WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Ceaseless
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◈ The Medieval Heretic King is Too Good at Developing ◈
Chapter 93: The Bohemian Artillery (3)
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North of the Sternberg domain. A broad expanse of rolling hills.
Once a barren, stony field where goats grazed, it had now become the Royal Artillery's dedicated firing range.
Today was the first demonstration of the steel cannon.
Besides me, Žižka, and my closest vassals, Bohemia's most influential nobles, including Cenek of Vartemberk, had been specially invited to the range.
Cenek approached me, fastening his thick fur coat.
“Your Majesty.”
“Welcome, Lord Cenek. I hope the journey was comfortable.”
“Ha ha, when Your Majesty summons me, I must set everything else aside. Still, getting in here was no simple matter. I lost count of how many inspections I went through on the way.”
Cenek clicked his tongue. Rather than displeasure, his face showed utter confusion at why a mere firing range required such excessive security.
The distinguished Bohemian nobles behind him did not look pleased either.
They had all been disarmed at the checkpoints and subjected to body searches.
“My apologies. As you can see, the things handled here are what they are, so security must be strict. Even a single rat getting in would be a problem.”
I smiled and patted his shoulder.
“But what you see today will be worth it. This is something that will rewrite the history of warfare in Bohemia, no, in Europe.”
“Oh? Is that the cannon everyone has been talking about?”
Cenek's gaze turned toward the center of the range.
There, Bohemia's past, present, and future stood side by side.
On the far left was a bronze cannon, giving off an antique blue-green gleam, cast painstakingly by Italian craftsmen.
On the far right stood Bohemia's cast-iron cannon, black and immensely heavy.
And in the very center stood something else.
This was the next mainstay cannon of the Bohemian army, cast in a Bessemer converter and completed through the combined efforts of Tomáš and Hanuš.
Ulrich No. 1.
“...”
For the record, I had not named it.
I had simply called it a steel cannon, but strange names like Ulrich's hammer and Ulrich's club began spreading among the soldiers. Before I knew it, Ulrich No. 1 had stuck.
Well, what did the name matter?
What mattered was its actual performance.
Ulrich No. 1 looked utterly unconventional.
A cold, silver-gray sheen.
A barrel that extended straight without unnecessary ornament.
And, above all, a visibly thinner wall.
Cenek's eyes narrowed at the sight.
“Your Majesty, may I speak frankly?”
“Go ahead.”
“That... isn't it too thin?”
Cenek pointed his cane at the steel cannon's barrel.
“Look at the cannons beside it. Even though they are that absurdly thick, they sometimes break when loaded with too much Gunpowder. But that one... its barrel looks barely two finger joints thick. You mean you will put Gunpowder in there and set it off?”
“And?”
“...It looks as though it will burst apart like paper the moment it fires.”
He was genuinely worried.
Worried enough to edge backward, in case he too was caught in the blast.
Cenek's concern was perfectly reasonable.
By fifteenth-century standards, a cannon's strength was its thickness.
Since the material's tensile strength was so poor, the only option was to make it absurdly thick.
But steel was different.
Steel with precisely controlled carbon content had five times the tensile strength of cast iron and three times that of bronze.
That meant a fifth of the thickness was enough to withstand the same pressure.
“Being fat does not make one strong. What matters is the quality of the muscle, is it not?”
“Hmm...”
“Well, see it with your own eyes. Seeing it once is quicker than hearing a hundred explanations.”
I gestured to Žižka, who stood on the range.
The battle-hardened veteran in an eyepatch silently nodded, then shouted in a booming voice.
“All batteries, prepare to fire!”
“Yes, sir!”
The artillerymen trained by Žižka moved in perfect unison.
First came the demonstration of the older cannons.
“Load!”
The soldiers rushed to the muzzles of the bronze and cast-iron cannons.
They tore open bags of Gunpowder, stuffed the powder in with long rammers, inserted wadding, then loaded round stone shot...
