Crusade against the Pope

Chapter 378 The war begins
Small-scale battles and the crackdown on heretics became the prelude to the war.

The conflict that Alexandros encountered was just a microcosm of this.

Most of the situations are not optimistic, after all, there are only a few teams led by veterans like Alexandros.

Farmers may have thought about wielding swords and guns, but their physical fitness and weapons and equipment can never make up for it.

In addition, most of the teams participating in the Cleansing Movement were led by veterans of the Crusades who had been through many battles.

In this situation, only those battles led by Paladins or with a large number of Turks can easily achieve invincibility and force the enemy to retreat.

Only when you are lucky will you have the opportunity to chase them down, force them to flee, and then defeat them one by one.

In this kind of confrontation, even Gailis couldn't intervene too much. After all, firstly, it would be too late when he received the news, and secondly, he might appear in multiple places at the same time.

However, this phase came to an abrupt end with the advance of the Komnenos army, and the atmosphere in the city became increasingly quiet.

Muhammad, a very common name in the Islamic faith.

To be precise, it is another dialectal pronunciation of Muhammad.

In fact, influenced by Persian or Turkish transliteration, it can also be called Mahmed.

Unlike China, which has the custom of avoiding taboos, Abrahamic religions do not customarily avoid taboos, or it can be said that ordinary people are not qualified to avoid taboos.

Only when one reaches the level of God is one qualified to be avoided by others.

In the Old Testament, there are many titles for God, but none of them is the real name of God. Even "YHWH" is Tetragrammaton, which means "four-letter name of God" when transcribed into Latin.

Some devout English believers even write GOD as GD when writing.

It can be seen that the concept of taboos does not exist in Abrahamic religions, but the requirements for the level of taboos are too high.

Even the concept of "God" or Son of God at the level of Jesus is ambiguous in different cultural circles.

In the English and German cultural circles, Jesus or names with similar pronunciations to Jesus are basically not used as names. Orthodox countries use alternative honorifics.

In Spanish-speaking Latin America, names like Jesus have become common.

It can be seen that there is really no need to be taboo about the names of ordinary saints or kings. On the contrary, using them as children's names has beautiful meanings.

Names like Gillis, which have no religious meaning, are actually outliers in the Catholic world.

As to whether there will be more in the future, or whether more sacred meanings will be added, it depends on the situation.

But in the Islamic cultural circle, everyone has long liked names like Muhammad, Mohammed, and Mahmed.

This intuitively reflects their faith and obedience to the prophet.

At the same time, there were so many people with the same name. As a member of the Assassins, Mohammed was different from Altaïr. When he went out to work, he was too lazy to use a pseudonym.

"Mohammed, take your people and send the food out of the city for me today. Those Latin uncles are not easy to fool."

The shop owner gave these instructions, and Mohammed could only nod and say yes.

Today, he is just a young man who was forced to come to Trebizon to work.

Because he was quite nimble, asked for a low price, and was good at talking and calculating, he got a job in a grain store.

Of course, in addition to him, some other people sneaked into Trebizond and formed a relatively loose spy network in the city.

In this way, people outside the city can obtain as much information as possible from the city.

Since it is difficult to disguise their appearance, most of them are not part of the Assassins, but are mainly locals.

Muhammad acted as a guide in this process.

Also because of the good identity he disguised himself to be, he was responsible for delivering the message.

Following the team, Muhammad escaped from the city of Trebizond. According to their established plan, they were going to the town of Attanatium. It was said that there, Komnenos' troops had begun to collide with the Latin army, and the two sides began to confront each other.

In this situation, if the army continued to collect supplies on its own, it might be detrimental to the assembly of soldiers in the war, so it instead put forward the demand to transport food to the city.

Atanati was a true imperial border town, just three days' journey from Georgian-controlled towns.

It’s not too far from the city of Trebizond and you can get there in a whole day.

Relying on their grain shop's identification, their team encountered some patrolling soldiers along the way, but they did not pursue them too much and continued their journey eastward.

However, when he was about to approach Atanati, Mohammed couldn't help but gasp.

The closer you get to Atanati, the more you see something that looks like a gallows, with corpses hanging on it, of course.

Outside the town of Atanati, sticks with people stuck in them were everywhere.

Mohammed found it hard to imagine the scene before him. It wasn't that it didn't look like it, but the number was simply too large, making him subconsciously unwilling to admit it.

The area of ​​corpses was like a dense forest, and on the walls of the distant town, human heads were hung in strings like decorations.

The total number of these is nearly three hundred!

It is not clear what kind of thinking this is. After killing someone, he did not want to bury the body but instead displayed it in public like this.

You have to know that Atanati is just a small place, with a total population of just over a thousand.

Including those who were killed but not hanged, there might be five or six hundred.

In this way, it is understandable why the Latin Crusaders asked Trebizond to transport food.

I'm afraid that the place of Atanati has been so badly damaged that it is no longer possible to find food.

When they were near Athanasius, they saw the Latins from the city escorting a group of people out, their hands tied and strung together with a rope.

They were dragged into a wild field, and then the Latins started killing them cleanly and efficiently.

No matter if the other person resisted or screamed, he would just shoot them. Once the shot hit the vital point, the person would struggle and flutter like a dead fish, and then gradually die.

As for why these people wanted to die, Mohammed looked at it for a while but couldn't figure it out.

Maybe it's simply because they are unlucky, living in a chaotic area and encountering a group of chaotic people.

You have to know that when the Assassins kill people, they will not do it unless it is necessary. Many times, they are just trying to intimidate the enemy and have never thought of killing civilians.

Just as the people in the grain team were so scared that their legs were trembling, they wanted to leave here and go into the city as soon as possible.

The group of Latins noticed them and naturally came over to stop them.

