WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Ceaseless
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◈ The Medieval Heretic King is Too Good at Developing ◈
Chapter 98: The Battle of Thessaloniki (3)
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The sea wept.
KABOOOM!
BOOM! BOOM!
A chain of explosions that far surpassed the limits of what human eardrums could bear tore across the surface of the Aegean Sea.
The damp sea wind mixed with gun smoke, casting a white curtain over the water. Whenever flames flashed beyond it, Ottoman soldiers were swept away like stalks of barley.
From the deck of the galley, the sight was shattering Francesco Foscari’s common sense.
‘How far from the shore is this ship right now?’
The distance between the ship and the city walls.
Then the distance beyond those walls, to where the shells were landing deep within the Ottoman camp.
Together, roughly...
‘Three thousand braccio? No, perhaps even farther. Didn’t King Ulrich say their range was fifteen hundred braccio?’
King Ulrich had told him that the cannon’s range was fifteen hundred braccio.
But Foscari had not personally witnessed the demonstration at Sternberg’s firing range. Only Bohemian nobles had attended. He had merely heard about it from the king.
And when he later heard the rumors circulating among the Bohemian nobility about the firing-range demonstration, the reason for their astonishment had been this.
The shells had struck their targets.
‘Ah.’
Foscari had been mistaken. He had assumed fifteen hundred braccio was the cannon’s maximum range.
That alone had seemed astonishing enough.
But it was not. Fifteen hundred braccio was its effective range, the distance at which it could be aimed and fired accurately.
The shells’ maximum range extended far beyond that figure.
“Reload! Do not rush. Stay calm and focus solely on accuracy!”
Even amid the chaos of battle, Jan Žižka’s command carried the weight of an anchor.
The old general had already ordered the eighth shot, yet not a trace of impatience colored his voice.
Click, creeeak!
Matej and Ondřej worked together to open the breech.
Hot gas burst from the rear. Scraping the remnants from the blackened chamber with a hook and pushing in a new cartridge took only twenty seconds.
Matej had been dying from seasickness only moments ago, but now his hands were impossibly steady.
The memory of hundreds of repetitions at Sternberg’s firing range had been engraved into his body. It moved automatically, without thought.
“Reload complete!”
“Range unchanged! Maintain elevation!”
“Fire!”
KABOOM!
The ninth shell split the air.
This time, its target was the Ottoman archers crowding the ground before the walls.
Packed together so tightly, they could not have known death was about to fall from above.
Whoooosh! Boom!
Dust erupted where the shell struck. When it settled, the archers were gone.
No, they were still there.
Only unrecognizable lumps of flesh and bows scattered without owners proved they had ever existed.
“Argh!”
“Fire is falling from the sky!”
The Janissaries climbing the walls panicked and fell from their ladders.
The Eastern Roman soldiers awaiting death atop the walls were equally stunned.
“W-What is that...?”
“Venetian reinforcements? I’ve never seen cannon like that!”
Andronikos gripped the battlement so tightly that both hands turned white. Andronikos’s eyes were fixed upon the flashes glinting over the sea.
In the time it took an Ottoman stone-throwing cannon to fire once, that monster aboard the ship had already spat out four shots. No, five.
It was an impossible sight.
Overwhelming firepower that lay far beyond common sense.
And so there was only one word to define this supernatural phenomenon.
“A miracle...”
Andronikos rejoiced.
“The Lord... has not abandoned Rome! He has sent us the army of Archangel Michael! Oh, Lord! Thank you!”
Overcome with emotion, Andronikos wept and fell to his knees.
Meanwhile, Sultan Murad II stood beneath the golden command tent on the far side of the city, his expression ice-cold.
‘How can shells reach us from that distance?’
Murad was no genius of the battlefield, but neither was he a fool.
The young sultan, who carried the blood of the Hadis family, had personally commanded the siege of Constantinople and had recognized the potential of gunpowder weapons early on.
So he chose judgment over rage.
“Ibrahim!”
“Yes, Sultan!”
“Fire the cannon. Sink every one of those ships. Use the guns deployed at the harbor, and every cannon that was breaking down the walls. All of them!”
“Your command will be obeyed!”
The Ottoman artillery commander began turning the stone-throwing cannon with teams of oxen.
It was grueling work to rotate the massive bronze barrel, which had no wheels, atop its rolling logs. But the Ottoman artillerymen moved with practiced skill.
Screeech! Thud!
At last, the huge muzzle faced the sea.
The soldiers hurriedly tore open sacks of gunpowder and loaded them, then rolled in granite shot far larger than a human head.
“Fire!”
KABOOM!
The bronze barrel screamed as it expelled an enormous stone.
The three-hundred-kilogram granite shot soared into the air. The dull stone arced slowly but imposingly toward the sea.
Then.
Splash!
A huge column of water rose.
Far ahead of the galley, in the shallow waters near the shore.
“...It falls short.”
The sultan ground his teeth.
It had fallen absurdly short. The shell had not even reached halfway to the galley before plunging into the sea.
The sultan shouted furiously.
“Fire again! Load more gunpowder!”
The artillerymen hurriedly increased the charge.
They loaded twice as much, then added another half again.
KABOOOM!
This time, the entire barrel recoiled, and dust burst into the air. The excessive charge shook the entire battery.
The stone flew.
Certainly farther than before.
Splash!
But it still could not reach the galley.
It had come somewhat closer, but the water column still rose midway between the shore and the ships.
Murad stared, rigid as stone, at the ripples spreading over the water.
‘Any more gunpowder and the barrel will burst.’
The Ottoman stone-throwing cannon was made of bronze.
Bronze was more flexible and impact-resistant than cast iron, but it had a definite limit to the explosive pressure it could withstand.
