Viking: Master of the Icy Sea

Chapter 385: Entering Italy

That night, Wigg convened a meeting with the high command.

Instead of rushing straight to the main point, he brought up a classic battle from history.

"In 281 BC, Hannibal led tens of thousands of troops out of Iberia, attempting to attack the core of Rome—Italy. At the Rhône Estuary, he was obstructed by the enemy and forced to detour upstream to cross the river. After the crossing, prompted by a series of factors, Hannibal made an unexpected decision: to force a march over the Alps!"

With that, Wigg tapped his wooden stick against a specific area on the map.

"After a grueling fifteen-day trek over the mountains, he miraculously entered the Po Valley, though it cost him nearly half his army. This time, our offensive target is the same as Hannibal's. The difference is that the Franks are well-prepared. They have built numerous defensive works in the Alps. Along this mountain road, for instance, they have constructed three stone fortifications and eight wooden stockades, giving us absolutely no opportunity for a sneak attack."

Wigg took a deep breath and moved the wooden stick toward the Mediterranean Sea coast. His intention was self-evident.

Since the Franks had fortress clusters along every other route, it made more sense to take the relatively flat coastal path and push straight through from west to east.

The next day, the army departed from Marseille, arriving at Toulon Port on June 11th. After two years of construction, the area had been transformed into a heavily fortified naval base.

During the recent naval battle of Nice, the Royal Navy had lost fourteen warships. The surviving vessels suffered varying degrees of damage and were currently undergoing maintenance in the port.

The Emperor took a walk around the port. He did not punish the Commodore, but simply ordered the fleet to restore its combat effectiveness as soon as possible. In the upcoming battles, the Royal Navy would be of little use; the key to victory lay with the army.Thirty miles east of Toulon stood a small border fortress of the Viking Empire. Venturing any further east meant officially crossing into territory controlled by the Franks.

After marching along the ancient, rugged Roman Road for several days, the scenery ahead suddenly opened up.

To the north lay the rolling, sparsely vegetated Alpine Foothills, their steep slopes forming what seemed like a natural barrier.

To the south stretched the sapphire-blue Ligurian Sea. The sky was clear, seagulls circled overhead, and gentle waves lapped against the long, narrow, pebble-strewn shore.

Directly ahead was a narrow coastal plain. A stone fortification built by the Franks sat atop a hill. If the Vikings wanted to pass through safely, they had to destroy or occupy this defensive work.

"What is the status of the Artillery Regiment?" Wigg asked Leif.

"I just counted. Only twenty cannons have kept up with the advance. The remaining sixty cannons were left behind in the rear. We will probably have to wait a while."

Wigg rode his horse up to a high vantage point to observe the Artillery Regiment in the distance.

Even with improved gun carriages, the bronze cannons remained heavy and sluggish, requiring eight draft horses to tow each one. Luckily, the Mediterranean summer was hot and dry. Had they encountered rainy weather, far more cannons would have been left stranded.

Unwilling to waste time, he ordered the Mountain Infantry to clear the surrounding area and immediately threw the twenty cannons into battle.

An hour later, the cannons advanced to a position three hundred and fifty meters from the city walls, sitting perfectly just outside the range of the garrison's trebuchets.

The Artillery Colonel roared his command: "Load!"

The gunners stood bare-chested, sweat carving streaks down their bronzed backs. Gunpowder charges and iron balls were fed into the cold barrels one after another.

"Fire!"

The twenty cannons belched scorching tongues of flame. Heavy thuds echoed from the city walls as gravel cascaded down, leaving shallow craters pockmarking the masonry.

The artillery barrage hammered on until noon, leaving the bronze cannons so blisteringly hot they were nearly impossible to touch. The barrage paused. The gunners splashed water on the barrels to cool them down, the relentless hiss of steam rising into the air. The sea breeze temporarily dispersed the gunpowder smoke, revealing the battered fortress. The walls were riddled with craters, and the battlements were shattered. Only a handful of the garrison remained at their posts.

Half an hour passed, and the bronze cannons finished cooling. The artillery commander narrowed his eyes, observed for a moment, and ordered the gunners to adjust their targets, focusing their fire on the most fragile section of the wall.

The final volley fire began.

Cannonballs howled as they slammed into the same area, every impact causing the city walls to tremble violently.

Finally, accompanied by a remarkably dull thud, a section of the city wall about thirty meters wide gradually collapsed, throwing up a cloud of dust that obscured everyone's vision.

Once the dust settled, the ruined scene was laid bare, the shattered rubble forming a gentle slope.

Seeing this, the Infantry Regiment executing the assault surged into the city, seizing key areas like the warehouses and barracks. The garrison offered no resistance; their morale had been shattered by the cannons. They hastily evacuated through the east gate, not even finding the time to set fire to their supplies.

The fall of the Nice Fortress was just the beginning. Further east, there was a stone fortification almost every ten miles. Some sat dead in the center of the road, while others were positioned on the hills flanking it.

To Wigg, this was nearly the limit of what the Franks could achieve.

If the Vikings were to stick to their previous approach of trebuchets and tunneling tactics, it would take at least a month to breach a stone fortification. These fortress clusters alone would be enough to stall the Vikings for an entire year, affording Charles the Bald ample time to mass his army and wait for an opportunity to launch a sneak attack.

Unfortunately for them, the Viking Empire had entered the Age of Firepower. City walls built during the era of cold weapons were typically only one and a half to two meters thick. They struggled to withstand cannons and were no longer suited to the current reality.

Unless the Franks increased the thickness of their walls to anywhere from four to ten meters, employing an outer layer of masonry and an inner core of rammed earth—but that required an immense amount of time. Clearly, Wigg was not going to give them any such chance.

Subsequently, the Great Viking Army utilized their cannons to push steadily eastward. The stone fortifications along the way fell one after another, holding out for half a day at most.

By late June, Wigg arrived at the Genoa Suburbs.

At this time, the Frankish Army had yet to complete its assembly. Large numbers of troops were scattered across various key passes in the Alps. They had never anticipated that the Vikings would punch through the coastal route in a mere twenty days.

"Father, look at the garrison on the city walls. I reckon when the Romans found out Hannibal had crossed the Alps, they looked just as panicked and foolish,"

The Second Prince and the commanders chatted and laughed loudly, completely disregarding the garrison inside the city.

Soon, fifty bronze cannons unleashed a volley fire. The city walls of Genoa were slightly thicker, exceeding two meters. The artillery barrage lasted until two in the afternoon, tearing a massive breach in the wall.

Fweeeeet—

The charge whistle blew, and two Infantry Regiments launched an assault. The Frankish Army relied on urban warfare to put up a desperate resistance, holding out until dusk. The majority of the soldiers fled through the east and north gates, while a small number escaped to the docks, boarding warships to leave the port.

'That is a lot of ships,' Wigg sighed inwardly.

A cursory glance revealed over a hundred warships floating offshore, interspersed with the flags of the Duke of Naples and other factions.

Now that the Western Mediterranean Fleet had been crippled, it was estimated that the homeland could scrape together twenty ships to send as reinforcements, including a fully equipped cannon ship, which would arrive around early August.

Even so, the Royal Fleet still could not seize naval supremacy. It was impossible to transport supplies by sea, which restricted the mobility of the Viking army.