Chapter 41: The Sultans Sword

After securing the city of Sivas I moved into the palace to rest under the guard of my Assassins. In the morning I had to gather my troops and leave back to Kayseri, I am on a tight schedule that somehow, I keep extending. I refuse to allow my lands to be attacked without a defense so I must return to Europe to lead the defense in the regions I own there.

Before leaving for Europe, I will begin the building and restoration of plenty of projects in my new region of Cappadocia. One is the prison system, which will be done by using these already existing complexes of underground cities. Another was the restoration of the Caravanserai and the existing trading routes.

Without the safety of trade, we have no reason to rule. I also commissioned the building of a few small mosques in the region to make travel and trade easier for everyone even without a horse. The roads will be extended and built by the system, so I do not need to worry about that, but the system will not build any buildings that people can stay at whilst traveling through the region.

I also begin the restoration and building of new fortifications like watch towers and small fortresses along the new border. I do not want the region to be looted by random raiders or by Eretna as he has still not been found. To guard against him I left behind my new ally Reza, to control Sivas and his soldiers there.

I decided to do this simply because it is easier, and I do not have the resources right now to control Sivas fully anyways. But if I can test this Riva's loyalty and secure the region that is all the better, but Kayseri will be garrisoned by my trained garrison troops and policed by my police officers trained in my cities. I prepared all the manpower needed for Kayseri, Smyrna, Ankara, eastern Anatolia, and Crimea before the campaign even started.

But the regions I did not plan to seize but instead fell into my lap I do not have any resources or government bureaucrats to send to those regions just yet. The remainder of the trained manpower will be used in the Balkans. But in less than three months I will have these insecure regions secured. I have just obtained three new system cities, leading to more output of trained and educated soldiers, administrators, and judges for those regions unsecured may become secure much faster than even I anticipate.

Once arriving in Kayseri, I will take the long trek over to Izmir and from the port there we will sail to Thessalonica. While I am in the Capital defending and attacking the Infidels my brother Suleyman shall lead our campaign in Crimea!

*** Pov: Suleyman

Waking up today I received a message from my brother. The messenger boy began to read the message, "The sultan says in this message that he has secured Cappadocia and is now moving the army back to the capital in Rumelia. He no longer will have the time to support the campaign in Crimea and the conquest of the region lies solely on your command. He does however state that you will have control of a massive fleet that will be led by the new Admiral Evrenos bey.

-He said that this fleet is new, and has many educated officers on its staff, he wants you to use this fleet to its full potential in conquering the coastal regions. He also said that there will be a shipment of cannons coming with this fleet, giving you a total of 130 cannons the most ever used. With these new cannons, he sent an engineering corps to make sure these cannons can keep up with the army and to build the infrastructure needed to move our army around the backwaters of Crimea.

-The last thing it says here is good luck, and prove to all that you are not just my elder brother but a great general. I want men to refer to you along with men like Subutai and Belisarius... Do not let yourself down!"

Hearing my brother's message, just made me chuckle and shake my head. How does this kid know all these stories... How can he say he wants me to be referred to along the same lines as these two men no one has heard of in centuries... I was not even taught anything about these two men growing up but somehow this boy did know about them and even in detail he is a strange one indeed.

But I cannot lie I do indeed inspire to be a great general I want to be written about and remembered for years to come. If what my brother tells me about these two men are true, I indeed want to be similar to these men, to be considered one of the greatest generals of my time.

*Sigh* Letting out a sigh I dismissed the messenger, then I moved to the main tent once more to discuss with my commanders the update of orders I received. Walking into the tent, all the commanders began to quiet down.

Then I said "We have new orders. We shall no longer wait for Sultan's forces he wishes for us to obtain the Crimean coasts with our army in conjunction with the navy. The faster the better as I have heard the Serbians are concocting some scheme against our Sultan. So I want all men ready to load up on the ships by tomorrow morning the fleet will be here then."

Once I have achieved my goal here I left, moving toward the port I began to make sure all the ships can dock here properly and nothing is broken or dangerous. Then I monitored the troops for the remainder of the day making sure everything is taken care of properly. If someone was being sloppy or not following my military protocols I would give them warnings and some men I have spoken with before were given small punishments like docking their pay or taking more of their loot in the future.

