Crusader Kings: Prisoners of War.

Chapter 180 Fetching Water
Since Orville is the commander-in-chief, the decisions he makes will naturally be carried out.

Normally, when marching to war, there would be a financial officer.

The inspector is in charge of finances, but he also plays a supervisory role. After all, a general leading troops to fight in wars may have his own plans, so he needs someone to watch over him.

It is inevitable that there will be some conflicts of opinion between the legion commander and the financial inspector. At this time, it will take some time to discuss and argue, and in the end the legion commander will definitely gain the upper hand, but it will waste some time, or the legion commander's power will be restricted to a certain extent. However, the situation on Orville's side is completely different.

Orville's own private soldiers were not equipped with an inspector, and the Ninth Legion was only equipped with an inspector in form. In fact, it was a capable accountant assigned to him by Vespa. He was good at accounting, but never participated in Orville's political and military decisions. He turned a deaf ear to everything other than finance, which was very worry-free.

In this case, the discussion on Orville's side was very efficient. It was nothing more than each officer providing Orville with several options, and in the end Orville himself decided which one to implement. He already had a contingency plan in his mind, so the process didn't take much time at all.

After the order was issued from the legion commander's headquarters, the entire army immediately set out and marched towards Hastings, and would arrive soon.
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The armies of both sides entered the vicinity of the battlefield one after another and set up camp according to their respective plans.

The Germanic coalition forces were centered in the town of Hastings, while the Romans confronted the Germans across the river.

To the north of Hastings is a small river called the Broad River. This is the key area of ​​confrontation between the two sides, and the river has become a natural dividing line between the two sides.

Generally speaking, both sides behaved very restrainedly and no one wanted to initiate an attack. The Romans camped on the north bank, while the Germanic coalition forces were stationed in the town of Hastings on the south bank. Although no open war broke out for the time being, small-scale conflicts in secret were inevitable from the beginning.

The Bled River, as the main water source, became the focus of contention between the two sides. Every day, both sides would send soldiers to come here to fetch water. The river was neither wide nor deep, and weapons such as bows and arrows, javelins and slings could reach the enemy on the other side of the river. Therefore, every day when both sides fetched water, there would inevitably be fierce physical exchanges.

At first, it was purely a spontaneous action of the soldiers. Later, after the command of both sides noticed it, it became a small-scale wrestling battlefield between the two sides. Overall, Orville had a slight advantage because his equipment and training level were better.

He specially sent out a small force to escort the soldiers who were fetching water. These people were the large shield crossbowmen he specially trained, imitations of the later Genoese mercenary crossbowmen, equipped with a large shield with a support and a powerful crossbow.

In normal use, bows and crossbows have their own strengths. The crossbow has a longer lasting output while the bow has better explosive power. At least in a shooting match, Orville has the advantage.

Crossbowmen can hide behind large shields and use their feet to string the bowstrings, and then stick their heads out to shoot after the bowstrings are stringed. They are always protected by cover to make them safer, but archers cannot do this. At most, they can tie a small shield on their arms, which has a very small protection area. Moreover, these Germanic archers do not have the conditions to equip advanced weapons and equipment such as shoulder shields and mail armor. Most of them just wear cloth and a bow. When shooting, crossbowmen can easily suppress the same number or even more archers. The Germanic engineering technology level is not enough. They value cavalry and relatively despise long-range troops. They do not have accurate heavy weapons such as torsion ballistae, and they do not have crossbows with enough power.

It should be said that these Germans were smart and had a good ability to adapt flexibly. They soon came up with a good solution. They made minor modifications to the water-carrying boxcars and added a thick wooden board shelter on one side.

In this way, their archers would also have cover when shooting, which greatly increased the safety factor. However, the Romans also had a backup plan for this situation.

They dragged two modified horse-drawn crossbows over and set them up on the other side of the river to fire at the water wagons. The torsion crossbows used by the Romans were somewhat awkward weapons, but they were quite accurate and had acceptable range. At least they could still maintain a certain degree of accuracy when shooting at targets as large as wagons and horses from a distance of thirty to fifty meters.

Since the Romans' ballista was not an ultra-heavy ballista that was difficult to move after being installed, it was not possible for the Romans' ballista to disintegrate a boxcar with one shot. However, if it hit a horse, the result would be obvious. No normal carbon-based creature could withstand the direct attack of a projectile weapon of this size and would surely die.

The small-scale war of attrition lasted for about a week. Finally, as Orville had expected, the Germans were the first to give up and started to overturn the table.

One day when the Romans were trying to get water, a group of Germanic cavalry rushed out from the hiding place on the other side of the river, waded across the river and rushed straight to the Roman army that was getting water. The two sides also had many clashes on the river bank, so the soldiers who were getting water were very vigilant, and they quickly took the javelins from the water carts, used these slender and sharp javelins as short spears to fight against the cavalry, and quickly formed a formation to prepare for the impact of the Germans.

The Franks were undoubtedly well aware of the Romans' tactics and organizational patterns, so they were wary of the Romans' javelins. They did not foolishly charge into the heavy infantry in formation, but simply lingered outside the javelin range, making the Romans dare not abandon their formation and could only be dragged in place, unable to move quickly.

At this time, many lightly armed infantry appeared from the other side of the river. They rushed across the river and prepared to launch an attack on the Romans who were fetching water. The Romans were caught off guard and fell into a tough battle this time.

The Romans reacted quickly. The cavalry commander on standby nearby quickly organized the cavalry to appear on the flanks, trying to force back the sudden light infantry. However, the effect was not good. The enemy had too many people, and without a cavalry commander, the officers themselves did not dare to rush directly into the enemy's line, as they would easily get stuck and unable to get out.

Originally, the Germans seemed to be on guard against possible Roman reserve forces, but after discovering that there were only some scattered scout cavalry here, they felt relieved and began to boldly besiege this small group of Roman troops. The difference in numbers made the battle situation undoubtedly one-sided, and the Romans could only hold on with difficulty.

(End of this chapter)