At the same time, Aearos also noticed that the attack of the defenders at the head of the city was weakening, and it was clear that the Lola warriors defending at the head of the city had never suffered such a siege method, although they still had a slight advantage in the long-range attacks of both sides, with the protection of the battlements, but the increase in the number of wounded also made them feel a lot of pressure.

"The enemy is in a mess!" He said with a smile on his face to Zantiparis, who was also in the rear and observing the enemy.

"It's a good thing to reduce casualties among soldiers and civilians, but the hardest fighting is yet to come." Zantiparis said calmly.

Aearos understood what Zantiparis was talking about in the hardest battle of all—that is, the face-to-face battle after the earth mountain and the walls were closed.

Compared with the bustle of the battlefield in the southern city, it is much quieter outside the western city wall.

First, hundreds of Campanian light infantry, holding the arrowboards made by the Dionian carpenters, came to the front of the trench and opened the brackets behind the shields to provide shelter for the light infantry, while they occasionally fired javelins and arrows from the gaps between the shields to attack the defenders at the head of the city.

As the defenders were restrained, the Onian hoplites pushed out the siege wagons (the engineers of the Dionian Legion instructed the carpenters of Enona and Campania to make these hollow wooden carts out of wood cut down by the soldiers from the mountain forest), just as the soldiers of the Second Legion had done when Davers led his army to storm Rome, and the wooden carts were spliced together in the process of pushing towards the walls until they reached the front of the trench.

Not only were the Allied soldiers amazed, but the defenders at the head of the city were dumbfounded, seeing that the wooden carts were nowhere to be seen, and the rockets fired could not ignite them, while the Dionian soldiers quickly passed sacks of earth in the wagons, and quickly filled in the trenches that were not wide.

Then, one by one, the wooden carts continued to push forward until they reached the city wall, so that two hollow passages formed by siege wagons formed from the city wall to forty meters away were formed, and the soldiers in the rear immediately carried a large log, and the front end of the wood was inlaid with an iron cone-shaped ram, which was passed by the soldiers and reached the city wall, where six soldiers carried it and hit the city wall vigorously.

The hard hammer slammed into the stone wall that had fallen into disrepair, shattering, the mortar falling off, and cracking the stone wall......

The tremors of the walls panicked the defenders at the head of the city, and they intensified their attacks, smashing stones and blocks downward, splashing thin oil and firing rockets......

The craftsmen not only reinforced the entire frame, but also adopted a herringbone structure on the roof, which was easy to unload, and was decorated with bags of water-soaked soil, which were not easy to ignite, so the soldiers could safely hit the city wall inside.

When the battering ram broke through the outer stone wall, revealing the rammed earth inside, the soldiers grabbed pickaxes and shovels and began to remove the stones around the gap, widening the hole in the wall, and then digging out the rammed earth inside......

The defense of the west and south walls alone had already put a lot of pressure on the small number of Lola defenders, not to mention that the coalition forces were also attacking on the east and north sides. In order to defend the city, the Lola people mobilized all the people in the city who could fight, including women, to defend the city.

The fiercest battlefield in Nancheng lasted for half an hour, the Dionian light infantry had so sore arms that they couldn't lift up, their fingers were injured and bleeding from drawing their bows, and the heavy infantry that formed the shield wall were killed and wounded more than 300 people, and the casualties of the people were also not small.

But the turnaround finally came, and Lola's defenders ran out of javelins. In just half an hour, they threw thousands of javelins, plus the javelins they had thrown a few days ago to stop the Dioonians from building a hill of earth, all the javelins in the city had been used up, and the arrows had almost been consumed.

As for the javelin thrown by the Dionian light infantry, it was a specially made spear tip, and the iron rod connecting the spear tip was very thin, and after hitting a hard object, it would be bent and could no longer be thrown and used, but the iron tip at the front end of the javelin could be quickly disassembled, and then a new tip was attached to the wooden pole at the rear end, and it could be used again, but it was obviously impossible for the Lola defenders to do it.

Therefore, the defenders could only throw stones and wood at the opponent, because the Dionian shield wall was ten meters away from the city, too heavy stones could not be thrown, and those that could be thrown were easier to be blocked by long shields, the threat to the Dionian heavy infantry was much smaller, the shield wall could continue to stabilize, and the people could drop dirt bags more quickly.

Seeing that the valley was gradually filling in, and the bags of earth had risen to the feet of the Ionian hoplites, they began to carefully move forward with their shields so that the people who could follow could fill in the depression further ahead.

At this time, Aearos at the foot of the mountain was already gathering the 1,000 Campanian heavy infantry and preparing to replace the army on the top of the mountain.

