Mediterranean Hegemon of Ancient Greece Chapter 976: The Fall of Syracuse

Because of his injuries, Kuchillas had not personally led the charge into the fortress. He waited outside, expecting to hear the cheers of victory, but was met instead by a flood of terrified soldiers frantically fleeing back toward him. His desperate shouts and attempts to halt them proved utterly useless. The panic was contagious; infected by the routed men, the soldiers still stationed outside the fortress joined the flight. When the clear bugle calls of the Daionian army rang out, the routed soldiers only fled faster.

Forced to join the retreat, Kuchillas was consumed by anxiety until a sudden thought gave him hope: not far ahead, Phalecus was leading a large number of civilians in building defensive works. Perhaps they could intercept these fleeing men and rally the army.

But when he finally reached the site, not a single person was in sight. They had left behind only a half-dug trench and an unfinished earthen rampart—obstacles that now only hindered the soldiers' retreat.

...

When the Syracusan Council received news of Hicetas's rebellion, they not only dispatched a messenger to inform Theagenes, but also sent someone rushing to the Epipolae Plateau to notify Phalecus. The civilians under Phalecus's command included many senior citizens, who needed to be urgently mobilized to form an army and crush Hicetas's rebellion.

The news shocked Phalecus so deeply that he immediately lost all interest in building defensive works. As he led his people back toward the city proper, he also stopped the messenger from notifying Kuchillas and his men. In his view, the assault on Euryalus Fortress was at a white-hot stage; if the attacking troops received this disastrous news now, it would shatter their morale and render all their previous efforts worthless.

Only when Phalecus reached the main city did he learn that Hicetas had not attacked the Council at all. Instead, he had led his forces back toward the Great Harbor.

Panic seized Phalecus. He knew the Great Harbor was very close to the Daionian military camp. If Hicetas secured the port and brought the Daionian army in by sea, Syracuse was doomed!

Time was of the essence. He had no time to wait for the senior citizens to go home, equip themselves with weapons and armor, and then muster. Instead, he took command of a thousand soldiers hurrying from the Western Sector, combined them with the five hundred senior citizens he had just mobilized, and fast-marched southwest toward the port.

Pushing into the port, they quickly spotted the traitor, Hitacus, who had arrayed his forces in front of the Military Port.

Spotting Phalecus's arrival, Hitacus prepared to parley in front of the formations to buy a little more time.

But Phalecus saw right through his intent and immediately ordered a charge.

The 1,500 soldiers—the majority heavy infantry—roared as they charged the enemy line, while the port soldiers unleashed a dense volley of javelins in return. Because survival was on the line for both sides, the battle was intensely fierce from the very start.

However, after a brief period of fierce fighting, the port defenders—primarily light infantry—gradually began to buckle. If some civilians from the Port District had not arrived with wooden clubs and oars to attack the Syracusan army's flank, temporarily relieving the pressure on Hitacus's troops, his army might have already routed.

Even so, the situation remained grim. The port defenders fell one after another in the fighting, and the entire army was forced back to the coast.

Right at this critical moment, fifty Warships successively entered the Military Port. The moment they bumped against the piers, the Daionian soldiers packing the decks rapidly leapt ashore. With no time to assemble into proper formations, the officers immediately led them in squads to attack the flank of the Syracusan array.

Fighting at the very forefront as commander, Phalecus was completely unaware of the changing battlefield. It wasn't until he noticed the soldiers around him beginning to break and flee that he paled in horror: the Daionian army had landed!

Throwing away his helmet and breastplate, he desperately retreated with the routed soldiers.

The Daionian soldiers relentlessly pursued them, while the soldiers of the Port District hurried to tend to their wounded comrades and the civilians.

As the Daionian soldiers neared the Inner Wall in their pursuit, they spotted Syracusan reinforcements arriving ahead. Although driving the fleeing troops into the reinforcements to scatter their formation was a good option, the problem was that there were too few pursuers. They feared they would fail to completely disrupt the enemy, and might instead be counter-routed due to their own disorganized ranks. Acting with caution, the Daionian officers chose to temporarily retreat, falling back to the Military Port to rendezvous with the main force still making landfall.

Having escaped danger, Phalecus did not command the force of over two thousand newly mobilized senior citizens to combine with the routed men, retake the Military Port, and stop the Daionians from continuing their landing.

After the recent battle, he felt that the entire Port District had likely betrayed Syracuse. Continuing to fight in the Port District would very likely trap this hard-won force in another encirclement.

After hesitating repeatedly, Phalecus did not dare take the risk. He instead ordered his troops to defend the Inner Wall and dispatched messengers to notify the Council.

It wasn't long before 3,000 Daionian soldiers joined with Hitacus's troops and advanced on the Inner Wall.

