章 14: The Battle of Adrianople 2- Prelude

I spent years trying to weaponize magic, and the only reliable and relatively safe way to achieve this that I had found was to use magic as an alternative to gunpowder. Magic power can be compressed and since the heating magic used as a magic enchantment turns into combustion, I managed to create a deflagration effect by making a chain of spells and compressing them just enough so that a projectile can be shot by a gun or artillery when the compressed chain of spells behind the projectile burns rapidly, thus firing the projectile. If the chain of spells gets longer, the projectile will not be pushed, if the chain of spells is compressed too much, then it just detonates exploding the whole mechanism.

It was relatively easier to work on artillery, but to acquire the required material, bronze in great numbers was, as expected, expensive. So it took some time to find enough material to even build a cannon, not to mention the fact that we had to develop coke and refine the forging methods and build a furnace and a platform to cast bronze. We used the classic sand casting method and through many attempts, we discovered that casting guns breech down caused the metal to be denser and stronger near the breech where the stresses are the highest. Cannons were cast with a core that could be removed, thus leaving a hollow casting that could be bored to the desired diameter. Centering the core was difficult and locating fixtures called chaplets were used to hold the core in position. Chaplets were made of wrought iron and bronze was cast over them. They remained part of the gun.

The gun passed all the tests and performed sufficiently enough, however, there was a small chance of the method of making it being stolen and the performance could be improved even further than the historical cannons, so I worked on the security and the performance further. The solution to security was to complicate the formula and the method of adding enchantment further. The old method was tedious, and required precision, as an analogy, it would be similar to weaving rugs with difficult motifs by hand. Sure, it requires a tremendous amount of dexterity, artistry, and skill, but I imagine it would be less stressful and has fewer stakes involved than a surgeon making an operation of septal myectomy, a surgery to unclog the congealed muscles of the heart.

As for the performance and another step of security, I added an enchantment to the projectile itself, which worked together with the magic of the cannon and further pushed and rotated the fired projectile, making it faster and deadlier. We managed to produce 3 small artillery pieces, together with the block trail carriages.

It was harder to produce a handheld gun, as it is difficult to work on a smaller surface, so we only made 5 or so musket-like guns. These muskets were muzzle-loaded and took about 20-25 seconds to load, however, they were quite powerful. Normally, black powder weapons fire projectiles at slower speeds than cartridge bullets fired from modern weapons, but my magic muskets fired a bullet at a speed similar to modern bullets, so the range and the effectiveness increased. The bullets were similar to modern bullets as they were kind of cylindro-conical, and the guns were rifled, meaning they had helical grooves in the internal part of the gun barrel, making the fired bullets spin. I gave these to the soldiers I assigned to protect the artillery position.

After we managed to produce steel in bulk and work on the steel in an advanced blacksmith workshop, we, well, mostly the dwarven blacksmiths worked tirelessly on producing plate armor. I contributed by telling them all I knew about the plate armor. The results were glorious. I clad all 10 of my knights and a further 40 men, squires, and followers that my knights were training, as well as their horses in full plate armor. During a time when knights clad in heavy chainmail armor and wrought iron helmets were considered to be almost invincible against all projectiles and threats, my men would probably seem to be nightmares. On top of the plate armor, we wore surcoats and tabards covering all major parts of the armor, fooling everyone into believing there was only chainmail underneath it.

I armed my men with 5 meters long lances made from strengthened fir, making it lighter than a lance made from any other tree, thus allowing us to actually wield 1.5 meters longer lances than the knights of this era. The lance had a handguard and a hardened steel tip, designed to last at least 2 hits before shattering.

Contrary to popular belief and the media representation, swords were merely sidearms throughout history and the main weapon of both the cavalry and infantry was a spear(pile, lance), however switching to your sidearm upon losing your primary can and did save lives, in addition to that, swords can be attached to your body and you don't need to carry them like you would a spear, therefore, swords retained importance. I too thought of them as important, so I put extra care into making the deadliest swords to arm my soldiers.

When my father summoned me to Nicea, I brought the artillery with me. I had no time to make a demonstration, so I just convinced my father that they were great weapons. My father was skeptical, but let me bring the weapons to the battlefield as he thought they would not hinder the army from the position I was placed in.

The first thing I did after arriving at my position was to dig a small trench in front of the artillery and put the dirt together to create a small makeshift mound to place my artillery on a slightly elevated position.

Throughout the morning of the battle, I could only be informed of the left wing and the center via the scouts, however, at around noon, the fighting spread to the right side of the battlefield and I could see the battle myself. Sir Gildor's charge order was not delivered to my unit, which I expected, so I took advantage of that and ordered my artillery to be positioned and I took command of my cavalry unit and moved my cavalry closer to the battlefield. My artillery position was around a km away from the Koutrigour unit trying to encircle Sir Gildor's cavalry force and my cavalry position was positioned half a km away from the enemy. I first ordered my scout to give the order to fire to my artillery, then I gathered my men in a wedge formation (resembles the character "^") and placed Sir Thalandir at the front, I myself was in the center with the flag of Alta because I wasn't tall enough to hold a lance. After the artillery fire hit the target and threw both the Koutrigour and Alta lines into chaos, I ordered a trumpet bugle call, a short tune signal to announce military action, to let gather the attention of both my Alta allies and the enemies on the battlefield.

The most important aspect of a battle, any battle is morale, and destroying the morale of an enemy is the goal of an army, not trying to cut them all down in a prolonged engagement, and there is nothing better to break morale than an inexplicable phenomenon.

So what happens when an army loses its morale and is thrown into despair? Annihilation.

クリエイターの想い
ryuutaurus

I used unicode characters to describe a battle scene in previous chapter, then I had to change it later on, but I am restricted at the moment, so I might post a bit less frequently until my restriction is lifted. :/

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