Chapter 1: Throughout (Part 2)
The siege of Yazda was long and painful.
This mountain fortress has three floors. Along the river bank is an outer wall with well-equipped garrisons and missile launchers with the same power as the Romans. There is a second floor on the mountainside, with only the front north gate and the side east gate. With two entrances, this fortress controls the most precious water source, a reservoir dug into a natural giant rock. The uppermost layer is a small but strong acropolis fortress, located on the top of a thousand Roman feet. Bows and arrows and slings fired from it can kill dozens of stadia in a radius.
Moreover, David Angite made the first move. When he raided Lepidah who appeared at the north gate, he suddenly let a group of troops occupy a certain high ground in the south, and extended the city wall to build a link with the third-layer outer wall. Together, they posed a serious threat to the Thirteenth Legion encamped under the high ground - the Romans surrounded the outer wall, but in turn were besieged within the city, making a very embarrassing scene.
Petnaeus, who was guarding the Xishan Fleet Fortress, decisively dispatched large ships and transported a considerable amount of siege equipment to the Thirteenth Legion. Hebrida arranged the entire legion into five camps, connected by wooden palisades, and Day and night, they used ballistas, cavalry cannons and wild donkeys to blast the Hasidic walls on the highlands. Finally, after three days, the gap was opened. Then Hebrida took more than a thousand Esios and personally built a gentle wall of earth. Then four centuries fought up the slope, and then captured the high ground on the flank. Only two of the four hundred Hasidic believers stationed above were captured, and the rest all died fighting.
At the same time, Lepidah's troops at the north gate also built four connected camps along the city wall of Yazda and aimed their trebuchets at the city wall. Keep smashing.
As time goes by. There were difficulties with food supplies in the Yazda Fortress. David Anget was determined to shrink his troops to the second city wall. At the same time, Lepidah sent a messenger and sailed around Yazda in a large ship. It was not easy to notify the chief officers of all the camps, and went to the fleet fortress to gather and hold a joint meeting before leaving. The former Lepidus handed over the defense of the camp to Phaobinas, and subsequently in the houses of the fleet fortress. He made new personnel arrangements: leaving Gable and a small number of infantrymen in the fleet fortress, and taking some ships to hold on. Half of the Serapis Legion went to reinforce the Thirteenth Legion, and the other half took large ships to raid the two islands with small fortresses on the outer wall of Yazda, and then attacked the water gate from there. At the same time, the Thirteenth Legion stormed the southern outer wall. Encourage all ministries to cooperate to seize the third outer wall and approach the core castle.
On the evening of March, the Serapis Legion on the big ship first launched a fierce attack on the two confronting islands. The deck of the big ship was simply taller than the towers on the islands. In front of the crumbling city gate, countless mad Hasidic believers rushed out. Swimming towards the big ship floating on the water, Selha ordered all the soldiers to hang torches on the deck and shot almost all of them with bows and arrows. The corpses and pools of blood filled the entire bay, and then the bow of the big ship spurted out high-temperature flames and burned down. After breaking through the water gate fence of the outer wall, one night later, the Serapis Army took the lead in breaking through the outer wall, but found that it was not counterattacked by the defenders in the city. After lightening in the early morning, the Thirteenth Army also formed a line along the carefully constructed fortification. On the siege slope, armed soldiers climbed over the outer wall and joined the Serapis Army.
When General Petheneus saw the empty scene inside the two city walls, he said to Hebrida and Selha: "The real siege has just begun. He ordered the military slaves and the Aesios to move the people outside the city." Trebuchets, ballistas, and goat-head hammers, plus wood and nails, are all brought in!"
At this moment, Lepidus' northern detachment had maintained a peaceful attitude. However, after learning that the Thirteenth Army and the Serapis Army had captured the outer wall, they moved the camp forward, demolished all the wall masonry, and built a new siege. At this time, Lebida discovered that one of the roots was a fake adobe brick, and he was surprised and regretful at the same time.
When the commander-in-chief, Antony, and Petnaeus observed the second city wall of Yazda, they felt that disaster was really coming. This section of the mountain was completely composed of white or black sharp rocks exposed on the surface. There were no tall trees and no shelter. "Dig the rock into pieces, and then put up a wooden frame to make a siege platform." Lepidah gritted his teeth. He knew the difficulty and cruelty of this project, but since Yazda refused to surrender, that was all he had to do.
The infantry guarded the catapults and catapults, constantly firing at the defenders on the second wall. All the remaining personnel, whether they were soldiers or officers, began to work hard, staring at the flying stone bullets. On the west side of the wall, with a reference length of 1,200 Roman feet, a staircase-shaped wooden frame was first built facing the city wall to prevent the Hasidis from arson. Dense nails and stakes were nailed to the frame and covered with After removing the iron sheet, the soldiers began to fill the wooden frame with gravel, and mixed a lot of volcanic ash to solidify, first building up a layer, and then another layer...
Small and brutal battles took place almost every day to protect and destroy the siege towers, and blood soaked the rocks everywhere, but the Hasidim were cut off from both inside and outside due to logistics, while the Roman army was able to flow through the Tostone River, Supplies were brought from the kingdom of Garamantes. Therefore, the Hasidim’s hope of clinging to the second wall is becoming increasingly slim.
Finally, at the end of June, the Roman siege platform was completed. It was 1,200 Roman feet long and 400 Roman feet high! It was filled with crossbows and scorpion crossbows, and there was a gap in the foundation of the platform, where a huge goat head hammer was specially placed, with wheels and simple wooden tracks underneath. The construction period lasted for three months, but the siege day was less than two days - the battlements were quickly damaged by concentrated stone bullets, and the infantry climbed up the steps on the siege platform and the temporary earth embankment like ants to capture the city walls and towers. The city gate was also hit by the goat head hammer and then burned down.
But the unyielding David Ankit quickly built a wall horizontally along the narrow passage of the Acropolis gate and continued to stubbornly resist the impact of the Romans.
The rainstorm came, and the yellow storm roared between heaven and earth. Both sides were running on Mount Yazda like horses in the wilderness, and the newly built siege towers and harp vehicles by Lepidus's vanguard were almost all blown away. The accumulated rain rose sharply, and the soldiers huddled under their cloaks and stood on slightly higher ground to avoid the rain. The temporary walls of Angit also collapsed after being soaked in water.
In the tragic scene, David Angit gathered the remaining fortress defenders in front of the Acropolis Temple and told them that this year's Day of Atonement had passed. (To be continued...)