Chapter 31 November 406 AD Dura-Capture

            As the trenches grew closer and closer to Dura, Julius grew more nervous. He had received word from his father that capturing the steam weapons was more important than capturing the city. Although Kush had captured steam weapons from Paulsland, they had not yet allowed Romans to examine them, and perhaps they were not able to make their own yet. In fact, the only reason why Parthian had steam weapons was because Paulsland was selling them to everyone but Rome and Kush. That meant that Rome needed to capture steam weapons before they became common weapons everywhere else. Unfortunately, Dura’s north side was on the banks of the Euphrates, and Julius had no means of stopping travel by boat if the soldiers of Dura decided to flee with their new weapons. The only thing he could do was have his cavalry harass boats when they came too close to the shore. Albeit his cavalry had learned that they needed to stay at least two thousand yards away from the city due to the steam weapons. At two thousand yards, a steam weapon could still technically hit one of his men, but it was far less deadly. Within a thousand yards, the weapons could hit formations of men consistently, and within three hundred yards, they could hit individuals. This meant that the boats keeping the city of Dura supplied had a massive zone where it wasn’t safe to harass.

            That wasn’t to say that Julius’s cavalry was idling away their days. The Parthians had sent an army of a hundred thousand cavalry, and four hundred thousand infantry, mostly conscripts, to push them back, but the fast fire bows overwhelmed them. The new bows had two advantages over the bows the Parthians used. First of all the bows gathered their power with a clever mechanism of pulleys, which shot arrows at far greater power than any other bow Julius had ever heard of, as the pulleys seemed to double the power of the archer who pulled the string. This meant that even his weakest cavalry archer was shooting arrows with more power than the greatest archer of Parthian, even though they were on the back of a horse. These powerful bows consistently cracked the armor of their enemies. Furthermore, the bows had a magazine that allowed them to fire more arrows than their enemies. Even though the Parthians had five times as many cavalry, their cavalry was shredded by the new weapons. As for the Parthian infantry, they were more afraid of the Romans than their own officers, and after facing the Roman cavalry, they revolted before facing the brunt of Julius’s forces.

            Months earlier, Julius had his soldiers build massive fortifications at the edge of the steam weapon’s range to defend against a Parthian army, but the Parthians never made it there. This new weapon stopped them in their tracks. Julius wondered how many cities he would take before the Parthians obtained one of the new fast fire bows. They were not that complicated once you knew the trick, and once Parthian had them, he suspected his invasion would be stalled out.

            Although Julius expected to face more opposition in the future, that was a problem he would deal with then. As for now, his men were nearly ready to reach the walls with their trenches. In fact, they had to tunnel the last fifty feet, as the attacks from the steam weapons made digging the trenches any closer impossible. Julius’s only fear was that Parthian would realize the city was lost and move the steam weapons before he could capture them. If so, then it would be a problem he would face throughout this campaign, as most of the Parthian cities were built along easily navigable rivers.

            As his men neared the eastern wall with their tunnels, he had decisions to make. His men were tunneling toward the southern, eastern, and western walls, and he needed to decide if they would collapse the eastern wall as soon as possible, or if they would undermine it and wait until another wall was undermined before making a wall collapse, so that his armies could attack from two or three points instead of one.

            Undermining a wall was a feat involving engineers and a lot of lumber. When an army dug under a wall, they would shore up the wall with lumber and keep digging, exposing more and more of the foundation of the wall as they dug. The more they dug, the more of the wall they stabilized with lumber. Once they dug out enough, they would set the lumber on fire, flee the area, wait for the lumber to burn, and watch the wall collapse once its supports were gone. If they didn’t undermine enough of the wall, then the wall would not collapse enough to get his army through, and considering the steam weapons, he would need a rather large collapse, preferably on more than one wall, to take the city.

            As Julius considered this, the decision was taken away from him. As his men undermined the wall the defenders of the city dug down and into his army’s undermining operation, and they began fighting, and the defenders decided that their best bet was to set the lumber on fire with coal oil and gamble that the wall would not collapse enough not to be breached. Most of the men who were undermining, alongside a number of the defenders, got caught in the fire and died. Once the fire was going they waited nearly two hours for the walls to fall. While they waited, Julius filled the east trench with as many legionnaires as possible. They were to wait his order to charge the walls when it fell. If the gap was too small, they would wait until they undermined another part of the wall.

            When the wall finally fell, it left a twenty-foot gap that the legionnaires could crawl over. If the Parthians didn’t have the steam weapons, then there would be no question about storming the city, but with those steam weapons, Julius had to take a moment to consider. He calculated that fifteen men could cross at a time, and that very few steam weapons could hold the breach, so they should be able to take the city.

            Once his consideration was over, he turned to his trumpeter and said, “Sound the attack.”

