The Last Frontier of Fire and Sword

From the 16th, the weather became fine. Arvid Widenberg’s reckless shooting of the messenger also thoroughly angered King Kazimierz. Now, he no longer imagined the Swedes in Warsaw surrendering, but threw himself on how to liberate the city by force.

So because of the terrible incident in which Widenberg killed the messenger, the Polish army began to shoot at the tall walls of Warsaw with small-caliber artillery before the heavy artillery arrived. The east wall of the city excavated tunnels, built underground bunkers and earth embankments, and brave Polish warriors braved the fierce artillery fire of the Swedes to gradually advance to a place only 30 meters away from the moat.

From there, the Polish artillery began to fire on the city wall and the city without interruption. The magnificent Kazanovsky Palace near the eastern city wall was turned into a ruin. No one expressed regret for this, because the people living in this palace were Traitor Rajjovsky. Even some Polish artillery, out of hatred of the traitors, deliberately raised the muzzle so that the artillery shells could cross the city wall and hit there. They hoped that one of the shells would hit the traitor.

But the wish is destined to be unfulfilled, because Rajjovsky had long expected that he would be hated by his compatriots outside the city, and his home would also be the focus of Poland’s attack. He moved out of his own house and moved into the Kazimierz Palace.

The poor palace, unable to speak, bears all the anger. The snow-white palace walls were riddled with holes, and the windows were almost full of broken glass. The windows were empty, letting the wind blow and rain. The rain of bullets fell on the gorgeous balconies and gardens day and night, destroying the fountains made of plaster and the precious flowers in the gardens. Rajyevsky used to keep pets running away in the garden full of bullet holes. They used sorrowful cry to tell their misfortune.

Although small-caliber artillery can destroy the crenels of the city wall, it cannot destroy the main body of the city wall. The Polish army encountered the same problems encountered by the Swedes in Czestochowa.

General Stefan Çarnetski is a military wise officer, and he refuses to let the soldiers launch a futile attack before the artillery gap is opened. But some people don't care and insist on attacking the city immediately. These people are the leaders of the rebels and militia groups and their soldiers.

These rebels and militias are totally inept at attacking a city. They regard attacking a city as as simple as they sneak an attack on a Swedish food squadron or patrol in the countryside. Especially when they heard the refugees fleeing from the city talk about the piles of gold and silver jewels looted by the Swedes in Warsaw, they only wanted to be the first group to be in contact with the treasures gathered by the Swedes.

These people launched a few representatives to go to King Kazimierz and told their requests. At first, King Kazimierz refused. Kazimierz, who had fought with his father and brother since his youth, was no stranger to the difficulty of siege. But he could not withstand the repeated plea of ​​these representatives. At the same time, the king's heart hoped that a miracle would really happen, and Warsaw was defeated.

Finally, when these representatives left the king’s camp, they received a warrant issued by Kazimierz allowing them to attack the city.

General Çarnetsky made the last effort. He was in the tunnel and said to them that the city could not be captured until the gap was opened with heavy artillery. Not only was the militia and the rebels unable to attack, even the regular infantry launched an offensive, which was futile. But these people did not listen to the kind words of the general soldier. They took out the king's warrant and forced the general soldier to let them go.

In the afternoon of this day, more than 6000 carefully selected soldiers from the rebels and militias prepared ladders, ropes, sandbags and hook rods. Most of them only have a saber and a pistol as weapons. Many of them don't even have an armed suit. Instead, they tie thick straws tightly around their chests for protection.

6000 people secretly concentrated on the tunnels and embankments, and with the help of these fortifications, they secretly approached the moat. When everyone was in the fighting position, after a gunshot, all the soldiers made a terrible cry, like a group of ants crawling out of the ground, rushing towards the moat, and the one carrying sandbags at the front Bingyong began to fill the river. The Swedish soldiers who had just awakened from their dreams fired at them with deadly firepower composed of muskets and artillery, and fierce battles began across the east of the city.

The soldiers and brave men were so many and powerful. They filled the moat in a blink of an eye under the cover of small artillery. Then, Bingyong made an appointment to cross the moat and rushed towards the wall in an disorderly manner.

As Bingyong began to climb the city wall, the covering artillery had to stop firing. Next, only God can help them.

But the bravery of these people did not get good luck. The soldiers did indeed get on the ladder and climbed up desperately. The skill and speed of climbing the ladder were almost like an ape. Perhaps even apes may not be able to surpass them.

However, Swedish soldiers shot deadly bullets at the towers and enemy platforms of the city wall. Some of those who were lucky enough not to be hit and climbed up to the crevice of the city wall were also shot in the face by the Swedish pistol cavalry hiding behind.

The Swedish soldiers also smashed the prepared rolling logs and stilts at them, under the impact and weight of the rolling logs and stilts, the ladder broke and turned into fragments; the warriors who climbed with ropes also fell together with the boulders. .

But even so, after the first wave of ground attacks were repelled, the warriors of the militia and the rebels organized a second assault. This time many people climbed the wall, but this time they faced the Swedish Pikemen. The spear forest, the spear can stab and push the siege soldiers bravely, but the sabers of the Polish warriors can’t deal with such long spears. Four spears stabbed over. What is even more frightening is that they encountered the same experience as the Skoreduski assault team, that is, they were cross-attacked by two towers on the city wall...More than 500 of the most brave and tenacious soldiers of the rebels and militias They died under the wall, and their blood stained the walls of Warsaw. The remaining people were finally desperate, and they retreated after the enemy's continuous shooting, evacuated through the moat, and returned to hide in their own tunnel.

Skozheduski, who was whipped, also saw the horror under the city wall, and his eyes were cracked.

"Why did I forget to tell your majesty!" Skrzedusky regretted it.

