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Aenarion said calmly, telling his men to do it immediately. The fleet did not change its course and continued to rush towards Kafa.

However, Kaffa was not defenseless at this moment. The Crimean Khanate's intelligence system might be extremely inefficient. They really couldn't believe that they had a high degree of interest in the richest and most powerful forces in the Mediterranean world. Why would anyone dare to attack them?

The Genoese and Ottomans who gathered in Kaffa, with their numerous caravans, discovered the whereabouts of Aenarion's fleet in advance. In order to protect their own interests and trade shares, these merchants stood on the side of the Crimean Khanate without hesitation and assisted them in deploying defenses in Kaffa.

The Genoese merchants even exaggerated, saying that Aenarion was greedy and that if his army came in, everyone's property would be looted! Years of savings would be lost!

Therefore, when Aenarion arrived at Kaffa, he found that the waterway leading to the port had been blocked by ships. Galleons and caravels flying Genoese, Venetian, Ottoman, and even Mamluk flags were anchored in the safe harbor, and hundreds of black cannons were pointed outward, alert to Aenarion's arrival.

"We will enter the city by land. After we enter Kaffa, we must not kill any merchants from any country. We must let them leave freely - except the Ottomans."

Aenarion waved his hand and gave up his plan to attack the port. Even if he could defeat these merchant ships, the price to pay would be too high. It was not just the damage in the battle, but it would also mean offending all the countries that came here to trade.

"Your will!"

The soldiers made a circle and, under the vigilant gaze of many merchants, anchored at a beach two kilometers away from Kaffa and began to deploy troops. The Third Phalanx Corps landed first, carefully stepped onto the vast green steppes of Crimea, and began to build artillery positions.

As soon as they came down, the Crimean Khanate launched an attack. Three thousand Tatar herdsmen riding on horses of various colors and holding composite short bows rushed out of the city like a colorful cloud, and came to the earth with passionate war songs!

Behind them was a 500-man Tatar heavy cavalry. These night demons were wearing chain mail and carrying dozens of spears that were more than two meters long and as thick as a baby's wrist. They could throw javelins as well as attack in close combat.

"Woo——"

The commander of the phalanx blew the horn, and a group of people quickly formed a large Spanish phalanx to resist the cavalry attack. Six hundred soldiers wearing heavy armor formed a huge formation of 20x30 in the middle.

The outermost rows and columns are spearmen holding spears and shields. Further inward are spearmen without shields but holding five-meter, six-meter, and other super-long spears.

At the four corners of the square formation, there were four 10x10 small musket square formations. More than a thousand people were all wearing tiered armor. Some elite soldiers even wore chain mail inside the tiered armor, which was extremely heavy. On the other hand, among the herdsmen, only a few night demons who looked like leaders wore only one piece of chain mail with short sleeves and short hem.

The Tatar Night Demon laughed when he saw the enemy's formation. If the enemy had cavalry, he would have to be cautious. But if they were all heavy-armored infantry, wouldn't that be a game for the archers? Even if I can't shoot through the armor, you can't catch up with me. We can take turns to harass the enemy until they starve to death or die of exhaustion.

They habitually used their old-fashioned tactics: all the men were divided into three teams, and when they rushed to a distance of 60 meters from the enemy, they would rotate around the square in a clockwise direction, running and shooting arrows, harassing the enemy, waiting for the enemy to become exhausted and create a loophole, and then launch a fatal blow with heavy cavalry.

However, when the Tatars rushed to a position of 3 meters, the musketeers at the front two corners of the phalanx had changed their formation into a 33x shooting array and began a three-stage attack. The soldiers in the first row retreated to the third row after shooting, and the soldiers in the second row then stepped forward to aim and shoot, followed by the third row, the first row, and the cycle continued.

As paper-wrapped bullets omitted the most troublesome projectiles and gunpowder loading, the firing speed of the matchlock gun was greatly improved. In addition, these musketeers were veterans, and they could complete the loading of ammunition and matchlock in about eighteen seconds.

When the three teams take turns shooting, sacrificing the density of bullet rain, the shooting efficiency will be increased by three times, every six

A round of earth-shaking gunfire would erupt in seconds! Like a bolt from the blue, it shocked the horses on the grassland that had never heard of gunpowder explosions.

Lead bullets whistled and tore through the sky, drilling bloody and transparent holes in the bodies of the Tatars. The Night Demons' horses, which had not been trained with gunpowder, would even fall into great panic at the sound of the muskets.

After the cavalry rushed to a distance of 60 meters and began to execute the archers' shooting orders, the musketeers in the two phalanxes behind also started shooting. After both sides shot for a while, the archers found that they had actually lost in the long-range shooting.

