Marco also wanted to make up for this lack of superiority in numbers, and eventually crush the opponent, but when the casualties approached 2,000, he stopped sending troops into the tunnels.

Amintas also quickly blocked the three tunnels, and the First Legion and the reserve soldiers also paid nearly 500 casualties, but fortunately, the Dionian soldiers won every battle, so they were able to save the wounded soldiers for treatment.

……………………………………

Margo sat in the tent with a straight face, sulking at himself.

The Carthaginians prospered on the trade in precious metals, and many of their citizens were engaged in mining, and the Magonides family was no exception, especially after relocating to southern Iberia, and his army occasionally worked part-time as miners when he was not fighting, so his army was good at digging tunnels, and the reason why he did not do this during the attack on Palagonia was because the town was located at the foot of the mountain, and the ground was too hard to excavate, while Selinus could.

The last time he besieged the city of Selinus, he built an earthen wall to attack through the tunnel, but soon after Hasdruba successfully raided the rear of the south coast, the situation of the battle changed, and he did not have time to implement it, and this time after careful planning and sufficient time, when the tunnel was successfully excavated under the city wall of Selinus, the Dioonians had not yet realized that there were two options at this time: one was to turn to horizontal excavation, hollow out the foundation of the city wall, and then pull out the wooden pillars supporting the tunnel, so that the city wall collapsed and there was a gap; The other is to continue digging forward into the city, and then wait until night, send an army to infiltrate the city through the tunnels, directly attack the Dionians, and occupy the whole city.

Margo chose the latter one, because he thought that this method would be able to deal with the Selinus defenders more quickly and effectively, but he did not expect to be discovered by the Dionians, and finally evolved into this, and from now on, the Dionians will definitely be more vigilant, and it may be difficult to dig tunnels for sneak attacks.

Marco was about to regret it, when a messenger sent by Hasdruba entered the Great Tent and dealt him another blow: Hasdruba tried to attack the Dionian army attacking Palermos, but was ambushed and 4,000 Lusitanian warriors were annihilated.

Margo yelled Hasdruba's name in the tent, calling him too stupid to be a child of House Margonid, forgetting that he had just failed a sneak attack, and terrified the messenger to the side.

After firing, Margo calmed down: Hasdruba's army was blocked and could not rescue Palermus, and the only hope was that Palermos would be able to hold on to himself, but now Palermos did not have many defenders, and its defenses had to be strengthened, but now the land route was not accessible......

Margo thought about it for a while, and decided to send reinforcements to Palermos by sea, which was certainly not possible during the day, it was easy to be discovered, and it could only be at night, which was a bit risky.

Although Margo had just suffered the failure of the tunnel plan, it did not wear out the sharpness in his bones, and he immediately asked his men to gather 3,000 Palermos in the army, and another 1,000 Solus, a total of 4,000 people rushed to Liliba immediately, and asked Themis to find a way to gather the cargo ships in the port and send them to Palermos as soon as possible tonight.

For the past two days, when the soldiers heard that their mother country was under attack, they kept clamoring to go back, which was what they wanted, so they hurried up even in the darkness of the night, and arrived at Liliba in the middle of the night.

However, the sentries at the head of the city of Lillian forbade them to enter the city, because the Sicilian fleet cruised the western seas every day, and sometimes sent the fleet infantry ashore to attack and harass, so that the various Carthaginian and Phoenician city-states were like frightened birds, and they were very cautious, especially when so many soldiers wanted to enter the military town of Liliba in the middle of the night, of course, they had to be very cautious, and the city lord Misheret himself went to the city to strictly check before entering the city.

After the identity was verified and the intention of the army was discovered, it had already taken nearly an hour, and Emitherre hurriedly sent someone to the port to inquire, but it was too late.

It turned out that since the Dionian fleet began to control the western seas, the number of ships coming to Liliba has gradually decreased, and now it has basically disappeared, and some of the owners of Liliba do not want to keep their ships in this blockaded port without profit, and have also found opportunities to flee to Carthage, which makes there are not many ships left in the port, far from enough to carry 4,000 troops at a time (at least 100 large cargo ships are needed), and the only opportunity is the fleet that comes to transport baggage to the Carthaginian army at night.

Although Morbar had successfully organized a large-scale transportation of military rations and baggage to Sicily by using the method of "repairing plank roads in the open and Chen Cang in the dark", he knew very well in his heart that the consumption of 100,000 troops was huge, and it was not enough to rely on a single transportation, and after the Dionian fleet learned its lesson, it would not work to use this method next time, so he came up with another way.

