Chapter 44: Rise of a new scourge of god?

***POV: MC

After finishing with the council, I moved back to my quarters. Wasting the next day away I spent time with my mother, sister, Mary, and my lioness Aurelia. After a long night, I awoke in the early morning hitting the road to begin my campaign against the heathen crusader alliance.

Leaving the city headed to a small city on the coast called Kolakia. I left the city with my newly recruited system units, my entourage now includes 7,920 soldiers. in the last month and a half, I managed to scrape together the funds to continuously recruit during the turns.

I can honestly say this further recruitment was done reluctantly by me as I need the troops once I heard the estimates of the crusader army's size. I recruited 2,400 more heavy horsemen who will be added to the kapikulu cav. Then another 2,400 are more musketeers, and the remaining forces are all heavy melee infantry these all will be janissaries.

My cannon output number is insane, I managed to add a further 40 smaller cannons to my roster as well. Traveling toward our goal it took another day's travel before we managed to meet up with our forces. Walking into our camp outside the small city, I went directly into the main tent.

Upon entering the room, I noticed all my commanders were already in the room ready for further orders. Using my authoritative voice I said "I need to tell everyone about the lords who joined us in the region so we know who to attack and who to allow to continue their rule but under our laws. Our strategy for the first part of the campaign is crucial for the second phase of the strategy.

-Keeping this in mind, I will give out your orders now, *PULLS OUT MAP* First phase is moving through the remaining river and road system seizing all the towns and cities in our path. We will be splitting our army up into smaller groups mostly into 5000 men manipular corps. We will continue seizing everything around us as we move through the remainder of Macedonia. Once we reach the Epirus border we will split into two armies splitting into one army of 25,000 and 15,000.

-The first army led by me will move north into Albania, while the second force will move into the weak lands of Epirus, there are barely any garrisoned forces there so it should be an easy catch. The hardest part for the leader of the second force who shall be Omar will be securing provisions, especially this winter.

-To help you out a bit as this is your first big move, I will have the logistics fleet supply you with fresh food from our lands but to do that you need to constantly secure ports as you advance. Now for your goals, you shall seize everything in Epirus, and leave no settlement without our flag hanging on its walls.

-Lastly, if I have not sent any message to reunite the armies you will seize all settlements not in our possession to the borders with Athens. I will leave a few diplomats with you as I believe they will be more important than soldiers in your tasks."

After giving my commanders their orders and sharing the details of the area on their maps... I moved on to describe the key point in the goal of my army, which is to make our way to Durres (Dyrrachium). I will not target the capital of the Serbian empire just yet, I want to seize the large port city called Durres before the enemies are ready to attack us.

By securing this city I can cut off the Italians from giving quick reinforcements near the actual war zones. There are other ports they can use but they will have to march for either a week or more to reach north Macedonia to reinforce Dusan's army. Next, once we reach the area I will begin to send more spies and assassins to reinforce my already massive number of agents in the area.

Their main job will be to ruin or poison water sources, burn food stores, and remove any notable leaders that they can get to. All in northern Macedonia and Kosovo will be entrenched in intrigue, hampering their forces in the region. I want them to feel pressure every day I want the fear of the Turks to build up in their armies.

I am shameless enough to even order chaotic acts of terrorism as well. I have brought along with agents extra barrels of black powder, grenades, and explosive arrows to be used by my agents in those areas to scare the hell out of the entire populace. They can blow up churches on Sunday for all I care, maybe I am being tyrannical but to me, it is logical to mess with gullible people.

I will also be spreading many rumors that the king is bringing these acts of violence on the people because of his greed and his conversion to Catholicism. I want as many people as possible to believe their king has given their churches to the Pope and has promised to forcibly convert all the Serbs.

Just by spreading these rumors, I can weaken the resolve and unity of his army, orthodox vs Catholic is a very divisive topic so an entire army of both trying to work together will be hard even without these rumors. Just imagine stewing a pot of muddy water only to have someone add to the flames and drop shit into the pot.

I also wanted to have my spies dress like catholic priests and have them perform forced conversions, but I was talked out of this by my vizier of the spy network. Well, after explaining we moved out. As we marched on, we subdued all the settlements that previously ignored our commands to join our state.

