1444, Byzantium Resurrects

Chapter 59: Battle of Tobruk
On August 1448, 8, Mansur, the son of Mamluk Sultan Chakmak, led his army to the city of Tobruk.

Isaac, fully clothed in armor, stood on the city wall.

Mansur rode a tall horse and came to the city wall with a proud look under the escort of his personal guards.

Isaac ordered his men to shoot arrows to stop him from moving forward.

"Enemy commander, come out and speak!"

Mansur looked stern and ordered a loud-voiced soldier beside him to shout in Greek.

Isaac was confused.

What, do you think you are Saladin?
The soldiers nearby looked at Isaac.

Well, this cannot be avoided.

Isaac raised his head from the battlement, escorted by several Guardsmen holding large shields.

"I am Isaac Palaiologos, Prince of Rome, Grand Duke of Soult, Master of Cyrenaica."

"I don't care who you are, you can't afford the price of angering the Mamluks!"

Mansoor screamed wildly.

"Even the Mongols were defeated by the brave Mamluks, so what are you?"

Isaac waved his hand and summoned the sharpshooter Hakan.

"Shoot him."

Hakan bent his bow and shot an arrow, which was like a meteor, streaking through the air and landing in front of Mansur's horse's hooves, stirring up dust.

Mansur was about to speak again when the frightened horse raised its hooves and he lost his balance and fell heavily off the horse.

The personal guards beside him quickly helped Mansur up, mounted the spare horse, and rode back to the camp, cursing all the way.

Isaac looked at him and thought it was a pity.

These two idiots have probably never commanded a war of this magnitude alone and treat war as a joke.

No wonder he was overthrown by Prime Minister Ashrev after only a few months as Sultan.

The Mongols don't even think about whether they have the wisdom and bravery of Baibars.

After this farce ended, the enemy began to attack.

The enemy was obviously still affected by Isaac's strategy of clearing the countryside and was unable to carry large artillery and catapults.

With only weapons such as small ballistas and catapults, Mansur would never be able to capture Tobruk.

The Mamluk army could not find any civilian laborers nearby and could only try to charge on their own.

Amid shouts to Allah, countless fanatical jihadists rushed towards the city walls from several directions, some carrying ladders, some carrying sandbags, paying no attention to the arrows and boulders flying over their heads.

They were like angry beasts, even if half of their cheeks were cut off by stones, they still carried the sandbags and ladders forward to pass them on to the brothers who came later.

This is what a Muslim is, tenacious and strong, ignorant and pious.

Mansur apparently failed to figure out the details of the defenders in the city. He kept the elite Mamluks firmly in his hands and sent out the mujahideen and tribesmen as the first wave of attack to test the enemy's strength.

The battle lasted from morning till early morning, and the Mamluk mujahideen suffered heavy casualties, but were unable to reach the city walls.

Mansur bit his lip tightly and ordered his troops to withdraw.

No matter how stupid he was, he had already discovered that the Christians were numerous and well-trained. Although they also did not have large defensive weapons, they were occupying a high city and were obviously not easy to attack.

He was not worried about the casualties among the jihadists, as there were plenty of them in Cairo and Alexandria.

He was worried whether he could successfully capture Tobruk before Prime Minister Ashriver arrived with his current military strength.

If I really wait until then, my prestige, which is already limited, will probably become even dimmer.

Mansur returned to the camp and sat alone, not knowing what to do.

In the following days, the Mamluks did not continue the suicidal siege of the first day. From time to time, they marched forward in small groups, and ran back in disgrace when faced with rain of arrows and stones, hoping to tire out the defenders in the city.

Isaac divided several troops in the city into three groups, rotating them every eight hours, while the other troops rested, causing Mansur's strategy to fail to achieve the expected effect.

In fact, with the military strength in Tobruk, it would be impossible to break through by force without 20,000 troops.

As time passed, the defenders did not run out of food and water, they were not exhausted, and they did not run out of arrows and stones.

Whenever the enemy troops outside the city started to eat, Isaac would always order the soldiers to carry the big pot of cooking mutton to the city wall, and have a few soldiers with loud voices deliberately talk and laugh loudly, sprinkle a lot of spices on it, and perform for the Mamluks outside the city.

The soldiers outside the city looked at the dry food and dried meat in their hands, and immediately refused to work and demanded that Mansur withdraw his troops.

Mansur had no choice but to give out gold in large amounts to appease the soldiers.

