Warhammer

Although the root cause is that Mirmiden has enough power to compete with the greenskins, the city has a history of constantly fighting against the greenskins since its establishment. The heroic deeds and glorious traditions that have been sung have also greatly restrained the idea of ​​​​a few wavering people in Mirmiden who want to "negotiate peace" with the greenskins.

Once upon a time, this city and this vast territory were ruled by "princes" of all sizes. Although after Emperor Justinian's great victory in the southern expedition, a decree was issued to make the "thousands of princes" in the border areas take off their titles overnight, there are still many ambitious people who are eager to regain this honorable title through their own abilities and achievements.

In the past, the number of "princes" on the border may have been counted in the thousands, but nowadays, there is no one who can get the title of "prince" recognized by the territory and the surrounding areas. The person who can make the name of "border prince" true again will undoubtedly become a prominent figure in this vast territory.

Even in the loose territory of free men in the border region, it is not impossible to accomplish the feat of nation-building.

The person most likely and most capable of doing all this is undoubtedly the Myrmidons - the recognized ruler.

Therefore, no matter how many ideas they had in mind, at the beginning, no one dared to propose "negotiation" or "peace talks" in the parliament. Doing so would undoubtedly cause great damage to their reputation and cut off the possibility of competing for the "throne" of Mirmiden.

Now that they have made up their minds to fight the greenskins to the end, naturally, there is no question of peace. Even if they want to talk, let alone whether the warlords on the border who have decided to use the corpses of the Myrmidons to intimidate them will agree or not, the angry people alone may drag them out of the palace and hang them, or even simply elect a patriotic leader to lead them in their all-out fight against the greenskins.

Therefore, the greater the pressure from the greenskins, the more united the people of Mirmiden become. The practices of the big warlords in Matoka, Zorak and other places made the ruling class who cared about their own property and lives surrender to the greenskins first, and then disintegrated the people's resistance. This practice cannot be repeated in Mirmiden.

The envoys it sent to Myrmidon were killed, and most of the traitors it sent to secretly contact some important figures, promising them "if this and that, then this and that afterwards" in the hope of winning them over, were directly exposed and publicly executed.

This will also further strengthen the determination of the border people and greenskins on the Black Bay Peninsula to fight to the end.

171: Defense of Mirmidon (IV)

"Take back position No. 2! Send out the reserve troops and hold them off!" A commander shouted to his adjutant, who was standing on the back of a small hill anxiously observing the situation on the battlefield.

Suddenly, a cannon shot "BOOM!" exploded not far from them.

The commander was awkwardly pinned down by his adjutant, but fortunately at that distance he was not injured by the impact, he was just covered in dirt.

He stood up and glared at the enemy camp in shock and anger.

All that could be seen was a huge crowd of black and green people, but behind the greenskins, one could see an artillery position manned by humans, aimed at the Mirmidon defense line.

"Bastard! Ballless traitor!" he cursed.

The greenskins' crude catapults and ballistas were basically built just before the battle and had limited power. The Mirmidonians' firepower was enough to suppress and destroy them; but this time they did not just rely on brute force.

The border states, big and small, that were conquered by them, whether sincerely or insincerely, were forced to serve the beasts that they despised and hated unwillingly under the coercion of the greenskins' military force.

Compared with the huge number of greenskins, human soldiers do not seem to be important... But what Gao Maoliang wants is not the cannon fodder troops of a few hundred or a thousand people, what he wants is the resources provided by the border people.

Their weapons are at least one level better than the ones made by the greenskins out of bones, stones or even wood.

Leaving aside the muskets, the power of cannons is at least more reliable than crude catapults and crossbows that may fall apart at any time.

The tribute that Gao Maoliang demanded from the city-states that surrendered to him was mainly in the form of military equipment and supplies. Although he knew that this would aid the enemy and bring harm to his compatriots who insisted on resisting, they did not care about so much. In order to meet the requirements of the greenskins, they even dismantled the fixed artillery on the city walls and sent them to the greenskins.

