The Crusader forces, described as "vast as the stars," displayed immense bravery in their three waves of attacks, seizing every opportunity and trying every method to exploit any weakness that appeared in the Ottoman defenses.
Although they did not have the same luck as the Ottomans once did, finding an unlocked small door, after suffering significant casualties, most of the towers in the middle section of the outer wall fell into Crusader control.
The Ottomans in this section were forced to retreat to the towering, sturdy inner wall.
However, the situation is still somewhat complex.
Laszlo intended to ascend the outer wall to continue encouraging the Crusader warriors to assault the even more resilient inner wall, but news arriving from the south quickly weighed heavily on his heart.
"The attack on the southern section of the walls failed?"
Laszlo looked up at the horizon; it was already evening, and by rights, the retreat should have been sounded by now.
"Yes, Your Majesty, all units suffered significant losses in the siege, and King Fernando could only order a temporary regrouping of the army."
The envoy from the southern section of the walls reported the situation to the Emperor with some shame.
The army in the south was divided into three parts: the main force was the Imperial Allied Army, supplemented by several thousand troops from the Kingdom of Naples and some Balkan vassal state armies.
Their mission was not a heavy one, merely to tie down the enemy forces on the southern section of the walls; the inability to complete even this simple task annoyed Laszlo.
"I don't want your casualty figures; I want Constantinople! Your unauthorized retreat is a betrayal of your comrades. If you still have any sense of a warrior's honor, then return to the battlefield and continue attacking the walls."
At such a critical moment, some people were still thinking of being cowardly lizards and preserving their strength; Laszlo would not give them a good look.
The Hungarian army, facing the main Ottoman defenders and under immense pressure, was still continuously assaulting the last line of defense, while the southern section only needed to tie down a portion of the Ottoman defenders, yet always failed first.
"This…" The envoy glanced at the sky, which was gradually growing dim, and was about to plead again, but met the Emperor's angry gaze, immediately recoiling and replying, "I will convey your order word for word, please rest assured, Your Majesty."
After speaking, he wasted no time and immediately rode his horse south.
Being harmed by incompetent allies was not a one-time occurrence; Laszlo was long used to it, and as before, felt indignant.
The plan to attack the inner wall was certainly unfeasible now; enemies from the southern section of the walls were constantly harassing from the flank, attempting to reclaim the lost middle section of the walls, while the defenders on the inner wall were also continuously pouring firepower onto the outer wall.
If it weren't for the dim light and poor visibility, the Crusaders remaining on the outer wall would likely not have escaped being picked off.
The inner and outer walls of Constantinople were only about twenty meters apart; the outer wall was low, only about five meters high, a stark contrast to the towering inner wall's height of over a dozen meters.
There's a saying, "He who fights from above, fights with ease," which is quite apt here.
The height difference between the terrace outside the city and the outer wall was even less than the height difference between the outer and inner walls. Additionally, the inner city suffered far fewer attacks than the outer city, so its wall defenses were relatively more intact, now becoming the greatest obstacle before the Crusader warriors.
This situation gave Laszlo an incessant headache.
Capturing a city requires human sacrifice.
The enthusiasm and expectation for the siege, and the willpower to fill the ditches with trampled corpses, all have time limits.
Unexpected setbacks can quickly lead to low morale; once the army's morale is damaged, it can lead to a temporary failure at best, or a complete rout at worst, rendering months of effort useless.
The poor performance of the allied forces is a major setback sufficient to affect morale; it is likely that some warriors have already realized that they have been "betrayed" by their allies.
"Your Majesty, it is already very late, and the warriors are very tired. We should stop the attack and rest for a while."
Grand Master Giovanni, serving as a combat advisor beside Laszlo, looked worriedly at the outer wall not far away.
The Crusaders occupying the walls had stopped their assault on the inner wall; they now faced double pressure from the south and the front, as the Ottomans were desperately trying to reclaim the lost walls.
This was an excellent opportunity for them; Bayezid would never allow the Crusaders to occupy the outer wall's towers and gates overnight, otherwise, they would face an even fiercer attack on the inner wall tomorrow.
As the main battlefield where the two commanders confronted each other, the fighting at the St. Romanus Gate was not the focus of the entire siege.
On the blachernae walls in the north, the strongest Hungarian army among the Crusaders was launching a fierce assault, and Bayezid had committed all his reserve units, including half of his Janissaries, to defend this last barrier.