The naive prince had hoped that the elite warriors of the Royal Mamluks could help suppress the riots among the soldiers, but he did not expect that they were the ones causing the most trouble.

On August 1448, 8, Mansur had besieged the city for ten days, but not a single tile was taken down.

Sultan Chakmak, who was far away in Cairo, could no longer sit still.

You have to know that 50,000 ducats only bought the right to use the Venetian fleet, and the daily wages and maintenance costs had to be borne by the Mamluks themselves.

These Venetian captains saw the Mamluk Sultan's predicament and deliberately raised wages, and went on strike at the slightest dissatisfaction.

Every day of delay means a little more emptiness in the treasury.

Faced with this situation, Chakmak could no longer suppress the opposition and agreed to send a second batch of troops.

On August 1448, 8, Prime Minister Ashriver officially marched to Tobruk with 25 elite local troops and some artillery.

As expected, as soon as Ashriver arrived at the siege camp, he immediately seized Mansur's military power, opened the treasury, and won over the army.

The siege generals had long been very dissatisfied with Mansur, and when the prime minister arrived, they changed their strategy without hesitation.

Mansur had no way to deal with the disunited generals.

On August 1448, 8, the long-awaited sound of artillery fire resounded throughout Tobruk, marking the beginning of the second phase of the siege.

Prime Minister Ashriver is a veteran and experienced man who is no match for Mansur, a useless person.

Ashriver divided his soldiers into several attacking fronts. He first fired the artillery he brought at a point on the city wall, and then sent out the attacking fronts to take turns.

The Mamluk attack vanguard once climbed to the top of the city wall, but unfortunately there was no successor and they were divided and annihilated by Isaac's reserve troops.

After several days of fighting, both sides basically figured out each other's fighting style, and the war began to turn into a consumption of blood and flesh.

Late at night, Ashriver sat in the tent, looking at the map and writing and drawing with his hands.

Son Aslan pushed open the tent and handed over today's casualty report.

"Any news about the Slaves Legion of the Paleologian family?"

Ashriver asked.

Aslan shook his head.

"Since the siege of Tobruk began, there has been no news from this Red Reaper. There have been sporadic looting incidents in the area, but they are probably just tribes taking advantage of the situation to rob."

"Have you contacted Yusuf and the resistance in Barqa?"

Aslan shook his head again.

"Yusuf refused to come out of the city to fight and drove our messenger away."

"As for the place..."

Anger flashed in Aslan's eyes.

"The entire Green Mountain region was almost completely looted, and a large number of people were driven westward, leaving little resistance."

Ashriver was silent.

"Ata, you..."

"I've told you so many times that you have to be called by your position in the military!"

"Yes, General."

Aslan lowered his eyes.

"Tell them to prepare for the general attack tomorrow."

"Spread out the rangers and report immediately if there is any movement from the Slaves Legion." "Yes!"

Aslan bowed and left.

Ashriver had no desire at all to launch a general attack now.

Since the siege, he had figured out the enemy's battle order. Only the Slaves Legion, known as the "Red Death," remained a mystery.

Since the Slaves Legion had been looting in the form of centuries, even they themselves were not sure how many people they had.

Some say one thousand, some say two thousand, and some say five thousand.

The last time he captured a Slaves soldier, he asked for a hundred thousand, which made Ashriver so angry that he beat him to death with a stick.

This mysterious legion is the biggest variable in this battle.

Ashlifer's heart was filled with emotion as he read the urgent letter from Cairo.

The money spent on this war has far exceeded the budget, and the Venetians' greed is endless. They have already launched strikes several times, demanding pay raises.

If we delay any further, there may be problems with food and water supplies.

Their own siege troops also suffered heavy losses. Several waves of jihadists had already arrived here by boat from Mersa Matruh and were buried in the wilderness.

The Ulemas were very dissatisfied with this, and he had to consider these factors.

On September 1448, 9, the trumpets of both sides sounded the prelude to the siege. For the defenders in the city, it was still an ordinary day.

The enemy's artillery fire was more powerful, and their arrows and stones were more frequent. I guess they were also very anxious.

This is nothing, it has happened before.

On the western section of the city wall, the soldiers defending the city lay obediently behind the city wall, waiting for the end of the first round of shelling.

They were already accustomed to this type of attack by the enemy and even had the energy to make jokes about it.

Some of them came from Count Adnan's vassal army, and some came from the Purple Guards, and together they formed the defensive sequence of the western section of the city wall.

