Drawing Cards in the Middle Ages to Rise in Ranks

Chapter 725 31: Meat Grinder

The battle raged from noon until dusk.

Thick, dried blood flowed wantonly on the city walls, transforming into a hellish picture with a pungent bloody stench.

The Ottomans left countless corpses behind as they retreated.

As night fell, they clearly had no interest in continuing the night battle. However, the enemy's artillery positions once again unleashed their power, bombing the city, though with little effect, resembling more of an aimless venting of frustration.

Constantinople also had its own cannons.

They were crafted earlier by Urban for Constantine XI, but due to financial constraints, the calibers were all small. After Urban conducted an on-site examination of the Theodosius Wall's structure, he concluded that cannons were difficult to install in the towers.

It was too ancient; this millennium-old wall did not consider installing cannons at its design inception.

Losa did not know whether to call Constantine XI broad-minded or foolish.

Urban was familiar with the Theodosius Wall's structure and was a cannon master. Yet you couldn't even pay his wages; did you not realize this man's potential threat? For such a person, if you can't use him and can't guarantee his loyalty, even if you don't secretly execute him, you should at least assign more people to closely monitor him.

A messenger from Mahmud II arrived under the city, proposing a temporary ceasefire for both sides to collect and tend to the corpses, with the ceasefire agreement lasting until tomorrow night.

Losa naturally would not refuse such a request.

The horror of the Black Death had left a profound impression on every sentient being. In the Giant Ship World yesterday, even the Giant Race from the extreme north lost eighty percent of their population due to the Black Death.

The holy light of the clergy could only heal external injuries. Urding, who had once served as the Archbishop of Milan, was already considered advanced clergy. Yet even he, at this level, still needed to turn to herbal studies for most diseases.

Neither the defenders nor the attackers wanted to see such a tragedy unfold again.

The time taken to tend to the corpses became a rare moment of peace.

The exhausted defending soldiers collapsed into sleep, with some still holding food brought by the citizens to the city walls. The wounded groaned softly in pain, and some bereaved women and children stood inside the city walls, mournfully crying.

The defenders threw the enemy's corpses into the ditches outside, buried them in the mud, and the Ottoman laborers came to drag the corpses onto carts, transporting them far away for concentrated burning.

Losa listened intently to the reports from various parts of the city walls. The southern section's defenders had suffered over forty casualties today.

The central segment was the focus of the enemy's attack. Even with his personal command, there were as many as two hundred and thirty casualties, mostly inflicted by those Brotherhood members wielding extraordinary power.

The northern section of the wall fared no better; the sections near the Golden Horn Bay and Brahna Palace were similarly weak spots in the defense. The Ottomans were well aware of this, concentrating dozens of large-caliber cannons to bombard the walls.

If Giovanni hadn't personally led a team to clash with the enemy and taken down the opposing Pasha leading the troops, the losses might not have been much less than those of the central segment.

Even if the Ottoman losses were certainly ten times or more than the defenders'.

But they could afford those losses.

After all, till this point, their true core strength, the elite Janissaries corps, had not yet been deployed. Though the vassal army had suffered significant losses, as long as Mahmud II could withstand this pressure, it could even serve as an opportunity to weaken local powers.

"The enemy's manpower is endless, while our soldiers are being depleted every moment."

Losa sighed lightly, patrolling the city walls, occasionally patting the weary soldiers on the shoulder, highly praising their bravery in today's fierce battles.

In the evening of Constantinople, the sky remained bleak, with dust and smoke filling the air. Many residential houses near the inner side of the city walls were affected by the shelling, collapsing into ruins.

Fortunately, these houses had long been vacant, making it more convenient to dismantle them for use as materials to repair and reinforce the city walls after they collapsed.

The magic array of the Theodosius Wall wasn't indestructible; at least, today's demolished tower was enough to illustrate this point. Losa didn't know how long the Theodosius Wall could hold out; the caster team responsible for maintaining this wall had died out hundreds of years ago.

Injured soldiers were carried off the walls by laborers. However, many with milder wounds still held their ground at their posts. The number of soldiers defending the city was limited, making it difficult to perform orderly rotations. It was like robbing Peter to pay Paul, transferring soldiers stationed at other wall sections that hadn't experienced combat to this one.

