Siege of Tarentum

bombarded the town with catapults from the land side, followed by almost daily infantry attacks. They also sought to undermine the fortifications through tunnels and mines. The catapults were slow in inflicting serious damage to the massive walls, but after five weeks, on (insert date), two large sparkpowder mines exploded under the northeastern wall, causing a portion of the wall to fall and to fill the moat. The attackers immediately assaulted this breach and soon gained control of it, but a counterattack by the house-guard succeeded in driving them back again. Twice more the dragonborn assaulted the breach that day, but each time the house-guard, aided by the town guard, held the gap.
a week later, NAME ordered a new massive assault, aimed mainly at the northeastern, southeastern and southern walls. After a day of furious fighting, during which the southern wall changed hands twice, NAME eventually called off the attack. He sentenced NAME to death for his failure to take the city, but eventually spared his life after other senior officials had pleaded with him for mercy.NAME's replacement, NAME, was an experienced siege engineer, and the dragonborn now focused their efforts on undermining the ramparts and blowing them up with mines while maintaining their continuous artillery barrages. The regularity of the locations where the mines were detonated under the walls (which generally rest on rock) has led to the suggestion that the dragonborn miners may have taken advantage of culverts under the former imperial city
With the town guard retreating into the city and towards the bridge  his house-guard, now left to their own devices, kept fighting and managed to successfully hold off the dragonborn for a while, but eventually they could not stop them from entering the town.  fought bitterly, but were immensely outnumbered and almost annihilated. Some survivors, accompanied by a band of refugees, fell back to the Ilian side of the river.
Category:Battles