Subsequently, Klier laid out his entire plan to Giray.
"This…" Giray hesitated, "No, I am the Khan of this land, and my subjects are faithful believers in Allah, doing this would…"
"Khan, this is a necessary sacrifice," Klier said without batting an eyelid.
He had witnessed countless battles where the Ottoman Army used poorly dressed fanatics as cannon fodder and irregulars, then sent in elite Janissaries or Sipahi like himself to reap the enemy.
To him, such a practice was as natural as eating and drinking.
"I need to discuss this with the three tribal chiefs," Giray waved his hand, indicating he was noncommittal.
This was also within Klier's expectations.
In the nearly one year he had been there, he had come to understand the power structure of the Crimean Khanate: at the very top was, of course, Khan Haji Giray; beneath him were the three most powerful tribal chiefs in the Crimea region, the Darhkans of the Khanate: Darhkan Beijin Xilin, the chief of the Shirin Tribe, Darhkan Ali Muzar, the chief of the Muzars Tribe, and Darhkan Mustafa Balin, the chief of the Balin Tribe; further down were the chiefs of the smaller tribes, who, though also Darhkans, held a slightly lower status.
In other words, like other nomadic regimes of this era, the Crimean Khanate was essentially still a decentralized tribal confederation, merely one with a not-insignificant central power.
According to Klier's observations, among these three powerful Darhkans, Beijin Xilin was old and lacked interest in or understanding of new things; Ali Muzar was at times suspected of being indecisive; Mustafa Balin was brave and resourceful, but his tribe's influence was weaker, and his presence was not as strong.
If it weren't for the orders of old Chandler Pasha, and his trust in Haji Giray's abilities, Klier would have already wanted to lead his Janissaries in a feigned surrender and return to the Ottoman as soon as possible.
"Alas, why do I have a premonition of ill fortune?" Before falling asleep that night, Mahmud Kelir felt some uneasy thoughts surfacing in his mind, "Never mind, it must be a delusion."
On the third day, after gaining the support of the three major tribal chiefs, Giray decided to proceed with Klier's proposal, though on a smaller scale than originally planned, and with fewer tribal members participating from the three tribes than initially intended.
After discussing with them, Giray stood in place, somewhat dejected, "I've done this much, if we don't achieve ultimate victory, my prestige in the Khanate will surely drop significantly."
At noon that day, under Giray's command, the large-scale advance of the Crimean Khanate was about to begin.
When Crimea launched its large-scale invasion, Manuel, commanding from the watchtower, was quite surprised to find that after the Crimean Tatars finished their prayers, they, as if fearless of death, recklessly braved the crossbow bolts and artillery fire from the tower, using the materials they carried to fill the trenches.
Some Crimean soldiers even threw the bodies of those killed in front of the trenches into them to fill them.
This caused Manuel to be extremely shocked for a moment.
After dispatching more artillery and archers, he hastily called his generals to discuss countermeasures.
Facing his urgent demeanor, the generals initially felt worried, but after the detailed battle report was delivered and thoroughly analyzed, everyone relaxed a bit.
Tukharovsky even burst into laughter: "With a casualty ratio like this, now we just have to see how many lives these Tatars have!"
The facts were just as they had analyzed.
The Crimean Khanate filled the trenches regardless of casualties, and the efficiency was indeed high.
By the night of the fourth day, the trenches on the outer side of the Isthmus had been completely filled, enough for Tatar cavalry to pass through.
But at what cost?
Looking at the casualty report, Giray's hands trembled uncontrollably, "It's only been four days, and the army has lost over a thousand men."
Giray felt his palms sweating, "If we include the conscripted laborers, the number of casualties is even higher."
Besides this direct information on paper, he also vaguely heard many complaints from the chiefs of smaller tribes in the military tent.
For them, their tribal members were both property and, in a sense, "family," as well as their strength to deal with future changes.
Now, being consumed like expendable resources, it would make them more easily absorbed by the larger tribes.
And according to the nomadic traditions of the Tatars, such absorption was not a good thing for these small tribal chiefs.
Honestly, Giray himself was very much against this method; weakening small tribes to strengthen large ones was not beneficial to the Khan's royal authority.
But it was wartime, and according to the guest general Klier: "In wartime, extraordinary measures must be used; that's how we Ottomans do it."
However, Klier didn't seem to mention that the Ottoman Sultanate was an anomaly that, after numerous fierce civil wars, not only wasn't weakened but grew even stronger.
To return to the point, if the defense line of the Tatar Isthmus only consisted of this trench, it wouldn't be entirely unacceptable.
But based solely on visual intelligence, there was at least another "moat" and a not-insignificant earthen rampart in front of the Crimean Army.
Recalling those towering watchtowers, Giray's head began to ache uncontrollably.
"Damn Christians!" he cursed in his heart.
He couldn't keep sacrificing lives; doing so would destabilize morale, and with the Golden Horde army behind them, these discontented small tribes might even defect.
Given this, he decided to change his method of attack.
On the fifth day of the offensive, facing the "moat," Giray did not directly conscript laborers to fill it as before, but instead sent people to survey it first.
Of course, during this process, the flying arrows and artillery bombardments from the Theodore defenders were naturally unavoidable.
But even so, apart from the arrows returned by the Crimean Army, these Tatars made no other moves.
"What are they doing?" The Theodore soldiers on the tower became a little confused, "They're not counterattacking, not launching a large-scale advance, and not conscripting laborers.
It's completely incomprehensible."
Finally, until that night, the Crimean Army did not launch the large-scale offensive that Theodore had imagined.
This not only puzzled the lower-ranking soldiers, but also Manuel, who was commanding the defense, became confused: "What exactly are these Crimeans doing?" That night, Manuel called his generals for a meeting to discuss.
At the meeting, everyone put forth their ideas, but none of them gave Manuel a clear understanding.
It wasn't until Tukharovsky tentatively asked: "By the way, Your Highness, how deep is our 'moat' anyway?"