Alma 49

Nineteenth year, eleventh month, tenth day: Lamanites approach Ammonihah. The city rebuilt, a sector of Moroni’s army in trenches shielded by the mounds they’d unearthed in the digging. The Lamanites, who fought mainly with arrows and rocks, thought the city easy prey, given its dilapidated wreckage from the last siege. They couldn’t have imagined the fortified troops lining the city’s boundaries.

These guys weren’t very bright—no offense. Hadn’t centuries of military history given them a clue? Mounds and trenches weren’t genius, after all. But to Lamanites it seemed brilliant. Which says more about them than about their foes.

They had gotten cocky because of their shields, breastplates, and thicker stitched-hide loincloths. But these newfangled upgrades really had no business on the battlefield against the relatively high-tech Nephites. Especially with Moroni in command. So the Lamanites’ minds were blown.

Now, if King Amalickiah had led his army in person he would have launched a full-scale assault. He didn’t mind ordering suicide missions. He really had a taste for the blood of his lackeys. But he didn’t even show up for this war and his underlings backed off. Moroni, meanwhile, had deployed troops along the normal escape routes, so the Lamanites had to run in the weeds, rag-tag and awkward, ducking to keep their heads on their shoulders. They amassed outside Noahland. They thought it would be safe harbor. They didn’t know Moroni had fortified it like other areas. So as they strutted up to the borderline, oaths of vengeance hot on their breath, they realized they’d been outwitted again.

It doesn’t take a prophet to get prepared. But it helps. Moroni had figured out they’d head for the place that seemed the most vulnerable and make it their outpost. So he’d piled all his muscle onto Noahland. The city was like a clenched fist.

Moroni had put Lehi in charge (the Lehi that had fought the Lamanites east of Sidon River). When the Lamanites saw he was in command, they got scared. But the oaths kept them marching. Because of the mounds and trenches, they had to go in the front door of the city.

Well, of course, they were sitting ducks for the Nephites, who were ready with their own rocks and arrows. It was a human slaughterhouse.

The Lamanites who survived the first blast pulled back and started to dig their own trenches to level the playing field. They’d dig their way into the city.

Wrong. The trenches filled with soldiers, yes. Dead and dying ones.

This was no real fight for the Nephites, who, though they dismissed war as a useful option, still preferred to win whenever possible. In this case they won in a landslide (almost literally). Trench warfare. More than a thousand dead on one side, not one on the other.

Okay, about fifty Nephites were wounded, but only in their legs. They’d all had helmets, breastplates, and shields. The wounds were bad, I won’t lie. But every single Lamanite commander was dead in the field. The Lamanite survivors went back to Nephi to tell King Amalickiah—himself a Nephite by birth, you’ll recall. His face reddened. He flew into a rage, cursed God and Moroni and swore he’d drink Moroni’s blood. The God part was a tell: obviously he knew God was on Moroni’s side.

The Nephites knew that too. So they celebrated, chastely and soberly, but fervently, well into the late-night hours.

That’s how the nineteenth year ended. More peace, good business prospects, high industrial output, all the things people came to associate with clean living, churchgoing, and civil obedience. But the line between peace and complacency gets thinner every day.