Chapter Sixty-One: Nothing Much After All

"Advance!"

Following the commands of the company commanders, several companies of the Blue Shirt Army stepped out in unison from beneath each section of the city wall, tasked with suppressing the enemy's fire atop the ramparts.

As the attack order was issued by the Song Empire, the large-caliber mortars deployed below the four walls also let out a roar. These mortars fired specially crafted explosive shells. Because their trajectory followed a parabola, and with no hostile artillery to interfere, they easily delivered bursting shells directly behind the city walls within effective range.

The dwarven soldiers and conscripted human laborers hiding behind the ramparts were miserably battered by these sporadic explosive shells. While such shells were not terribly effective at destroying defensive structures, their lethality against human flesh and blood was absolute: to be grazed was to be maimed, and to be struck was to die!

While the dwarven soldiers within the city of Bernia endured the sparse mortar bombardment, Song Empire recorders continuously noted the tactical effectiveness of the artillery. Mortars were rarely utilized in the Song Empire's engagements; after all, the vast majority of the empire's battles took place in the open field, where field guns clearly outperformed mortars by a wide margin, and mortars were by no means inexpensive.

Nevertheless, mortars had achieved excellent results in the siege. No doubt once this report was submitted, Sun Li would increase investment and deployment in mortars.

Accompanied by artillery fire and military band music, the soldiers of the Blue Shirt Army finally ceased their idle chatter, fixing their undivided attention on the distant enemy. When the moment of desperate struggle arrived, these civilian-militia forces finally began to take discipline seriously!

Perhaps this was the only area where the Blue Shirt Army surpassed mere mob militias; while usually rather lax, they were remarkably earnest when combat commenced...

Under the unilateral artillery dominance of the Song Empire, the dwarven soldiers did not dare to show their faces at all. Several companies of the Blue Shirt Army easily reached the base of the wall, then raised their rifles to provide suppressing fire, making it even more impossible for the dwarves to peek out.

In truth, General Aimer had never intended to engage in a firefight with the massive numbers of the Blue Shirt Army. Even with the cover of the city wall to rain fire down from an advantageous height, they could not outlast tens of thousands of enemies!

At the very least, the neatly aligned Blue Shirt Army marching with heads held high projected a high morale for rifle fire!

Naturally, the dwarven soldiers chose to hunker down, waiting for the moment the enemy scaled the wall to let these Song soldiers witness the glory of the dwarven army through cold steel!

"Haha, Bajin Long, these dwarves are nothing much after all. The moment we come up, every last one of them turns into a turtle hiding its head. Short legs really make it easy to hide; what a bunch of trash!" Qi Long laughed loudly as he watched the enemy beaten into submission by his own troops.

"That's for sure. Their main force was wiped out by us in one pot, let alone these remnants and stragglers. These dwarves have stiff brains too; instead of fleeing for their lives, they insist on staying behind to resist the invincible army of our Song Empire, forcing your grandpa here to choke on gunpowder smoke. Let's take no prisoners later; I'm going to turn these dwarves into human poles one by one, and let them know the consequences of offending us masters of the Song Empire. Haha," Bajin Long replied with an arrogant expression.

At this moment, the ranks of the Blue Shirt Army were indeed permeated with a sense of contempt for the dwarven soldiers. With their own rifles and cannons suppressing the opposite side to the point where no one dared to raise their heads, they had suffered zero casualties so far, while the enemy was periodically blown apart, leaving behind severed limbs and broken bodies. Everyone felt entirely at ease.

"Why aren't the cannons we found in the warehouses of Bernia opening fire? Are we just going to stand here and take a beating?" General Aimer demanded discontented of his subordinate officers as he watched the one-sided bombardment on the city walls.

"General, those antique relics left behind by the Frankania Empire are simply unusable. Moreover, we have no artillerymen and no way to repair that junk. Well over half of the dozen or so cannons are completely broken, and the few remaining... they all burst during firing... and several of our brothers were killed or injured..."

Upon hearing this, General Aimer fell silent. Had the Marshal not concentrated all the artillery and gunners for the main battle, how could these remaining dwarven troops have been left utterly devoid of firepower?

Initially, Aimer had rejoiced upon finding some old artillery in Bernia, the former capital of the Frankania Empire. As a result, those cannons failed to kill a single enemy, instead delivering a vicious blow to their own men first...

Hmph, even without artillery, we dwarves can still achieve victory through sheer willpower and bayonets!

Under the advantage of absolute firepower, the demolition teams of the Blue Shirt Army swiftly planted a massive quantity of explosives at the city gates. In this era, when dealing with ordinary city walls, no one used ancient equipment like scaling ladders or siege rams anymore. The approach was either firepower suppression combined with explosive demolition, or using heavy guns to directly blast a breach through the city walls or gates!

Therefore, open-field combat still accounted for a huge proportion of warfare in this era, and the protective value of ordinary city walls was genuinely limited—unless one constructed those special bastioned fortress systems, but those things were astronomically expensive!

As long as one wasn't utterly incapable of defeating the enemy in the field, wouldn't it be better to spend that money to hire more soldiers and purchase more weapons?

Sensing the demolition tactics of the Blue Shirt Army, the dwarven soldiers abandoned the defense of the ramparts. In truth, they had only been up there as a precaution in case the enemy managed to scale the walls; however, observing the situation, the Song Empire's commander was well aware of his own army's abysmal hand-to-hand combat capabilities and wisely abandoned the idea of a melee fight atop the walls.

Fewer than four hundred dwarven soldiers formed ranks a short distance behind the city gate. With a deafening roar, driven by a massive quantity of explosives, the ancient city gate and the gate tower above it collapsed instantaneously, leaving a sloped breach in the entire wall defense system.

"The city gate is blown open! Brothers, charge with me!" A Blue Shirt Army officer who had long been waiting in the rear waved his command saber and charged forward with a ferocious expression leading his subordinates.

It wasn't that they didn't want to maintain formation for a textbook volley-fire execution, but the debris of the bombed city gate was entirely choked with jagged stones. A neat formation could naturally not pass through, leaving no choice but a bayonet charge! Yet, in a face-to-face clash nearly identical to open-field combat, the Blue Shirt Army officers did not believe that their force of over a thousand men could be defeated by less than half their number of dwarven soldiers!

"Long live the dwarven empire! The glory of dwarven warriors never falls! Fix bayonets! Charge!" Led by General Aimer's trusted staff officer, the dwarven soldiers at the breaches of all four walls surged forward to meet the blasted-open gaps.

The dwarven officers knew all too well that they had to push the Song soldiers back right at these gaps; otherwise, once they broke through, the enemy's numerical superiority would spread out completely, and by then a single dwarven soldier would truly be facing multiple bayonets at once!

Right now, the gaps were narrow, and the enemy's deployment front was roughly equal to the dwarves', meaning the fight was far from over! (To be continued.)