This made the Mirmidons both irritated and resentful:

Being hit by artillery from "our own people".

Although the human artillery in the opposing greenskin army seemed to be in a state of absent-mindedness as a whole, with extremely poor accuracy, as if they were shooting blindly with their eyes closed, but occasionally hitting the target would still cause considerable losses to the defenders.

The defenders of Fort No. 1 dug three layers of trenches inside and outside the land outside their territory. The rest of the terrain was also bumpy and rugged, making it difficult for the greenskins to attack.

But the number of enemies was beyond their imagination.

The soldiers hiding in the trenches fought with spears and muskets, but the greenskins swarmed in and almost filled the trenches with dead bodies. The outer defense line that was originally expected to last for more than an hour was "filled" and broken by the greenskins in just twenty minutes, and they had to shrink their defense line backwards.

The defenders on the city wall kept firing to support the defense line outside the fortress, and the gunners could not stop even though their ears were buzzing from the roar.

The extremely high density of the greenskins means that every shell can cause huge damage. Solid bullets, shrapnel shells, and shotgun shells, once fired, will create a flower of blood in the tide of enemies outside the city, and even directly clear out the enemies in the surrounding areas.

In the past, the Myrmidons could not produce such firepower, and even if they did, they could not equip every castle with it.

But everything changed because Mao Liang had a fight with the dwarves at Haimen Pass.

The control of the sea in Blackwater Bay is in the hands of the Dwarves of Seagate. Although they do not want to continue to argue with Gomaoliang, who has already left the territory of the Mountain Kingdom, and seek to settle their hatred with him for the time being, it is easy for them to support the Myrmidons.

When Gao Maoliang forced Zorak to land, the first batch of dwarf technical advisors landed at the port of Mirmiden with a large amount of support materials, which greatly boosted the confidence and courage of the Mirmiden people to resist the greenskins.

After the experience of the Reconquista, the dwarves knew the importance of firepower in defensive battles. A set of fine armor and weapons was expensive, but it would not allow a civilian to easily defeat a fierce green-skinned giant.

But a musket that was mass-produced in a gun factory and cost only "one-fifth of a set of armor" at most could enable untrained militiamen to maximize their effectiveness.

In order to prevent the greenskins from making a comeback and threatening Haimen Pass, Yongheng Peak ordered the troops to reinforce Haimen Pass to stay put for the time being. In order to support the Black Rock Castle front line, they had to take over the abundant supplies brought by the Iron Rock Defense, which would have to remain there for the time being. In addition, Haimen Pass itself was one of the most important factory fortresses in the entire Mountain Kingdom. It was good at manufacturing fleets and large-scale engineering machinery. Similarly, it was also easy to manufacture guns and cannons.

Therefore, the dwarves of Haimenguan simply took advantage of this rest time to use all their available transport capacity and sent shipload after shipload of military supplies to Mirmidon.

If there was no hatred, even if they all believed that the enemy would come back to cause trouble for the dwarves after capturing Mirmidon, it would be difficult for them to take the initiative to do such a thing.

Dwarves are trustworthy, vindictive, and boastful. They are generous but also very stingy.

But in the presence of hatred, all these efforts are insignificant in the eyes of the dwarves.

Even though it wasn't the dwarf who pulled the trigger and loaded the shell himself, he still felt relieved as long as it finally hit the heads of the ugly green-skinned war gang.

But there are still too many greenskins.

The area gap caused by each artillery shell can be filled by the swarming enemies within just a few seconds. Even if the defenders' artillery fires non-stop, it seems to be a drop in the bucket compared to the number of greenskins.

The greenskins advanced forward madly, even though most of them would fall on the way before they could even touch the city walls, killed by arrows, bullets, or spears. But as long as the battle situation did not completely turn against the greenskins, or the casualties exceeded a certain proportion, their morale would be greatly hit. These greenskin beasts who were warlike by nature and lived on war would continue to attack with their brutal and ferocious nature bred in the wilderness, which brought pain to the world.

Soon, all the outer positions fell and were captured by the greenskins.