As for the reserves, they absolutely couldn't be used lightly.

Under the city walls, the corpse collectors sent by the Ottomans scavenged like packs of hyenas, pulling necklaces off the deceased, picking up the dead's belongings.

"God bless!"

One Rumelian corps collector, high-spirited, pulled a necklace off an Eastern Orthodox soldier, unabashedly hanging the necklace with the Eastern Orthodox Cross around his own neck.

"God won't bless scum like you, traitor."

A Greek soldier cursed angrily from the walls.

The corpse collector looked up to see a Greek soldier with a conspicuous dent in his helmet and bloodstains on his face, leaning out to hurl insults at him.

He shrugged: "Mate, if I were you, I'd lie down quietly and pray to survive until tomorrow."

"Heh, I return the same words to you."

The Greek soldier sneered as he raised the crossbow in his hand, signaling that he could take the corpse collector's life at any moment.

"Thank you."

The corpse collector shrugged indifferently. People like them, what can they do in such times? The Ottomans' butcher knife hangs over their lord's head, and their lord hangs the butcher knife over theirs.

Not serving the heretics is easier said than done.

Some clergy from the Eastern Orthodox and Latin Churches, carrying statues of the Holy Mother Mary, came to the city walls.

They spread holy light with healing effects, soothing the soldiers' wounds.

Even those close to death, who were hard to save, ceased their wailing, and the look of pain on their faces gradually faded away.

A priest dressed in a vestment robe applied the consecrated olive oil to his forehead: "Rest in peace, child, you fight for Christ until death, all the sins of your life will be forgiven, and you shall ascend to the Celestial Kingdom…"

The expression of the dying gradually became peaceful, no longer letting out howling cries, and finally, the priest closed their eyes, silently reciting a prayer.

The corpse collector looked enviously at the solemn scene on the city wall and silently made a cross on his chest.

The Ottomans did not forbid the Eastern Orthodox faith, just as the Saracens had done; it was merely restricted.

But if they were injured, there would never be anyone to perform their last rites.

The Emperor, watching this scene, was merely silent.

"Many people died today."

Viviana's footsteps were light, her war boots adorned with white tassels stepped onto the city wall, yet they made no sound.

"More of the enemy died."

"What if Mahmud II is really determined to use lives to wear us down?"

Losa responded without hesitation, "Then we wear him down."

The Ottomans have a large domain, but their internal contradictions are not small at all. He doesn't believe that the young Mahmud II could hold back those old ministers left by Murad II when faced with too high a cost.

He doesn't believe Mahmud II can always sit still.

Viviana couldn't help but frown, this indifference to human lives was just like her father and His Majesty the Emperor.

Indeed, isn't he now an Emperor himself?

"In our time, some scholars suggested that to eliminate war, in the future, we might rely on knights' duels to resolve international disputes."

"So, should I negotiate a duel match with Mahmud II? I would like nothing better. But if everything in the world could be solved so easily, it would be nice."

Losa's tone was a bit irritable; war was a meat grinder. He wasn't a heartless person; more than most monarchs, he didn't want to see deaths, but harboring such a mindset would only cause more deaths.

"I just..."

Viviana hesitated to speak.

When she supported the fleet in Golden Horn Bay today, she set fire to one small Ottoman ship and two large ones.

The rowing ships of this era had many crew members; even a small galley had more than a hundred crew. The Ottoman large triple-decked galleys, including the slave rowers, could have a total crew of up to four hundred people.

Even conservatively estimated, she had killed five hundred people in one day.

This was more than a hundred times the number of people she had killed in her previous life; before this, she had only killed two robbers and accidentally killed one opponent in a duel.

"I'm sorry."

Losa rubbed his brow: "My tone was a bit rushed. But Miss Viviana, this war didn't start because of my will, nor will it end because of my will."

Viviana was silent for a moment, then said in a low voice, "I should be the one to apologize; I am the one who failed."

Losa sighed softly, "You've already done well enough. When I fought my first battle…"

He paused for a moment, then said with helplessness, "

Losa sighed softly, "You've already done well enough. When I fought my first battle…"

He paused for a moment, then said with helplessness, "