-throwing cannon was about 5 meters long, with a caliber of 500 mm, and fired stone shells weighing 700 pounds.
The firing accuracy of these stone cannons was not high, and the initial velocity was also extremely low. In order to improve the effectiveness of the cannons, the cannon bodies were engraved with corresponding magic inscriptions. After adjustment, the effective range could generally reach 500 meters, which greatly exceeded the range of bows and crossbows, and even far exceeded the range of low-level mages that was less than 100 meters.
The stone bullets they fire are not entirely stone bullets. Depending on the situation, the bullet bodies will also have inscriptions. Especially in the first few rounds of firing, they usually use expensive enchanted stone bullets with additional magic-breaking effects to destroy extraordinary powers.
Seeing the artillery being pushed out, the rebel soldiers obviously became agitated, but were quickly suppressed by the officers.
There was another low horn sound, and white smoke burst out from the muzzles of the twenty stone-throwing cannons on the battlefield. After a few seconds, Charlotte heard the rumbling sound of cannons coming from here.
With a series of loud noises, stone bullets fell into the rebel camp, and translucent ripples appeared around the camp, like flowing water.
That's the mage's shield.
The flowing shield blocked all the stone bullets, which seemed to have hit a sticky corrosive liquid. Their speed first decreased rapidly, and then the bullet bodies glowed with a fiery red light and melted like snowflakes.
However, one round of shelling is clearly not the end.
Three minutes after the first round of stone bullets was blocked, the second round of artillery fire began.
The low-level wizard's shield was obviously not enough to compete with the stone bullets with the magic-breaking effect. After weakening more than a dozen stone bullets, the translucent shield almost reached its limit and shattered.
However, because the walls of the rebel camp were not high, most of the stone bullets did not hit the walls directly, but flew over them at a low altitude and smashed into the camp like meteorites.
Most of the stone bullets missed their targets, but two hit their targets. One shattered a tent, while the other hit a watchtower and pierced through its turret.
But that’s all.
Miriah's current artillery is still too weak.
Although the stone bullets with the magic-breaking effect can severely damage the caster's defense, they can only kill by relying on kinetic energy and do not have the explosive effect of Blue Star's later artillery.
But pure kinetic energy plus the magic-breaking special effect is already the strongest force on the battlefield to restrain spellcasters.
Six minutes later, the third round of shelling began.
This time, the rebel spellcasters obviously did not have enough time to rebuild a large spell shield, and the meteorite-like stone bullets encountered almost no resistance and smashed into the camp.
Charlotte saw that after this round of shelling, two more tents in the rebel camp were destroyed.
In addition, several stone bullets fell into the rebel troops assembled in the camp. The soldiers who were hit were shattered to pieces, along with their armor, and could not be found on the spot. The stone bullets that fell to the ground bounced several times due to inertia, causing further casualties among the rebels and causing commotion and panic.
However, this was not the greatest achievement of the battle. The greatest achievement was that a stone bullet finally hit the wall of the village. However, the wooden wall was obviously unable to compete with the artillery after losing its magical protection, and a hole was directly torn in it.
This caused further confusion among the rebels.
The rebels reacted faster than Charlotte had imagined. After a gap was made in the village wall, soldiers carrying large shields quickly rushed over to further strengthen the defense.
A few minutes later, the fourth round of shelling began.
After the calibration of the previous three artillery attacks, the accuracy of the stone bullets became more accurate this time, and a total of five stone bullets hit the village wall.
Although two of them were blocked by the magic of those who were suspected to have entered the realm, three of them still hit the wall of the village, creating three more gaps after the first one.
On the front battlefield, the walls of the rebel camp were already crumbling.
“Woo!”
A horn sounded, much louder than the previous one.
This is the order for the soldiers to attack.
Castel's coalition army began to move again. The nobles and elite private soldiers at the front raised their shields, and the peasant soldiers at the back picked up ladders and rushed towards the rebel camp...