Chapter 315: Siege

"Catapult! Load! Load!"

Before Luca arrived at his own camp, the soldiers under his command had already prepared for war in an orderly manner.

The huge "palms" of the twenty catapults were slowly pulled down together, and the busy soldiers transported stones onto the catapults, covered them with kerosene and burned them with torches.

"Fire! Fire!"

“Dongdong…”

Twenty flaming rocks were hurled into the air, trailing long trails of smoke and flying behind the walls of Augusta Travia.

The Bagauda rebels seemed unmoved, although there was chaos behind the city wall, and the screams of women could be heard clearly outside the city. The civilians in the city were fleeing in all directions, they had no idea where to flee to.

"Lujia." Andrew stopped Lujia and said to him, "If we attack the civilians in the city like this, we will suffer huge casualties."

"I just want to make the city a mess!" Luca said disdainfully. "Only in this way can their army's actions be seriously delayed by the crowds of citizens like headless flies. Then we can seize the opportunity to attack the city."

"Infantry! Forward, forward!"

The infantrymen holding the ladders started to set off. They adopted a new and extremely dangerous siege method, which was to have three or four death squad soldiers sitting on the contact between the ladders and the city walls. They were equipped with the heaviest armor in the two legions under Luga. Because it was a battle that was very likely to be a one-way battle, Luga gave them the best food on the way, which even Luga himself could not enjoy. For this time, Luga also tried his best, taking all aspects into consideration, and all served for the siege.

More than twenty ladders were lifted up by the soldiers and placed on the walls of Augusta-Treville.

The fully armed suicide squad soldiers held the ladders tightly in their left hands and daggers in their right hands. The protection provided by their heavy armor was enough for them to abandon their shields.

The moment the ladders met the city wall, the death squad soldiers were met with arrows raining down from all directions. However, the arrows bounced off the heavy plate armor or got stuck in the layers of chain mail. Even the best armor could not protect the absolute safety of the death squad soldiers. There would always be a few unlucky ones who exposed their weaknesses and were pierced by arrows and fell from the ladders. However, other death squad soldiers jumped up onto the chaotic city wall and fell into the crowd, crushing several Bagauda rebels who did not dodge.

The walls of Augusta-Travelles were not very tall, only seven meters high. Such a height was indeed a solid fortress that was beyond the reach of the barbarians who had no siege means. However, in front of the Romans who had siege means, the stone walls seemed so vulnerable.

Every time a stone hit the city wall, it would cause it to shake violently. However, the catapult was not able to throw larger and more powerful stones, so the stones could only make the city wall shake but could not cause any serious damage to it.

“Boom boom boom…”

With the earth-shaking footsteps, the walls of Augusta-Treville were like a dam, instantly hit by the flood. The Bagauda rebels were still resisting stubbornly. They raised the stones they had prepared and threw them from under the wall. The dozens of death squad soldiers relied on their heavy armor to be invulnerable for a while. They waved their short swords in their hands and walked through the crowd like no one was around. They were surrounded by soldiers holding wooden bows and had no power to resist. The most important thing was that this was not the most terrible thing, because there were still a steady stream of soldiers climbing up the wall on the ladders behind the death squad and joining the battle.

"Break the door! Break the door!"

Dozens of crossbows were aimed at the wooden gates of Augusta-Treville.

“Ka-ka-ka…”

After a volley of shots, the flying stone eggs instantly smashed the wooden city gate into pieces.

“Bang!”

The entire city gate was smashed to pieces, wood chips and debris were scattered all over the ground, and corpses were everywhere inside the city gate. They were all killed or injured by the stone eggs that pierced through the wooden gate. Many people were still struggling and twisting in the body parts and pools of blood. It seemed that all this was irreversible.

"Go in! Go in!"

Led by the centurions, teams of centurions brandished their iron swords and rushed into the chaotic Augusta-Treville. On the streets below the city walls, they roared and clashed fiercely with the Bagauda rebels who came forward to stop them.

"Everything is going too smoothly, Luca!" Andrew pointed at the city and said to Luca with a smile as he watched the situation gradually tilt towards Rome. "At this rate, we can have dinner in Augusta-Treville before dark."

"I hope so!" Luca took a deep breath and secretly thought in his heart that he hoped so, because the attacking force was less than a thousand people, and it was enough to make the Bagauda rebels in the city so exhausted and even difficult to resist. So where were their people? This question appeared in Luca's mind. He couldn't help but ask, where did the five thousand people go when they were released? Did they focus on defending the southern part of the city and ignore the northern part? Time passed by minute by minute, whether on the city wall or under the city wall, the resistance of the Bagauda rebels became weaker and weaker. Many rebels were even lifted up and thrown off the city wall by the roaring Roman soldiers. Facing the fierce offensive of the Roman army, they could only struggle to resist without any counterattack.

"Luga, what are you waiting for?" Faced with the favorable situation in front of him, Andrew was eager to try. He was eager to seize the victory and join the siege team.

"Team Two, Forward!"

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Seeing that Luca had obtained permission, the second array of 1,000 people of the Skylark Legion, led by the centurions, trotted all the way and joined the siege team. Logically, they should attack with all their strength and put all the soldiers on the battlefield to defeat the enemy with absolute advantage and gain control of the city as quickly as possible. Obviously, Luca did not do so. He was obviously watching and just invested in the army bit by bit like moving bricks and tiles. Andrew himself took a wait-and-see attitude in the face of a good situation, which made him incomprehensible.

"Luga, why don't you take action?" Andrew asked, "Do you know that this will cause heavy casualties to the attacking army? We could have avoided this."

"Andrew." Luca raised his lance and said to him slowly, "Don't you feel that this is going too smoothly?"

"What do you mean?" Andrew looked at Luca with a puzzled look on his face. Luca didn't say anything, but nodded to the messenger, and then the messenger shouted loudly: "Third team, move forward!"

"Such a large-scale attack will inevitably mobilize the Bagauda rebels throughout the city, but I didn't see any strong reaction from them. No, it must not be like this!" Luga said. At this moment, the third team of soldiers rushed into the city gate, and only loud trumpets were heard in the woods around the city.

"Yes, they are here, that's it!"

Hearing the rough horn, Luca couldn't help but smile, and raised his lance high and shouted to the soldiers on standby: "Prepare for battle! Prepare for battle!"

(End of this chapter)