"What are you doing?" The leader spoke Greek instead of Latin.

Seeing this, the leader of the grain team breathed a sigh of relief and hurried over to greet the other party.

After revealing my identity, the other party's expression improved a lot.

After another round of getting closer, they found that they were actually acquaintances and had met each other in the city. However, the other party was from the Ioannis family, while the leader of the grain team was from another noble family.

Mohammed didn't say a word throughout the whole process. He just lowered his head to avoid attracting the other party's attention, after all, he looked like that.

Perhaps the Greeks could accept it, but as for the Latin Crusaders... it was a little more complicated.

Fortunately, maybe because his makeup was reliable, or maybe the Latin people didn't recognize him, he got away with it.

But when their team entered the town, what they saw was another picture of hell.

……

On the other side, Garys also successfully received the message.

The fog of war is indeed very annoying. Many times, it is impossible to judge how many troops the enemy has.

Therefore, during wartime, whether reporting more or less of one's own military forces to the outside world, it would always have a misleading effect.

When Cao Cao said he had 800,000 soldiers during the Battle of Red Cliffs, many of the nobles in Jiangdong were willing to believe him because they did not have a deep understanding of the Central Plains.

After all, in the eyes of the people of Jiangdong, although they are a barbarian land in the south, they can still gather so many troops. The Central Plains is vast and rich in resources, with hundreds of millions of people, so it is no problem to mobilize 800,000 troops.

Taking the current war as an example, the city of Trebizond simply did not disclose the number of its troops to the outside world.

As for the number passed down by word of mouth among farmers, it ranges from 3,000 to 30,000.

It is a joke to rely on such hearsay as the basis for war planning.

Fortunately, with someone like Mohammed who is well-versed in intelligence in charge, he can more or less understand the other party's situation.

According to the estimation of the food transported at one time and the estimation of the enemy camp, the total number of enemy troops would not exceed 3,500.

This number is normal.

On the one hand, it was a gathering of private armies of various nobles in Trebizond, and then some able-bodied men were added as servants, and then Latin reinforcements were added to put it together.

And this number is actually much larger than the number of troops on Garys' side.

On Gellis's side, excluding the two thousand Georgians of the Komnenos brothers and the Imperial Knights under his command, the total number of people added up to less than two thousand five hundred.

In this situation, the Komnenos brothers had some doubts, but Gairis was full of confidence.

Gellis even took the initiative to ask Komnenos not to be too secretive about the number of their own troops, but to generously inform the other party through data such as the size of the military camp that they have fewer troops.

Thereby provoking the other party's desire to take the initiative to attack.

This was indeed effective, because the other side also chose to set up a military camp within the field of vision of Garys.

From this stage on, the atmosphere began to become tense.

Every day, soldiers were busy preparing for battle, sharpening their weapons, adjusting the size of their armor, praying to God, or trying to write some letters.

After consultation between Gellis and Komnenos, their troops would gather once a day on the flat ground outside the military camp, arrange their own formations, and see if the enemy was willing to fight.

This method is actually quite ancient, having been continued since Roman times.

At first, the Trebizond side was a little hesitant and never took the initiative to fight.

But as the supply became more secure and their understanding of the surrounding environment deepened, they became radical when they were sure that Garys was an isolated force with less than 3,000 men.

They also began to organize their troops and prepare for battle with Garys.

However, one question that puzzled them was that the military flags on the Gellis side clearly showed two styles, but overall, both styles revealed the cultural color of Christianity and had symbols such as the cross.

This shows that Geillis's side was a united Christian army.

But neither the Latins nor the nobles of Trebizond could figure out which Christian army would be willing to stand with the Georgians at this juncture.

On July 7, everything was ready and the war officially began.

Although Gellis had the smallest number of people, he became the commander-in-chief of this battle because he had the upper hand in the previous negotiations and had reached an agreement with David Soslan.

Under his arrangement, the Georgians were divided into two groups, each with a thousand men, and commanded by the Komnenos brothers, respectively, and divided into the left wing and the center army.

As for himself, he led the Imperial Knights Brigade to the right wing.

Because the terrain nearby was open, Garys did not envision a surprise attack this time.

Among them were the Georgian heavy infantry units, who were arranged in the "Greek phalanx" style, with spears pointing forward and shields lined up tightly, forming two moving city walls.

The army of Trebizond was composed of private soldiers and recruits from various places, with varying levels of training. Although they had the advantage in numbers, they lacked a unified command rhythm.

They adopted the typical "linear advancement" tactics, that is, three layers of infantry advanced, the right wing was the crossbow team, and the left wing was the commando led by Latin knights.

When the war officially began, the troops of both sides began to slowly approach each other.

When the distance was about 100 steps, arrows began to shoot at each other.

A small number of Trebizond archers fired first, and the Georgians raised their shields to meet the attack, and the front row suffered few casualties.

Then the main enemy infantry pressed forward, shouting and screaming, as if a mountain torrent was rushing towards them.

The Latin generals did not impulsively mobilize the cavalry to charge.

The warfare skills of today's Crusaders have improved a lot compared to the past. At least they don't think that all problems can be solved by relying on the knights' charge.

But the relatively weak left wing of Garys still made them hesitant.

Compared with the Georgian heavy infantry phalanx, the Imperial Knights, which numbered only 300 people, looked quite elite in terms of equipment, but their overall number was indeed very small.

This made them hesitate, and finally when the other two armies collided with the Georgians, the Latins took the initiative to attack.

When the roar sounded, the battle flags fluttered in the strong wind. With more than a hundred knights in the lead, plus other cavalry, a total of two hundred people, after a slight detour, they launched a charge from the left side of Gellis.

Feel the shaking of the earth.

The Fourth Crusade finally encountered the Jerusalem heresy in a foreign country without their knowledge.

(End of this chapter)