Anno Domini, 831-January-12
Sigurd, who stood beside me aboard the ship, breathed deeply while extending his arms with his eyes closed, letting the sea wind strike his face while our ships cut through the sea at great speed.
"A great battle approaches… a great battle that will lead us to show the best of ourselves, where the All-Father himself must be watching how his servants fight and spill blood in order to stand beside him in Valhalla," Sigurd said while still keeping his arms spread wide.
"I do not doubt it. Egypt is an ideal place for growing food because the specific conditions of the Nile allow for a perfect system of land to cultivate wheat. For centuries, it was the personal property of the Roman emperors, where it was said that half the revenues of the entire Roman state came only from the province of Egypt, so you understand that whatever we must do will be difficult. Every siege will be hard… unless we secure the local support of the Christians in the region," I said, nodding at Sigurd's words as he looked extremely intense.
"This time… will there be more battles like in Pannonia? It was a shame that a war between such great empires only had one small battle between their forces. I had imagined something like seventy thousand against seventy thousand, where thousands die, a great battle so the valkyries can carry away the souls of the finest warriors," Sigurd said.
"Probably. Unlike Croatia and its mountains, this territory is flatter, filled with farmland around the Nile Delta, just like all the terrain that follows the river, so it would be expected that we never encounter an enemy attempting to wage a war of attrition like the Croatians, although we may face Sarakenoi horse harassment tactics, but that is something you and your men are already trained to deal with. We only need to hope the new Abbasid caliph does not intervene," I said while watching the waves as we continued moving onward.
We had already traveled for several days by ship, to the point that the last port we had passed on our route had been Rhodes, where we last resupplied for the long journey ahead of us.
But I had not wasted all the available time, since I possessed maps from when I had been preparing for anything that might happen in Jerusalem, so I had many decent maps of the region we were invading.
So I had tried to prepare my officers for what we would encounter in the region. Ideally, there were two cities with ports large enough to anchor the Byzantine fleet, considering that for months reinforcements and supplies would not stop arriving.
Alexandria and Damietta. Either of those two cities could support the Byzantine invasion that should eventually number around one hundred thousand men, considering that a wave from Jerusalem with thirty thousand men was supposed to arrive, followed by a second wave from Anatolia with another thirty thousand men, leaving us with around one hundred thousand fully mobilized troops.
And it was expected that between the garrisons and the forces of the wali of Egypt, there should be a similar number, although I doubted they were all in the field, and gathering them would take time, especially with the Copts involved. If I managed to bring them over to our side, this campaign would become much easier, since they were still a considerable majority living within the cities, so the opportunity for the Copts to side with us could never be ignored, although of course the question of what they would demand in exchange for their support would become the dilemma, especially because they followed a different religious doctrine.
That could create friction among the higher circles of the ecumenical patriarch, so for the moment, I had to work with promises that I probably could not entirely control.
"Strategos, land in sight!" one of the sailors shouted from the mast of one of my naos while observing the distance.
"Anything indicating that we are close to our destination? If everything went well and we navigated correctly, we should be looking at Damietta," I said while looking upward toward the ship's lookout.
"I am not entirely certain, strategos. I have never seen the city before, but I do see a city in the distance, and I can see the harbor," the sailor replied while continuing to stare ahead.
"Good, we have arrived. Alert the commanders, prepare for a landing, and ready the siege equipment. We have no time to waste, and we will assault the walls the moment we have ladders, rams, and some catapults prepared to provide cover for our forces," I shouted while moving through the ship, watching my sailors begin changing knots and shifting the sails.
My men quickly began preparing themselves while the translators translated my words into Slavic and Serbian, and before long, hundreds of men could be seen emerging from the holds of the transport ships, preparing to disembark.
It did not take long before we saw the city growing larger, the closer we approached, and we watched as the ships leaving the harbor began rapidly returning from where they had come after spotting us.
Something impossible to miss, since it was not every day that more than three hundred ships could be seen sailing toward a city that was not yet the great commercial metropolis it would later become.
The closer we approached, the dromons began diverting from the direct course toward the beaches surrounding the city and covered our flanks while the sailors aboard the dromons rowed to prepare for their naval assault, readying the scorpions mounted at their prows.
While the wind continued pushing us toward our destination, it did not take long before we reached the beach, where our ships began driving into the sand in formation, trying to maintain as much order as possible as we disembarked and immediately began preparing to seize the city, since under normal circumstances, we would establish a naval camp to protect the ships from the winds and tides, but this time, we would have to establish it inside Damietta itself.
In barely a few minutes, our forces began filling the beach while equipment was distributed and the artillery that would be used for the siege was prepared along with the materials for the ladders.
"Come on, take the mobile defenses. We need the exact height of those walls, and we cannot waste a single second," I said while ordering the Serbian crossbowmen who were assembling the mobile walls to move to the front.
