When the Saint comes, she does not collect food

Chapter 874 Position
After inspecting the battlefield, Grand Commander Emeric felt his scalp tingling.

Ladanburg is surrounded by a semi-circular valley. On one side is the winding but barely straight Nauan River, and on the other side is a semi-circular descending mountain range.

Where the mountains with a descending gradient meet the plains, a stretch of hills stretching for seven or eight miles is formed.

The passage between the river and the hills was only about two miles wide enough for a large group of cavalry to pass through.

As for the hilly areas, there are breastwork defense lines with thousands of people.

Breast walls were built along the ridgeline of the hill. Since there was no time to transport mortar, oak boards and rammed earth wall cores were used.

On the upper edge of the breastwork, the shooting holes were alternately distributed in a serrated pattern, the holy guns were extended, and the spears were swaying in the air, reflecting the dazzling sunlight.

There are natural slopes formed by hills in front of the breastwork, which makes it convenient for the Holy Gunners to shoot.

They even dug a trench one person deep under the breastwork to prevent the infantry from attacking in groups.

As for the gaps between the breast walls, they were blocked with stakes.

The monks of the Holy League had specially wrapped a lot of vines and branches on it, so if a knight with poor eyesight charged and bumped into it, it would be a big problem.

Horn brought several thousand Crusaders with him, and that was not for nothing.

These crusaders usually maintain law and order in the countryside and serve as militia reserves.

They are not very good at fighting, but they are quite good at digging.

It is estimated that Besser himself did not expect that his first task as Horn's staff monk would be to supervise the construction of the Crusader Army's positions.

"Devil! Devils! Evil spirits! Pagans! Heretics!" When Archpriest Wenceslas arrived at the scene and observed the battlefield, he could not help but curse continuously.

The Grand Commander calmed down at this moment. "The one in charge of the scouts is Knight Stentok, right? Where are the others?"

Soon, the flag captain, Stentok, came galloping over, dismounted from his horse, and bowed to the grand commander.

"Have you explored the terrain nearby? What's going on?"

Stenstock took out a map he got from Gravel Plain, but it had a lot more detailed markings.

But Grand Commander Emeric refused to take the map and only asked, "Do you see the obstacle on that hill?"

"I saw it."

"Can we climb up from the outside, like attack them from the rear at night?"

Stentok considered it for a while, and finally said: "We did find a smuggling route through the mountains, but I don't know if the people in Qianhe Valley know about it."

"Since it was used for smuggling, it means they didn't know about it. If they knew, they would have allowed it to exist until now." The head priest shouted impatiently.

After a brief exchange of ideas, Emeric made a decision: "Stentok, call your knight commander and try it at night. Lord Cosme will be on standby at any time to cooperate with the captain of the Stentok flag in the attack."

In the afternoon, they were stuck in front of the hill defense line. After organizing several feint attacks, the Border Knights were forced to set up camp.

Archpriest Wenceslas did not sleep the whole night, waiting for good news from Stentok.

At about five o'clock in the morning, the priest heard the sound of hurried horse hooves.

He immediately wrapped himself in a blanket, lifted the door curtain and walked out, just in time to see Cosme dismounting.

"What's the matter?" Wenceslas asked impatiently.

"It was a trap. They placed rolling stones, shotguns, and glowstone lamps on the mountain road. Nearly 600 soldiers were captured, including 132 knights."

"You son of a bitch!" Archpriest Wenceslas was so angry that he had forgotten his duties as a priest. "You've always been a coward. If you have the guts, come out and try it."

It is not impossible to capture this position head-on by attempting a surprise attack at night.

This line of defense consists of a thousand people, and their vanguard alone has eight thousand people. This line of defense only has a few cannons, so they are naturally not afraid.

The problem is that it’s not cost-effective.

How many brave knights would it take to attack such a position?

Even if they traded one for one with this group of soldiers, they would still be at a loss.

You can just go around it. There's a nail nailed in this gap of less than one kilometer, which keeps harassing the logistics. Isn't that disgusting?

