Chapter 662

With a thunderous roar.

A Stone Bullet smashed into a watchtower. It seemed that many of the magic arrays along the ancient walls that had stood for a thousand years had failed at their weaker points. Rather than being deflected as before, the Stone Bullet sheared the tower cleanly in half.

Collapsing masonry, the ballistae and small hand cannons stored within the tower, and the garrison troops all came crashing down.

Piercing screams rang out, while the distant enemy erupted in excited cheers.

The power of hundreds of cannons was terrifying. All of Constantinople trembled, as if it had returned to the era of frequent earthquakes. Every soldier defending the city cowered beneath the shelter of the stone walls, yet Stone Bullets still occasionally flew into the city and crushed homes.

However, towers like the one that had just collapsed were few. Most sections of wall and watchtowers remained immovable under such fierce bombardment, greatly bolstering the defenders' morale instead.

Constantinople had always been a city steeped in religious fervor, one of the five patriarchates and once an Eastern Orthodox Church center that stood alongside Rome.

Pick any passerby off the street, and they could quote classic passages from the Bible and debate doctrine with Latin missionaries.

What they feared most was being abandoned by God, not fighting heathens. If it had been a Genoese colony under Ottoman attack, even a miracle might not have accomplished much.

The bombardment stopped at some point.

By the time the defenders came to their senses, tens of thousands of enemies had already charged out of the smoke.

The laborers digging tunnels in full view packed tons of earth into sacks. Conscripted soldiers serving as cannon fodder then carried them through volleys of arrows and musket fire to the moat, where they dumped them