Beyond that limit, the cannon itself became a bomb. Every artilleryman would be scattered as scraps of flesh.
“...Fine. If the cannon cannot reach them, we will go and destroy them.”
Murad bared his teeth.
“Deploy the fleet waiting by the shore. Once we board their ships, cannon will be useless. Ram them with your prows, leap onto their decks, and cut their throats with scimitars!”
Boarding action.
The ancient Mediterranean tradition, carried down from the Battle of Salamis, in which galleys came alongside one another and clashed blades upon their decks.
The Ottoman navy was among the most powerful naval forces in the world at the time, and its rowers could handle galleys as skillfully as Venice’s.
Above all, they possessed overwhelming numbers.
Even if Venice had sent many galleys, the Ottomans only needed to send two or three times as many and crush them by force of numbers.
“Deploy!”
Bwooo!
At the sound of the horn, the Ottoman galleys anchored within the bay began to move.
Splash! Splash! Splash!
Hundreds of oars cut through the water in perfect unison. The rowers’ cries formed a rhythm as they drove the ships swiftly forward.
Marines with scimitars clenched between their teeth crowded the bows, ready to board.
The Ottoman galleys were armed with pointed rams at their prows. Their standard tactic was to smash into an enemy vessel’s side, break its hull, and leap onto its deck amid the confusion.
Watching from afar, the sultan nodded.
‘Yes. We only need to close the distance. No matter how quickly they fire, they will not be able to handle dozens of our ships attacking at once.’
The sultan’s calculation was correct.
A galley’s speed depended on its rowers, and the Ottoman rowers were cutting through the water at full speed. The distance between the ships began to shrink rapidly.
But.
“They are coming.”
Žižka, watching from the deck, had no intention of simply letting them approach.
“Lower the muzzles. Elevation, zero degrees.”
“Zero degrees? That would mean firing level...”
“Yes. We will fire directly into their hulls.”
Matej held his breath for a moment, then silently turned the screw handle.
Screeeech!
The steel barrel slowly lowered.
The muzzle that had been aimed at the shoreline came level with the sea, facing the prow of the Ottoman galley racing toward it.
Žižka raised his hand.
“Range, three hundred... two hundred...”
The Ottoman galleys’ bows were now closing in sharply. The bronze ornaments fixed to their rams gleamed menacingly as they cut through the waves.
The marines on deck shouted and swung ropes and grappling hooks.
“Allahu Akbar!”
Žižka lowered his hand.
“Fire.”
KABOOM!
The shell did not arc through the air.
It flew almost in a straight line, skimming the water’s surface before striking the bow of the leading Ottoman galley head-on.
KRAKOOOM!
Craaaack!
The oak hull tore apart like paper. Wooden fragments scattered in every direction, and dozens of marines standing at the bow were swept into the sea by the debris and impact.
Then seawater began pouring through the enormous hole.
“The ship is taking on water! Plug the hole!”
“The oars are broken! We cannot move!”
But the second shell was already in flight.
KABOOM!
Speed was the most important thing in battle on the water.
But in this battle, that rule meant nothing.
While the Ottomans rowed closer, the steel cannon could fire at least ten shots.
Boom! KABOOM! KRAKOOOM!
Twenty steel cannon opened fire at once, spewing flame. The Ottoman galleys were helplessly ravaged by the unceasing barrage pouring down upon them from all directions.
It took less than thirty minutes for half the Ottoman fleet to sink, while the remaining half fled miserably with holes riddling their hulls.
“...”
Murad II was speechless.
Not with cannon.
Not with ships.
The enemy battered him from a safe distance, while he could not lay a finger on them.
It was as though an adult were mocking a child, holding one hand against the child’s forehead as the child flailed useless punches through empty air, unable to reach them.
Defeat.
An unfamiliar and unpleasant feeling he had never experienced before crawled up the sultan’s spine.
‘Me? I am losing?’
Immediately after ascending the throne, he had crushed his uncle’s rebellion, cut off his younger brother’s head, and fought across countless battlefields.
Even during the siege of Constantinople, though he had failed to take the city, the course of battle had remained entirely in his hands.
But today.
Here, off Thessalonica.
For the first time in his life, he was being completely and utterly overwhelmed.
“Ibrahim.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
“Mere merchants could not have made such a thing. The Venetians may be good at counting money, but they are not capable of creating something so vicious.”
Murad’s gaze fixed on the top of the Venetian galley’s mast.
Beneath the golden lion banner, another flag fluttered in the wind. A two-tailed lion on a red field.
Ibrahim spoke carefully.
“Your Majesty, that banner... bears Bohemia’s coat of arms.”
“Bohemia?”
A name came to the sultan’s mind.
The king of heretics fighting against the Emperor and the Pope in the heart of Europe.
A sorcerer who wielded iron and fire.
Murad muttered the name as though chewing and spitting it out.
“Ulrich... Ulrich von Sternberg! Has that man extended his reach even this far?”
The sultan glared at the banner for a long time, then swept his cloak aside and turned away.
“Sound the retreat.”
“...!”
Grand Vizier Ibrahim was horrified.
“Sultan! Are you truly ordering a retreat? Our troops have already entered through the walls! If we press just a little harder...!”
“Give it up.”
Murad’s judgment was as decisive as a blade.
“The cannon have not stopped firing. Before we take the city, my main force will melt away under that bombardment.”
He glanced at the burning Ottoman fleet.
“And above all... today, I lost.”
Admitting defeat was humiliating.
But wasting his troops through meaningless stubbornness was a far greater sin for a ruler.
“But remember this, Ulrich. I will repay this debt without fail. Steel for steel... fire for fire.”
Bwooo!
The mournful sound of the retreat horn rang out.
Footnotes:
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