Why did the lord rebel

Chapter 517: The Battle of Thorn City (Part )

Many times, the course of a battle is completely a chain of cause and effect composed of many accidental events.

Taking the current Battle of Thorn City as an example, Xiahou Yan was in a hurry to fire at the Aurelian Gate because he saw the smoke rising from the west of Thorn City from afar - this meant that the imperial army at the three western gates had begun large-scale exchanges of fire with the federal defenders, and the Frost Maple Ridge armed forces, as a feint attack force, naturally could not stay out of it.

However, the start of the battle at the Western Three Gates on February 11 was actually a pure accident.

The fuse that triggered the battle in the west was precisely the withdrawal of the Wyvern Air Cavalry ordered by General Omar Canyang.

In the past half month, the federal garrison and the imperial army, who were facing each other across the wall inside and outside the Thorn City, had been in a lukewarm stage of mutual probing and harassment. The imperial army was busy building a siege camp, using fences, chevaux de frise and giant catapults to surround the Thorn City, while the federal army was doing everything possible to hinder the imperial army from completing the siege.

Therefore, the interaction between the two sides was limited to the Empire occasionally using catapults to shoot a few packages of surrender documents onto the top of the city walls, while the Federation sent out small groups of Wyvern air cavalry and wolf cavalry every day to sneak attack the Imperial Army craftsmen and destroy some important siege facilities.

During this process, both sides maintained great restraint and no comprehensive, large-scale exchange of fire occurred.

The reason is that everyone knows that siege is a long-term project. There are many sieges in history that lasted for several months or even years. What's more, Thorn City is the number one metropolis on the continent of Haven.

If we reveal all our cards and go all in right at the start of a fight, not only will it be easy to hit a wall, but it will also easily lead to our momentum declining and eventually becoming exhausted. This is really not a wise move.

Even until February of the 997th year of the Imperial Calendar, the Imperial Army had only been steadily advancing the construction of fortifications, without setting an official date to begin the siege:

Although the Empire did not have much time due to financial pressure, the Federation defenders, who had their supply lines cut off and were trapped in an isolated city, were undoubtedly the more anxious party. The Empire's humans could have built fortifications, dug tunnels, and filled up supplies at their leisure, and waited until the city became turbulent due to famine and civil unrest, and then seized the opportunity to launch a large-scale attack.

  Therefore, when the Glorious Federation's Wyvern Air Cavalry destroyed a giant trebuchet of the Imperial Army outside Caligula's Gate in the northwest with a large-scale bombing this morning, General Pickford, the deputy commander of the Imperial Central Army who was in charge of leading the offensive in the direction of Caligula's Gate, did not have any extreme reaction:

Similar daily air raids by the Federation Orcs have been going on for some time. Although those brave Wyvern riders are able to blow up several siege weapons and one or two grain warehouses every day, these air knights will also suffer heavy losses in the subsequent magic and anti-aircraft counterattacks of the Imperial Army.

In any regime on the continent, air cavalry is a priceless treasure. Being able to exchange the air force of the Glorious Federation for a little loss in an air raid is definitely a good deal for the Imperials.

Therefore, General Pickford did not feel sad at all about the loss of the giant catapult. Instead, he waved his hand calmly and transferred the mage corps that had been prepared long ago to the battlefield.

  As the Mage Corps joined the battle, the scene on the battlefield suddenly became pleasing to the eye:

The Federal Air Cavalry, which had completed the dive-bombing mission, had just begun to climb in altitude when the Imperial Magicians' counterattack firepower had already arrived. Ice-blue frost arrows and scarlet flaming fireballs, like fireworks on the St. Augustus Festival, shot towards the wyverns in the sky at the speed of running stars.

After a long war, the Empire's military magicians had already mastered the tricks to deal with the Orc Air Cavalry: although the Federal Air Force had amazing mobility, the wyvern riders were, after all, ordinary orcs with no magic resistance. In addition, due to the load limit of the wyverns, they could not wear heavy armor, so they had almost no ability to fight back against magical attacks.

