"Forward!" A centurion of the White Lion Legion drew his sword and roared the command, directing his soldiers to push shield carts and shoulder sandbags packed with earth as they charged ahead.
The
The rumbling of war drums echoed ceaselessly across the battlefield spanning several miles. Soldiers of the White Lion Legion pushed enormous shield carts laboriously to the edge of the trenches ahead, blocking the crossbow bolts raining down from the defensive line. Soldiers carrying sandbags, sheltered behind the shields, hurled the sandbags into the trenches and immediately turned to run back. Before long, a section of the forward trench was filled level. Several White Lion soldiers dragging wooden planks rushed up to the shield carts and laid the planks on the ground—the trench had been breached.
Throughout the entire process, only four soldiers were struck by stray bolts: one killed and three wounded. They were all dragged back for treatment. The dead soldier had already stopped breathing—he had been struck by a crossbow bolt head-on, the bolt entering through his left eye and penetrating deep into his brain. The only mercy was that he had suffered no pain and died almost instantaneously.
With one section of trench filled, not a single soldier's face broke into a smile of relief—only endless exhaustion and numbness. Because beyond that one filled trench lay countless more trenches to breach. Looking into the distance, all one could see were row upon row of densely packed trenches. This was the defensive position established in the Folivode Province, and this was also the reason the Second Prince's White Lion Legion had attacked for six days and six nights yet advanced only three or four miles.
"I suspect that while we were attacking, they were still digging more trenches behind this defensive position." Duke Kemaiss, observing the battle, said to Lord Northland.
This was a result that no one had anticipated. After conquering the Duchy of Sabaji, Lord Northland had had the armed forces of the Northland Four-Family Alliance and the two legions of the Fasabrun Family rest for nearly a month in the Chisexes Province, waiting for the Second Prince to arrive. Who could have guessed that in just over a month, the Duchy of Folunto had transformed the defensive line ahead into this—digging countless trenches that interconnected into an endless web, to the point that once the offensive began, the Second Prince realized how incredibly difficult it would be to breach a gap in this defensive line.
Breaking a line was easy; breaking a web was hard—this was plainly obvious. In his previous life, Lord Northland had heard the saying that war was the best teacher. The defensive position before them proved this point perfectly. In the history of warfare across Galentea, there had never been a defensive position or defensive method like this. Virtually all defensive battles had been fought using castles and fortresses. When forces were at a disadvantage, even setting up a defensive position meant digging one or two trenches, erecting an earthen wall, and deploying ranged weapons to inflict casualties on the attacking enemy.
But once the
Three years ago in the southern provincial siege-and-defense battle, Lord Northland had made perfect use of trenches and arrow towers combined to counter the Fasabrun Family's light cavalry tactics, then used catapults in the open field to crush an assault by seventy thousand elite infantry from the Central Four Duchies, winning a great victory and forcing the Fasabrun Family back into the Eastern Wastes Province.
But no one had expected that battle to produce such enormous changes in the Central Four Duchies. The Second Prince had originally believed that with the White Lion Legion's formidable combat power and the fifty catapults squeezed out of Lord Northland, he could easily tear a gap through that first line of trenches and earthen walls. What he hadn't anticipated was that behind those trenches and earthen walls lay yet more endless trenches and low earthen walls. When everyone saw this, they were practically on the verge of collapse—what kind of battle was this supposed to be...
On the first day of the assault, the only opposition in front was a garrison of a thousand men. They crumbled the moment the boulders the size of human heads began raining down on their positions, firing only a few dozen crossbow bolts before vanishing without a trace. The White Lion Legion filled fourteen trenches and breached twenty-one earthen walls in a single day, leaving flat ground ahead. Naturally, the results were zero, because the enemy had already fled.
On the second day they pressed forward again, but after advancing two hundred meters they discovered another expanse of trenches and earthen walls ahead. The garrison this time was far braver—they held out for half a day under the catapult bombardment, using the cover of trenches and earthen walls to loose crossbow fire that inflicted dozens of casualties on the White Lion Legion, while suffering over two hundred killed and wounded themselves.