The remaining soldiers retreated into the castle to rest with the reinforcements of the fortress defenders.

The corpses of both sides almost filled the ditch, paving a bloody road.

They didn't even take a breath, nor did they give the enemy a chance to breathe, and they began to make engineering preparations without stopping. The artillery troops, which had been like drunk and with poor accuracy, began to work reluctantly after the traitors sent by Mao Liang to supervise the battle found several gunners who were suspected of deliberately missing the target and executed them on the spot.

Anyway, all we have to do is smash it onto the city wall.

The lackeys working for the warlords threatened the troops: if the warband's attack here was disrespectful and they did not play their due role, then the greenskins would implement a killing order on the entire team - including the place where they came from, to punish their incompetence.

This forced the human servants who were unwilling to serve the greenskins and had been slacking off to start helping the greenskins take away the fate of other people for the sake of their own and their families' fate.

Once the greenskins' artillery began to fire, the Mirmidons could no longer unilaterally suppress the enemy with firepower as before.

As the greenskins began to climb onto the city walls, the bloody battle entered its second act.

Fort No. 1 was guarded by 13,452 soldiers. After three days of bloody fighting, this number dropped by more than 3,000.

There was no such thing as testing or confrontation from the greenskins.

They came straight up and launched a general attack.

Fort No. 1 was almost deprived of its eastern wall by such a fierce attack on the first day of defense. Fortunately, the soldiers risked their lives to push the greenskins back down, and the battle line returned to a situation where one side occupied the city while the other side defended itself.

On the fifth day of the war, the corpses of the greenskins piled up under the city were almost level with the city walls. After all, Fort No. 1 was an old fortress that mainly served as a coastal defense. It soon became shaky under the greenskins' rapid attack and was on the verge of being breached at any time.

However, reinforcements from the main city were slow to arrive, or in other words, after the war became stalemate, the original plan was disrupted.

Although they had been prepared, the number of greenskins still exceeded the Mirmidon people's imagination. During this period, the dwarf fleet even sent them a warning:

In the east and south of Blackwater Bay, that is, the western and southern badlands of the "Barrens", small and medium-sized greenskins have gathered to cross the sea and try to reach the border princes' territories.

The primary goal of these greenskins crossing the west is naturally to come to the Black Bay Peninsula to join the big Waaaagh and "join in the celebration".

The dwarf fleet tried hard to intercept and slaughtered the greenskins on the sea of ​​Blackwater Bay who tried to cross west with only the small sampans, but their numbers were too large. There was also intelligence that the Giant's Tower was also besieged by a large number of greenskins, as if it was a general riot of the greenskins in the Badlands. Therefore, it was inevitable that many greenskins slipped through the net and came to the border to join Mao Liang's army.

After setting up many subordinate warbands to work in parallel and reduce the pressure on direct command, so that the troops of Gao Maoliang's headquarters were at a proportion that could best exert their combat effectiveness, it still gathered more than 150,000 greenskins to besiege Mirmidon.

By demanding "tribute", or in a sense "ransom for the city", it obtained a large amount of military supplies from Matoka, Zorak, Kalundborg, Kavik... and other places. These resources upgraded the greenskin armed forces of the warlord headquarters to a higher level, and it also brutally and forcibly took away the gunpowder stocks and cannons of these cities.

Due to the situation, most cities had to comply with the demands of the warlords.

Including the skull cannon made by the greenskins themselves, which is made by the tribal beastmen who prayed to the blood mother, cast copper and iron with blood, and used the skull as the base. It is also a "junk cannon" poked out by the greenskins' hands - a weapon that is equivalent to playing a game of Russian roulette every time it fires. The shells fired are of the shotgun type, which pose a lower threat to fortifications, but can still cause considerable damage to infantry.

The greenskins gathered more than four hundred war machines, including cannons, catapults, and ballistae, in Mirmidon.

The variety is so diverse that even the most experienced scholars in the Gunnery Academy may not be able to identify all the types of artillery in the greenskins' "Smash His Army".

