The Great Arcanist Who Traveled Through the World of American Variety Shows.

Chapter 575 Siege
Richard does not intend to significantly advance Europe's science and culture, so let them develop on their own.

His current target is a German city - Mainz.

Mainz is located on the Rhine River and was originally built by the Roman Empire. At that time, the city was not large and was used more as a military base to suppress the Germanic people.

But with the decline of the Roman Empire, these cities became the front line against Germanic invasions and were later occupied by the Germanic peoples.

The Roman Empire built a city here and developed it. After the Germanic people occupied it, they naturally did not abandon it and directly operated it as a key town.

Mainz, once a wild and barren border town, has a lot of fertile land after being developed by the Romans and the Germanic barbarians. It has become a rare wealthy place among the Germanic barbarians.

It is also one of the few cities with city walls.

Of course, the Romans' city walls are incomparable to the ancient Dongda's city walls. The ancient Dongda's city walls were rammed earth and glutinous rice paste, which made the walls strong and even allowed people to walk and ride horses on them.

This level of wall is only found in important cities in Italy. Most of the rest are stone walls that are 30 centimeters to half a meter thick. Not to mention horses, even people can't stand on them.

This kind of wall requires a wooden frame to be built behind so that people can defend behind the wall. The defensive power of this wall cannot be compared with that of Dongda.

This time, Richard led three thousand people to prepare to plunder Mainz, mainly because Mainz was in the Rhine River basin, and he could use ships to quickly transport supplies and troops.

Five hundred cavalrymen marched along the river, and the remaining 2,500 took the boat. The army marched very quickly, and in just one day, Richard arrived near Mainz.

The Germanic tribes along the way had either fled or been plundered before. There was no resistance at all along the way.

When Richard arrived near Mainz and saw the city, he immediately felt that he had made the right decision.

There are large tracts of fertile fields outside Mainz, which have not yet been harvested, and the city walls are not high. It is no wonder that the Romans looked down on those barbarians. The city now looks the same as when the Romans took control.

Before absorbing Roman culture and craftsmen, the Germanic people were basically barbarians.

When they found out that Richard's army was coming, the German barbarians in the city were trying to gather together in a hurry. As a result, the leader of the Foreign Legion, Karl, directly led the Foreign Legion to overwhelm the German army outside the city.

After being defeated, these hastily gathered barbarian soldiers fled back to the city. Karl even wanted to lead his troops directly into the city and capture Mainz in one wave.

Then he was stopped by Richard. After the army outside the city bought time, the Germanic barbarians in Mainz had gathered a large number of soldiers.

If we rush in at this time, we will definitely suffer heavy losses.

These foreign troops are very ruthless in attacking their own people, the only problem is their poor discipline. They easily get carried away when fighting, and charge forward mindlessly as if they have turned on the berserk mode.

They fought bravely, but suffered heavy losses.

But it is really useful when it comes to critical moments.

The leader, Carl, chopped off more than a dozen heads and killed the enemy general, thus completing the achievement of beheading the general and capturing the flag.

According to the military merit-conferring system promulgated by Richard, Carl could be promoted three levels in a row, but he was originally a leader and had already been rewarded with a bloodline potion, so his military merits needed to be repaid with the bloodline potion first.

Richard led a large army to land, and the 3,000 troops were not more numerous than the army of Mainz City. However, the Mainz defenders did not dare to come to Richard for a field battle.

It was entirely because Carl's surprise attack in the morning shattered their confidence.

Richard came to a high ground and looked at the city of Mainz not far away. At this time, the gates of Mainz were closed and thousands of soldiers were guarding the city tightly. It was obvious that they were planning to rely on the city walls to fight a protracted war with him.

The land in the Mainz area is fertile and the harvest is good. In addition, it has not been affected by war before, so the food reserves are sufficient.

Richard looked at the nearby land and saw fertile fields outside the city. This place had been developed by the empire for hundreds of years, but in the end, it was abandoned by the empire.

All we can say is that the Roman Empire was wealthy and powerful, and it didn't feel bad for its own sons to sell their father's land.

If the Roman Empire had been able to defend this place, the Germanic people would not have been able to attack the province of Gaul, and the empire would not have been in such a tight financial situation as it is now.

This land is different from the Rhine Province occupied by Richard. Because of the irrigation of the Rhine River, it is convenient to build water diversion canals. If managed well, it can be a granary.

Unfortunately, these things are now completely a wedding dress for the Germanic barbarians. Of course, the entire province of Gaul later became the territory of the Germanic barbarians.

And these Germanic barbarians established the Frankish Kingdom here.

"What a pity! If there were enough people, we could occupy this place." Richard said with regret.

