Crusader Kings: Prisoners of War.

Chapter 49 Famine
Even the injured generals had to lead the troops, which greatly boosted the morale of the soldiers.

In this regard, female generals do have certain advantages over male generals. Female generals who fight with injuries arouse the soldiers' desire to protect and win to the greatest extent. Although Tia is strong enough to carry a mule and cross-country, she can also truly tear the enemy apart on the battlefield.

After the soldiers were ready, Orville also began his own plan.

At dusk, Orville ordered a large number of crossbows in the legion to shoot food into the city, which once again triggered a scramble among local civilians and blocked traffic under the city wall.

A considerable number of soldiers were absent-minded and joined the civilians in snatching food.

Taking advantage of this good opportunity, Tia personally led the soldiers to operate the battering ram and started a new round of attack.

Previously, the Roman soldiers had always waited until the earthen embankment was completed before launching their attack. Now that the embankment had just collapsed, the Parphi people thought that the Romans would temporarily suspend their attack, and their defense was a little lax, so they were caught off guard.

The soldiers who were looting food under the city wall hurriedly tried to get up there, and the reserve troops in the city also hurriedly prepared to run to the top of the city wall, but both were blocked by the people who were rushing to grab food.

The crossbows were still dropping food intermittently, which made the hungry civilians reluctant to leave no matter how the soldiers tried to drive them away. They saw the Roman army getting closer and closer to the city wall.

The soldiers, who could no longer care about other things, decided to kill the civilians in a rage, hoping to use their blood to wake them up and make them make way for them.

This caused further chaos in the city. The priest party, seeing the right opportunity, took the chance to start an uprising. A small group of people suddenly attacked from behind the rebels, causing the rebels to lose their position. The three parties were mixed up and could not organize a proper defense at all.

At the same time, another group of priests had already ambushed near the city gate. As soon as the riot began, they quickly killed the guards at the gate and slowly removed the stones and wood blocking the gate.

Tiya's battering ram reached the bottom of the city wall without much obstruction. They knocked on the city gate. After the gate was knocked open, the priests in the city had almost cleared all the obstacles at the gate.

The two sides cooperated internally and externally, and the army quickly rushed into the city gate, but due to the congestion and chaos in front of the city wall, the large force did not continue to advance, but stayed where it was to consolidate its position and prevent the enemy from counterattacking.

The road leading up to the temple from the Antonine Wall was very narrow and crowded, and only a few people could pass through. Considering the injury on her left arm, Tia finally did not lead the people there herself. She ordered one of the most capable centurions to lead more than 200 people to pass through.

Led by a local guide, the group traveled back and forth between the paths and indeed arrived at the gate of the temple.

At this time the gap in the combat quality of the two armies was clearly revealed. The Roman army would always keep a guard force to guard important positions. Now the temple gate was still open, and many guards did not stay at the shooting points on the city wall. Instead, they went to positions with a wide field of view to observe the commotion coming from the Antonine Wall.

Taking advantage of this opportunity, the two hundred people immediately began to seize the gate of the temple. The guards were caught off guard and met the well-prepared heavily armed soldiers. Needless to say, the result was disastrous.

Most of the guards at the gate were killed by the Romans' javelins at the first moment of contact. The remaining people had a blank mind and could not think of forming a formation to resist on the spot. Instead, they retreated into the temple, preparing to meet up with the guards on the city wall and huddle together for warmth.

The Romans took advantage of this opportunity to enter the temple unimpeded, and then began a brutal hand-to-hand fight with the temple guards. During the protracted war, the combat capabilities of these Parfis had been continuously improved. They had a numerical advantage and launched round after round of fearless charges.

The number of Romans was really limited, so they deployed their famous tortoise shell formation and stood at the gate like a rock, struggling to hold out until sporadic reinforcements arrived.

The hand-to-hand combat between the two sides was still very brutal, with blood, corpses and broken weapons all over the ground. The battlefield spread from the entrance of the temple to a few dozen meters inside the temple, but in the end the Romans failed to rush in and seize the temple.

Seeing that the war was unresolved, Roman reinforcements continued to rush to the battlefield, and the shield wall pushed the Parphite front back little by little. John Levi and Bar Gioula, who were standing on the watchtower in the inner courtyard of the temple observing the situation, made a decision.

They used flammable materials such as rosin to set fire to the exquisite colonnade, which was the main passage connecting the Antonine Wall and the temple and was the focus of the battle between the two armies.

A fierce fire broke out and the Romans had to start retreating to avoid being burned. This attack was considered a failure, but it was conceivable that the city gate would be damaged by the fire, and the next attack would become easier.

On the other side of the Antonine Wall, the battle entered its final stage. The Palphic rebels were defeated, and the Romans and the priestly army gradually took control of the city walls and most of the attached urban areas.

After the initial panic, the civilians in the city saw the city gates were open and began to flee outside the city. The Romans detained these people and gave them some food, waiting to be dealt with later.

The Antonine Wall was already under Roman control, and they now had the option of attacking the Third Wall and the Temple, which were connected to the Antonine Wall.

However, they did not choose to do so. First, the troops needed to rest, and second, the situation in the city was so bad that it would not be an exaggeration to describe it as inhumane.

Orville and most of the Roman soldiers felt physically uncomfortable after seeing the scene in the city. Tia was in a complex state of anger and self-blame. She swore to the gods repeatedly that everything in the city was done by the Parphi people and had nothing to do with her. After repeated mental suggestion for a long time, she was able to barely accept the reality.

Orville recorded the situation in his journal.

“People in the city were eating leather straps from belts, shoes and shields, and some were gathering hay stalks to sell, but soon even that was hard to find.

On the rooftops were women and babies, dead or dying of hunger, and the streets were filled with old men who had died, and those who survived were bloated with hunger, weak as ghosts, and thirteen men fell dead as they walked from the gate to the Roman camp. The sick in the city had no strength to bury their loved ones, and perhaps the healthy would not do so because there were too many dead.

It seemed common for people who were burying others to fall down and die along with the corpses. Many people also crawled into their own shrouds to wait for death. Those who came out of the city did not cry or mourn. Hunger suppressed all their emotions. The atmosphere was very silent and depressing.

It seemed that for a long time, the rebels had been fighting us over the piles of corpses. We had to spend several days cleaning up the corpses, on the one hand to avoid desecrating the dead, and on the other hand to worry about the terrible plague. The situation was very bad. Many veterans who had served for more than ten years vomited like drunkards, and some new soldiers fainted in the city and almost suffocated to death.

(End of this chapter)