Chapter 659 Twelve-pound Griffin Cannon
January 18, 1447 in the imperial calendar.
The morning light shines on the mottled walls of Fraser's Fortress, ringing the warning bell. Dust falls on the towering wall stacks, and fang-like crossbow arrows are spit out in the footsteps.
The side door of the castle opened, and dozens of knights carrying swallow-tailed flags filed out of the door.
The cold spring wind swept across the stone bridge over the river, stirring up the hexagonal battle flags on the stone bridge that looked like spider webs.
Beside the river outside Fraser Castle, you can see colorful turbans and vests and tattoos all over their arms.
At Lulesi's initiative and request, all secret parties and their private armies in the northern counties who could arrive within three days arrived.
Dozens of secret parties gathered together, but there were actually nearly a thousand people, but most of them wore thin robes and vests, exposing their bare knees and ankles, and only wore waist knives and staffs around their waists.
Some of them even hung a grass cage with a toad on their waists, and would take it out and lick it from time to time. Most of them were lean and even skinny.
Some mages who specialize in combat will be gathered in advance.
They are strong, wearing iron-faced hoods and leather armor, and carry zigzag swords made of obsidian and hardwood on their backs, ready to charge fiercely after releasing spells.
Most of the time, ordinary mercenaries and even armored sergeants will be overwhelmed by this move.
If it is by a mountain stream, the battle mages even dare to counterattack the extraordinary knights, and they can really cause a certain amount of damage.
However, in small plain areas like Fraser Castle that have been cleared and logged by knights and slaves for generations, the knights can suppress the battle mages with their mobility.
"Fraser Castle...won't ask us to risk our lives again." A battle mage held up an awning and stood on the hillside looking towards Fraser Castle.
Another dark-skinned wizard with a scimitar on his waist said, "We can't even climb the 6-fathom-high city wall, so let me kill one of you."
"Isn't there that saint-grandson of Qianhe Valley?"
"Saint Sun..." Several secret party members and battle mages looked at each other, and they all saw complicated expressions on each other's faces.
On the one hand, they admired the farmer for expelling the Church of the Thousand Valleys, killing Prince Condé, and slapping the Pope in the face.
But on the other hand, this holy grandson seems to be a fanatical believer. He not only claims to be the Pope, but also creates his own sect to exorcise the devil. This makes the secret party members who have always opposed the church and worship the devil very entangled.
"Even the holy grandson is not the grandson of the false god, right?" Looking up at the heavily guarded black-clothed soldiers on the hillside, a battle mage envied and complained, "He can also ask the false god to bring down the popular sky. Can’t be punished?”
"Is it said that there is some new catapult? Or is it a spring-driven fireball crossbow?"
"Come on, which fireball crossbow can project three miles?"
"Maybe, don't they have wind-up guns?"
"I have made a homemade clockwork gun, but it is not that powerful." A member of the secret party raised his head, "It would be a shame if so many people were called and the result was ineffective."
As if they remembered something, several small and medium-sized secret party leaders immediately found the thorn in the team and threatened: "If Mr. Horne's new weapon fails, and any of you dares to be weird, I will slap his mouth to pieces. Do you hear that?" ?”
These secret party leaders are still counting on Horn's relief food. Don't let others get in your way, it will be too uncomfortable.
He couldn't hear the secret party's discussion. He stood on a high hillside and listened to Lulesi talking about the strategy of Fraser Castle in the past few months.
The Fraser Castle strategy proposed by the Joan Party was not new to Horne's arrival.
As early as June last year, the Joan Party began to remove the castle strongholds outside Fraser Castle bit by bit until there was no obstacle between Causeway City and Fraser Castle.
With the clockwork gun in hand, Ruo'an's party finally had the ability to fight against the knights.
Even so, looking at the rangers galloping back and forth on the plains, the secret party army still hesitated and did not dare to move forward.
They were waiting until a certain saint's grandson finished casting a spell.
On the hillside, several high priests of the Joan Party and several elders of the Shadow Society were watching the engineers who were busy going up and down, and the long, straight, thick black pipe under the canvas.