The land in front of us is already cultivated and is a rare granary. With the Rhine River, there is no need to worry about water diversion and irrigation. The soil of the alluvial plain is fertile and suitable for agricultural development. The only problem is the looting of the Germanic barbarians. If 100,000 people are settled here and 5,000 troops are stationed, this place can be used as an outpost to attack the Germanic tribes.

Richard did not surround the entire city of Mainz. First, he did not have that many troops. Second, doing so would easily make the people in the city see that they had no way to retreat, which would instead inspire them to have the courage to die.

Richard didn't want to fight these people head-on. He didn't have a large population now, and too many casualties would affect the development of his territory. At the same time, he didn't want the war to last too long. If it lasted too long, other Germanic tribes would likely come to rescue him.

Siege warfare in this era is not easy to fight, but this is for other people. Richard has preserved a large number of drawings of engineering equipment.

After seeing that the other side was defending tightly, Richard ordered people to set up camp around, and then asked the soldiers to cut down trees and make siege equipment.

The Romans had the best siege technology in this era, but the Romans' engineering technology was far inferior to that of the University of Tokyo at that time.

Don't have too many battering rams, ladders, siege towers, catapults, siege vehicles, crossbows, etc.

It was no problem to deal with this city with average defense. Richard commanded the soldiers to build several ladders and ramps. The ladders had wheels underneath and wooden boards in front as shields, so they could be pushed forward. There were barbs in front of the ladders that could hook onto the city wall.

When they get near the city wall, the baffle above will directly hook onto the wall, and the soldiers on the ladders can rush up continuously.

The lintel is a tall frame, which is higher than the city wall. A row of archers stand on the lintel, shooting arrows at the city wall from above to suppress the soldiers on the wall.

In this era, not to mention the barbarians like the Germans, even the Romans had never seen this kind of siege equipment.

At the same time, there are battering rams and siege vehicles. The battering ram is simple, just like a house with four wheels, and the soldiers use the house as a cover to quickly rush to the bottom of the city wall.

The siege vehicle is much larger, with a huge log hanging inside. Dozens of people push the siege vehicle to the city gate, and then push the huge log to hit the city gate.

If it was in ancient Dongda, you also need to prepare a moat-crossing vehicle, which is a tool for crossing the moat. In Europe at this time, only a few cities in Italy had it.

The city in front of us has no moat at all.

It took Richard an entire night to successfully build more than a dozen pieces of engineering equipment. Early the next morning, he ordered his soldiers to push these siege equipment and launch an attack.

In addition to these siege weapons, Richard also made several catapults. This type of catapult used Roman technology. Richard made some improvements to it and it was able to throw stones weighing 20 to 30 kilograms about 100 meters.

Soon, the catapult was the first to show its power.

On the city wall, the Germanic barbarian soldiers were stunned to see so many tall machines erected outside the city overnight.

Seeing the appearance of the soldiers around him, the leader of the Germanic barbarians secretly thought that something was wrong and immediately shouted, "What are you afraid of?"

"What's the use of these junk? We have the city wall. As long as we defend the city wall, these things are useless!"

"Order the men to prepare their javelins, and throw them when they come near, and set them on fire!"

"boom!"

A twenty-pound stone fell from the sky and hit the city wall directly. The stones in the area that was hit collapsed and the broken stones flew everywhere. Several Germanic barbarian soldiers around who were unable to dodge were hit on the head and bleeding.

As a stone fell, the remaining three catapults followed closely, and one stone after another smashed into the stone wall.

The stone wall was dented and cracked. Fortunately, the speed of the catapults was not fast and their accuracy was average, otherwise these catapults alone would have been able to bring down the entire wall.

But even so, the morale of the Germanic barbarians on the city wall was low, and every time they saw stones flying towards them, they would scatter and avoid them.

Taking advantage of this opportunity, two archers were pushed near the city wall, and then dozens of archers shot arrows downwards.

The Germans on the city walls had nowhere to hide. Some of them wanted to fight back, but their arrows had to be thrown upwards, making it difficult to hit the soldiers on the ledges.

Instead, there were heavy casualties in the exchange of fire.

At the same time, siege vehicles and ladders also rushed up under the cover of the ramparts. Faced with such ladders, the Germans had no way to deal with them head-on.

The foreign legions on the ladders could not wait any longer. As soon as they approached the city wall, Karl jumped over the ladder first, and then waved his battle axe to violently hack at the Germans around him.

In just a blink of an eye, several soldiers around him were hacked to death by him, and the foreign legion soldiers behind him immediately rushed up through the gap.

After just the first wave of attacks, Mainz became shaky.

(End of this chapter)