Chapter 148 Awakening Smelling Salts and Morris Square
“Bang!”
Thirty steps away, the wooden target shook violently, and the shot stone bullets instantly hit the wooden target. There were more than a dozen large and small holes punched in the target.
While the secondary gunman on the side was holding a purge rod and returning the firing rod to its original position, Victor immediately took out a stick-shaped tube of refreshing smelling salts from his waist.
Putting it around the tip of his nose slightly, his expression immediately became clearer.
Twisting the clockwork again, the gears creaked continuously.
“Bang!”
The target that was beaten into a sieve broke from the middle and fell directly to the ground.
"How is it?" Horn stood aside with his hands behind his back and asked impatiently.
Holding the heavy clockwork gun, Victor picked up the refreshing smelling salts just given to him, and said with a smile: "Your Majesty, this thing is much easier to use than potions."< br>
This refreshing potion in the form of smelling salts was much more effective than he thought. Without the process of drinking and waiting for it to take effect, the stimulating smell went straight to the brain.
After smelling the smelling salts, he even felt like he could take another shot.
"Sisi, you did a good job." Horn looked at Sisi with satisfaction and said, "You made this solid awakening potion in three days."
Sisi Rubbing his hands, he stood there unconfidently: "I added devil's wood, devil's wood oil."
"What is devil's wood oil? How did you get it? Are you interested in telling me?"< br>
Speaking of this, Sisi was no longer sleepy and began to explain in detail.
The so-called devil's wood oil is to heat devil's wood chips in high-temperature steam.
During this process, the fibers inside will gel. After taking it out, it is pounded into clay, which can be sieved to squeeze out a semi-solid ointment.
After Sisi’s explanation, Horn gradually remembered this thing. This kind of tree is more common in southern mountainous areas and has been seen in the wild spider forest before.
Carrie introduced him to him before.
The ancestor of this tree is said to be the famous tree man from the period of the former Seven Hills Kingdom.
But later due to a blight plague, a large number of tree people became sick and died, and their descendants decided to coexist with the blight, and gradually evolved into what they are now.
To a certain extent, the devil's tree is a zombie-like tree man, but it just doesn't move.
The devil's tree is named because it is black both inside and outside and is famous for being waste.
This kind of devil wood is fine when it is young and can be used for burning firewood. However, after three years of maturity, it will quickly turn black.
The quality of Devil's wood is very poor and cannot be used to make furniture at all. Its brittleness is better than that of charcoal, but if it is used for fire, it will have an indescribable pungent smell.
Devil's wood is most often used to make powder to repel termites.
According to Sissi, some alchemists will also use devil's wood chips as low-end catalysts when downgrading their consumption. However, because its pungent smell can seriously affect meditation, it is called dog shit wood.
“How did you come up with the idea of using an anti-parasitic medicine as an oral medicine?”
“I originally just used devil wood as a carrier to make a smear-type refreshing ointment. It can reduce the size and make it easier to carry." Sisi scratched his head, "But I didn't expect that this ointment would evaporate quickly when it comes into contact with the air. With the idea of not wasting it, I gave it to the Holy Gunners to apply, but the feedback was actually better than ordinary ones. The awakening potion is more effective than I expected..."
It was Horn who asked Sisi to research the shrinking and awakening potion, and he did have this need at the moment.
After these days, Horn already has thirty-three Cannedy Type 1 wind-up muskets, a Cannedy Type 1 barrel, and a Ferdinand Type 1 clockwork hand cannon.
This had used up all the orichalcum, and his Ferdinand bow was melted down and replaced with a more efficient and portable clockwork hand cannon.
As a result, among Horn's current four major legions, basically each brigade can be assigned a clockwork gun.
Under normal circumstances, Horn will still organize the Holy Gunners into the Holy Armored Division at a ratio of two to one between melee soldiers and long-range soldiers.
For now, the Hussite car-fort tactics learned by the Holy Armored Division are the most suitable for Horn's current situation.
Hide in an armored tank and use wind-up muskets and flails for defensive counterattacks, which is very suitable for militiamen with little training.
But this tactic also has disadvantages, that is, it requires flat enough ground to deploy, and enough time for it to deploy.
For Horn, this tactic is just like the Song Dynasty. The mobility is too poor to pursue and expand the results.
