The fifth day began before sunrise, when the air was still cool, and the city lay under a low veil of smoke and dust.
This time, the guns opened without ceremony.
Luxenberg batteries fired at dawn in disciplined waves, the rhythm slower than the day before but heavier, more deliberate. Targets were no longer tested; they were chosen. A bastion on the western wall took the first sustained punishment, stone flaking, parapets collapsing in measured stages. Engineers had spent the night calculating angles and soil density; every round now landed with intent.
Basra answered more coherently than before. The garrison gunners had learned the ranges. Shot fell into the siege lines, tearing gaps in trenches and smashing earthworks. Men were lost, not in heaps, but steadily, the quiet arithmetic of siege warfare. Stretchers moved back along duckboards. Fresh crews stepped forward without pause.
By midday, Victor ordered the forward advance.
Under the cover of rolling artillery fire, trench parties pushed closer, extending zigzag approaches toward the western wall. Gabions were dragged forward, filled, stacked, and reshaped even as shot fell among them. Smoke thickened the ground, blurring distances, swallowing men whole before releasing them again in flashes of movement and steel.
Inside the city, pressure mounted. Fires burned unchecked in the outer districts, fed by shattered warehouses and broken water lines. Civilians crowded inward, compressing life toward the city's heart. The defenders were forced to choose: man the walls, or control the streets. They could not do both.
The harbour became a killing ground.
Luxenberg ships advanced in pairs, bombarding the sea wall at close range. Hakim batteries replied fiercely, and several ships were damaged, one driven aground in shallow water. But the weight of fire was unequal. A section of the dock collapsed into the bay, taking cranes and storehouses with it. Smoke drifted out to sea, marking Basra's position like a wound.
By evening, the first visible crack appeared.
Not a breach, yet, but a sag in the western curtain wall where repeated impacts had loosened stone and timber. It was small, barely noticeable from a distance, but Victor saw it through his glass and nodded once.
That night, the siege tightened its grip.
Sappers went forward under darkness, muffled and methodical, beginning the dangerous work beneath the wall. Sharpshooters took positions in ruined farmhouses and hastily raised towers, denying the defenders rest. Drums beat inside the city, steady but strained, as commanders worked to keep order and courage intact.
On the sixth day, Basra woke to the sound of the earth collapsing.
A section of the western wall slumped outward, not yet fallen, but weakened beyond denial. Cheers rose from the Luxenberg lines, not wild, but controlled. The guns shifted focus immediately, hammering the weakened section while smaller batteries raked the adjacent towers, isolating the point.
The garrison threw everything they had into holding it.
Men laboured atop the wall, shoring stone with timber and sandbags. Cannons were dragged forward to fire point-blank into the approaches. Muskets cracked in relentless volleys, turning the air above the trenches into a whistling storm.
Victor still did not order the assault. He let the pressure build. Let exhaustion deepen. Let hope drain away one careful hour at a time. By nightfall, the western wall stood scarred and bowed, fires glowing behind it like embers beneath cracked stone. Basra remained standing—but only just.
The city was bleeding strength with every passing hour. And everyone involved knew what came next.
The breach came at dawn on the seventh day.
There was no dramatic signal, no shouted challenge from the walls, only a deep, grinding sound as the weakened western curtain finally gave way. Stone slid outward in slow collapse, then fell all at once, raising a cloud of dust that rolled across the approaches like fog. When it cleared, a jagged opening gaped where the wall had stood, wide enough for columns to pass through, its edges raw and unstable.
Victor gave the order without ceremony. "General Bertrand, have your guns adjusted. We have already breached the wall, no point in continuing to make it wider." The French General nodded and began to issue corrections to his gunners.
The guns shifted immediately, concentrating fire not on the breach itself, but beyond it, into the streets and inner defences just inside the walls. Shot smashed into barricades hastily thrown together during the night. Return fire from the city faltered, scattered, then thinned as crews were driven from their positions.
Infantry moved forward in dense, disciplined formations.
Engineers went first, clearing rubble under the cover of smoke, widening the passage just enough to allow men through two abreast. Skirmishers followed, slipping into the shadow of the breach and fanning out along the inner wall, muskets raised, bayonets fixed. Resistance met them at once, sharp, close, desperate, but it was fragmented, lacking coordination. The defenders had prepared for a wall fight. Now the wall was gone.
Then the main body entered.
Luxenberg troops crossed the threshold of Basra in steady waves, boots crunching over fallen stone, standards lowered until they were inside the city proper. Drums sounded, not loud, but firm, keeping the pace, anchoring men who now fought among buildings instead of fields. Orders were shouted and repeated down the line as units peeled left and right, securing streets, courtyards, and junctions with practised efficiency.
The city fought back in pockets.
From rooftops and windows came scattered fire. Barricades slowed the advance, forcing brief, brutal engagements in narrow streets where smoke lingered and echoes confused direction. But every resistance was isolated. Once engaged, it was surrounded. Once surrounded, it collapsed.
By midday, the western quarter was lost. Bodies of slain defenders were beginning to form hills. It was a bloody affair. For every Luxenberg death, ten defenders would join the hill of corpses.
Luxenberg flags rose over captured towers and mosques, not as symbols of triumph, but as markers, lines drawn to organise what came next. Artillery was hauled through the breach and turned inward, sealing the city's fate. The sound of fighting moved steadily eastward, deeper into Basra's heart.
The harbour guns fell silent one by one.
Smoke drifted upward, mingling with the call to prayer that rang out despite the chaos, thin but unbroken. Civilians withdrew behind closed doors and inner walls, the city folding in on itself as soldiers took its streets.
From the western gate, Victor entered Basra on horseback, stopping just inside the ruins of the wall. He did not ride forward. He did not raise his voice. He watched the city being taken, methodically, inevitably, until the noise of resistance began to fade.
By nightfall, Luxenberg boots stood on Basra's stones. The city was not yet fully subdued. The palace still held. The inner districts still bristled. But the invaders had crossed the line that mattered most.
Basra had been entered. And there would be no turning them back.