Since the Accounting: A Chronicle of the Roman Khanate

Chapter 651: Sad news: The value of heads is going to depreciate again!

While Guo Kang and others were forming their battle lines, the Mamluk army on the opposite side also deployed their troops.

At the front of the formation were a large number of Egyptian "volunteer" infantrymen. They formed a long row, crowded together. From a distance, they seemed almost endless.

Lu Yougong observed it for a while and said to Guo Kang that for such a large group, the initial estimate was that there must be about 50,000 people. Compared with the 20,000 or 30,000 people mentioned by the Persian girl before, it was obviously much more. He felt that if you look at it this way, the 200,000 troops claimed by the Mamluks in the decisive battle with the Ilkhanate may not be too exaggerated.

A few days ago, when fighting for the port, these infantrymen suffered a lot of losses. There were more than 2,000 beheadings reported by various units. When Guo Kang told Zhu Wenkui about this, the latter did not believe that so many could be gained in the first battle.

But Guo Kang told him that this was not surprising - Guo Kang and his men had captured 300 heads just by taking that hill. Because during the battle, these Egyptian infantrymen were killed and wounded very quickly, and were always driven forward repeatedly by the Mamluks and free riders who supervised the battle from behind with scimitars and whips, until they could no longer hold on, so the loss ratio was very high.

When they finally collapsed, the cavalry just ran away. The infantry lacked cover and organization, and many of them ran to the nearest road, but ended up getting stuck on the river branch. Few escaped. After Guo Kang found that those people had no intention of fighting, he ordered the soldiers to stop chasing them and try to get them to surrender. Even though they couldn't speak the language, many people put down their weapons and lay in the mud to surrender - or wait to die. If it weren't for such kindness, there would probably be 200 more beheadings.

Even more people were killed at the port. The terrain there was relatively complex, with many buildings and facilities. The Mamluks therefore deployed a large number of "jihadist" infantry to engage in fierce street fighting with the Purple Tent Army to fight for control of the port area. According to Meltem, most of these people were not native Egyptians, but came from several Berber tribes.

These people were hired by the Mamluks not long ago and were invited to come and station in Upper Egypt. The grievances between these forces are very complicated and cannot be explained in a few words, but Meltem said that generally speaking, since the Arab conquest, Egypt's southern border has never been peaceful.

Although they defeated the Eastern Roman Empire, which was full of internal conflicts, and occupied Egypt, the Nubian region south of Egypt was still the sphere of influence of the Crusaders. The local Nubian Kingdom had a good relationship with the Eastern Roman Empire. After the Arabs invaded Egypt, many local forces in Egypt tended to favor the new conquerors and even acted as internal supporters; but the black-skinned people in the Nubian region have always been "loyal outside the region".

When the Umayyad dynasty tried to persecute the Coptic Church, it was the Nubians who helped them. The army from the south went all the way north along the river and even surrounded Cairo. The local governor had to hastily cancel the order and negotiate with them. This treaty lasted for six or seven hundred years. However, the Nubians still frequently went north and occupied Upper Egypt many times. The most powerful Nubian country was the Makuria Kingdom, which maintained its rule in the area from Luxor to Aswan for a long time.

The Arabs in Egypt had no way to deal with this. Therefore, they constantly introduced Arab and Berber tribes who believed in Islam from all over the world and let them live in Upper Egypt to fight against these Nubians. For hundreds of years, the Upper Egypt region has been providing many tribal soldiers to various Egyptian regimes. This is how it started.

Guo Kang was very surprised by this, because he had never known that the situation in this place was so complicated. Although everyone thought he was knowledgeable, even he himself always thought that Egypt was Egypt, the southern border of Rome. Further south, there was only Ethiopia on the Red Sea. And beyond that, it was all wilderness outside the civilized world, and various "miscellaneous" tribes with little presence. Even if you don't understand, it doesn't matter - at least it should have been like this since the demise of the Kingdom of Kush. Unexpectedly, these people can still maintain such a strong presence.

However, Meltem said that this was actually known to everyone who had been to Egypt. She was a little surprised why Guo Kang was paying attention to Egypt but didn't understand these situations. After all, Egypt has been composed of these two parts since ancient times, so he couldn't just ignore the affairs of Upper Egypt.

Moreover, the situation here is actually more complicated now.

By the time of the Mamluk dynasty, the major kingdoms of Nubia had already decayed and declined. The state lost control of the nomadic tribes outside the Nile Valley, and the royal family began to indulge in intrigue and intrigue, and even introduced tribal forces to serve their own internal struggles. At this time, traditional trade routes also changed, and coupled with the impact of the great plague, the Nubian region suffered a serious blow.

The powerful Mamluk Sultan Baibars, with the help of the internal strife of the royal family, defeated the Makurian King David and supported another royal family member who was closer to him to come to power. But afterwards, the Nubian Kingdom over there did not completely become a puppet of the Mamluks, or was quickly assimilated. Because the civilization of the Nubians was actually very advanced, and might even be more politically advanced than the Mamluk warlords...