The interpreter who spoke Serbian relayed my orders to the Serbs, and they quickly began moving while carrying the reinforced plank walls strengthened with steel toward the walls, where the Serbian skirmishers began doing what they did best: becoming a headache.
Some of my siege engineers went with them and began measuring the height of the wall using the shadow it cast, while a rain of arrows and bolts started being exchanged between the walls and the outskirts of the city.
While the exchange of projectiles continued, I noticed the walls were heavily manned, which meant the city had to possess a strong garrison, although it should not exceed four thousand men, so they would not be able to withstand the pressure for long.
Although we did not have the time. In a few weeks, I could simply take the city with relative ease, but holding the harbor was essential for the next stages.
So it did not take long before the siege engineers returned and began working after measuring the walls, while supervising the construction and occasionally rotating the troops while observing the wounded and dead being removed from the battlefield and distributed among the surgeons I had brought and the priests, so they could perform funeral rites as quickly as possible.
The first catapults and scorpions had been completed and began to be transported toward the walls.
Before long, large batteries of artillery formed and started firing against the walls, and I quickly saw the dense defenders positioned on the battlements, shooting arrows while maintaining the security of the city, being struck by a rain of stones chosen to be launched in massive quantities. Three-kilogram rocks that, in great numbers, could shatter bones and crush skulls.
So it did not take long before we saw defenders falling from the walls or simply retreating from wherever the catapults became problematic.
"How are the ladders progressing?" I said while watching engineers operate a scorpion and impale a defender by piercing him straight through with the launched projectile.
"Almost ready… we only need to secure a place for them, strategos, but we must be careful with the ground, since it is somewhat soft and the ladder could sink if it bears too much weight, so I made them slightly longer. Hopefully, it does not create too great a problem," the engineer replied while making the final adjustments to the ladders.
"Form the ranks and prepare for the assault. That way, we force the defenders to stay on the walls no matter what in order to stop us… how is that ram coming along?" I said while hearing the shouting and the constant sound of arrows striking the protections.
My officers began issuing orders, and long ranks quickly formed while preparing to carry the ladders toward the walls, and we noticed more people returning to defend the battlements, clearly trying to offer the greatest resistance possible under their conditions.
More stones flew over the walls, striking and injuring defenders, and we began noticing fractures in the defense, which was slowly failing as sectors appeared where defenders were missing and parts of the wall were no longer defended, either because of casualties and injuries or because moving normally along the battlements had become impossible.
I began giving the relevant orders for the troops to march toward the walls while holding their shields overhead.
Although those sectors were clearly less defended than others, that did not mean it would be easy, since arrows still began falling, striking the shields, and those that were not stopped slammed against the armor of the Varangians carrying out the assault against the walls.
Closely followed by crossbowmen and field scorpions, the advance continued, and it only took a few minutes before the ladders were installed and the Varangians began climbing while the defenders did what they could to push the ladders away, but they were firmly planted in the soft earth, so despite several men trying to move them, there were no results.
Exerting enormous pressure on a single section of the wall, the results soon appeared, since the defenders were unable to prevent the attackers from ascending the battlements, with crossbowmen and scorpions ensuring nobody exposed themselves upon the parapets, along with the bombardment of stones overhead, trying to clear the walls and prevent reinforcements from arriving.
A short battle followed where several Varangians plunged to their deaths, falling from the ladders, but finally, the first men had already reached the walls, killing the defenders with their pole hammers and beginning to crowd the area while more and more men climbed the battlements.
The moment the breach was secured, I began climbing the walls myself to issue orders while trying to descend through the battlements in order to rapidly strike toward the local Muslim keep, where many defenders were already fleeing inside the city, searching for refuge.
"Come on, keep the pace, tonight we sleep inside this city!" I shouted while noticing people barricading themselves inside their homes while my men ran through the streets, killing every defender who had not been fast enough to escape.
Amid the charge, and hearing thousands of boots and pieces of steel moving through the streets of Damietta, listening to my officers shouting through the roads, we managed to reach the local ribat.
I received a pleasant surprise when I saw the Varangians struggling against the defenders to stop them from closing the gates while trying to force their way inside.
As more men arrived and began pushing, it took almost no time for the gate to burst open, and the defenders fell backward, where they were beaten to death while the rest fled toward the final defensive position they were trying to close.
"The ram! We can break it with the ram!" I shouted, although little could be heard amid all the clashing metal and agonized screams around the area.
The ram arrived within minutes, and they began smashing the final gate of the ribat with force.
The instant the gate became splinters after hundreds of blows, the Varangians hurled themselves forward in their bloody frenzy, killing everything inside and leaving both our dead and Saracen dead scattered throughout the place.
By the time the sun was setting, we already had complete control of the city after killing its governor and securing the entrances, while ropes were placed around the soldiers of the garrison and the systematic capture of the Muslim population had begun.
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