In recent days, the enemy's firepower has become increasingly fierce, but the offensive against the city has become increasingly weak.

Some veterans pointed out that the enemy was almost unable to hold on.

Sure enough, everything is the same as before.

After the artillery fire ended, groups of enemy troops attacked the city walls under the cover of shields and siege vehicles.

"Cheer up! Get ready with the hot oil and rolling stones!"

The captains of each team shouted.

These things are quite effective against individual soldiers climbing ladders with shields, but they are not as effective against siege vehicles covered with special cowhide.

Because the defenders lacked large defensive weapons, it was difficult to cause damage to the Mamluk siege vehicles.

The enemy's attack today was particularly fierce, pouring towards the city wall from all directions, wave after wave.

Count Mikhail led the First Guards Corps and rushed to the city walls to put out fires.

Generally speaking, things are going pretty well.

This made Isaac a little confused.

A siege of this intensity would cause heavy casualties on both sides, but the losses of the attacking side would certainly far exceed those of the defending side.

Is this preparation for a decisive battle?

What is the other side's confidence?
"It's time to get them started!"

Ashriver looked at the fiercely fought city wall from afar, searching for a weak point.

"From the west section!"

On the western section of the wall, the battle situation was tense but still under control.

The soldiers skillfully responded to every enemy attack and used different weapons to deal with different enemies.

If the enemy holds up a shield, use stones; if the enemy climbs a ladder, use crossbows.

"The enemy's siege vehicles are coming! Switch to rockets!"

The archers stepped forward and shot at the enemy siege vehicles with arrows lit on fire basins.

The arrows landed on the siege vehicle, and the flames flickered a few times, getting smaller and smaller until they went out.

"It's a specially treated siege vehicle. Change to a war hammer and a halberd! Get ready to fight the enemy!"

This siege vehicle is coated with special material and is not easy to burn.

The siege vehicle was getting closer and closer, and the twitching of the enemy's beards was clearly visible on their ferocious faces.

"kill!"

The two armies collided.

As soon as they came into contact with the enemy, the defenders immediately realized something was wrong.

Although the enemy was dressed in tribal clothes, they were clad in iron armor, armed with sharp blades, and were well-trained.

"It's the Mamluks!"

Ashriver looked at the Mamluks' victory after victory and a smile appeared on his face.

This was his strategy, to first use the tribesmen and local private armies to launch a full-scale attack, to confuse the enemy's thinking and to tie up the enemy's reserve forces.

Then, the elite Mamluks were ordered to change into the clothes of the tribesmen in order to paralyze the enemy's nerves.

In this way, at the moment of battle, the besiegers can gain a momentary advantage, and can gradually expand the advantage, snowballing into victory.

Isaac saw that the western section of the city wall was in danger and thought to himself that it was bad.

He no longer had many available reserves.

Turning around to look around, the enemy troops attacking the city discovered the victory of the western section of the city wall, and they desperately tried to hold back the defenders to prevent them from returning for reinforcements.

"Guards, follow me!"

Isaac drew his sword and rushed to the western wall with his own guard of three hundred men.

This guard has just been formed and has never experienced a major war, so its combat effectiveness is questionable.

Other commanders liked to select the best from the rest of the troops into their personal guards, but Isaac was different.

He always assigned his personal guards to various troops as middle-level officers to strengthen his control over the troops.

In Isaac's opinion, since he would not go into battle to kill the enemy, there was no need for his personal guards to be too elite.

Looking back now, this was indeed a major mistake.

There’s no other choice but to grit your teeth and do it!

Isaac looked toward the sky to the south.

……

South of Tobruk, a sparsely populated valley.

Corps Commander Erdosh and Corps Slaves are stationed here.

When Yaroslav and Count Adnan were planning to clear the countryside, they deliberately left this water source surrounded by no-man's land as a backup.

The enemy scouts saw that there was ruins all around and would not continue to spy down.

Any tribesmen who occasionally strayed in were captured to prevent the news from leaking out.

Report on the horse.

"Captain! Early this morning, the enemy forces besieging the city launched a full-scale attack, and almost all the people left behind are wounded!"

"After investigation, we found that all their cavalry are located in the direction of Green Mountain. There are very few in the south, so there is no need to worry."

Come to think of it, who would care about a destroyed uninhabited area?
"Commander, please give the order!"

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(End of this chapter)