Siege of Lerwijk

The Siege of Lerwijk and the Battle of Lerwijk which was part of the siege as a whole were two events lasting from 6 March - 1 April 1859 during the Ripuarian Revolution.

Initial Siege
On the 6 March the 1st and 3rd divisions of Lindenholt besieged the city of Lerwijk and cut road and rail access. A city that only 6 days prior officially joined the revolution and was occupied by rebels. The Free Ripuarian Army had few soldiers in the city, mainly the 4th Brigade Freiheit lead by Brigadier Abel Schulz which consisted of irregular infantry and poorly equipped soldiers. The city wasn't ready for a siege and food supplies were low already from the start. Brigadier Abel Douay had calculated that the city had enough food for at most a single month.

The city at the time had fewer than 100 artillery guns. Not enough to sustain a good defense against the Lindians. Abel Schulz knew that surrender was inevitable and had to come up with a plan that will enable him to retreat the most amount of force out of the city before it falls. Schulz decided to force the siege to last as long as he possibly could to slow the Lindian offensive, rationing food to the civilian population and using concentrated firepower from the 100 guns he had to maximize damage to the Lindians. His soldiers at the brigade took up defenses against many Lindian raids.

Battle
On the 10 March, Umbrellia officially declared intervention in the war and mobilized its armies in support of the Ripuarians. At that time the battle of Grunfeld has just been won but the siege of Lerwijk was still ongoing. The initial Umber plan was to relieve Lerwijk and let the Free Ripuarian Army hold the Lindian army against the eastern front. On the 15 of March, the Umber army arrived at Lerwijk in attempt to relieve the siege. The Umber believed the Lindian forces would be weakened by the siege's length and decided to not launch an offensive but to hold small skirmishes to tire the Lindians out. Unexpectedly, the city surrender after only a little more than two weeks. The Umber army decided to attack and attempt to push the Lindians out before they could entrench in the city. The eventually battle of Lerwijk would result in heavy Umber causalities and swift defense in the city. On the 6 April, the Umber army retreated from Lerwijk.

Surrender
On the 30 March, rations and food supplies ran out and the city was forced to feed on horse meat for six more days until 5 April when the city formally surrendered to the Lindians. When the gates opened for the Lindian soldiers they were baffled to find not one functioning artillery gun or rifle in the city. Two weeks prior to the surrender, Abel Schulz began smuggling his soldiers out of the city on the cover of night, moving them eastwards. On the 1 April he hid the final caches of weapons and destroyed the last artillery gun he had in the city and the rest of the soldiers that he did not manage to smuggle were hidden between the civilian population mostly as factory workers.

Abel Schulz himself stayed in the city even after surrender, hiding as a worker at a factory.