The task of the imperial magicians was simple. They just had to wait for the moment when the wyverns completed their dive and reached their lowest altitude, and then use the simplest, fastest and longest-range low-level magic, frost arrows and fireballs, to launch intensive shots. This would be enough to knock the proud federal air cavalry down from the clouds like shooting a turkey!

  The Imperial magicians' air defense tactics were indeed surprisingly effective:

In the sky full of magic barrages that almost formed straight lines, the Federation air cavalry who tried to break free from the Empire's firepower network were simply unable to escape the joint attack of the Empire's magicians - against the backdrop of the azure blue sky, four or five two-legged dragons were unfortunately hit by magic, and then fell down with their masters, performing a Haven special version of Black Hawk Down.

This one-sided magical pursuit lasted for a full half minute. The wyvern that survived the anti-aircraft fire finally broke free from the pursuit of the imperial magician and raised its flight altitude to a safe distance.

However, General Pickford and his Imperial air defense forces did not stop there.

The Glorious Federation sent this wyvern air cavalry wing from Thorn City, with a total of nearly 300. Thanks to the high reproduction rate and relatively cheap training cost of wyverns, the size of this air wing alone has far exceeded the injured "Lancaster Air Force Wing" under the command of Grand Duke Rosario. Although the griffins ridden by the Empire's air cavalry far surpassed the wyverns in terms of magic resistance, endurance and combat capabilities, their rarity and high cost are still the Achilles heel that restricts the development of the Empire's air force.

Precisely because the Federation Orcs sent out a large number of wyvern air cavalry, General Pickford knew clearly that the result of shooting down just four or five wyverns would not be enough to cause any damage to this group of air combat heroes from the East.

Based on the experience of the past few days, the wyvern air cavalry who had successfully escaped the Imperial anti-aircraft fire counterattack were about to continue their advance and launch an attack on the second giant catapult in the Imperial camp in the northwest.

So, General Pickford slowly gave orders, requiring the imperial magicians present to continue to be alert to the wyvern air cavalry in the sky, and also to dispatch a large number of anti-aircraft firepower such as heavy crossbows, archers and magicians to the location of the next giant catapult in the north to prepare for the next wave of enemy air strikes in advance.

From a purely tactical perspective, General Pickford's tactics were impeccable. He relied entirely on his extraordinary experience to predict the actions of the Orc Air Cavalry. This was the work of a master who could foresee the situation and cure the disease before it occurred.

  However, General Pickford missed one point:

Today's Federation Wyvern Air Cavalry was not prepared for the next bombing - because they had just received the latest instructions from General Omar Canyang, asking them to stop this suicide bombing operation that caused huge losses.

Therefore, after being blocked by the Imperial magicians, the Wyvern air cavalry did not hesitate to fight and did not even look at the second giant catapult in the north. Instead, they decisively turned their heads and headed southeast towards the Federal Air Force Base in the upper city of Thorn City and began their retreat.

——But this behavior seemed very strange in the eyes of General Pickford, who knew nothing about Omar Canyang’s latest orders.

  General Pickford, who had fought against the orcs for many years, would never believe that this group of fanatical and warlike green-skinned orcs would cowardly retreat prematurely without suffering heavy casualties!

It was because of this mindset that the old imperial general was completely unaware that the federal air cavalry flying south was actually retreating; instead, he made a serious misjudgment of the current situation -

General Pickford mistakenly thought that the wyverns flying southward above his head were turning around to attack the imperial positions on the other side of the Merton Gate in the south!

Among the three imperial camps arranged from north to south west of Thorn City, the Caligula's Gate camp in the northwest under the command of General Pickford is not of high status. The real main attack direction of the imperial people is still the Merton camp in the west, which is located south of Caligula Camp and commanded by Grand Duke Rosario and Marquis Liam.

General Pickford knew that if he watched these Wyverns turn their firepower to bomb the Merton Camp, he would be severely criticized by the military - these Wyverns initially attacked your Caligula Camp, and now they can actually run to the Merton Camp and start a massacre. As the commander of the Caligula Camp, you, Pickford, cannot escape the blame!