Although Skrzeduski's sneak attack ended in failure, this failed sneak attack was not without any results. The sacrifice of the assault team made Skrzeduski discover it clearly. Because of the lack of troops, the Swedish defenders did not focus on the long walls of the defense. Instead, they used the towers between the walls to fortify and stock up. Countless ammunition. The reason why Skrzeduski's commando team lost so much was that after the Swedes closed the gate of the tower, they shot the entire section of the city wall with platoons of guns and shotguns.

Skozheduschi asked the horsemen to carry him to King Kazimierz.

"So whether we can seize the walls of Warsaw, the key lies in whether our artillery can destroy these towers we built." Skozheduschi lay on a camp bed and told the information obtained by the soldiers' lives. The king and the marshal.

After Skozhedusky finished speaking, King Kazimierz held Skozhedusky's big hand excitedly. King Kazimierz's hands looked so white and soft compared to Skozhedusky's big bronze hands.

"My soldier, your intelligence will save many lives. Alas, I shouldn't have been so impulsive to you..." King Kazimierz said emotionally.

What he meant was that if Skozheduski could tell himself the information earlier, he would completely pardon his whipping.

Skrzeduski smiled affectionately. But his smile seemed to affect the wound on his back, making his smile so hideous and painful.

"Your Majesty, I was really too impulsive. I was blinded by the hatred of Bao Hong, and I really deserve to be punished. And if I told you earlier, those warriors might not die." Sky said.

Skozheduschi's self-critical attitude moved King Kazimierz for a while.

After a while, King Kazimierz stood up.

"My marshal, have you heard everything?" King Kazimierz turned and asked Marshal Lubao Macki.

"Yes, yes." Marshal Lubao Macki said as he wiped the corners of his eyes with a handkerchief.

King Kazimierz nodded. He squatted down again to comfort Skozhedusky, and then left with the marshal.

In the next few days, the Polish army temporarily abandoned the storm. The engineers of the Republic took advantage of the hard-won fine weather and raced against time to prepare for the general offensive. They blocked the canal from the moat to the Vistula, and then dug an underdrain to drain the moat. The next task is to fill in the moat.

The siege artillery, in accordance with the order of the marshal, waited until the heavy artillery arrived, and then bombarded the tower in a targeted manner. Although the Swedes have made sufficient preparations to defend these towers, sandbags are hung on the outside of the tower walls to reduce the damage caused by the artillery fire to the towers, but in front of the absolute number of artillery that the Republican army now occupies, these defensive methods appear so. It's a drop in the bucket.

The Polish artillery first used small-caliber artillery to break the sandbags on the periphery of the tower, causing the sand to flow out, and then used a large-caliber cannon to make a fatal blow to the tower.

In front of the large-caliber cannon, the tower was like paper, and a large hole was punched out in one shell.

Once again, a cannonball blessed by the army priest even penetrated through the shooting port of the tower, hitting the gunpowder barrel inside, and overturned the entire tower to the sky. This incident was seen by the soldiers as a miracle, and the morale of the army was even higher.

On the 21st, the army of the Republic of Poland tentatively launched an offensive.

Before the attack was launched, Polish artillery had trampled on a whole section of the city wall and cleared the surrounding towers.

King Kazimierz threw an entire infantry regiment of Colonel Alexander Casimir into the battlefield. The colonel and his German mercenary regiment have always been known for daring to fight tough battles.

But when Colonel Alexander Casimir commanded the infantry regiment to attack the city along the ramps piled up by ruins, they unexpectedly discovered that on the inside of the city wall, the Swedes had built a second city wall. This inner wall was fifty meters away from the outer city wall. The Swedish musketeers in blue uniforms and Swedish guards in yellow uniforms, who were already waiting behind them, saw the Polish army rush in and immediately launched a salvo.

Unprepared for the appearance of the inner city wall, they were repulsed by the defenders in the first round of attack. And rather gray and humorously, it was a group of German mercenary pikemen who finally drove them out of the gap.

Unwilling to give up Lvbao Macki, in the next 10 hours, sent teams to attack in turn. Participated in this attack were the armored Cossack company of Jan Zenovic, the Polish Pikemen of Count Tszkevich, the Polish militias and death cavalry led by General Stefan Czarnetsky, as well as the The forces of Alexander Okinsky pardoned by King Kazimierz, but before the strong position carefully constructed by Arvid Wiedenberg, all attacks ended in disastrous defeat. The cunning Arvid Widenberg even cut off all the inner crevices of the outer city wall before the war, so that the Polish musketeers who climbed up the city wall fired unobstructedly against the Swedish musketeers. The dead and wounded falling from the city wall blocked the way of attack, making the attack of latecomers even more difficult.

At the height of the battle for the city wall, the Swedish army's cavalry unit launched a counterattack from the flanks. They entered quickly from the side and were stranded with the attacking Polish infantry. Due to terrain constraints, both sides could not maintain the formation well, and the battle quickly became a battle between cavalry and infantry. The well-equipped and tall Swedish pistol cavalry often gained a huge advantage in close combat. Often seven or eight Polish infantrymen were unable to withstand the attack of a Swedish pistol cavalry.

The Polish wing cavalry under the command of the king and the marshal wanted to join the battle group and compete with the Swedish pistol cavalry, but they were all rejected. Because both the king and the marshal knew that the strength of the wing cavalry was to charge, and the melee was not their strength. Neither of them wants to consume the most powerful assault force of the Republic meaninglessly.

In the battle that day, the Polish Republic left thousands of corpses under the walls of Warsaw.

After night fell, the two parties were in a tacit understanding and died down. The Polish army abandoned the meaningless outer wall and retreated to the offensive position. The Swedish army did not repair it. They hoped to turn this gap into a continuous bleeding wound for the Polish people and drain all the blood of the Polish army.