All the enemies were equipped with armor, so it was difficult to cause damage even with conical armor-piercing arrows. And as long as the enemy's muskets hit them, their horses or soldiers would lose their combat capability. Those who were lucky would die directly, while those who were unlucky could only fall to the ground with their horses and watch themselves slowly die from excessive bleeding.

After they surrounded the enemy, every team of the 400 musketeers was able to shoot!

"Boss! This is not a solution! The enemy has too many long-range projectile weapons! We can't shoot them all, and the horses are frightened by the explosions. Give the order to charge! Kill the enemy musketeers first!"

The Tatars fell into chaos and had no choice but to charge directly. The horse archers retracted their composite shortbows and drew out their spears and scimitars. Five hundred night demons wearing short-sleeved chain mail, who dared to be called "heavy cavalry", also waved their spears and launched a charge together with the light cavalry!

At this moment, the training level and quality of the phalanx soldiers had fully reached the standards of a regular army, and they could switch formations freely. Under the command of the regiment commander, four holes were immediately opened at the four corners of the spear phalanx, and the holes were immediately closed after the musketeers came in, turning it into a large spear formation with all four sides facing forward, which stunned the Tatars.

What kind of training is this? Where are the musketeers? Are we going to charge head-on into a dense phalanx of spearmen? Isn't that courting death?

The Tatar leader was also confused at this moment, not knowing how to respond. He ordered his soldiers to retreat and resume archery harassment. Then the musketeers came out of the spear formation and continued three-stage shooting, crushing the nomadic cavalry with Aenarion's Thunder.

After this was repeated several times, only a few unlucky people on Aenarion's side were shot dead by arrows, and the others were injured, while the Tatar Night Demons had left behind hundreds of corpses.

Chapter 249: The Fallen City (Part 1)

The two sides fought and scrambled several times. The Tatar leader saw that he could not gain the slightest advantage over Aenarion, and the opponent's ammunition seemed endless. If he continued to consume it, more of his men would die, so he had to retreat.

After these horse archers retreated, the Varyag Guards began to disembark, covering the artillery. Five hundred Mongolian orcs also landed. These 3,500 people set up camp on the grassland east of the city of Kaffa.

Some auxiliary troops also began to build artillery positions, wrapping lead bullets and gunpowder with oil paper on the ship to make more paper-wrapped bullets to replenish the ammunition of the musketeers. During this period, the Tatars sent out small-scale nomadic cavalry to harass, but they were all repelled by the cooperation of spears and muskets.

This formation and these soldiers were specially trained by Aenarion to fight against the Dark Angels' cavalry. The Janissaries were annoyed by this formation and would rather avoid it than fight it, not to mention these nomadic Tatars.

A few hours later, the artillery positions were set up and the bombardment could begin. This time, Aenarion adopted a new method of breaking into the city.

First, use a salvo of 3-pound field artillery to blast some holes in the extremely hard stone walls of Kaffa. Then, use a 12-pound siege gun, aim at the position between two holes, raise the muzzle slightly, and then fire, trying to make the three holes form a triangle to cause maximum damage to the wall.

Deafening roars echoed throughout the city. Sections of the city walls were torn apart by the whistling iron shells. Fragments of stone and bricks, dust flew everywhere. Dazzling flames shone in the air, replacing the sunset to illuminate the entire scarlet sky, casting one patch of blazing light after another.

Bricks and stones began to shake, cracks spread rapidly, and the entire section of the city wall seemed to be about to collapse at any time. Choking smoke filled the air and spread everywhere. The guards on the city wall fled in fear. The shouts of soldiers, the screams of civilians, and the whistling of artillery shells filled the entire city!

After several rounds of bombardment, the city wall finally couldn't withstand the power of the artillery and collapsed. The sound of rock collapse resounded throughout the city! Huge rocks and debris hit the ground like a meteor shower, and under the strong shock, the rubble and dust were thrown into the sky dozens of meters high.

The effect of these small cannons digging at cracks and large cannons smashing walls was very obvious. The Tatars looked in despair at the stone wall that the Mongolian Huihui cannons had not been able to break through two hundred years ago, and then fell down under the fierce bombardment of Aenarion.

"Don't rush into it yet."

Aenarion stopped the Varangian guards who wanted to charge when they saw the city wall being destroyed.

"Write some letters and say that I have no intention of harming the merchants of Kaffa, so I will give them one night after the walls have been destroyed: they can pack their bags and leave by boat, and I will not stop them.

If you don't want to leave, then hang the flags of Genoa, Venice, or Mamluk over your own factory, and my soldiers will never rush in to burn, kill, or loot."