Therefore, the somewhat panicked General Pickford, on the one hand, used the newly created magic line to transmit information, urgently notifying the Merton camp that a group of federal air cavalry was heading towards them, and on the other hand, he urgently dispatched the anti-aircraft forces and mobile firepower at hand, trying to intercept those "diverting targets" of the federal air cavalry halfway.

The mobile forces that Pickford urgently allocated included the "Stuka Griffin Regiment", the air force of the Imperial Central Army, which had been in a slump since the death of the dragon knight Baron "Son of the Wind" Wolfgang, and was only hastily rebuilt at the beginning of this year.

The problem lies with these newly trained rookie Griffin Sky Knights.

We know that the Federation's wyverns did not go to bomb the Merton camp as General Pickford had guessed, but returned to Thorn City according to General Canyang's instructions.

Therefore, the troops at the Merton camp, who had learned from General Pickford that the Federation might launch a bombing, held up their staffs, crossbows and longbows, and waited for a long time at the sky. However, they did not see the so-called "Federal Wyverns" at all. Instead, they saw a group of Imperial Griffin Knights from the "Stuka Griffin Regiment" appear in the sky...

As luck would have it, this group of rookie air cavalrymen who had just stepped onto the battlefield were so unfamiliar with the combat procedures that they forgot to send the necessary friendly force identification signals while flying...

As luck would have it, the anti-aircraft troops in the Merton camp who were preparing to guard the "Federation Wyvern" were a little too nervous...

As a result, it was an unknown Imperial magician in the Merton camp who, without thinking twice, swung his staff and fired at his own people in the "Stuka Griffin Regiment".

——Although there is a big difference in appearance between the wyvern and the griffin, when the two types of air cavalry are in the sky, they are indeed just small black shadows to the ground troops, which makes it a bit difficult to distinguish them.

As long as one person failed to distinguish between friend and foe and opened fire on the Stuka Griffin Regiment in the air, the other anti-aircraft firepower in the Merton camp would follow suit: For a moment, countless spells, crossbows, and artillery shells were all fired at the Griffin Knights in the air, beating these unfortunate rookies who had just ridden the Griffin for a few days into a state of panic.

It was not until a griffin was shot down by friendly fire and fell heavily to the ground with its knight that the Imperial Army at the Merton Camp on the ground realized that they had made a mistake and had hit the wrong person.

But the mistake had already been made.

The air cavalry of the "Stuka Griffin Regiment" did not come empty-handed. Each griffin carried a large amount of ammunition, as well as incendiary bombs that they had not had time to replace due to the hasty takeoff.

Under the firepower of the Empire at the Merton Camp, many griffins died tragically in the sky, and the incendiary bombs in their claws and on their bodies fell down...

So, while the anti-aircraft firepower of the Merton camp was busy sniping its own air cavalry, this large-scale siege camp was also turned into a sea of ​​fire by its own incendiary bombs dropped from high altitude.

For a moment, the Griffin Knights in the sky were wailing, the anti-aircraft troops on the ground were fleeing in all directions, and countless soldiers and officers were running to put out the fire...

Everywhere you look, there is killing, death and destruction. Unfortunately, it is all the empire's own people fighting against each other.

Even the real Federation air cavalry retreating towards the Thorn City base camp did not notice the chaos at the Empire Merton Camp until halfway. The alert Federation air cavalry would certainly not miss this great opportunity, and hurriedly turned around and dived on the two-legged dragons, and began a real bombing of the Merton Camp that was in chaos...

Even the federal garrison stationed at Merton Gate spotted the fighter planes and sent long-range firepower and air force reserves to join the battle...

Therefore, when General Siegfried arrived at the top of the Aurelian Gate in the north, panting, the orc veteran was completely confused about the current situation:

In the distance behind him, the Empire's Merton Camp, where there shouldn't have been any exchange of fire, was now rising with thick black smoke and dust. One after another, giant catapults fell to the ground in the raging flames created by bombing and incendiary bombs, making a deafening roar that could be heard from afar.

And in front of him, in the murderous Frost Maple Ridge position outside Aurelian Gate, there was an extremely thick black gun barrel with its head raised, aimed at Aurelian Gate, ready to fire, just like an AR-15 ready to snipe the president.

General Siegfried felt that the world must be crazy.