"We're too late."
Eiblont put down the gold-inlaid telescope and shook his head. "If we'd arrived a month earlier, the enemy definitely wouldn't have finished building the walls. We might have been able to take down the Nasrian Volunteer Army's camp while the walls were still incomplete.
Now that they've finished building the walls, it'll be a little troublesome for us to uproot them. "
Claude didn't say a word. He knew that Eiblont was already giving him face by saying it would be a little troublesome. In fact, it was a lot of trouble.
He didn't expect the high-ranking officers of Canas to confess that the Nasrians were rebuilding their logistical base on the ruins of Wickhamsburg. Only now did he realize that they weren't rebuilding it on the original site, but expanding it instead. They had even finished building the outer walls.
As the capital city of Cromwell's outer colonies, Wickhamsburg was known for its strategic terrain and tight defenses.
During the first Shiksan war, Wickhamsburg only had one garrison line and managed to hold out for half a year under the siege of a Shiksan standing corps.
In the end, it took the colonial army a month and a half to transport two heavy siege cannons to destroy the walls and take over the castle.
The second time Wickhamsburg was conquered, it was General Michelc's victory. During the first colonial war, two of Shiksan's standing corps were wiped out and General Michelc led Ranger to the border.
The two parts of Wickhamsburg's walls that were destroyed by the cannons hadn't been repaired yet. The garrison line that was defending it had no choice but to raise the white flag and surrender, allowing Ranger to reclaim Wickhamsburg.
When he received news that Shiks had sent five more standing corps to Nubissia, General Michelc decided to fortify Cromwell and Balingana and evacuate all the inhabitants of Wickhamsburg, leaving only an empty castle and the nikancha living around it.
When the second colonial war started, the Shiksan standing corps easily occupied Wickhamsburg and slaughtered and chased away the nikancha living there. They also turned Wickhamsburg into their main logistical base.
However, Michierc ordered Line 131 to take over Wickhamsburg through a secret tunnel they dug beforehand and burned down all the supplies. Then, the entire castle was reduced to rubble by the explosion of the ammunition depot, forcing the Shiksan corps to surrender due to running out of supplies. Thus, they won the second colonial war.
However, Shiks wasn't willing to end the war after two defeats and announced that they were going to form ten standing corps.
Under the guise of mercenaries, they hired retired soldiers from Aueras' arch-enemies, Nasri and Canas to form two volunteer corps and sent them to Nubissia to stabilize the situation there.
In the first half of the year, Shiks sent two more standing corps to Vebator, only to run into a food crisis.
While they urgently sent supplies, they also opened up hundreds of thousands of acres of fertile land in Vebator to tide them over.
According to the high-ranking officers captured, the first batch of potatoes had already been harvested in Vebator and the food crisis had been alleviated. That was why they decided to launch a military campaign against Cromwell and Balingana.
The Nasri corps had their eyes on the favorable terrain of Wickhamsburg and decided to rebuild their logistical base there.
If it wasn't for the fact that the light cavalry of Canas wanted to earn some extra income from hunting buffalo, they would have stayed in Cromwell too.
With the two corps there, Crowell's colony would soon become a Shiksan prefecture.
That was the main reason Claude was so determined to uproot the Nasri corps. As the highest commander of the war theatre, he wouldn't allow the enemy to plant a nail in his war zone.
That was especially true for the volunteer corps of Nasri, the kingdom's arch-enemy. They were famous for their defensive prowess during the five years of war.
If they were allowed to occupy the ruins of Wickhamsburg, Cromwell would soon become the enemy's territory.
Unfortunately, it was just as Eiblont said, they came too late.
The enemy had already finished building the outer walls and set up camp inside the walls.
It wasn't a good idea to recklessly launch an attack when the two sides were roughly equal in strength. Thundercrash's men would most likely be badly battered in front of the enemy's walls. Even after paying a heavy price, they still wouldn't be able to take Wickhamsburg Castle. There was even a high chance that the enemy would seize the opportunity to counterattack.
Claude had wanted to see if the enemy had built on the original site. If that was the case, he might be able to make use of the secret passage.
He didn't think that the enemy would expand the entire castle. The trench at the exit of the secret passage had been filled up and included within the walls, much to his disappointment.