The members of the Nubian royal family had different beliefs, but that did not stop them from fighting for power. In Makuria, there was even a situation where the Christian and Muslim kings took turns in power. When the Mamluks tried to intervene further in the area, both the Christian and Muslim kings expressed their resistance.

At that time, the most powerful tribe in Upper Egypt was the Banu-Kanzi tribe. The Nubian king negotiated privately with the tribal chieftain and agreed to let the chieftain become a co-king. The chieftain was very happy and immediately turned against the Mamluks, repelling the invasion of the kingdom and defending his country.

At the same time, the Nubian Kingdom often established alliances with Ethiopia in the southeast, asking them to help defend religion, and won over the Banu-Jad tribe and the Beja people - these people are also nomadic tribes that believe in Islam, but they are the older generation of nomads, so they hate the new nomads even more, so they also actively join the Crusades. Relying on these flexible diplomatic strategies, the Nubians persisted for more than a hundred years. However, the Nubians themselves are the weakest link in the covenant. Due to the serious decline in military power and the addiction to civil war, they can only abandon land and shrink their power. By the end of the 14th century of the Tianxiong era, frequent civil wars had destroyed Dongola, the capital of the Makuria Kingdom, and the kingdom simply left it to other tribes.

After that, the kingdom's court did not stay in its old home, but moved to the north, to Mount Ada between the first and second waterfalls. This kingdom still exists today.

But they were too weak and ended up betraying their allies. After finding that the Banu-Kanzi tribe had completely disobeyed them, the Mamluks introduced the Berber Hawara tribe to replace the Banu-Kanzi, allowing them to enter Upper Egypt and plunder territory on their own.

Just two years ago, the Hawara and the Banu-Kanzi fought a decisive battle in Aswan. The Nubians were completely unreliable at this time, and the Banu-Kanzi tribe, without the support of their allies, was defeated. As a result, the entire Aswan was completely destroyed by these more barbaric new tribes. Everyone in the city - including Egyptians and Arabs - was slaughtered and looted, and even the city buildings were demolished. The destruction was so severe that Egyptian scholars now tacitly assume that Aswan no longer exists.

Because they had gained great benefits in the previous war, these Berber jihadists were currently in a state of full motivation and high spirits, and were very positive about the Mamluks' recruitment. She was not surprised by their enthusiastic performance in the battle for the port.

However, on the other hand, the Eighth Legion did not have a very high opinion of these soldiers.

Earlier, at the meeting chaired by Tuo Huan, everyone had a routine exchange. The officers of the Eighth Legion told Guo Kang and others that these tribal warriors were of low quality and basically only rushed around. Their grassroots commanders were quite sensitive to changes in the battle situation, but they lacked effective ways to deal with it. Every time they lost a battle, they could immediately deploy other troops to counterattack, but the newcomers still didn't know what to do, and could only repeat the previous wrong offensive routes and inefficient tactics over and over again. It was not until too many people were lost that they could react and try to change the route or adopt other tactics.

Therefore, after a night of fighting, the Eighth Legion did not think much of these tribal holy warriors. They said that war requires meticulous organization, efficient feedback, and flexible scheduling, which is a technology and even an art. When Caesar was in Gaul, he encountered too many barbarians like this. In modern times, it is no longer the time to win wars by brute courage.

The only result of these enemies' desperate charge was that they repeatedly crashed into the positions set up by the legionnaires, leaving a pile of corpses. In one night, they contributed thousands of heads. In addition to the results achieved in the capture of a siege camp in the north of the city, the first battle after the Eighth Legion landed had already beheaded nearly 2,000 people.

Of course, although there seem to be many of them, the enemies currently lined up here are actually more powerful than before.

Guo Kang thought that the intelligence that Meltem had given them before should not be a big problem. There was no need for her to falsify it. It seemed that during the days when the Romans were resting, waiting for people, and marching, the Mamluks were not idle at all and were working overtime to capture able-bodied men.

He estimated that this group of so-called soldiers were just cannon fodder, used to consume the firepower and physical strength of the Romans. If you must say, they were not completely useless.

For example, the veterans on Guo Kang's side didn't take it seriously, and some even began to doubt that if they continued to fight like this, the military department would find out that the Egyptian infantry was actually very "weak", and the heads they cut off would probably be severely devalued, just like the barbarian conscripts before. But the new Russian soldiers in the team were generally seeing such a big battle for the first time.

After all, they lacked military education and practical combat experience. Even those who had participated in street fighting in Dadu had never seen such a grand scene on the Great Plains.

For recruits who lack military common sense, it is easy to make a simple judgment that more people = stronger. Therefore, when they saw that the other side had so many people, some of the Ross recruits began to be surprised.

There was nothing that could be done about this kind of thing. Guo Kang could only ask Father Ivan to help him again, to lead the new soldiers in front of the battlefield, to recite scriptures in his native dialect, to comfort everyone, and to give them something to do, so that they wouldn't think too much. As for the others, it was probably useless to just persuade them verbally, and they could only wait until they fought a few battles and gained experience before they could understand it themselves.

(End of this chapter)