The staff nodded and immediately ordered their men to copy the letters. Indrognir put all the letters together in a sack and flew over the city of Kaffa in a grand manner.

These letters were thrown towards the port area where the most foreigners gathered, falling on everyone's head like snowflakes.

Now, the choice fell into the hands of these merchants. They had originally looked at Aenarion's huge fleet and the hundreds of cannons trembling in fear. They believed the lies of the Jewish goblins and thought that the Romans were really coming to catch them all in one fell swoop, so they were forced to unite together.

As a result, now, after destroying the city wall and proving his ability to seize the entire city, Aenarion said that his target was not them at all. You merchants can leave or stay. Even if you stay, as long as you are not Ottomans and fly the national flag, I will never infringe on your interests???

At first, some merchants thought that Aenarion was trying to trick them out of the safe port. Then some merchants tried to leave the port by boat. Aenarion fired a few flares, letting the bright fire illuminate the sea where they were heading, and at the same time asked the flag bearer to signal "goodbye" to see them off.

At this moment, all the merchants doing business in Kaffa were furious. They ran away without a second thought. The fully armed merchant ships ignored the tripartite alliance of Genoa, Ottoman Empire and Tatar and fled from the war-torn Kaffa in all directions. No one could stop them - these merchants all had cannons.

There was no other way. The anxious Genoese, together with the Tatars, launched another night attack, trying to destroy Aenarion's artillery position. Then things turned out the same as in the morning. The unarmored archers could not shoot the heavily armored musketeers, and their chain mail heavy cavalry could not break through the heavily armored spear formation. They returned empty-handed after leaving behind hundreds of corpses.

By dawn the next day, their port was three-quarters empty.

Aenarion waved his hand and ordered an attack on the city. A round of artillery fire directly blew up the broken pieces of the wall that the Night Demons had temporarily used to block the gap in the city wall last night. The phalanx soldiers with spears in front and muskets in the back slowly advanced forward under the cover of artillery fire.

At the same time, large caravels began to bombard the port. Under the cover of artillery fire, Viking longships rushed forward. The Varangian Guards also successfully landed at the port. The Tatars were overwhelmed by Aenarion's two-line attack!

The local defenders watched as cannons pulled by horse-drawn carriages slowly entered the city from the east, and Varyag landed from the south. Having experienced the power of artillery, they did not dare to retreat back to the inner fort and become targets. The cavalry's mobility could not be fully utilized in the complex city alleys.

They tried to rely on the complex urban terrain to block the Roman advance, and Aenarion's response was straightforward: he knew that with the amplification of the Night Demon Bards, ordinary Night Demon militia could also burst out with extremely strong combat capabilities, so he did not let Varyag go up and fight desperately, and directly pulled out the 3-pound field artillery.

Under the astonished gaze of the Tatar Night Demons, a row of huge carriages pulled by two horses appeared in front of them. Shields were installed on both sides of the carriages to improve their defense capabilities. On top was a 200-kilogram 270-pound cannon that could rotate 3 degrees and could fire from the left, right and rear sides in addition to the front.

And this time, they were loaded with shotgun shells.

Amid the earth-shaking sound of artillery fire, one 3-pound cannon after another spewed out a wave of death composed of metal and flames. The flying metal fragments cut the first row of Tatars into countless pieces of flesh. Body remains were scattered all over the ground. The back rows were pierced into sieves by the flying iron filings. Blood gushed out like a fountain from the wounds cut by iron sand and iron filings!

Some gunners were also conducting experiments to find out which shells would be most effective against dense crowds of people.

An ordinary iron bullet could directly smash a soldier into pieces, and then carry his shattered flesh and blood to continue rolling backwards, tearing a flesh and blood ravine in the enemy formation.

As for the chain bullets designed to hit masts, two iron bullets welded together by chains danced, whistled, and spun, like the scythe of the god of death, whistling past and tearing seven or eight densely packed spearmen in half. Their bodies were not stronger than masts.

If a pile of heavy musket iron bullets were thrown into the barrel of the gun, and the iron sand of the shotgun was replaced with seven or eight small iron bullets, the effect seemed to be the best. These shells had extremely strong penetrating power. They could often penetrate a Tatar soldier in armor, hit another soldier behind him, penetrate again, and hit the next soldier until the power of the shells disappeared.

Each lead bullet can often kill 2 to 3 enemy soldiers at a time, and such lead bullets can be fired 7-10 times each time!

Under such firepower, the Tatars were defeated and streets fell one after another.