Centuries ago, the Crusaders broke into Constantinople from there, and a decade ago, the army under his father, Mehmed II, also breached the city defenses from there.
Despite being built on a steep slope and having an astonishing quadruple wall, everyone knew it was the most vulnerable point.
Therefore, even though the outer wall had fallen, Bayezid's attention was mostly focused on the offensive and defensive battles on the northern section of the walls.
As for the fierce fighting on the terrace between the inner and outer walls, it was actually difficult to determine the outcome of the entire battle.
Laszlo, however, was more focused on the current battlefield. He had enough trust in Paul, the Hungarian army commander he had chosen, and therefore never directly intervened in command across ranks, entrusting the crucial task of breaching the city entirely to Paul and the Hungarian Crusaders.
Paul indeed did not disappoint him; in the afternoon, messengers had already reported that the blachernae walls had been breached three times, with only the last and strongest wall outside the imperial palace remaining.
However, there has been no news of the fourth wall being breached until now, presumably, the Hungarians are facing immense obstacles in this process.
Laszlo didn't care about these things; he only hoped that his army could open a breakthrough on the main front.
"The enemy will not give us a chance to rest, and we cannot give them a chance to rest. If we abandon the outer wall, all of today's efforts will be in vain."
Laszlo gritted his teeth, thought for a moment, and decided to take a gamble.
Aside from the Imperial Guard dispatched to reinforce the northern battlefield, he still had over twelve thousand regular troops, and nearly thirty thousand conscripted auxiliaries and laborers.
After the attrition of this period, the regular armies of Austria and Bohemia suffered nearly two thousand casualties. The auxiliaries and laborers, relatively speaking, suffered even heavier casualties; although there are no detailed statistics, the casualties are certainly above five thousand.
In the first two waves of fighting earlier today, the auxiliaries fought almost entirely in a discarded state, consuming as many enemy arrows, stamina, and some troops as possible, after which the elite units in the third wave took over the battlefield and successfully breached the outer wall's defenses.
Now, Laszlo still has some auxiliary units that have retreated to rest, as well as a corps of over two thousand seven hundred men as reserve troops, plus over a hundred foot knights and over five hundred sergeants from the Knights Hospitaller, bringing the total force to still nearly ten thousand men.
"Light the torches, bring the scaling ladders, we are entering the city!"
After a brief hesitation, Laszlo made a decision that shocked everyone.
Both his attendants and the several important figures accompanying him began to persuade the Emperor to remain calm.
However, Laszlo couldn't care less about these things; breaching the city was just a final step away, and if he were to give up at such a moment, he shouldn't have come here in the first place.
Soon, the Crusaders, having received the order, poured out of the nearest siege camp, countless torches converging, appearing to those inside the city like stars scattered across the earth.
It wasn't until they saw these "starlight" gradually approaching and continuously streaming from the breaches and wide-open outer gates into the terrace between the two walls that the defenders realized the Crusaders' fourth assault was launched just as the sun was about to set.
After a day of difficult fighting, a large number of Ottoman defenders were already exhausted.
They could only force themselves to continue fighting to fulfill Prince Bayezid's task of recapturing the outer wall.
Fortunately, the enemy opposite also expended a great deal of energy in the previous brutal fighting; now, neither side was having an easy time.
Unfortunately, the influx of more fresh troops quickly broke this fragile stalemate; after a brief engagement, the Ottomans attempting to attack the outer wall were forced back into the city.
At the same time, the Crusaders in the southern section, after being severely reprimanded by the Emperor, also regained their fighting spirit and launched a new round of attacks on the walls.
Torches illuminated the entire outer wall brightly, and the Ottomans on the inner wall also lit torches to guard against sneak attacks, and while the night was not yet deep, both sides began another round of confrontation.
Laszlo directly ascended the outer wall, ordering his imperial banner to be waved, continuously igniting the fighting enthusiasm and courage of the surrounding soldiers.
Arrows constantly whizzed past him, until Laszlo could no longer resist the insistence of those around him and entered the nearest tower to avoid Ottoman snipers, while his standard-bearer remained on the walls, inspiring the morale of the besieging army with a spirit of utter fearlessness.
The surrounding shouts of killing, the clanging of metal, and the explosions from ignited gunpowder, all sorts of noisy sounds made the night no longer silent.