            “Brrrr Brrrr, Brrrr Brrrr” sounded out. Like an arrow leaving a bow, the Roman legionaries left the safety of the trench and began charging the gap. A moment after their bodies fully left the trench, they began to get shot. Whatever the steam rifles used for ammunition was able to pierce their shields and armor. The armor was so useless against the steam weapons that the legates had given serious consideration of ordering their men to attack the city without it, but they expected the city defenders to have armor, so that thought never gained traction.

            Despite a dozen men falling in the first moments of the charge, more soldiers gladly climbed out of the trenches and charged the city. They knew the city held loot and women. Some of the men imagined gaining riches, while others just wanted to be with a woman. Either way, the soldiers’ greedy hearts spurred them into danger.

            As they charged the fallen wall, bullets rained down on them, piercing shields. Arrows also rained down, but their shields and armor shrugged off those missiles like they were designed to.

            As the soldiers sprinted to the wall, Julius couldn’t help but consider how times had changed. For centuries, the safest way to attack a wall was in formation, but a formation moved slowly, and so his soldiers sprinted in what looked like an undisciplined manner. Far from being undisciplined, it was logical.

            As the men reached the rubble of the fallen wall, they slowed down and were shot down by the ridiculous steam weapons. That said, the men were reaching the collapsed wall and climbing it as more and more men filled the gaps behind them. It was clear to Julius’ eyes that the steam weapons could not fire fast enough to stop the charge, although the two dozen yards between the fallen wall and the trench had cost at least a hundred lives. It didn’t matter; tens of thousands were prepared to fill the gap.

            As the men climbed the rubble of the collapsed wall, a strange thing happened. The steam weapons stopped shooting at the men at the front. It was obvious they had reached a place out of its reach. As the men behind the front saw that, they hurried to the safety near the top of the collapsed wall.

            As the soldiers topped the wall and made their way into the city, they found an organized resistance ready for them. Albeit steam weapons were not waiting for them, so they had nothing to worry. The force wouldn’t find out until later that the way the defenders had set up the steam weapons made them impossible to move when their pressure vessel was boiling hot. It was a mistake born from a lack of experience with these new weapons, a mistake the Romans would take advantage of.

            As the Romans crossed the broken wall and met with the defenders, they hustled up into their well-known formations and began pushing forward. They had no choice but to push forward; the entire army was coming in behind them, and they would push them forward if only to get out of the sight of those awful steam weapons.

            When the Romans met the Parthian guard, the Romans’ years of experience showed. Each Roman soldier had at least five years of experience, and most had more than ten. Once a man became a soldier of Rome, he wasn’t allowed to retire for at least twenty years as long as he could fight. The Roman soldiers just had more experience than the Parthians they were fighting, and between their experience and the army pushing them forward, they were pushing the Parthians back.

            The Parthians were making the Romans pay for every inch of ground, as the Parthians were killing more soldiers than they lost, but the Romans had far more men than the Parthians had. As the Parthians lost their front line, then second line, and finally third line of defenders, they began to realize there was no winning this battle, and so one of the men fled the battle. Then a second, and then a third, and then a wave of men. They fled toward the city docks on the north side of the city. If they were lucky, they could escape on a boat.

            As for the Romans on the front line trading blows with the Parthians, they couldn’t flee if they wanted to. They were being pushed forward by all the men rising from the trenches. That said, as soon as the Parthian line broke, the Romans didn’t pursue; instead, they rushed toward the gates and walls. They wanted to capture the steam weapons as Julius promised a thousand gold coins to the men for each steam weapon captured.

            As the Romans reached the steam weapons, some of the Parthian gunners stood and fought, and shot down dozens of Romans, but they were eventually overwhelmed by Roman numbers. The lucky ones died by spear and sword. Those unlucky enough to be taken alive took a week to die under the tender cruelty of Roman soldiers. Other Parthian gunners fled as soon as they saw the numbers that were attacking. They, too, spent their last days being tortured.

            It may seem a strange thing, but the Romans were happy to let the Parthians flee on ships, and to encourage this, they waited to attack the docks, only attacking the walls and gates near the docks, but not the docks themselves. If the Parthians thought there was a safe way out of the city, they would cause less trouble, and it would make the Romans’ jobs easier. Once the Romans captured the walls and gates, they systematically looted the city, and raped every woman they found inside the walls, too stupid or poor to flee to the docks. Unfortunately, for many of the citizens, there were far too few boats to take everyone across the river, and all those that were left became the property of Rome.

            Once the city was safe, Julius made his way to the city and took command. The governor of the city was long gone, as were all the wealthy, but Julius didn’t care; he had the steam weapons. As soon as they were cooled enough to move, he sent them back to Rome, via Jerusalem, with half of his army. Then he put the city to work rebuilding their defenses and adding to them. Dura would be the city he used to capture the rest of Parthian; as such, it needed massive new fortifications.