There was no other choice, so the Tatars simply abandoned the entire city of Kaffa. All the soldiers fled the grassland from the north gate, taking all the gold, silver and jewelry they could carry, and retreated to Bakhchisaray, the capital of the Khanate, which was located in the center of the grass sea on the peninsula.

Chapter 250: Slave City (Second update!)

After capturing the city of Kaffa, Aenarion did not dare to relax at all. He immediately ordered his Third Phalanx to control the entire city and stationed his own people at various important passes.

At this moment, the three thousand-man phalanx corps he brought with him were firmly stationed in the three cities of Sevastopol, Amiansk and Kaffa. The only field troops that could be mobilized were two thousand Varangians and five hundred Mongolian orcs.

He quickly issued orders, asking Athens to transport a large number of muskets, bayonets, supplies, and silver coins to him.

There is no other way. I don't have many troops, and Thessaly's defense pressure is also very heavy. I want to get enough

Soldiers can only be recruited locally.

Accompanied by Llane, his strongest bodyguard, Aenarion strode into the slave market of Kafa. What came into his sight were shocking and cruel scenes.

Hundreds of naked white slaves stood neatly on wooden platforms like commodities, so that slave owners and buyers could easily see their strength and sexiness, as well as their health.

They were even categorized, with male white slaves lined up and sold as labor, with prices pegged according to their physical strength.

Female white slaves stood in a row and were sold as sex slaves. Their initial prices were determined based on the beauty of their faces, and the grandeur and beauty of their breasts, buttocks and other sexual organs. Some female slaves even had "Virgin" tags hung around their necks to increase their prices.

And those children were also standing in a row. They were sold specifically to the Ottomans and the Mamluks. These two countries liked to train their children from an early age to become their loyal slave soldiers.

The hands of these slaves were tied behind their backs, with finger-thick hemp ropes tied around their necks. They were tied tightly to wooden stakes like cattle and sheep. Their fair skin was covered with whip marks and scars, and their faces were filled with numbness and despair. The entire market was filled with a dirty smell and a depressing atmosphere, as if the entire space was filled with cruelty and exploitation.

Several huge iron barrels filled with burning charcoal are distributed in various corners of the slave market, with various red-hot irons placed inside. They even provide customized slave marking services. The blacksmiths will make their favorite irons on the spot, and after they are red-hot, they will be branded on the slaves that have been successfully sold.

Aenarion rushed to the backyard of the slave market, where there were still several carts of slaves that had just arrived and had not been unloaded in time.

In order to improve transportation efficiency, the Tatars transported slaves as cargo. Dozens of people were squeezed into a small prisoner car, with naked bodies piled up and squeezed together powerlessly. Skinny arms and thighs stretched out of the wooden cage powerlessly. They didn't want to waste any space, so they stuffed a few more slaves horizontally above everyone's heads!

The prison van was so crowded that the wooden fences were bulging like balloons!

Aenarion split the cage with his spear. In an instant, countless white bodies fell from the prison cart like waves. Countless people's limbs had been numbed by the pressure and they could not stand up. They could only lie on the ground and wail.

And this is just one of the slave markets in Kaffa. There are at least thirty such markets.

This is the largest slave city in Europe: Kaffa.

In my previous life, I saw a statistic that over a century, the Tatars sold millions of Eastern Europeans to all parts of the world through the port of Kaffa and made huge profits, which directly led to the entire Ukrainian region becoming an unmanned wasteland. Villages and farmlands became uninhabited and untended ghost towns.

The slaves who died on the road were thrown directly on both sides of the road, and their bodies were exposed in the wilderness. The land of Eastern Europe was covered with the corpses of slaves, and their blood dyed the entire land black.

Bones exposed in the wild and no crowing of roosters for thousands of miles is the most appropriate description of this land.

And Aenarion has already tried to make Crimea, as well as the lands and populations in southern Eastern Europe, his own future private property, and it is impossible for him to allow such a thing to continue to happen.

"Release them all! Untie all the slaves! Open the granary, feed them well, and quickly count how much food we have looted? How much is left? How many slaves are there?"

Aenarion pulled out the booklet he carried with him and checked how a normal person would express emotions when seeing this scene. Then he perfectly disguised his anger and compassion and began to free the slaves.

These people had nowhere to go. The Tatars took away everything they could from their villages and burned down everything they couldn't take. For revenge and to make a living, they all joined Aenarion without hesitation.

Not long after, the statistical report came out. It showed that the expeditionary force had transported a total of 600 tons of grain with the help of large ships, and had also looted more than 600 tons of grain from the warehouses in the three cities, totaling 1,200 tons.

The ones driving the ship are you and Admiral Artemisia's zombie soldiers, and there is no loss of food.