I need all my soldiers to have the proper discipline or in the future when we are in a battle we will lose because one man did not properly follow orders this is my doctrine. But once the sun began to set, I returned to my tent, where I did my daily workout, before having a bath and finally resting.

In the morning the Navy's ships began to dock in the port, where I led my troops to load up on these ships and load the supplies and horses into the hold of the ships. This process was done rather quickly compared to most armies as I led this personally and had everything and everyone already at the port ready to go.

By noon we were already en route to Crimea. I am currently on the deck of the flagship with Evrenos bey, we began discussing our strategy. He wants to focus the navy on siege warfare instead of just using the fleet for logistics support. He explained to me that we can hire local merchants and use the merchant ships we brought along to support our logistics and use the navy when needed to support our supply lines.

But he even cited examples of how my brother used the cannon-bearing ships to crush the enemy's walls as the number of cannons on the ships is way more than we have on the land. And the ships can move faster than we can on land, he says we can use the navy to crush enemies before the army even arrives in the city.

Hearing this was a lot I asked for some time to think. I need to indeed rethink my strategy, I did not know our navy was strong enough to take entire cities and it even secured an entire island without any land force support. Thinking and thinking days began to pass until I finally managed to arrange a proper strategy in my mind.

Yeah, I got it! I must now wait for us to reach the ground to explain to my commanders but the naval admiral is on this ship making it easy to explain the plan to him at least. After knocking on the door I entered the Admiral's office on the ship.

I said once in the room "I have the plan together it took me a while to put it all together. But I will have your navy play a vital role in these sieges. For the first part of the campaign we must secure the entire coast, without the port cities we cannot siege the cities further in as we will probably starve once our supplies run out.

-So, if we must secure the coasts the quickest way is by sea, so we will use the sea to our advantage. The Genoese have lost the majority of their fleet in the area having no real defenses against the sea as of now. So, we will move our armies by sea from city to city, once we capture a city we will embark back on the ships and disembark at the next city conquer it and move on again and again. How does this sound?"

Evrenos bey was silently thinking for a minute before responding "My navy is capable of this. But what will my ships be doing during these sieges will we participate?"

I thought for a second before saying "I want to follow the same strategy as my sultan. The navy will bombard the walls just as we will, wherever the walls fall first shall assault the city from that point. But this is not all, I hope to split the navy into a third, two-thirds of the navy will transport and siege cities with the army. The final third will move ahead of the army and navy and bombard the next city's walls, giving us a head start on attacking the cities and attempting to force these cities into surrender early."

He again thought for just a minute and replied "I agree, this sounds good. The spies say there are only merchant vessels around the Genoese ports here, and the numbers are extremely low according to the locals."

After this short conversation, I left his office and returned to my quarters. Here I pretty much waited for our arrival in Crimea... Soon I received notification we are approaching the coast and will have to disembark soon.

Once we arrived at a natural harbor unattended by any defenses only inhabited by local villages, we landed our ships there and the army disembarked the ships quickly again under my supervision. This took longer than I wanted but we were completely in marching order within three hours.

The first city we decided to siege was the best-defended city in the area and the most populous city in Crimea A city known as Caffa or Feodosia. Now we find ourselves looking to capture such a city that would have taken my father and his father years and maybe even decades to conquer. I am here now and expecting to conquer the city within the week or even quicker than that.

I received word the defenders number no more than a thousand men. This great though they have men armed with similar weapons to my brother's hand cannons they do not have large cannons as I have. This gives me a large advantage as I can just let the cannons and the ships bombard the city until the defenders can no longer defend and give up or until a gap is made and we can assault the city.

I do not plan to assault the city as I do not have any heavily armored units, I have mostly light-armored men who can move quickly and loose thousands of arrows quickly. I do though have 2000 heavily armored infantry and 500 heavy armored cavalries but to send these two at the walls against similar numbers would result in many losses.

So once we arrived on the outskirts of the city the navy was already bombarding the city, and the gates were closed. I had the siege camp built this took less than a day as the engineers my brother sent are extremely efficient at the building of pretty much anything.

-The second chapter for the day hope you enjoy it.