The Venetians

The bombardment continued for three days. Andravida's walls were badly damaged and were expected to hold no longer than another day.

Vitus summoned the commanders to discuss the plan for tomorrow's assault. Worried that the lure of plunder might spark infighting among the troops, he ordered each unit to contribute soldiers to form a military police force.

"Remember, once we enter the city, the military police will be responsible for confiscating and collecting valuables. The rest of the troops will focus solely on fighting. We'll divide the spoils after the fighting has died down."

The order sounded reasonable, and the mercenary commanders, led by Piero, agreed. They chose dull-witted men to serve as military police; even without them, the fighting strength of their units would remain unaffected.

As for the military judge, Vitus picked an inflexible captain from the Tuna Mercenary Group. "Urinus, I hereby appoint you military judge. Your duties are as follows..."

When he was done, Vitus handed him a roll of parchment. After confirming that Urinus could read, he sent him on his way.

"After a full day of work, I can finally have dinner."

Vitus leaned back in his chair, gazing at the dark night sky beyond his tent. After a short wait, a guard brought him a large bowl of steaming mutton soup and a piece of hard bread.

Vitus broke the hard bread into small pieces and dropped them into the soup to soften. The broth was rich and cloudy, with golden fat floating on the surface. At the bottom of the bowl were onions, garlic, and chunks of turnip.

"Ah, winter really is the perfect season for mutton soup."

He picked up a spoon and sipped. The first taste was salty, savory, and scalding hot, warming him from mouth to stomach in an instant and driving away the chill in his body.

Thinking back over the past two years, he realized that armies of this era usually stewed beef and mutton in iron pots instead of roasting them over a campfire.

"Roast meat tastes great, but grilling makes the fat drip away continuously, wasting a lot. From a logistical standpoint, soup is clearly better value.

"Too bad beef and mutton are so expensive. Farmers use oxen to plow their fields and raise sheep for wool; they won't sell their livestock to the army lightly. Pork and chicken aren't cheap either. If the army is to have meat every day, the only choice is fish..."

As the army's commander, Vitus had to keep costs strictly under control. He couldn't spend too much, but neither could he be so stingy that he provoked a large-scale mutiny. Paoli Di Maggio had been right: waging war really was much like doing business.

After finishing the soup, he leaned back contentedly and closed his eyes for a brief rest.

Suddenly, a piercing scream echoed through the night, followed by a sentry's shouts, the clang of a gong, and the deafening blast of a Three-Pounder.

Vitus got up and had the guards help him put on his breastplate and helmet. Time was short. He had no time to put on the rest of his armor—the arm guards, gauntlets, greaves, and other pieces—so he quickly climbed the nearest watchtower.

For this campaign, he had consulted ancient military texts and worked out a simple field camp on his own. It was square, with a shallow ditch dug by the soldiers around the outer perimeter, a wooden palisade behind it, and wooden watchtowers at intervals.

The cold wind howled. Vitus narrowed his eyes and scanned the surroundings in the faint moonlight. The commotion was coming from the northern side of the camp. Enemy soldiers outside were attacking with torches in hand. Some hacked at the palisade with axes, while others set up ladders to climb over it.

As time passed, more and more defenders converged on that area. They fired through small openings left in the palisade, using crossbows, Three-Pounders, and the hand cannons brought by the mercenaries.

Hand cannons had short range and poor accuracy; they were only useful in close combat. The mercenaries loaded gunpowder and lead shot into the barrels, gripped the wooden stocks with their left hands, and rested the barrels against the firing slits. Then they used their right hands to touch the powder at the rear with a lit matchcord.

Bang!

With a deafening report, orange-red flames burst from the muzzle. The gunner's body jerked slightly before he withdrew to the rear to reload.

Watching the mercenaries repeatedly reload and fire, Vitus suddenly thought of the Ming army's Three-Eyed Gun.

"If you added two more barrels to the end of the stock, they'd look exactly alike. But Ming cavalrymen used the Three-Eyed Gun mainly because it felt good to swing and worked well as a long club on horseback. Its actual shooting performance was terrible."

The East Roman army put up fierce resistance against the night raiders, inflicting heavy casualties. Duke Centurione Zaccaria knew the tide had turned against him and ordered his guards to sound the retreat. On the way back to the city, mercenaries and militia members began abandoning their ranks without orders, fleeing under cover of darkness.

Once inside the city, Centurione counted his men. Of the eight hundred who had set out, only three hundred remained.

"Withdraw!"

Before leaving, Centurione took all his savings with him, and the soldiers seized the opportunity to loot on a grand scale. The next morning, Vitus led his army into the city and was bitterly disappointed.

"Twenty-five hundred impoverished citizens and a ruined wall. This is the capital of the Principality of Achaea?"

He had been campaigning for nearly a month and lost more than six hundred men. With the garrisons he had stationed along the way, he had fewer than two thousand field troops at his disposal.

With no other choice, he decided to rest in Andravida for a time and recruit a batch of militia. Since the nobles appointed by Centurione were either dead or had fled, Vitus summoned representatives from the surrounding villages and asked them to spread the news of the conscription among the people.

During the meeting, a priest voiced a question. "Your Highness, how do you intend to govern Achaea in the future?"

Vitus had not yet made up his mind, so he placated them with a few formal promises. "I swear that the agricultural taxes I collect in the future will never exceed Centurione's. Considering the devastation this war has brought upon the people, next summer's agricultural taxes will be canceled!"

(Note: The Palaiologos Dynasty's tax system was complex. The core of its agricultural taxes was the land tax, with additional levies such as the hearth tax and livestock tax. The overall tax rate remained between 30 and 40 percent. Agricultural taxes were usually paid twice a year, in May and September, so rural communities could pay with their harvested produce.)

Under the authority of the East Roman imperial family, Vitus recruited eight hundred Greek farmers in a short time and incorporated them into the Tuna Mercenary Group—or, rather, the Tuna Legion.

In mid-November, the East Roman army set out again. They met no resistance along the way. The knights wisely abandoned the castles their families had inherited for generations and fled with their families to Patras, at the northern tip of the peninsula.

By this point, the centuries-old Crusader state was all but doomed. Centurione could only seek outside intervention. He found a Venetian merchant doing business in Patras and asked him to help mediate.

"Duke, I'm just an ordinary cloth merchant. I hold no public office. How could I negotiate on Venice's behalf?"

The merchant, named Elion Daltino, only wanted to make money and had no interest in getting involved in this insignificant conflict. But when Centurione paid him three hundred ducats as an appearance fee, he reluctantly agreed.