Moving up the river that is bringing our armies closer and closer to our destined split. Steamrolling through these undefended lands we seized Yenidje, Vodena, and Kastoria, the last city is where we finally split, him heading southwest and my army heading west.

Marching my army into Albania, I found that the region's border was filled with unruled and decentralized villages and towns, nothing special here. After another day's march, we reached a roadblock in the way of the route, a small city ruled by the Zarkovic noble family.

Moving into the range of this city our grenadiers bombed the city's gates and we again steamrolled a small city. But after leaving this city and a few hour march we reached the first small goal, the city of Valona (Vlorë). Upon arriving outside the city, we began building the siege camp...

Once I awoke in the morning the siege was ready to begin, But this is a weird siege position we find ourselves in. As this city does not have a curtain wall, but it is defended at the entrance by a harbor castle, and a hilltop castle meant to hold the citizenry when attacked and push back the attackers.

This is a strange position to be in, as we had to arrange two siege camps. One focused on attacking the walls of the harbor castle and the main hilltop castle at the same time. I chose this route instead of attacking one castle at a time as the result would be a guerilla campaign against my siege of the harbor.

Ordering the engineer corps to find a way to preserve the castles but also give us an advantage enough to take them with ease. I know it sounds impossible but the garrison here is no more than a few dozen men split between the two castles, they have been identified as the noble family's retinue.

The engineer decided to go with a gate bombing, seeing as the defenders cannot suppress us with projectiles from the walls, they have no way to keep us away from the gate. Hearing their opinions, I agreed as this was my first thought I just did not know if it would damage these smaller castles.

Sitting on the back of my horse I watched the men begin to move into ranks preparing for the assault on the main gates of both castles, and the rear gate as well to the hilltop castle. The harbor castle could get bloody if we just rushed in, seeing as there is only one entrance. To somehow correct this, I moved many musketeers into the assault squad of the harbor castle, they will be able to send any heavily armored defender to his grave pretty quickly.

Soon the skirmishers moved forward to provide covering fire for the few horsemen who will rush the gates and drop the grenades. These grenades are slightly different from the ones we use in our battles, these are larger grenades that are to be rolled into place and then they explode once the fuse is blown.

Once the horsemen got nearest the gates the grenades were rolled towards the gates, after the explosive was released the horsemen rode full speed back towards the protection of the camp. I said "Assault squads move forwards! Destroy the enemies and take the castles, get this done so we can move on!"

Once they got their orders they moved forwards in lock step. Moving in towards the front entrance, the enemies crowded around the entrance hoping to use their small numbers strategically to hold back our larger force. These men were probably given hope that they would be reinforced, and they could drive our troops away but this is impossible.

After getting close enough our muskets began to fire all across the marching line, The enemies who were hiding behind hastily constructed wooden barriers in the gates entranceway. These defenders were being shot in high rates as they gave to much faith to their wooden barricades, the small lead bullets passed through the wood to penetrate the bodies of these defenders.

The casualty numbers among the defenders were rising by the second even before our melee troops reached the gate. So, when the melee focused soldiers finally began to tear down the shabby defensive barricade, there weren't many defenders to fight back against the swarm of my troops entering their castles.

Leaving no man alive my assault squads once again crushed the defending soldiers leaving no one alive this time as it was easier to travel without any prisoners. Once the castles were secured and checked I moved into the castles to arrange the rebuilding process of a gate, so we can place some garrison troops here.

I sent a firework into the sky hoping to signal the fleet who should be located near the area with our supplies. We shall wait here for another day until we make contact with our fleet as they have the siege cannons, we need to take the next city which is a large city called Durres. Moving my attention to the castle on the hilltop a firework was sent sky high signaling my forces victory at that castle as well.

I moved towards the castle on the hill as that is most likely where they hold the grain from their fields and the gold from tax is held. Resources are more important to me now than even gold, as it is winter and my lands don't actually have much food to spare for a campaign so every week, I must scrape together the proper supplies. Only Abydos at the moment is able to properly supply my army with the necessities of food.

-Sorry about taking so long to write this chapter but I will admit I got stuck replaying a strategy game for the 100th time it was such an interesting playthrough that I lost track of my free time for the last two days. I will be posting regularly again sorry.