open sea

Chapter 1294 The smell of sulfur

Siege warfare can establish the advantage of war, but compared with the defending side, the siege side often has to face greater difficulties.

Charles, Earl of Plymouth was no exception.

Their army is not a standing army, and their service time is limited, whether they are loyal to his noble family or other invited lords. In order to aid him, many nobles from the west lost their lives in this battle. deal a big blow.

If this war seems to be unprofitable, then what is the reason for the nobles to recruit freemen and serfs in their territories to form an army and drive hundreds of miles to the city of Plymouth?
The biggest dilemma and the most important issue is money.

Often they were able to plunder places during wars. Once the siege camp was established, soldiers went out to incite the peasants' dissatisfaction with the lord, so as to carry out looting.

The problem is that this is Plymouth, the territory of the Earl of Charles. How do they incite the people and rob themselves?

With no additional sources of income, the Earl has almost spent all his wealth to reward the reinforcements from all over the place. Everyone's hope is to capture the city and rob those Ming merchants.

At least in people's eyes, those businessmen are still rich, but no one knows how rich they are, but now there are only these uncertain amounts to offset the worries of the nobles' daily military expenditure of hundreds of pounds.

The siege has been going on for a long time, and they desperately need a victory, especially for Earl Charles-there have been cavalry and infantry who have deserted the camp. The people who belonged to him reduced those workshops and farms that belonged to him to ashes.

Their tentative attack failed, and the bluff around the three sides of the city did not cause the defenders to relax. The hastily made catapults and catapults will always be focused on by the enemy artillery in terms of range, and the siege towers are also used by the enemy. Cannons and a defensive weapon that can shoot arrows in bursts are destroyed.

In regular siege battles, the Ming merchants guarding the city seemed to have stronger willpower than them.

Of course it is willpower, rather than being more professional. In fact, Earl Charles knew that if he could get all the siege troops to attack together and rely on troops several times larger than the defenders, they would easily launch numerous attacks on the siege surface that was several miles long. Assault, in the end this city with a serious shortage of defenders will definitely fall.

But he couldn't, except for a few families who were directly loyal to him, no one of the other reinforcement nobles was willing to brave the artillery fire or the strange rocket rain to advance for Plymouth.

In the beginning, they could be seduced by the wealth of the Ming merchants in the city, but the troublesome problem now is that many nobles pay more attention to the women at home than the wealth of the merchants in the city.

They started fighting in the spring, which also brought great difficulties to food collection.

All this made Earl Charles doubt whether the siege could last until the tunnel was dug.

Fortunately, reinforcements from the sea arrived, and the news that his younger brother Howard and Drake arrived in the coastal waters of Plymouth led by eight Galen ships and twelve armed merchant ships turned the situation around for him.

"Tomorrow we will launch a general attack. The confrontation has been long enough. Our tunnels are sure to be dug under the cathedral, but the workers said that they heard conversations and chaotic and non-stop footsteps underground. Our churches are barracks."

"So we have to continue digging in three directions. The two streets where the untouchables live and my manor. The two Sirs Miller and Nice led troops to enter the street with weapons from the ground, control the untouchables in the houses, and issue them weapons. Chaos in the streets; Sir Harry leads his troops into the manor, where the enemy commanders are likely to rest, and you keep them in check."

"Better let them declare their surrender."

"If not, you will make as much noise as possible to attract the attention of the defenders, or find a way to open the city gate. No matter whether your operation is successful or not, you only need to hold on for a while, and we will launch a general attack on Plymouth."

The nobles who received the order summoned their subordinates, and the entire siege camp began to pray before the battle again on this night. People knelt down and kissed the hilts of their swords, and then the conscripts with short weapons followed the brightly armored nobles into the narrow tunnel to Plymouth. Attacks in the city.

No matter what the aristocrats were thinking before, at this juncture they don't want to show their incompetence in front of the nobles from the court, so they have to act one step ahead, and it is best to capture Plymouth before the navy defeats the merchant ships. Or at least create a tug-of-war with the defenders in the city.

Otherwise rumors of their incompetence would have spread through London with the return of these court lords.

And in the underground of Plymouth, a Ming sailor with a broad belt and a hatchet was holding a porcelain bowl upside down on the wall, leaning sideways in the tunnel and listening to it for a long time, until he heard the sound of chain mail colliding, and he turned around. He turned his head and made several gestures to the sailors holding the three-eyed blunderbuss at the end of the matchlock behind them.

People squeezed out of the passage, and the sailors wearing cloth shoes with thousand-layer soles and tangled clothes quickly climbed to the ground along the tunnel, and reported the discovery from the underground to the generals guarding the ground.

In front of the Beiyang cavalry at the outpost, there was a sketch map of the jurisdiction area. Soldiers from all over the place were reporting their discoveries here. According to the sounds heard by the soldiers, he used charcoal to draw the enemy's marching position underground on the map. The route extending from outside to inside the city gradually became clear. The cavalry recruited their subordinates and quickly wrote a letter, requesting that it be handed over to a General Makino Baojia who was stationed in the defense area.

The news was sent quickly, and Baojia gathered all the tigers under his subordinates, and asked in a low voice at the place mentioned in the letter: "Is this the place? It's all ready. If the rocket rises, they will dig it down and block it." Back off!"

In other places in the city, some people dug wells and dug dark ditches; some people lit fires and made chimneys out of wood; they all waited for Ying Ming to send a signal in the city.

If the caravan sailors with three-eyed guns cannot defeat the enemy underground, they will first dig down and block the tunnel near the city wall to block enemy reinforcements. If this does not allow the sailors to defeat the enemy, everyone will retreat to On the ground, use a chimney to guide the smoke into the tunnel, and then flood the tunnel with water.

No matter how well armed the enemy is and how powerful their fighting power is, as long as they enter the tunnel, this is a dead end leading to Naihe Bridge.

The tunnel is still being excavated.

The soldiers at the front tried their best to suppress their smiles. They could feel that the road was getting easier to dig, and the knights behind were telling them in a low voice that it was not far away and that they would arrive at the wine cellar soon, so they must be careful and keep their voices low.

As someone chiseled away the last bit, the earthen wall made a sound of gold and stone, revealing bricks and stones. People's hearts were raised, and some people cheered strongly, and turned their heads: "My lord, we have dug to the wall of the wine cellar!"

Someone pushed the loose bricks and stones, trying to see a little light into the wine cellar. The conscripts with daggers and axes behind them buckled their helmets and gathered around the knights, ready to make a breakthrough.

On the other side of the wall, the sailors sitting cross-legged were alarmed by the sound of chiseling the wall. They eagerly raised their beloved three-eyed guns. Some people pointed their thumbs to the wall behind them, and the brick was being slowly chiseled alive. pushing outward.

The torch ignited the long matchlock, and the moment the brick hit the ground, two three-eyed guns hit the terrified eyes that wanted to look out along the gap.

The sailors heard something muttered on the other side of the wall, but they could not understand it.

"My lord, the wine cellar is very dark, I can't see anything... what is this, it's cool like iron, it smells of sulfur."

　Good morning!

　　Sorry, I got up late today.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)