This is...an enlarged version of a clockwork gun?
Several high priests and elders looked at each other, but they were all confused. Leonardo took a pen and paper to record the data, while Seamotine nervously directed the artillerymen to load the clockwork barrel into the tail of the barrel.
With a click of the buckle, several artillerymen carefully installed the rack firing rod and gear on the rotating shaft of the barrel.
The iron ball slid into the iron pipe from the front end, making a dull sound. Amidst the smell of metal and lubricating oil, Seamotine gave Horn a lazy chest-beating military salute: "Installation and loading completed."
"Okay!" Standing beside the long pipe, Horn was joyful from the bottom of his heart.
After Leonardo and Highmotine proposed the concept of a clockwork cannon, it only took them one month to successfully develop the first prototype clockwork siege cannon.
Since no expense was spared, this gun used the lost wax method and cast iron to build the barrel, a 5-meter-long barrel, an 8-centimeter-thick barrel wall, and a carbon steel barrel as tall as a person.
In the spring chamber covered with an orichalcum skeleton, there is a full 8-pound orichalcum spring, which even Hornlai cannot twist a few times.
Carrying this giant clockwork cannon is a crank bracket that adjusts the angle and direction of the muzzle through two gear sets, and a two-wheeled gun carriage made of iron rivets and wood.
Unlike the three-pounder cannon like the Falcon Cannon, this griffin siege cannon fired a solid iron ball weighing twelve pounds and was specially designed for the castle.
Most castles in this era were tall and thin. To be precise, they were thin relative to the human power.
The thickness of the city wall is about the width of two or three people side by side. This thickness is thick enough for catapults and manpower, but not enough for siege guns.
6◇9◇Book◇Bar
"The horoscope is completed, the angle and position are correct!"
"Calibration completed!"
"My Majesty has an order, move the cannon forward five centimeters!"
"Everything is ready, request launch."
"Permission." After giving the order, Horn pulled several onlookers and the crowd back a few steps to a safe distance.
Although the barrel housing is made of carbon steel, it is quite dangerous to pull out the tightened spring clip latch, and the barrel may explode if accidentally.
During the previous transportation, a roll of 10-pound winding spring shattered the inferior C-clip, and the remaining half of the head was still not found by the porter.
Hooking the latch with a hook, an artilleryman took a few steps back and yanked the rope in his hand.
The high priests who were still dozing suddenly suddenly started to stir. Before they even opened their eyes, they felt a stream of air blowing towards them, causing them to squint their eyes.
There was a loud rumbling sound as if a chariot was rushing through the sky, and a strong wind blew out from the air pressure valve. Several nearby soldiers and secret party members were even blown backwards by the sudden airflow.
The faces of several old wizards of the Ruoan Party, the elders of the Shadow Society, and even Lulesi changed slightly.
The moment the latch was pulled out, the entire Griffin Cannon trembled. The kinetic energy of the rotation of the clockwork was transmitted from the central axis to the gear, and was instantly converted into direct kinetic energy by the firing rod.
The heavy iron ball flew out from the muzzle with an afterimage, tracing a trajectory through the sky.
In the dull eyes of everyone, they fell on the wall of Fraser Castle from a distance of three miles.
"Boom——"
Amidst the huge explosions, the secret party wizards stood on tiptoes and looked blankly towards Fraser Castle in the distance.
A wave of smoke composed of masonry dust and human bodies jumped up from the green stone city wall that was more than ten meters high.
When the spring breeze blew away the diffuse smoke and carried the frightened screams and cries from the city wall, everyone swallowed involuntarily.
This tall and difficult-to-climb city wall was once a nightmare for many secret party members. They had hundreds of frontal attacks or deceitful surprise attacks over the decades, but they had never bitten off a brick of Fraser Castle.
But now, there was a gap visible to the naked eye in the originally neat and perfect city wall. Broken stones and mud fell to the ground, and there were even the corpses of two unlucky knights among them.
"Wall, wall collapsed?"
(End of chapter)