At his suggestion, the Carthaginian Senate adopted a decision: to have the owners of Carthage and the nearby Phoenician city-states, who traded with Sicily all the year round, were familiar with the sea conditions, and had experienced seafaring experience, form three small fleets of several dozen cargo ships, which would take turns to load food and supplies during the day, depart at dusk, and arrive at Lilipa, Mazara, or Erix late at night...... After unloading the cargo, the fleet had to leave the port and return immediately, so as to avoid running into the Dionian ships cruising after dawn.

So the port workers in these cities were resting during the day and on call at night, and the flames of the lighthouses were unusually bright. Of course, if the weather is bad at night, these small fleets will stop transporting.

So far, the fleet has successfully transported several times, and although each time the material transported is not much, it is better than the long stream.

It so happened that the destination of the flotilla this evening was Lilibal, but unfortunately by the time the Emitsare sent his men to the port, the flotilla had already left.

With a sigh, Imisare decided to send men to inform the cities of Mazara and Erlux the morrow morning, and to inform them to help transport the soldiers, regardless of which city's port the Carthaginian fleet would arrive at the next night.

In addition, he had to have both cities sail all the idle cargo ships in the harbor to Lilibal, and gather enough ships to transport all the soldiers to Palermos at once.

After making these decisions and placing the soldiers in the barracks, Misherre finally went back to sleep with peace of mind.

…………………………………

Not long after sending away the reinforcements, Margo received a messenger from Lilipa, who brought an order from the Senate: due to the several attacks of the Phoenician allies in Africa by the Dionian fleet, the Senate decided to transfer the fleet back to defend the coastline of the homeland, and hoped that Margo would speed up the siege and capture the city of Selinus as soon as possible.

After reading this order, Margo became angry again: although there was no result in this period of time since Morbar won that naval victory, the Diovician fleet was still cruising in the western seas, but the Carthaginian fleet was still looming in the western seas, so that the Dionian fleet did not dare to attack the rear of the Carthaginian army on a large scale, and the number of attacks was significantly reduced, so that he could concentrate all his efforts on building the inner and outer walls of the camp and the earth hills, and concentrate his forces to attack the city of Selinus. Now that the fleet had been transferred back to Carthage, the Dionian fleet was able to harass the rear of the army with impunity, forcing Margo to distract himself. Moreover, the defenders of Dionya are well defended, and if the Carthaginian army attacks strongly, even if the city of Selinus is finally taken, the casualties will inevitably be heavy, and how can the intention of a decisive battle with the main force of Dionya be realized!

Margo was extremely suspicious that the Senate's order had been made at the instigation of the Hannos, and while cursing Hanno in his heart, he also decided to ignore this order and attack the city in an orderly manner according to the original plan.

On the second day, the Carthaginian soldiers continued to build the dirt hill, and they had already begun to ram the wooden frame with earth.

The Balearic soldiers on the inner wall kept throwing lead pellets to suppress the long-range attacks of the defenders at the head of Selinus, so that the construction of the earth hill could be carried out in an orderly manner.

While Amintas had the light infantry at the head of the city and the ballista troops moving to the city fully attacking the Carthaginian soldiers who were busy in front of the city in order to sabotage and delay the enemy's efforts to build the mountain, he also had the mountain reconnaissance team soldiers scattered throughout the trenches in the city to listen carefully to the movement of the underground and prevent the other side from digging tunnels again. In addition, he assigned some soldiers to assist the engineering battalion in the construction of wooden walls.

……………………………………

In the evening, the Carthaginian fleet and the cargo ships of Mazara and Erlux arrived at Lilibal as promised, and after carrying 4,000 reinforcements, the more than 100 cargo ships quietly went north, and finally entered the port of Palermos smoothly.

When these soldiers jumped off the boat in excitement and boarded the dock, ready to rush back to their homes first to enjoy the warmth of their wives and children, countless black-armored soldiers appeared in front of them and surrounded them.

The hearts of the reinforcements suddenly fell to the bottom: Palermos had been taken over by the Dionians?!

Here's the fact: Palermos surrendered to the Dionian army.

Why did Leotizides seem more confident when he negotiated with Midorades to attack Palermos, because his team included the hundreds of engineers left by Davers to assist him in attacking the city of Syracuse, and when they left Syracuse by ship, they also dismantled as much as possible the siege equipment used to attack Syracuse, placed them in cargo ships, and transported them together.

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