The White Lion Legion spent two full days filling trenches to create several passable lanes through this stretch, then resumed the advance. After another two or three hundred meters of flat ground, they encountered yet another few dozen rows of trenches and earthen walls. Everyone was seething with frustration—what was the meaning of this? The garrison numbered only a few thousand, and their resistance was hardly fierce; the attackers just kept filling trenches while the defenders kept digging them. What kind of war was this?
The Second Prince finally lost his patience and issued an order he would deeply regret—he told the White Lion Legion's soldiers to stop pushing shield carts forward to fill trenches and instead simply carry planks to bridge across and pass through. Speed was of the essence; seizing this trench zone as quickly as possible was the real priority. So the White Lion Legion dispatched a sword-and-shield regiment to press the attack with full force. Facing a thousand defenders across this trench zone, they quickly swept the enemy aside and continued forward.
But this trench zone was particularly vast. When the sword-and-shield regiment's soldiers disappeared from everyone's sight, the distant sound of battle cries and fighting suddenly carried back. The Second Prince was anxious as ants in a hot pan, pacing in circles, because with trenches everywhere the cavalry simply could not ride forward to reinforce. He had no choice but to send scouts ahead to investigate, but the few he sent were quickly picked off by cold arrows loosed from the trenches. When he sent larger groups who could at least fight their way in, nobody returned with reports—the only thing that changed was that the distant sounds of killing grew louder.
Everyone present was sharp enough to see that this situation clearly meant they had walked into a trap. The problem was that besides the White Lion Legion's remaining three regiments, there were also the Kenmares Family's two heavy-armored regiments and Count Shahin's two light infantry regiments—nearly ninety thousand troops in total. Though the total force attacking the Central Four Duchies numbered three hundred thousand, more than half were cavalry. Faced with a battlefield blanketed in trenches and earthen walls, Lord Northland and the others exchanged helpless glances. They could hardly order cavalry to dismount and fight as infantry to provide reinforcements.
The real problem was that the White Lion Legion's sword-and-shield regiment had attacked too fast and too fiercely, charging straight ahead until they vanished beyond sight. The Second Prince had never anticipated a situation like this—losing track of the battlefield's overall picture meant he had effectively already lost half the battle. Now the decision he faced was whether to commit fully, throwing every infantryman he had into the fray.
This was not an easy decision to make. After days of assaulting this position, Grand Duke Folunto certainly already knew the Second Prince intended to break through here. This entire defensive line was being held by five legions totaling nearly two hundred thousand troops. Given the pattern of the past few days, Grand Duke Folunto could easily have repositioned his forces and assembled a formidable line ahead. That attacking sword-and-shield regiment could very well smash straight into an ambush and be surrounded—and then that surrounded regiment would be used to lure the Second Prince into committing reinforcements, allowing the enemy to concentrate superior numbers and annihilate his hundred thousand infantry. After that, the cavalry left behind could only stare helplessly at this defensive line.
The Second Prince and
The attack had gone far too smoothly. After crushing the resistance of a thousand-man garrison, the sword-and-shield regiment encountered mostly garrison forces of a thousand men or so in their subsequent advance. Those forces simply could not withstand the regiment's assault. One garrison unit after another was wiped out. The advancing regiment pressed forward in high spirits, pushing ahead courageously. Before they knew it, they had advanced over two li—and then discovered three fully equipped elite infantry regiments from the Central Duchies waiting for their arrival.
Only now did the sword-and-shield regiment realize they had reached the end of their rope. Caught in the pincer attack of the Central Duchies' three elite infantry regiments, they took a devastating blow and suffered catastrophic losses. Fortunately, the countless trenches and earthen walls that littered the battlefield now served as barriers behind which they could mount a defense. Under their regiment commander's orders, they fought a rearguard action while retreating.
What they had not expected was that the trenches and earthen walls were not merely defensive structures. Another infantry regiment from the Duchy of Folunto had used these trenches as cover, shifting rapidly behind earth walls to reach their rear and block their line of retreat. When the sword-and-shield regiment, still stubbornly resisting, saw their escape route cut off, their morale collapsed. Their regiment commander and several battalion leaders fought desperately and finally carved out a bloody path, allowing the soldiers to flee back. But they themselves were surrounded by the swarming enemy. Before long, cheers erupted from the enemy ranks, and several heads were hoisted high on spears. The remaining soldiers finally abandoned any hope of rescue and retreated...
