Chapter 334: Battle of Moncruz (V)

He stabbed a night guard to the ground with a shot, drew his spear, and took a step back. The spearmen on both sides immediately took his place.

"After we finish this round of fighting, we will change shifts!" Zhu Erdan shouted to the surrounding warriors, "Just hold on for another five minutes."

Standing aside to rest, Jourdan looked at the peasant soldiers coming and going like the tide.

Most of them were villagers from the south. They would scatter after stabbing seven or eight people to death, and then be led by their entourage knights to fight back.

But there were too many of them, several hundred people in a group, attacking in turns.

The Savior Army's spearmen clearly defeated them, but were unable to pursue and expand their victory.

They could only watch as the scattered peasant soldiers were forced to reorganize their formation by the night guards and were forced to return to the battlefield by the armored sergeants and squire knights.

Later, as more and more corpses appeared under the low wall, the purpose of these peasant soldiers was no longer to break into the city, but to fill wooden barrels with soil and dump them under the low wall.

After completing this act, they ran away with the bucket.

As long as we can pour three buckets of soil to the base of the wall, we won't have to attack the city today.

This is a trick knights often use when attacking a city. The peasant soldiers are not good at engaging in head-on combat, but it is still possible to ask them to move some soil.

The soil and corpses gradually formed a slope, and their subsequent attacks did not even require a human ladder.

Panting heavily, Jourdan wiped the blood off his face and shouted to Bernardo, "Clerk, what are the current casualties?"

"Fifteen wounded, three dead, but we killed more than thirty night watchmen, and there are still twenty wounded prisoners."

In the Salvation Army's statistical caliber, peasant soldiers are not counted as combat achievements, so even if they killed hundreds of peasant soldiers, it would still only be counted as a collective achievement of "holding the city wall."

Jourdan pinched his tired brows. These damn night guards and even armored sergeants were hiding among the peasant soldiers. They would jump out to attack from time to time and would climb over the wall if they were not careful.

Although the night guards were unable to break through the spearmen's line, there were still some casualties.

In essence, the Night Watch Guards used the Peasants to block the lead bullets, and the Knights used the Night Watch Guards and Peasants to consume the Holy Guns.

But if the warrior monks did not use the holy guns and accidentally let the night guards and armored sergeants open a gap, they might have to consume more holy power in order to push them down.

Jourdan was not sure when the reinforcements would arrive, so he could only prepare for the worst and save as much holy power as possible while preserving his strength.

After taking a couple of sips from the canteen, Jourdan immediately put down the canteen when he saw Laurent approaching from the side. “Were the night guards coming up to you just now?”

"Yes, two armored sergeants and a dozen night watchmen came up." Laurent took the canteen from Jourdan and took two sips. "But I asked the spearmen to cooperate with the holy guns to deal with them. No one was injured."

"Okay." Zhu Erdan straightened his crooked helmet, "Get ready. When a shot is fired on the second floor, we will start the shift change."

A division captain asked, "Aren't we trying to save our holy energy now? Why do we need to ask the second-level soldiers to disperse the peasant soldiers who are gathered here?"

Laurent returned the canteen to Jourdan and said, "Fool, as soon as we change shifts, the knights will charge, and the peasants will be in front to block the bullets for the knights, and then they will charge forward.

Letting the gunners cast Holy Wind when the enemy's peasant soldiers are concentrated will force them to retreat, reduce the pressure on our spearmen, and prevent the knights from taking advantage of the situation to charge.

If we wait until the knights charge before firing, the first shot will scatter the peasants, and before the second shot is even fired, the knights will be right in front of us. "

Laurent's words were rough but his point was true, but his tone still made the division captain look unhappy.

Zhu Erdan immediately tried to smooth things over: "Okay, let's switch defenses if you have anything to say. We can still hold out for more than two hours after a switch. I don't believe they are made of iron."

With the orderly sound of gunshots, the surrounding peasant soldiers immediately dispersed, and the night guards who used the peasant soldiers as cover naturally retreated as well.

After a short respite, the 400 Holy Gunners from the two legions immediately began to change shifts, leaving only the Pikemen at the front.

Such an obvious transfer naturally could not be hidden from Helwin's eyes.

He shouted to the sergeant of the armored soldiers, "Bring 20 armored soldiers, and 2 squires to dismount and fight on foot, and follow the next batch of peasant soldiers to charge forward. The first one to reach the top will be rewarded with gold pounds!"

Seventy sturdy soldiers wearing breastplates or chain mail immediately put on tunics and blended into the next group of attacking peasant soldiers.

