What Cabrera saw was even more hopeless, but at the very beginning, he had not given up.
Puertollano's city walls had been inherited from ancient Rome, with an astonishing average thickness of three meters. Though they still fell well short of Constantinople's five meters, this nevertheless gave Cabrera a little comfort.
However, when the Austrian Empire's army gradually deployed, it filled Cabrera with fear. With just a rough visual estimate, he knew this Austrian Empire army numbered no fewer than thirty thousand.
And still more soldiers were streaming in from the rear, while the number of artillery pieces was also considerable. But compared with the artillery, what Cabrera truly feared were those rocket launch racks and the airships that were rising into the sky.
A quarter of an hour later, the Austrian Empire's envoy arrived before the main gate and read out the declaration of war. Half an hour later, the Austrian Army's artillery began ranging shots.
At first, Cabrera leaned over the city wall with great interest, watching the enemy's artillery test-fire. With his many years of military experience, he believed this distance was absolutely safe.
Great cannons and mighty ships were a boy's dream, and men loved them just the same.
Yet as the gunner pulled the fuse, a dull, thunderous boom shattered the silence of the battlefield. A great burst of firelight and thick smoke sprayed from the muzzle, and a shell dragged a long trail straight toward the section of wall where Cabrera stood.
The city wall shuddered under the tremendous impact. Broken stones and clods of earth flew everywhere. Cabrera fell sitting to the ground, while the soldiers around him were in an even more miserable state; some were even frightened into convulsions.
"Return fire! Return fire!"
Cabrera's roar tore from his lungs. He felt