It was so tedious that the watching nobles nearly yawned.
“What if enemy cavalry approaches while they are doing that?”
“What can they do? Fire one shot and run.”
Loading alone took ages. If enemy cavalry charged in earnest, they would lose their heads before loading was finished.
But the steel cannon was different.
“Eh?”
“Where are they going? Why are they heading behind the cannon?”
The nobles' eyes widened.
The soldiers had rushed not to the front of the cannon, but to the rear, its breech.
Click, screech!
When a soldier turned the large lever attached to the cannon's rear, the back of the barrel opened like a lid.
“The back opens?”
“They put a door on a cannon's rear? When it explodes, all the heat will escape backward and burn the artillerymen alive!”
A cannon's rear had to be closed. That was how it fired forward.
Even a child knew that. Yet this cannon was open at the rear.
A screw breechblock.
Precision-cut threads that prevented gas from escaping backward, along with a copper-ring gas seal that expanded under pressure to close every gap.
When the Gunpowder exploded and pressure was applied, the seal expanded and perfectly closed the tiny gaps. Then the gas could not escape backward, only burst forward.
I had handled the engineering design, but Tomáš and Hanuš had completed it in practice while nearly tearing their hair out.
Unconcerned by the nobles' shock, the soldiers slid a prepared cylindrical object into the chamber.
It was a fixed cartridge, with Gunpowder and projectile combined in a single pouch.
Click, screech!
They turned the lever again and firmly locked the rear door.
There was no Gunpowder to spill and no need to tamp it down with a rammer.
Loading had taken only ten seconds.
Once all the cannons had been loaded...
“Fire!”
Žižka's flag dropped.
Boom!
With a thunderous roar, all three cannons spat fire at once.
A vast cloud of white smoke covered the range, and the cannons slid backward from the recoil.
The wooden targets placed fifty meters ahead were smashed apart.
All three appeared to have similar power. The distance was short, after all.
But the real difference appeared immediately afterward.
“Hurry and clean them! Check for remaining sparks!”
“Ah, hot! Pour on more water!”
The soldiers handling the bronze and cast-iron cannons were sweating as they shoved wet brushes into the barrels.
If they did not clean out the soot and extinguish any remaining sparks, the cannon could explode when the next load of Gunpowder went in.
But the steel cannon?
“Reload!”
The soldiers opened the breechblock again.
Pale smoke curled up from the chamber, but they did not hesitate.
The residue left by the burned cartridge either blew out with the gas when the rear door opened or could simply be scraped away with a hook.
A new round went in, and the door closed.
“Fire!”
Boom!
The second projectile flew only twenty seconds later.
The target one hundred meters away shattered into pieces.
The nobles' mouths fell open.
“Th-that is possible?”
“The other cannons have not even been loaded with Gunpowder yet!”
But the steel cannon did not stop.
“Reload! Fire!”
Boom!
A third projectile.
While the crew of the bronze cannon beside it had only just finished cleaning the barrel and picked up a bag of Gunpowder...
The steel cannon had already put three projectiles into the targets and was preparing its fourth round.
The firing range fell silent as if doused with cold water, and the nobles had gone pale.
At that speed, it could fire at least five times while a knightly order charged toward it.
Shields? Armor? None of that would mean anything.
They would simply be standing before a meat grinder.
“Your Majesty... at that speed, even the thickest castle wall would collapse in an instant.”
Cenek touched his own neck with a trembling hand.
As though an invisible projectile were aimed at his throat.
I smiled calmly.
“It is too early to be surprised, Lord Cenek. Now that it has warmed up, I should show you the real thing.”
“The real thing?”
“There is something more frightening than speed.”
I raised my baton and pointed toward a distant hill.
The target, roughly one kilometer away, was no more than a small dot to the naked eye.
“Can you see that? The rock with the red flag planted in it.”
“What? Th, there? That is too far away. There is no way a cannonball could reach it...”
