Chapter Two: Construction Advance (Fourth Update)

Many of the bastions erected by the Madrid Empire were equipped with inner and outer moats, as well as communication trenches between the works. Their emperor, ever fearful and forever uneasy, even ordered the bastions to be reinforced with walls six meters thick. The distance between any two bastions was about two hundred meters, exactly the maximum effective range of a smoothbore firearm. This allowed overlapping fields of fire and greatly strengthened the fortress’s defenses.

Faced with such a colossal turtle shell, Marshal Max and Marshal Gerdo mustered a vast corps of engineers and added nearly one hundred thousand infantrymen to carry out earthworks. With ample manpower, the combined armies of the English Empire and the Franconian Empire dug their first parallel trench in a single day, about six hundred meters from the fortress.

Although the artillery of the Madrid imperial bastion complex could also reach that far, smoothbore cannon of the age were utterly incapable of aiming at such distances. Even to estimate the range was difficult. A great many solid shots were fired over the course of the day, but most of the iron balls never even came close to the edge of the trench. Once the digging was complete, the allied armies had suffered only a few dozen casualties. Marshal Max, the overall commander of the coalition, paid them no mind at all.

Thereafter, using the first parallel trench as a base, the allies continued to dig toward the fortress. The method of advance was as follows: first, an engineer carrying a wicker basket would, under the cover of a wooden shield, dig forward about half a cubic meter of earth, shoveling the soil into the basket as he worked. When finished, he would continue crawling forward to dig more, while other engineers deepened and widened the trench just excavated, reinforcing it with gabions and fascines until soldiers moving within it could be fully concealed. After one or two hours of such labor, the engineers would be relieved to maintain the pace of excavation. When the trench reached a certain length, infantry would move into it to protect the engineers and prevent the defenders from sallying out to sabotage the work. By the time the trench was finished, it could be as wide as four meters, broad enough to permit artillery to pass through.

As the allies pushed forward, they employed a zigzag trench approach, deliberately changing direction from time to time so that the defenders’ guns could strike only the parapet. In this way they avoided enfilading fire from the garrison and reduced their losses. By the night of the eleventh day, the allies had advanced through their zigzag approach trench to a second parallel trench roughly three hundred meters from the fortress. Although the defenders responded with cannon fire and sorties from the walls, the demoralized Madrid Empire forces failed to present much of an obstacle. The fifteen guns directly facing the trench could kill only a little more than thirty allied soldiers per day. During the first five days of the siege, total allied casualties amounted to only about one hundred and fifty.

Only after the second parallel trench had been completed did Marshal Max order the artillery into position within it. At dawn on the fifteenth day, the bombardment began.

In siege warfare, Marshal Max made extensive use of ricochet firing. This meant choosing a low trajectory so that the shell, after striking the target area, would bounce in all directions, threatening nearby men and machines alike. In a siege, the shell could leap directly over the parapet of a work and strike the front face of a bastion or ravelin from the side, killing personnel and destroying guns. Such batteries were also used to fire along certain sections of the covered way.

Only fifteen days had passed since the first parallel trench was begun.

During that time, the allies had suffered fewer than three hundred killed and five hundred wounded.

Once they possessed the second parallel trench, only three hundred meters from the bastions, Marshal Gerdo of the English Empire seemed to feel that ordinary artillery still had not proven murderous enough.

A day after the ricochet bombardment began, the English imperial army brought up a number of recently developed high-angle howitzers. These howitzers fired a newly designed shell, a type of explosive round whose casing could not withstand much pressure and could therefore be launched only by howitzers or mortars. Its trajectory was arcing, and it had no penetrative power; it could only explode on the surface of fortifications, with very limited destructive effect.

Yet the steep angle of fire made it easy to arc the shells over the bastions’ parapets and strike the guns and men inside directly. The fragments and shock waves produced by the bursting shells dealt a devastating blow to the morale of the Madrid Empire’s soldiers.

When a shell landed inside a bastion defense system packed with men, it achieved true accuracy in the fullest sense of the word. So long as a shell fell within the bastion, it meant soldiers collapsing in rows; if fortune was kind, a single shot could even put a gun out of action entirely.

After only three days of bombardment, the bastions were crowded with wounded men missing arms and legs. Soldiers whose bodies had been shredded by shell fragments were everywhere. The constant pain of their mutilations made the injured almost envy those who had died outright in a single blow. Seeing the wretched expressions of their former comrades, the intact soldiers around them grew more and more demoralized by the day. Had it not been for a cadre of die-hard officers utterly loyal to the emperor of Madrid, these bastions at the front would long since have mutinied and surrendered.

Demoralization was not even the worst of it. After several days of intense bombardment, nearly all the artillery in the forward bastions had been knocked out. The bastions’ firepower dropped by an entire tier.

In truth, the fortress function and the barracks function had become one; counterattacks from the works were the main defensive measure. At first, when the allies began digging their trenches, the Madrid defenders really did often sortie out to harass them. The results were not impressive, but at least they had courage.

After suffering under the rain of shells, even that courage was blown to pieces. For the soldiers assigned each day to hold the forward bastions, the duty had become nothing less than a death warrant. The troops stationed at the bastion line did not dare show their faces; one and all, they shrank behind the solid walls, doing everything possible to avoid the terrible impact of the explosive shells.

This method did indeed reduce the defenders’ casualties, and Marshal Max felt it was about time to attack.

At the first pale light of dawn, the allies launched their usual heavy bombardment. Then large bodies of musketeers rushed up to the base of the bastion walls. After the artillery fire had slackened, some bold defenders peered out to see what was happening, only to find ranks of neatly formed musketeers already aiming in their direction.

The allied soldiers spotted the movement at once. The nearest company fired a volley, sparks flashing all across the bastion parapet. Even if the defenders survived by chance, none of them would ever again have the courage to raise their heads and return fire. The Madrid imperial defenders were utterly terrified.

Under the covering fire of the allied musketeers, the officers sent forward demolition men carrying massive charges. With a thunderous blast, a breach was blown in the bastion gate, and the long-pike troops, already waiting, surged forward with a roar.

Seeing the defensive system of the bastion on the verge of being broken, the officers went all out as well, forming punitive detachments and killing a number of cowards on the spot. The defenders’ morale finally rose a little.

The brutal assault on the fortress had truly begun.