But the remaining 5,500 soldiers and the 4,500 rescued slaves, together with tens of thousands of mouths, would consume about 15 tons of food a day.

According to this calculation, we can only hold out in Crimea for eighty days. Greece is not a good grain-producing area, so we must keep enough food and take more. If there is a disaster this year and the harvest is poor, I am afraid that the basic foundation of Thessaly - Attica will collapse.

"It doesn't matter. Today is March of 1452. Look, we will take Crimea in eighty days. By June, everyone will be able to return home in time for the grain harvest."

Aenarion assured his men and then sent spies to check on the movements of the Crimean Khanate, the Ottomans, and the Genoese. He had not expected the Genoese to defect, so he had to re-evaluate the war situation.

Two thousand Varangians set out by boat, and began to plunder Tatar livestock, destroy Tatar horse farms, and bombard Tatar herders along the river. It was not the first time that Valkiya came here to burn, kill, and plunder. They were eager to kill and build a Khorne Jingguan. At the fastest time, they could plunder three villages in a day along the inland river and the coastline.

The Tatars were so frightened that they trembled in fear, and were terrified when they saw the bloody flag of Khorne and the red flag of the Romans.

As for the 4,500 slaves, Aenarion did not expect them to do anything. It was good enough that they could fill in the ranks. He selected one third of them, that is, 1,500 of the strongest men, and taught them how to shoot with muskets and bayonet thrusts, and they became lightly armed musketeers.

As for the remaining 3,000 men, they only need to know how to load their muskets and use the muskets with bayonets as spears in close combat. In this way, they can use another type of three-stage attack.

These Slavs were arranged in three rows, with the strongest and most well-trained one-third in the first row. After shooting, they passed the muskets to the people behind them, who passed the loaded muskets to the first row and reloaded the guns that had emptied their bullets at the same time - this would also achieve the effect of uninterrupted firepower, and there would be no troublesome changes in formation or substitutions.

This is a very unconventional and quick method. It can create a musket army with a high hit rate and fast firing rate in a very short time. The disadvantage is that two-thirds of the people in this army cannot fight, and if the leading one-third die, it is basically useless.

Chapter 251: Storm is coming (3rd update!!)

A few days later, Aenarion received intelligence that the Crimean Khan had angrily declared war on the Eastern Roman Empire and immediately assembled his troops. Tatars from all over the Crimean Peninsula rushed to his royal court, with about 45,000 light cavalry equipped with scimitars and short bows, and 5,000 heavy cavalry in chain mail, which was the same as the previous estimate.

Their primary target of attack is not yet known.

However, the Khan discovered that there was a problem with the troops he had assembled. The herdsmen in the east should have been able to provide him with two thousand light cavalry and dozens of heavy cavalry, but in the end only three quarters of them showed up.

The horse farm in the west should be able to produce five or six thousand horses, but in the end it only produced three thousand.

The Tatar noble in the south was capable of leading a hundred mail-armored heavy cavalry to participate in the war, but he took three days to walk dozens of kilometers and still couldn't reach the destination. He sent out scouts to check and found traces of battle on the river bank, as well as a white, bloody pyramid made of human heads. The ground was also written with dazzling elven words in dry, black blood.

Blood sacrifice to the blood god! Skull sacrifice to the skull throne!

"Oh Allah! Why is it that crazy girl Valkia again! Is she hanging out with the Romans?!"

The Tatar Khan roared in anger.

Although the Ottomans were very angry, their navy was extremely weak and they had no ability to send the Janissaries across the sea. So Muhammad ordered his craftsmen to build a castle not far north of Constantinople, at the narrowest part of the Bosphorus, to align it with the Anatolian Castle on the other side of the strait, and to pull up iron chains to block the Bosphorus.

This strait is the only waterway connecting the Black Sea and the Mediterranean Sea. If it is locked, Aenarion's expeditionary force will be trapped in the Black Sea and cut off from the Greek part.

Because the fortress is located in the Balkan Peninsula, and the Turks called the Balkan Peninsula Rumelia, which means "the land of the Romans." So the fortress was called Rumelia Fort.

The attitude of the Genoese was more ambiguous. Aenarion did not directly declare war on the Genoese. Their territory in Crimea, like the Galatia region in Constantinople, was just "leased" seaports and markets. The Roman soldiers did not attack these concessions at all, so it did not constitute a declaration of war.

Besides, the slave trade is a difficult matter to deal with. I cannot say that the reason for my declaration of war is that the Romans do not allow me to sell slaves to pagans. Even if I report this to the Pope, I will still be in the wrong.