After explaining the situation to Wenceslas, Cosme scratched his head and said, "Now it seems that we can only ask the knights to dismount and attack." The Border Knights do not have the bad habits of the Imperial Knights. It's not that they can't dismount and fight on foot, but it's more disadvantageous to do so.

If we asked them to ignore this line of defense and go directly through the passage less than one kilometer long, everyone would feel uneasy.

"This is the only way. Let's go inform His Excellency the Grand Commander."

On the morning of that day, the hill defense line was caught in the continuous sound of gunfire and shouts of killing.

Wearing double-layer armor and holding a large shield as tall as a person, hundreds of knights launched dozens of rounds of non-stop attacks on the towering defense line every day.

It must be said that the morale and endurance of these border knights are much stronger than those of the Inland Empire Knights.

They would start intermittent attacks at around six o'clock every day and would not stop until around five in the evening.

During the battle between the two sides, the border knights actually caused considerable casualties to these elite guards.

However, despite this, these more than a thousand monks still relied on these two breastwork positions to keep the border knights in place for two full days.

Not until the soldiers and infantry arrived did the thousand-man Holy Alliance army retreat leisurely along the mountain road.

The border knights wanted to give chase, but the mountain roads were too rugged and they had no experience in marching on mountain roads, and their horses could not fly. They could only watch the guards disappear into the valley.

However, the three giants of the Knights Templar did not feel much joy of victory.

Although they captured this position, they also suffered nearly a thousand casualties (including more than 600 people who were captured and killed on the mountain road).

It can only be considered a pyrrhic victory.

After being delayed in front of the position for three days, we were finally able to move forward.

Finally, on June 1st, a total of 19,000 troops of the Border Knights arrived near Ladenburg.

Although it took only a little over a week to travel from Xiongjian Castle to Laden Castle, the three great Knights felt that the journey was unusually long.

The first thing the three giants did when they arrived at Laden Castle was to climb up the nearby hills to observe the entire future battlefield.

The morning mist rose from the surface of the Nauan River, covering the valley like a shallow bowl filled with goat's milk wine.

In the distance, the towering Hematite Mountains reach high into the sky. Compared with them, Laden Castle looks like a small house only one meter tall.

But when the morning mist dissipated a little and the June sunshine fell on the swaying green grass leaves, the three great knights who were originally climbing along the mountain were all stunned.

The grasslands and villages that were originally near Ladenburg have now been completely destroyed.

Instead, there are dense fortifications and wooden arrow towers.

With the main castle of the Knights of Ladenburg as the core, a circle of high walls and rammed earth triangular castles were erected on the periphery, and dozens of light and heavy clockwork cannons were mounted on the artillery forts.

Just from the perspective of the Grand Commander and his two companions, they could see twelve clockwork cannons installed on four triangular forts.

Outside the triangular fort was the earthen fence that the knights had seen in Xialu City.

Outside the fence was the breastwork they had seen before, and in front of the breastwork was a double trench.

The zigzag trench, with spikes and breastworks, winds and twists like the mythical Minotaur's maze.

On the outer layer, there are intermittent shallow pits and traps covered with grass.

This is not used to hinder the knights, but to hinder the advance of infantry and shield carts.

Of course, due to time constraints, although the outpost defense line bought some time for Ladenburg, fortifications were only built in one direction.

That is, these defense lines are only on the north side of Ladenburg, but not on the east and south sides.

But the problem is that even without the defense line, they still can't get through.

Previous floods had already inundated the low eastern depression, and the collapse of the Inossen Dam caused the Nauan River to overflow in the spring.

Horn deliberately did not build any new water conservancy projects and semi-artificially created a swampy environment on the east side of Ladenburg.

Launch an attack on Ladenburg from the swamps and puddles?
After standing on the mountain path for five minutes, Grand Commander Emeric, who never showed his emotions, murmured:
"I am a mud horse..."

(End of this chapter)