This defeat was like a massive slap across the Second Prince's face. Having initially believed this defensive line would fall easily, he was now forced to sober up and turn to everyone for advice—but no one had any good suggestions. Neither Grand Duke Fissaburen, a veteran of countless campaigns, nor the quick-witted Lorist could come up with a plan. No one could say how the attack should proceed.
In truth, Lorist was even more shaken than anyone else. No one was a fool—the Central Duchies' defensive line was essentially trench warfare. A secret report carried by messenger hawk from the family's intelligence operatives hidden in the Duchy of Folunto's city of Pedro revealed that the Grand Duke of Folunto had mobilized nearly the entire duchy's populace. Over a distance of nearly one hundred li, from the defensive line of Frivold Province all the way to Pedro City in the Perolina Province, they had dug countless trenches and raised countless earthen walls. Even the three intelligence operatives had been conscripted to dig trenches for some twenty days—which was why the secret report had arrived so late.
This was utter damnation, Lorist cursed bitterly. It was obvious that these trenches and earthen walls formed a defensive position designed specifically to counter the Norton Family's war chariots, steel crossbows, and catapults—rendering both long-range attack weapons useless. Without above-ground defensive structures, the ranged weapons had no targets. The steel crossbows had nothing to shoot at, and if the catapults wanted to smash something, they could only pound the earthen walls and trenches. The defending forces had all become ground rats, scurrying through the trenches. If the attackers grew impatient with filling in trenches and leveling earth walls one after another and rushed forward with light forces, the result waiting for them would be the same fate as the White Lion Legion's sword-and-shield regiment.
.
Now the attacking Kingdom of Andinork found itself caught in a dilemma. They filled in the trenches during the day, only to have them dug open again at night. Sending troops to garrison the positions resulted in endless harassment and raids through the night, with casualties often exceeding those suffered during the daytime. Sending troops to hunt down the enemy led them straight into traps. Navigating the winding, zigzagging trenches, it was easy to lose direction or be lured into an ambush, resulting in devastating losses. After five days and four nights of attacking, they had advanced less than two li. Everyone was falling into despair.
"What kind of battle is this? I would rather face every last soldier the Central Duchies can muster in a decisive engagement—even if the enemy outnumbered us ten to one! But what is this, dealing with trenches and earth walls day after day? Even the soldiers are cursing, and morale is dropping fast!" the Second Prince complained to Lorist.
Lorist delivered the final blow to the Second Prince. He produced a spy report from Pedro City and handed it to the Second Prince. The Second Prince accepted it with suspicion, and when he saw that the report described trenches dug and earth walls built across a distance of a hundred li, he was completely stunned. After a long pause, the Second Prince leapt to his feet, his expression agitated. "Has Grand Duke Furindo gone mad? He's dug trenches throughout the entire duchy! Does he even want to plant crops and harvest grain anymore?..."
But the Second Prince quickly realized that without doing this, Grand Duke Furindo had no way to stop their cavalry charges. Covering half the duchy's ground with trenches and earth walls had at least tied down their offensive forces. Furindo still had the other half of the duchy's land for farming, and if the harvest fell short, he could buy or borrow grain from the Handra Duchy. If the front lines couldn't hold and Furindo Duchy fell, he wouldn't need to worry about grain supplies anyway. And if the Second Prince got his hands on Furindo, the Grand Duke might not even keep his life — everyone knew the Second Prince hated those four Grand Dukes above all else.
"Sound the horn. Recall the troops to camp." The Second Prince gave the order to his attendants in dejected spirits. There was no point in any more futile efforts now. The mere thought of the hundred-li-long trenches and earth walls still waiting to be filled and leveled sent shivers down his spine. It seemed conquering these three duchies would require an entirely different approach.
Post-battle statistics revealed that to repel the Kingdom of Andinork's advance, Grand Duke Furindo had mobilized nearly a million subjects across his entire duchy, spending over three months digging 431 trenches — each two to three meters deep and interconnected — across the eighty-three li from Folivoed Province to the provincial capital of Perlina Province. From the excavated earth, over a thousand earthen walls, each one to one and a half meters tall, were erected, creating on the flat plains an obstacle that was easy to assault but nearly impossible to hold against. It was hailed as a miracle of warfare and enshrined among the wondrous spectacles of war in Galentea's continental military history.
...