Naturally, an existing cannon could never reach such a distance.
It was beyond the dreams of a smoothbore cannon with an effective range of only two to three hundred meters.
Stuff enough Gunpowder into one, and the shot might somehow fly that far, but it would become like a rugby ball. There would be no telling where it would go.
But one secret lay inside Ulrich No. 1.
Rifling.
Spiral grooves cut into the barrel's interior.
They made the projectile spin, allowing it to fly farther and more stably.
“Žižka. Show them the results of your training.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
Žižka nodded and signaled the gunners.
“Matej, Ondřej. Load it.”
“Yes, sir!”
“Yes, General!”
Creak, creak!
The two gunners worked together to turn the screw handle beside the cannon. The barrel rose slightly, lifting its muzzle.
This was not the crude method of driving in wooden wedges to roughly set the angle as before.
This was precise fire, using gears and mathematical calculations to set the exact elevation.
“Range, one thousand! Elevation, three degrees! No deflection correction!”
“Aimed and ready, General!”
Žižka raised a hand high, then brought it down sharply.
“Fire!”
Boom!
The projectile could not be seen.
It was flying faster than sound.
One second, two seconds, three seconds...
Silence passed.
Had it missed? Just as the nobles were about to begin whispering among themselves, red dust rose from the hill one kilometer away.
Thud!
A beat later, the heavy impact sound came riding on the wind.
“Gasp...!”
Cenek's jaw dropped.
“It hit! From that distance, with a single shot?”
The surroundings became a cauldron of fear beyond mere astonishment.
A strike from one kilometer away.
This would overturn the very concept of siege warfare.
Place cannons on a castle wall, and they could blow off the enemy commander's head before the enemy even established a position.
Conversely, besiegers could break down the castle gate before the defenders even drew their bowstrings.
The nobles stared at one another with pale faces.
The cannon reflected in their eyes was not merely a weapon.
The thunderbolt of God. Or the flame of the devil.
“Th, that... was truly made by human hands?”
“Then castle walls and armor are completely useless...?”
What if that steel cannon appeared in their own domains?
Castle walls? Moats? Knightly orders?
None of it would matter.
I could see the slightest trace of ulterior motives and ambition evaporating from the nobles' eyes.
Before overwhelming force, even the seed of rebellion could not sprout.
“Your Majesty...”
Cenek was the first to speak.
In a trembling voice, he bowed deeply with all the respect and fear he could muster.
“As long as this weapon exists, no one anywhere on earth will dare threaten Bohemia. Even if the Emperor himself came, even if Rome's legions returned to life, they would kneel before that cannon.”
When Cenek bowed, the other nobles all cried out as one.
“Your Majesty! Today, I have seen the god of war!”
“Long live Bohemia! Long live King Ulrich!”
Praise erupted from all sides.
It was the most sincere flattery possible, born from the instinct to survive.
With a satisfied smile, I stroked the barrel of the steel cannon.
‘This should keep the nobles in line for a while.’
That was the real reason I had called them here today.
Now that the nobles had tucked their tails between their legs, everything I had planned, beginning with tax collection, would proceed far more easily.
They had seen clearly that a single word from me carried enough destructive power to smash a rock one kilometer away.
Having confirmed the cannon's performance, I was about to conclude the demonstration and dismiss everyone.
“My lord.”
János Hunyadi approached my side like a shadow.
“A guest has arrived from Venice.”
“A guest?”
“Yes. Francesco Foscari. He is quite eager to have an audience with Your Majesty, carrying a personal letter from Doge Mocenigo against his chest.”
I gave a quiet laugh.
“What impeccable timing.”
Their arrival at this moment meant something major had happened in the Balkans.
And that meant opportunity for me as well.
I looked back at the steel cannon, pale smoke still rising from it.
“Let him in. I was just in need of a suitable opponent for this one's field test.”
Footnotes:
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