July 29, 1802.
Before the pale yellow morning sunlight had fully spread across the Tiber River, Denipol burst out from beside the massive stone base of the Tomb of Cecilia Metella.
Behind him followed 600 soldiers of the Montpellier Third Dragoon Regiment.
This place lay a full thirty kilometers from the mouth of Trajan's Canal. Denipol had originally thought they would not reach the vicinity of Rome until that afternoon, but Second Lieutenant Kamas had miraculously procured three steam tugboats—according to him, the Tiber had only begun introducing these things at the start of the year, and there were merely six or seven on the entire river.
The steamships were exceptionally fast. They had reached Rome's Southern Suburbs by dusk the previous day and rested here for the night.
The force, flying all manner of flags, quickly passed through a vineyard. Through his Telescope, Denipol could already see the majestic Aurelian Walls outside Rome. He could not help frowning at Kamas. "Why aren't we attacking from the north? It would only take another two or three hours to circle around there." The southern section of the Aurelian Walls was the best preserved, because throughout history, foreign enemies had rarely attacked Rome from this direction. The northern walls, meanwhile, had been dismantled into a scattered shambles over the course of a thousand years, and successive Popes had been unwilling to spend money repairing them.
Kamas gave a sly smile. "Because no one would imagine that anyone would launch a surprise attack from the south. That is why the Naples Army has stationed only a little over four hundred soldiers along nearly five kilometers of wall."
Denipol raised his Telescope again. "But that damned stone wall is at least ten meters high! Fortunately, the moat has been filled in and planted with