"This city is difficult to fight." Outside the east gate of Xilotepec City, Xiulote said seriously in the army after carefully observing the width, thickness, and materials of the city wall. After the last conversation, Shulot felt much more at ease, and the distance between him and Avitsotl seemed to be much closer.
"Of course, if Hilotepec was easy to fight and was so close to us, it would have been eliminated by the crusade decades ago, and it would not be able to wait until today." Avitsotl said with a smile.
He liked staying with Shulot, who had no sense of danger, which made him feel a rare sense of relaxation. "After all these years of fighting, all that is left in the north are hard-handed stones."
"Avit, have you noticed the section of the city wall?" Xiulote continued to study it carefully. "It is a polymer of stone and clay. It has not become loose at all under the erosion of rain."
"It should be an adhesive mixed with corn mortar and lime." Avitt also became more serious. "I remember when I was supervising the craftsmen to add to the pyramid, I saw that they used it. The cost was very high."
"If that's the case, it's similar to glutinous rice mortar, and much harder than Sanhe soil. It's impossible to dig the city foundation."
"What is glutinous rice? Digging the city foundation?" Avitt asked with a smile, "Xulot, why do you have such an interesting idea? Do you want to use a stone ax to dig through a city wall that is nearly ten steps wide?"
Xiulote was at a loss for words for a moment. He realized that the Aztecs now had neither iron picks nor copper picks, only perishable stone and wooden tools on hand.
"Then how do we usually attack a city?" Shulot asked the senior officer beside him.
"If the city wall was not high, the warriors would have the levies pile dirt under the city and then charge directly up. The small Miztec cities in the south would be easy to attack," Avitt recalled.
"As for the situation like now, where the city wall is too high and too thick, we generally don't attack directly, but just siege the city. If water, food and salt are cut off, the city will surrender after a few months of siege."
"Our army is ten times that of the city. We can just build ladders and climb up like ants to attack the city."
"Using ladders to attack by force will cause too much damage. Village militiamen are almost useless in the attack, and their morale is too low to climb up. If warriors are used, the casualties will be too great. In the face of stones or javelins falling from the city head, an eagle warrior can't even climb. They are almost as fragile as village soldiers. Moreover, the civilians on the other side can also help defend the city and can be used as half-conscripts."
"Don't we have a group of senior warriors? Two thousand Jaguar warriors and six thousand senior warriors are attacking the city together. The militia on the city will definitely not be able to resist it. At most, a thousand people will be killed before the city can be breached."
Avitt turned his head and looked at Shulot with incredible eyes: "Are you crazy? Using Jaguars and Eagle Warriors to attack the city? They are all military nobles, the core of the alliance to suppress the various states. This is not the case with Te The national war of La Scala or Tarasco. If hundreds of military nobles die in this kind of city-state crusade, then the king should stop fighting and prepare to go back to quell the rebellion."
Schulot thought about it with an analogy. If the King of Poland killed five hundred noble knights in a battle against the Crimean Tatars... well, I never thought about it.
Shulot continued to look at the city wall. The surrounding warriors began to howl loudly to intimidate the enemies in the city. They struck their shields with war clubs, making a violent banging sound. The levies in the rear also began to shout loudly. The city head not far away was in panic for a while, but then stabilized under the pressure of noble warriors and priests.
In this medieval battlefield with no artillery, no turrets, no catapults, and even no long-range suppression by excellent archers, the siegeers had to unilaterally withstand the unbridled firepower pouring from the city. Attacking a fortified city has become an extremely difficult task.
It was impossible to storm a large city-state guarded by tens of thousands of people by relying on low-morale, poorly-trained village warriors. The elite city-state warriors are the core of the city-state's power and cannot be consumed at will.
Therefore, the most common method is to besiege the city.
"Do you have any other ideas?" Avitt asked curiously.
"The land here is not very rocky. Maybe we can dig a tunnel and break into the city directly."
"Digging a tunnel? You mean digging a road underground and crossing the city wall, right? It sounds feasible." Avitt simulated the excavation scene in his mind. "How deep should we dig? How wide should the passage be? How to determine the direction underground? How long can we dig with a stone shovel in a day? How to avoid being discovered by the other party?"
"Hmm..." Shulot thought for a while and made sure that he had not read a book with specific instructions on how to dig a tunnel. "We can try the specific details. We can also ask a miner."
Avitt hid this suggestion in his mind for the time being. He started to get a little serious, "Is there any other way?"
"Perhaps we can design a simple catapult with a range that exceeds the bow and arrow at the top of the city. It can throw rocks weighing several kilograms and hit the city wall." Shulot thought of the classic shapes in countless games.
"I know about throwing stones, but what is a car?"
"..." Shulot was having a hard time describing it, "It's something with two or four wheels that can be pushed or pulled."
"What is a wheel?"
"..." Shulot went a little crazy and explained the shape and use of the wheel with gestures.
Soon, Avitt was the first to react: "It turns out they are toys made by the Mayans. I have seen them in the market in the capital. You can push them and play with them in the square under the big temple, but when you leave the city, they are everywhere. How can mountains, trees, and wheels compare to the speed of humans?"
"If we have enough metal tools, we can cut down the trees, and then build stone roads between the mountains and the forest. Then relying on wheeled carts, city-states can travel quickly, and the effective border of the alliance can be expanded to Huastec, Miztec, and even further, Zapotec.”
"It's a very good idea. Roads can indeed expand the territory of a country. But pushing a wheeled cart by hand, apart from transporting more things, shouldn't make anyone run faster."
Indeed, there are currently no camels in Central America. Maybe we could go to North America and tame bison, or get alpacas from South America to pull carts? Shulot's thoughts were far-fetched.
"Then how should the catapult be designed?" Avitt was an extremely pragmatic person, and the topic returned to siege.
"Let me try to draw." Shulot found a branch and squatted on the wet soil to write and draw. Avitt stood beside him and watched. One was wearing a Tengu priest robe, and the other was wearing a sunstone commander's cloak. The two high-ranking nobles were studying by themselves, and the samurai coming and going next to them did not disturb them.
"It's definitely impossible to get a complicated return cannon. The Romans seem to have a torsion trebuchet? Torsion, torsion, it sounds like it requires beef tendons or elastic ropes. We don't have it, and we can't get it."
"I'm looking for the original one, well, the original one, Cao Cao's trebuchet of the Three Kingdoms. I remember seeing it in the old Romance of the Three Kingdoms. It should be a center bracket with a rotating lever on it, and the short-headed man pulls it with a rope. The top of the long head throws stones.”
Shulot thought hard for a long time and finally drew the simplest human-powered artillery cart. Unfortunately, he had read so many time travel books before and never really studied the structure of a trebuchet.
Avitt looked at the abstract shapes on the ground and pondered them carefully, simulating them in his mind. "The short head drives the long head, and the long head shoots stones. It seems feasible. This process is a bit like a sling, which also rotates to throw stones."
"Xulot, it takes several years of training to ensure the accuracy of the sling. How can you ensure the accuracy of the catapult?"
"The shape should be fixed, and then the configuration should be fixed." Shulot recalled the simple description in the novel. "But we still have to try how to do the specific details. How about asking a carpenter?"
The two were discussing passionately when they saw the city gate in front of them suddenly open. A priest wearing a feather crown and a rare black and white cloak, under the gaze of tens of thousands of city-state warriors, holding a scepter high, walked slowly towards the camp from the city of Xilotepec.
