Crusader Kings: Prisoners of War

In the classical era when there were no firearms such as cannons, there were only a few ways to fight a siege. Either you use a battering ram to break through the wall, or you use a ladder to climb over the wall, or you dig a tunnel through the wall. These are the mainstream ways. Apart from that, you can only rely on siege and use the hawk-eating tactic to exhaust the enemy's food, and then the enemy will naturally surrender.

To be honest, it is difficult to take down a truly strong city in ancient times by force. Most of the time, you can only rely on siege without attacking to wear the enemy to death. The defenders and attackers are not on equal terms, otherwise no one would spend a lot of effort to build a strong city.

Orville now understands Tia's irritability when she besieged the Holy City. This situation would make anyone irritable. The heart of the person who attacked by force is bleeding, and the siege without attacking is afraid of changes if it is delayed. No matter what he does, it will be unpleasant.

After a thorough accounting, he decided to continue the strong attack because he really couldn't delay it. Disturbing news has come from the north.

The main force of the army of the Kingdom of Northumbria in the north was gathering, wanting to confront the sons of Ragnar head-on. King Ella wanted to defeat these pirates in one fell swoop, which obviously overestimated his own strength and underestimated the strength of Ragnar's sons. The result was that the king was captured and executed, and the Kingdom of Northumbria was annexed by the Vikings.

At that time, the only country that England could talk about was the Kingdom of Wessex. Orwell knew that the sign of the Roman Empire was too conspicuous, and he also knew that Ivar the Boneless was not a fool. It was very likely that he would propose to divide the territory with the Kingdom of Wessex, and then Orwell would be at risk of being besieged. He did not want to face the cities of Wessex, the Frankish cavalry and the Viking longships at the same time. If that happened, he might have to withdraw in disgrace, which would destroy the dignity of him and the Flavian royal family, which was unacceptable.

However, it was not all bad news that reached Orwell. Almost a month after the siege began, another force joined the war against the Anglo-Saxons.

After returning to her own territory, Boudica fulfilled her promise first and organized a large army, heading east from Wales and south to Winchester. Due to the rush of time, Boudica could not organize too many warriors at one time, and she also knew that too many people would be a burden, so she only selected three to five thousand people from the best, and the combat effectiveness of these people should be barely usable.

Orwell did not expect these barbarians to play any role. It was enough to strengthen their momentum and serve as labor. The battle still had to rely on their own elites.

So far, England has completely become a hot land. Everyone is fighting here. Each force has its own special interests, and the strength of each force is not particularly weak. They are either local snakes or strong dragons. The situation has gradually become more chaotic.

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Owell would organize a team to attack every few days, but this time he did not attack the gap that had been made. Instead, he found another place and started to smash it with a trebuchet. After breaking the frame, he pulled the siege hammer up and hit it until the wall was knocked down.

After opening the gap, he would not try to invade the city from the gap, but immediately shifted his spearhead to create another gap, constantly creating new wounds on the long wall.

His intention was very obvious at this time: since one gap could not be rushed in, he might as well open a few more gaps to fight on multiple fronts. Orwell's troops were relatively abundant and were not afraid of doing so.

The Wessex people were not slow to react. They could easily see the other party's intentions, but there was no way to stop them because they did not have the ability to destroy the siege hammer and lacked the force to effectively kill Orwell's guards.

Sending talents to kill the guards seems feasible, but in fact, the risk is very high. Orville also has talents with strong combat effectiveness, and the number is still three to two. If you show up rashly, you may suffer. Orville did not send people down to keep an eye on the talents of Wessex and wait for the opportunity to decapitate. Once the Wessex people lose any more talents, the battle will be more difficult to fight. Obviously, the other party does not want to take the risk now.

In this case, Wessex has lost the initiative and can only respond to the moves.

The two sides are still conducting high-intensity small-scale games openly and secretly as before. Overall, they have won and lost, but the wounds on the city wall are indeed increasing day by day. The siege lasted for about half a month, and the city wall was smashed with seven or eight relatively weak small wounds.

At this time, Orville found Astolfo, who had been watching the show, and wanted to chat with him.

He is not wearing armor now, but a more decent robe and gown, which is a more relaxed home dress. He was not nervous or angry at all, as if he was just treating this war as a knight's adventure, and he didn't care about winning or losing.

Orville couldn't help but be curious: "I am attacking your hometown now, won't you be angry and upset about it?"

"I see that your military discipline is pretty good. There is basically no burning, killing and looting. Since civilians are not persecuted, I don't have a good reason to resent you. You don't seem to understand the purpose of my coming here. I came here to do justice, not to fight. After I came here, I found that I was not really needed here. Instead, my compatriots did some shameful things. They were not friendly to the indigenous people here."

Orville really judged others by himself, because he was a general and a politician and had to speculate on others with this kind of thinking, but in fact there were many people who did not want to live like this, such as Jeanne Dacre and Astolfo now.

With a self-deprecating smile, he continued to ask the other party: "In your opinion, what will be the outcome of this war?"

"I don't know, and I don't care, but if you force me to say it, I actually think you will win, because you also know that your Roman army is much stronger than the Kingdom of Wessex. It should be logical that the strong will win in the end. That's all.

You asked so many questions, so I'll ask you a question in return. I heard that you are from Palphi. I have heard from some missionaries in the Kingdom of Frank that Palphi executed a powerful prophet decades ago. Is this true or false?"

Astolfo didn't care much about political gains and losses. Instead, he began to ask about prophets and the chosen ones. In his opinion, these legendary stories are the most interesting things.