Laszlo observed the battle through the tower's embrasures; warriors erected scaling ladders at various points on the walls, constantly attempting to climb up.
Other siege weapons became useless as they could not cross the outer wall; instead, scaling ladders became the most effective tool.
However, the cost of using scaling ladders for siege was immense; stones and other heavy objects constantly smashed down from the walls onto the heads of warriors about to climb the walls.
They fell from heights, losing their lives before they even had a chance to scream.
The firepower from the walls was extremely fierce, with various arrows constantly raining down onto the area below the walls.
Since the terrace itself was only twenty meters wide, aiming was not really necessary; just shoot.
Laszlo's archers stood on the outer wall or in the outer wall's towers, shooting upwards at the wall above.
Although it was a low-to-high shot, the distance was only tens of meters, so causing casualties was not a difficult task.
Just as the fierce fighting raged near the St. Romanus Gate, the northern part of Constantinople suddenly became ablaze.
This blaze was literal; the Ottoman garrison camp on the Sea Walls of the Golden Horn caught fire due to some accident, and the fire then spread throughout the entire camp, directly causing chaos among the Ottoman troops guarding the Sea Walls, with some units retreating into the city.
Earlier, the Crusaders who had already captured the Platina Gate, after repelling many Ottoman counterattacks, finally received a large number of reinforcements.
The Austrian and Portuguese fleets transported all the land forces stationed on the north bank, including troops from Milan and the Austrian Imperial Guard, to the coast near this gate.
The remaining troops were assigned to attack the blachernae walls in the northwest direction; as that was the focus of Ottoman defense, they predictably met with failure and fled back to the north bank across the pontoon bridge in disarray.
However, they also successfully misled the Ottomans, making them mistakenly believe that blachernae was the focus of the Crusader attack, when in reality, the Crusader commanders had set their sights near the Platina Gate in the middle section of the Sea Walls of the Golden Horn.
As the true main army poured into the gate, within half an hour, twenty-five towers and three other gates fell into Crusader hands. The lightly defended Ottoman naval defense camp nearby was also breached and burned down.
With the fall of the Sea Walls, the defenders of Theodosian Walls had to face the risk of their retreat being cut off. These Crusaders who breached the Sea Walls could even bypass the outer wall defenders and directly assault the core urban area of Constantinople.
After all, the distance from the Platina Gate to Theodosian Walls was even further than to the core area of Constantinople, i.e., the urban area protected by the Byzantine walls, and the path to the city center would face almost no obstruction.
Whatever choice the Crusaders who breached the Sea Walls made, it would be a huge threat to the Ottoman defenders.
Bayezid, who was personally leading troops in fierce fighting at the St. Romanus Gate, almost fainted when he received the news.
He put down his bow, and after a brief struggle, ordered all his remaining personal Guards to be dispatched to rendezvous with the re-assembled Sea Walls defenders inside the city, as well as a portion of the troops guarding the blachernae walls, to attempt to retake the lost Sea Walls.
Now Bayezid was truly at a loss; his troops were completely insufficient, and he could only constantly rob Peter to pay Paul, trying to fill the ever-appearing gaps in various places, but he could already fully anticipate the final outcome.
He recalled how his teacher, Zagan Pasha, described the previous siege of Constantinople to him. At that time, Zagan, who commanded the navy attacking from the Golden Horn, expected fierce resistance, but in reality, only dozens of sailors from two Venetian warships were responsible for guarding the largest gate of the Sea Walls of the Golden Horn.
After a brief resistance, they reached a compromise with the Ottoman navy and successfully returned to their ships to Crete, while all the gates on the Sea Walls of the Golden Horn were completely opened to the Ottoman navy. The Eastern Rome Emperor, with only just over seven thousand men, could not even fully man Theodosian Walls, and therefore had no defenses on the Sea Walls at all.
Now it was Bayezid's turn to feel despair about this; even if he had twenty thousand men, it was extremely difficult to achieve a complete defense on the three sides of the Sea Walls of the Sea of Marmara, the Sea Walls of the Golden Horn, and Theodosian Walls, which totaled nineteen kilometers in length.
However, at this moment, he couldn't afford to lament the resilience of the Eastern Rome people back then, because he might very well follow in the footsteps of Constantine XI.
Bayezid sighed softly, drew a sharp arrow from his quiver, and with one shot, effortlessly ended the life of a Crusader warrior below the walls.
Night fell, and the killing continued.