…………

"Ah! The barricades on the road have been removed!" Deklama was next to the slope leading to the second floor. When he saw the barricades removed, he immediately jumped out of the pit.

Stepping on the slope, Deklama crawled towards the passage, and the other village leaders rushed over in a swarm.

It was not only Deklama who saw the passage opened. Hundreds of local villagers and engineers also saw it.

Seeing that Deklama was leading the way, they naturally did not want to stay on the front line of the battlefield and ran towards the passage.

Amid the noisy shouts and whistles, rows of holy gunners formed neat lines on the second-floor passage, preparing to go down to the first floor. Before they took a step, they saw more than a dozen housekeepers and village heads jumping out of the passage, hunched over, and scurrying up.

Momri frowned but ignored them, after all, there were only a few of them and they were not blocking the road.

He gave the order without thinking: "Wait for me to blow the whistle, and then we will go down the left passage."

He stood at the front from the end of the team. After hearing Jourdan blow the whistle, he led the first fifty men of the Holy Gun Division and trotted towards the first floor.

Walking on the gently sloping ground, Momri had just walked out of the gap in the low walls on both sides when he heard a noisy voice coming from in front of him.

When he looked up again, he saw hundreds of engineers and villagers stuck together like a large gray cloud, and the boiling crowd was pushing and shoving each other as they ran towards the passage entrance.

Momri took a breath of cold air, drew the armed sword from his waist, and ran quickly towards the engineers and villagers.

"Don't block the road, get out of the way, get out of the way quickly!" Pointing his armed sword at them, Momri shouted at the group of villagers and engineers who were running over.

"Sir, please let us go up, it won't be a hindrance."

"Brother Deklama just passed by here, please let us pass."

Momri did not respond to the villagers' request, but instead shouted at the engineers: "What are you doing here? Do you want to be deserters?"

The engineers who had originally followed the crowd immediately began to retreat. They shrank their necks, fearing that they would be seen by Momri, and moved quietly backwards.

When the villagers saw the black-hatted monks in armor running towards them in neat steps, they prepared to leave with the engineers.

But the flow of people was already chaotic. Some wanted to go forward, some wanted to go backward, and some even tried to slip past Momli when he wasn't paying attention.

I didn't know who tripped whose legs first, but I heard a scream of "Ah" and two or three people fell down first, and then the engineers and villagers fell down one after another like dominoes.

They were already standing unsteadily on the slope, not to mention that the weather was gloomy and they couldn't see clearly today. On the road where Momri was changing guard, they were in a crowded mess and wailing.

"Ouch, my legs!"

"I told you not to run, don't run!"

"Who? Who stepped on my hand!"

The crowd was struggling, some lying down and some standing up, crying and shouting like a quagmire blocking the road.

The Black Hat monks looked at the villagers who were blocking the road and looked at each other in confusion.

Momli gritted his teeth and said, "Let's go back and go down the other side of the passage. Let the spearmen clear this path. Anyone who dares to block the way will be killed directly!"

…………

"What's going on?" Laurent spat out a few grains of sand that had flown into his throat. "Aren't we supposed to be changing guard? The infantry are about to rush in again!"

It was said that after the firing, the Saint Gunners would take over and go to the second floor one by one, but Laurent waited left and right and still didn't come.

It's not just the defense line on his side, the same situation exists even on his left side.

"I don't know!" The captain of the Lancer Division, who was guarding the same wall as Laurent, also complained loudly, "Our Holy Gunner has gone, but where is their Holy Gunner?"

Laurent gritted his teeth: "I'll go ask, you..."

Before he could finish his words, he saw a head wearing an iron helmet appear behind the captain of the spear division.

"Be careful! Behind you!"

Before he finished speaking, there was a sound of breaking air and shouting. Under the dark clouds, a dim sword light swept across the neck of the captain of the spear division. Blood spurted out like a fountain from the cut surface of the neck where the flesh was squirming.

The skull rolled to Laurent's feet. He fell to the left subconsciously, and the armored soldier's sword hit the place where he had been standing.

Laurent turned over and fell on his back, raised his gun, and pretended to pull the trigger at the armored sergeant.

The armored soldier was so frightened that he fell backward on the spot, rolled over, and hit the wall with his elbow to change direction, before he stood up in confusion.

When the sergeant realized that Laurent was bluffing him, his face immediately turned as red as pig liver.

"You fool me?!"

Seven or eight armored soldiers supported themselves on the wall, climbed over, and landed on the ground with a thud amid noisy shouts and screams.

The sultry wind blew on Laurent's face, but he felt a chill.

(End of this chapter)