There were even antique mortars dating back hundreds of years, which were dug out from the warehouse by the border people and given to the greenskins to make up the numbers.

For example, the port city of Kalundborg on the shore of Blackwater Bay actually sent ships to the battlefield site where they had fought against the pirate plundering fleet to salvage the cannons on the sunken ships. When they were handed over to the greenskins, there were even seaweeds stuffed in the barrels...

But maybe it's because of the protection of Brother Gomao, or the power of the greenskins has reached a certain level, and there is indeed some kind of "metaphysical" power bonus, just like their rubbish cannons that humans would never be able to fire, and their rubbish ships that can't even leave the port and will leak everywhere and sink, although these weapons often explode, for the greenskins as long as they can fire a shell, it is considered a success.

Unable to find so many gunners, many soldiers of the border vassal army would rather be beaten and punished than get close to these old antiques who were probably older than him and his fathers combined, let alone ignite and fire.

But Mao Liang didn't care about it.

Anyway, Mirmidon is a big city, it's just there and it won't move.

As long as the shell can be fired, it doesn't matter if the accuracy is a little off.

So the greenskins' attack on Mirmidon was a rare one:

The artillery battle began.

Their fierce firing, accompanied by explosions and screams, marked the clarion call for the first wave of attack.

Under the continuous and dense bombardment (because the artillery models were old and the styles were different, it was difficult to fire at the same time), the Mirmidons even had the illusion that the city walls would collapse at the next moment.

Gao Maoliang's behavior reminded many people of the legendary greenskin warrior, who was extremely brave and also good at using flexible tactics to gain advantages for himself. He was good at mixed-force strike group operations, and perhaps the first person to use goblin wolf cavalry and catapult tactics on a large scale, [Gorbad Bonaparte] - [Gorbad Ironclaw].

However, the military capabilities of the warlords themselves were not actually that strong. They just had a deep understanding of how much impact technology could have on war, so they subconsciously attached importance to "gunpowder", which symbolized the direction of war development.

After the first day of bombardment, both the Greenskins and the Mirmidons could be said to have achieved "excellent" results.

The greenskins destroyed the northern wall of Mirmiden—but the people of Mirmiden had been prepared for the war a long time ago. After all, they fought with the greenskins every day. So in fact Mirmiden had four walls, two on the outer ring, one in the middle, and one on the inner ring. The distance between the two outer ring walls was more than eight meters. The collapse of the outer wall did not affect the overall integrity of the defense. It can only be said that the defensive pressure on the north would be greater.

Mirmidon also destroyed more than one-third of the greenskins' artillery and ballistas - most of which exploded on their own.

In order to prevent the greenskins from cutting down trees to build siege equipment, the people of Mirmidon lit several torches and burned all the forests within dozens of miles before the enemy arrived.

But the number of greenskins is too large, and they have enough manpower to go to more distant places to cut wood, collect stones, and transport them to the front line to build ladders, battering rams, catapults and other equipment.

But the Myrmidons are no pushovers.

On the night when the greenskins set up camp outside the city and began to build a siege camp, a commando team composed of elite soldiers in Mirmidon attacked the greenskin camp under the cover of night. They killed hundreds of enemies and destroyed the siege camp that the enemy was building. They also used horse-drawn artillery to quietly pull field artillery outside the city, and fired at the greenskin camp within the range. One of the solid bullets even hit the warlord's tent less than two steps away, killing a patrolling orc soldier.

The attack was a remarkable success. The attack in the dark threw the greenskins into chaos. They drew their swords and looked around in confusion, but saw no enemy coming. Some even thought it was a call to attack and mindlessly rushed towards Mirmidon, only to be easily wiped out by the defenders under the city wall.

Some greenskins started fighting among themselves in anger after the "false alarm". Fortunately, Gao Maoliang had a very high prestige, and the greenskin "gendarmes" he formed easily suppressed the chaos.

The sound of artillery fire in the middle of the night, accompanied by the news of "victory", made the residents, who were originally nervous because of the outbreak of war, breathe a sigh of relief, and then began to cheer for victory.