Eiblont's suggestion was to besiege the castle and wait for reinforcements to arrive.
They could use Thundercrash's mobility to trap the enemy in Wickhamsburg and wait for their rations to run out.
However, he didn't know how long it would take.
No one knew how much rations and supplies the Nasrian army was carrying. If it was only for two to three months, they would be able to get by if they endured it.
But if the enemy had a year's worth of supplies, it would be better for them to go home and sleep. They couldn't attack the castle anyway. Their morale would crumble if they had to stay in the wilderness for a year without fighting.
But Claude rejected Eiblont's suggestion. What he needed was time to wipe out the volunteer corps as soon as possible.
The longer they dragged it out, the more disadvantageous it would be for the war zone. Just the logistics alone would put them at a disadvantage compared to the enemy.
Even if Thundercrash had organic mobility, their warhorses consumed more energy than humans. They couldn't just graze on some grass in the wilderness. They also needed a large amount of nutritious food to feed them.
So, Claude decided to attack by force. With the grenades in hand, he didn't believe that the Nasri volunteer corps could hold the walls.
Eiblont didn't know that Claude had a trump card and tried to persuade him for a while.
Claude only shook his head with a smile and refused to listen. Instead, he ordered his men to spread out to prevent the enemy in Wickhamsburg from escaping.
At the same time, he wanted to show Claude why he was so confident in breaking through the walls.
However, Claude's plan didn't work out. To his surprise, the volunteer corps didn't hide behind the walls like turtles.
When they realized that the soldiers of Thundercrash hiding in the pits a hundred meters away from the city walls were a great threat to the defenders and cannons on the city walls, they sent out their infantry to launch a counterattack. This forced the first wave of Thundercrash soldiers to pay a heavy price, forcing them to retreat from the front lines.
Claude's face darkened. It was obvious that the enemy realized that Thundercrash didn't outnumber them by much, so they were confident in counterattacking.
If Claude wanted to throw his grenades into the walls, he had to get within 70 meters of the walls.
But the current situation was that Thundercrash couldn't get within a hundred meters of the walls. They couldn't even snipe the defenders on the walls.
Claude had no choice but to follow the example of the Canasian light cavalry he wiped out and dig a trench 800 meters away from the walls to avoid the enemy's cannons and reduce casualties.
This was something that could not be helped. The enemy had a lot of ammunition and supplies. Within 800 meters, as long as there were more than three people gathered together, the cannons on the city wall would fire solid projectiles to attack.
Under such circumstances, Thundercrash's soldiers couldn't dig to the front at all. They could only dig from 800 meters away, out of the range of the cannons on the walls.
It took them eight days to dig the three trenches to a distance of 200 meters from the city walls. During this time, the volunteer field army stationed in Wickham Castle sent out a night raid team to attack the guards in the trenches, causing nearly a hundred Thunder soldiers to be injured or killed.
In addition to the casualties caused by the cannons on the city walls while digging the trenches, there were already more than 400 casualties.
However, it was precisely because of this that the soldiers of Thunderclap were enraged. Everyone knew that the regiment still had a powerful weapon in the form of a grenade, so their morale didn't drop. Instead, their fighting spirit grew even stronger, and they all requested to fight day and night to continue digging forward.
They wanted nothing more than to dig all the way to the bottom of the walls and use the grenades to take revenge.
By now, Claude understood how difficult it was to deal with Nasri's volunteer corps. He changed his battle plan and decided to fight a tough battle at Wickhamsburg instead of hoping to use the grenades to crush the enemy.
He remembered a famous saying he read on the military forums in his previous life. Weapons weren't the deciding factor in a war. The real deciding factor was the people.
The fact that Nasri sent people out from the walls to counterattack from time to time showed that the enemy's morale was just as high. They believed that they could defend Wickhamsburg.
If they didn't trap the enemy in the castle and weaken their morale, they could still fight to the death with Thundercrash even if they were caught off guard by the grenades.
Perhaps the Thundercrash Regiment, who thought that the enemy had been defeated by the grenades, would suffer a great loss. After all, the grenades weren't a true killing machine. They were just a variant of the grenade, and their damage wasn't that great ….