The trumpets sounded, and the Dionian light infantry quickly withdrew down the hill. According to Zantiparis's plan, Aealos led the Campanian heavy infantry in a dozen columns, opened up the space, and slowly marched up the dirt hill to facilitate the evacuation of the people and the Dionian heavy infantry downward.

The Campanian hoplites, wearing Corinthian helmets and large copper shields, had a narrow field of vision and clumsy movements, and it was difficult for them to climb the mountain, but the gentle slope of the hill did not affect their march too much.

The Dionian hoplites, who formed a shield array on the top of the hill, moved towards the city wall without the assistance of the light infantry, and the more fierce the attack became, and even some Lola warriors simply climbed over the wall over the battlements, jumped onto the almost filled dirt hill, armed with spears, and launched a direct attack on the Dionian hoplites.

In this long period of defending the city, the defenders of Lola have seen it clearly, these Dionian soldiers did not carry spears at all because they held shields in both hands, so the Lola warriors stepped on the uneven dirt bags with one foot deep and one foot shallow, directly knocked away the long shield with their bodies, and even knocked down the enemy, and then stabbed the spear in their hands.

The shield wall formed by two columns of Ionian hoplites was shattered, and as the populace fled in panic, the Ionian officers shouted, "No retreat!" Throw away a long shield and replace it with a short sword!! ……”

In fact, without them shouting, the soldiers were already doing the same, these reserve soldiers from the mountains of Lucania had previously endured the enemy's long-range attack, watching hundreds of their comrades suffer casualties, and the sudden direct attack of the enemy just now caused dozens of casualties...... They are all Lucanians who grew up after the establishment of the Kingdom of Dionia, although the cultural integration of the kingdom has weakened their wildness, but the military training has taught them teamwork and comradeship, with the anger of revenge for their comrades, they are armed with short swords and long shields, and fight with the Lola defenders.

However, the trumpet of Dionya on behalf of the retreat was sounded at this time.

Despite the reluctance of the soldiers, they had to obey orders.

And the Lola warriors did not continue to pursue, for when they saw the "tin cans" coming up, they ran backwards and climbed into the city walls.

On this dirt hill with a width of more than 50 meters, the Campanian heavy infantry slowly approached the defenders at the head of the city, gradually forming a dense formation, and the defenders were separated by a battlement. The trumpets of the attacking army under the city continued to sound, and the Campanian heavy infantry on the dirt hill, led by Aealos, began to engage in a fierce battle with the enemy.

To tell the truth, the Campanias have been at war with the Samonai over the years, and there are few such good opportunities for face-to-face combat, because the Samonai warriors always use javelin throwing first, killing and wounding Campanian soldiers, and then retreating, luring them into pursuit, taking advantage of the weakness of the opponent's slow movement in the retreat, repeatedly attacking with javelins many times, until the opponent's formation is completely confused, and then sending armored infantry to break through and completely defeat the opponent.

This set of tactics has been tried and tested repeatedly, and the successive failures have made the Campanias fearful, so that they do not even dare to go out of the city for field battles, and today finally have a chance to take revenge, and the Campanian soldiers roared loudly, and one by one the bayonets poked at the enemy.

The defenders of Lola, of course, could not adopt the guerrilla tactics that had worked well in the past, but could only meet the enemy head-on, and they had their armored warriors blocked in front of the battlements, followed by light infantry, and formed a dense formation in the aisles of the city to counter the Campanian heavy infantry. In order to be able to contend with the enemy, they also drew some of the defenders of the western wall, because they believed that the battle in the west was relatively calm, and even if the defenders were small, they would be enough to deal with.

But not long after some of the defenders of the western wall were transferred, bad news came out: the western wall had collapsed in two places.

This was all due to the Dionian soldiers in the siege van, who removed the stone walls and rammed earth at the lower end of the city wall, destroyed the foundation of the wall, and caused the already weak wall to collapse due to gravity, and the scattered stones even smashed several Dionian soldiers who had no time to retreat.

The loud "rumbling" and the morning mist that rose into the air not only shocked the Lola defenders, but also made the Campanian soldiers dumbfounded, originally they saw the unique and slow siege method of the Ionian soldiers for so long without any movement, and they couldn't help but feel a little contemptuous in their hearts, feeling that it was both time-consuming and laborious, and even some soldiers said disdainfully: "It is said that the Dioonians are brave in battle, it seems that they are also afraid of death, and only know how to hide in wooden boxes!" ”

And now the tragic fate of the city walls has given them a resounding slap in the face. Of course, they don't know that in the various military camps in the Kingdom of Dionia, not only will the soldiers actually build a section of the city wall in training to exercise their ability to build the city, but they will also train how to break through this section of the city wall in the next training, so the Dionian soldiers are not digging randomly, but destroying the structure of the city wall purposefully and efficiently.

Literature Museum