The troops who launched the night attack were treated like heroes. The cheers pierced the tranquility of the night sky and could even be felt by the greenskins outside the city.

This was a blow to the prestige of the big warlords.

So Mao Liang quickly took decisive retaliatory measures.

172: Defense of Mirmidon (V)

At dawn the next day, Gao Maoliang ordered his troops to launch an attack, with artillery, crossbows, and catapults once again in force.

This put great pressure on the nerves of the residents, most of whom had just fallen asleep in the middle of the night because they had exhausted their energy due to excitement last night.

But Gao Maoliang was not in a hurry to attack the city. As a non-human race, the greenskins had greater physical strength and endurance than ordinary humans. They had already surrounded Mirmidon. Except for the west side facing the sea, the greenskin army had formed a siege on its north, south and east sides.

Although there was no fleet at hand to completely surround the city this time, it also cut off the connection between Mirmidon and other fortress strongholds that were still resisting. Except for Fortress No. 1 located on the coast with ships for sea communication, the rest of the strongholds temporarily lost contact as the greenskin army approached and besieged Mirmidon.

It is not known whether they are alive or dead, whether they fall or successfully hold on.

But at this point, Maoliang found that he was facing a difficult situation:

The Mirmidons, who allowed the armed civilians to move forward, mobilized and armed more than 100,000 militia "warriors" in a short period of time. Perhaps whether these people can become qualified "warriors" needs to be put in quotation marks, but what cannot be ignored is that as long as they stab hard with the spears in their hands, they can still kill a ferocious green-skinned giant.

There are now nearly a million people from both sides gathered on the narrow Black Bay Peninsula.

For defense purposes and to allow the soldiers to have no worries, in case the city eventually fell, the greenskins could carry out a massacre so that the women and children could escape. Before the official war, Mirmidon had contacted the dwarf fleet and the Alliance to pick up a large number of elderly, weak, women and children by sea transport.

In order to relocate the women and children as quickly as possible, they will disembark directly on the land of Algaris. Upon hearing the news, Misha promised that the Alliance Legion would pick up these old and weak people and evacuate them to the territory of the Alliance and resettle them around Lusigny.

Under the regent status of the eldest daughter and her father, the border princes (at least the western part) including Mirmidon had become an "inseparable" part of the Alliance after the war.

The people of this land naturally had no qualms about accepting it and were instead very positive.

The arrival of war refugees can also promote patriotic enthusiasm in the country. For example, the "not very loyal" city of Lucini, because of the continuous sheltering of exiles, is now a firm supporter of the eldest daughter regent leading the army to the east to fight against the greenskins; and a loyal supporter of His Majesty Aiel's expedition to the badlands to support the dwarves.

After all, if Misha had not marched east to "jointly defend" Algaris, when the greenskins attacked, the war would have broken out on the territory of Lusignan, and they would have been the ones who would have been homeless and become refugees.

Aiel was a wise ruler. Although some people in the Lucini, or in Tyrell, still feel resentful about Tyrell's defeat in the last war and their forced annexation - or being kidnapped into the Alliance, most people, especially the civilians and the middle and lower classes who were the main beneficiaries of Aiel's policies and systems, would not deny this.

And apart from their slightly peculiar appearance, the "wild" orcs are much friendlier than the "green-skinned orcs".

They are simple, honest, and keep their promises (Aier strongly recommends this point), and they are very enthusiastic even to strangers they have never met. Ai'er is using his efforts to subtly change the discrimination and stereotypes of the majority of humans against the minority group of orcs. He is really trying to create a society of "racial equality."

......

With the arrival of the greenskins, the clarion call of war was officially sounded. After the "Great Transfer", the entire city of Mirmidon still had a population of over 350,000, and more than half of them had now been incorporated into the military or paramilitary sequence. This number was almost the same as the greenskins in the outer city, or even more than the troops under Gao Maoliang's command.

Even though the hastily trained militia might need three to one to balance their forces against a large green-skinned beast on the battlefield, the defense of the city walls greatly enhanced the role they could play on the battlefield.