Claude ordered the soldiers to dig a horizontal trench 150 meters away from the walls to prevent the enemy from sneaking out and counterattacking. Then, they dug another horizontal trench 120 meters away and pushed forward step by step.
Eiblont, on the other hand, watched the battle in confusion. He didn't understand why Claude was doing this.
The two folk had brought two months' worth of ammunition with them before they set off. At this rate, they would run out of supplies before they could even take Wickhamsburg.
Claude simply smiled and told Eiblont to be patient and everything would be clear in a few days.
Over the next few days, Thundercrash's soldiers finally managed to dig a trench within a hundred meters of the city walls. Now, they could use their muskets to suppress the cannons on the city walls, making it impossible for the enemy to leave the city and set up a campfire to prevent a night attack.
At night, in order to defend against the Thundercrash Regiment's night attack, the volunteer army had no choice but to send a large number of soldiers to guard the city walls. Occasionally, they would toss down torches from the top of the walls, using the weak light of the torches to see if there were any enemies near the city walls or trenches …
However, Claude didn't intend for Thundercrash to get close to the walls at all. They only needed to get within 70 meters of the walls and use the grenades to lob them at the walls.
Continuous explosions rang out on top of the city wall. Amidst the flames, soldiers' limbs were blown off the city wall from time to time.
A total of ten rounds of a thousand grenades blasted the wall that Thundercrash was attacking into into a mess. They suffered heavy casualties.
While the volunteers called in a few batches of reinforcements, they didn't dare to send more up the walls due to the casualties of the first two batches. Even after the grenades stopped for ten minutes, they remained at the bottom of the walls and only sent a few soldiers to the top of the walls to watch.
The ten-minute pause was only for Claude to order the grenades to advance 15 meters and lob five more rounds of grenades into the walls.
In the end, nearly a hundred grenades were thrown in the first round, and the volunteer reinforcements stationed at the bottom of the city wall immediately suffered a great loss. The grenades landed in the middle of the crowd, and a large area was blown up. The soldiers who were not injured turned around and ran, not even bothering to bring their wounded comrades down.
By then, the rest of the attackers had already crossed the trench in front of the walls and were climbing up the walls with ladders.
Although there were more than a dozen volunteer soldiers on the city wall who were sent to observe the situation, it was impossible for them to fend off so many attackers. They either turned around and fled or died under the bayonets of the attackers.
Soon, the front part of the walls was occupied by Thundercrash. The soldiers on the walls continued their assault along the walls while opening the main gate for the rest to enter.
Under the cover of the grenades, the four walls fell one after another. Most of the volunteers were trapped in the ruins in the middle of the walls.
After taking over the four walls, Claude ordered them to stop attacking and wait for daybreak to prevent any accidental casualties.
Only when the sun rose did Thundercrash realise that Nasri's volunteer corps was still planning to resist. They had set up a defensive position in the middle of the city walls and concentrated their cannons on the western wall, intending to open a gap there and carve out a path of survival.
Unfortunately, the quality of the outer wall they built was very good. Dozens of cannons bombarded the wall for half a day, but the inside of the wall was full of potholes, and it did not collapse.
Seeing that the enemy still wasn't surrendering, Claude ordered the cannons on the walls to turn around and fire at the ruins in the middle of the walls to destroy the enemy's defensive formation and draw away their firepower. At the same time, Myjack ordered Tribe 131 to throw grenades in tandem with Eiblont's troops to attack and take over the enemy's defensive formation.
The battle in Wickhamsburg lasted for three days and two nights. In the end, the remaining 43,000 soldiers of the Nasrian volunteer corps put down their weapons and surrendered to Thundercrash.
The siege lasted for 22 days. More than half of Nasri's volunteer corps had been killed, with 17,000 soldiers dying in battle. The entire army was wiped out.
However, Thundercrash's and Eiblont's 3rd Monolith's casualties weren't small either.
Thundercrash's casualties were mainly due to the counterattack they suffered while digging the trenches and the final night attack. They suffered around 4,000 casualties.
The casualties of the 3rd Monolith Division came in the last three days of the battle inside the city. Because they were not familiar with urban warfare, General Eiblont's troops suffered more than 6,000 casualties when attacking the enemy's defensive positions built on the ruins. He had lost almost an entire regiment of troops.