The Inner Wall merely served to isolate the Port District and inspect foreigners, so it was not built as high and sturdy as the outer wall. It was only three meters tall with a relatively narrow walkway, and possessed no defensive stockpiles of stones, timber, or pitch. As a result, once the Daunian Allied Forces closed in, Phalecus was stunned to discover that the Syracusan soldiers, despite defending from the high ground, were at a disadvantage.

A sky-blotting barrage of heavy javelins hurled by the Daonian Heavy Infantry and light javelins thrown by the port soldiers rained down, inflicting significant casualties on the Syracusan defenders at close range. Phalecus's current army contained very few light infantrymen. This stifling situation, in which his army could only endure the beating without being able to mount an effective counterattack, chilled Phalecus's heart.

Before long, the civilians of the Port District promptly brought over wooden ladders normally used for house repairs and logs used for shipbuilding to aid the Allied Forces in their siege of the wall.

Watching this scene from the wall, Phalecus felt a stifling tightness in his chest, while his soldiers huddled beneath their shields to weather the ranged attacks from below and screamed curses at the betrayal of the port dwellers.

The soldiers of the Daunian Allied Forces swiftly propped the wooden ladders against the three-meter stone wall. Taking advantage of the enemy on the wall being suppressed by javelins, they nimbly scaled the ramparts. At the same time, Allied Forces soldiers battered open the gate with the logs and surged through the Inner Wall's archways. Brutal frontal combat gradually unfolded both on the wall and down below.

On the fiercely contested wall, Phalecus looked out and saw another massive black army—the second wave of landing forces, the Daunian 8th Legion—appear in the Port District, pressing toward the Inner Wall in a mighty throng. His heart instantly plummeted to rock bottom.

Right at that moment, another soldier pointed to their rear and shouted in panic, "The city is on fire!"

Phalecus hurriedly turned around to see thick smoke billowing and flames shooting into the sky in the northwest. He paled in shock; a fire covering such a vast area could not be an accident. Had the Daionians already fought their way into the city?!

If he thought this, his soldiers were even more panicked, their morale plummeting drastically. Fortunately, the senior citizens, having survived multiple wars, remained somewhat rational and knew very well: if they chose to retreat now, Syracuse might be completely finished!

Therefore, spurred on by Phalecus rushing about and encouraging them, they were able to barely maintain the defensive line.

But misfortunes never come singly. The section of the Western Wall near the sea was very close to the Port District. Standing atop the wall over ten meters high, the Syracusan soldiers could not only see exactly what was happening in the Port District, but also thousands of Daionian soldiers successively landing at the Military Port and fiercely attacking the perilous Inner Wall. Moreover, they could see that the culprits behind the city fires were also Daionian soldiers in Black Helmets and Black Armor, rapidly marching toward the city's core.

Witnessing this horrifying sight, the Syracusan defenders were utterly terrified. Deeply worried about the safety of their families, they lost all morale to keep fighting and began fleeing into the city. To evade blame, they shouted as they ran: "The city is on fire!! The Daionians have fought their way into the city! The Daionians have fought their way into the city!..."

Their retreat left a void in the defenses along the southern stretch of the Western Wall. Daionian soldiers swiftly captured the ramparts and advanced northward along the walkway on the offensive.

The defenses of the entire Western Sector rapidly collapsed.

...

The ones who ignited the city fires were the troops led by Diocassis. They had relentlessly pursued the routed Syracusan soldiers, refusing to give the enemy a moment to breathe and regroup, chasing them from the Euryalus Fortress all the way to the edge of the main city. Although they had run for several , the downward slope of the terrain kept the soldiers relatively fresh.

Throughout the pursuit, Diocassis kept turning a question over in his mind: once his force entered the city, how could they best help the entire siege army capture the whole city more rapidly?

He knew that in order to let his raiding force secure a firm foothold at the Euryalus Fortress, Commander Prosous had ordered the entire army to launch another fierce assault on Syracuse. His comrades were using their lives to create this opportunity for him. Therefore, he had to shatter the enemy's will to fight as quickly as possible to reduce the soldiers' casualties.

In the end, the best method he thought of was—using fire.

Consequently, he dispatched a single company to break into the private residences. They collected olive oil and pitch, poured it over a row of houses on the edge of the main city, and then lit the fire, while he led his troops to continue their pursuit of the routed enemy.

Kuchillas, Steisikos, and the others fled directly toward the Council. Kuchillas still desperately hoped that the Council could dispatch a force to intercept these pursuers, who clung to them like maggots to a bone. Little did he know, the Council had no troops left to send. Furthermore, upon hearing that the enemy was fighting their way in, the terrified senators didn't dare remain in the Council hall. They fled westward one after another, placing their hopes on the forces of Theagenes and Phalecus to protect their safety.