The biggest drawback of this tactic is that in this world, knights can really destroy the car and fort alone, and even jump over the car and fort.
Therefore, this tactic can only be used as a transitional tactic, and the Dianzhongdian phalanx of muskets and spears must be put on the agenda earlier. But Horn didn't want to use the Spanish square from the beginning.
The Spanish Grand Square requires sufficient troops and a lot of training. The formation is relatively rigid and wastes a lot of troops and firepower.
So Horn preferred the Morris Square in the Dutch War of Independence.
In the Dutch War of Independence, because the soldiers were farmers, vendors and craftsmen, they were not professional soldiers.
This resulted in Prince Maurice often taking a group of rotten fish and shrimps that had only been trained for a few weeks to fight Spain's elite soldiers [the Flanders Army].
In order to have a good time fighting the Spanish, Prince Maurice came up with this quick version of the musket phalanx.
Unlike the Spanish Grand Phalanx, which placed musketeers at the four corners, the Morris Phalanx placed musketeers on both sides or behind the pike phalanx.
At the same time, the size of the large phalanx was reduced, changing from a phalanx to a thinner horizontal array. By retreating firing and increasing the battle width, frontal firepower projection was enhanced.
The price is that compared to the large square formation, the defensive power is greatly reduced, especially the protection against flanking cavalry attacks, which is almost non-existent.
The advantages of the Morris Square are lower training time costs, lower equipment investment, and more flexible tactical methods.
Compared to the Spanish Grand Formation which requires a long period of training, Horn felt that it would be better to use the Morris Formation for the time being.
Recently, a small-scale flu has appeared in the new camp. Horn has a premonition that another group of holy ones will be born.
After Grampwin's wedding is over tomorrow, Horn will have to leave the day after tomorrow. By then, he will leave the craftsman who made the clockwork gun in the camp.
Once the war begins, with the old battalion soldiers as gunmen and the new battalion soldiers as spearmen, if the opponent is infantry, Morris's phalanx is still very advantageous.
But if you want to take advantage of the firepower advantage of Morris's phalanx, Horn's clockwork blunderbuss has two big problems.
The first problem is that the total weight of the gun and the caliber of the gun tube are not small, so it can only scatter the bullets, and the kinetic energy of the projectiles is seriously attenuated.
This problem should be solved by the blacksmiths under the Duke. At most, it is a cost issue. The Duke of Kush has accumulated a pile sealing warehouse for hundreds of years and is not afraid of this.
The second issue is the frequency and number of transmissions.
After a long period of training, all the holy gunners have basically reduced the amount of mana to about two to three shots, but this still cannot complete the whole battle.
Moreover, their firing frequency is relatively low, and it often takes one and a half or even two minutes to complete three rounds. Horn does not pursue shooting from beginning to end, but at least completes it within one minute.
This is not a situation of blind pursuit for a long time.
But now, with the scenting salts, most of the time, I can shoot three shots in one minute. If necessary, I can even switch hands to someone else and shoot three more shots.
It is barely enough to cope with one battle.
Although Sisi, as a pharmacist, did not understand why smelling salts were useful, this situation was the norm in this era.
Since it is useful, let’s use it for now.
"Okay, Sisi, in order to reward your contribution, I appoint you as the president of the Royal Pharmacy Society of the Papal States, and your disciple will be the first member."
The appointment certificate will be He handed it to Sisi, who took the piece of paper with a confused look on his face.
“I’ll bring you a manifest later. Don’t spread it around. Take a look at what’s on it that can be used as medicine. If you’re interested, write a report. Give it to me.”
“Got it.”
Horn left the shooting range refreshed, walked toward the stable, and pulled out a short riding horse.
"Jean, let's go, let's go to the city to get the alchemy bill."
Calling Jean and Sissy, Horn mounted his horse and headed towards Castle Joan of Arc. .
Halfway through the journey, Jeanne looked into the distance and shouted: "Look."
Looking up, she saw behind the grove not far away, rising in the direction of Fort Joan of Arc. A few puffs of faint black smoke arose.
Horn frowned slightly.
I heard that the citizens who rioted yesterday surrounded the Duke's castle to boycott the issuance of war bonds and the tax commissioner, and they did not disperse until sunset.
I don’t know how the Duke handled it, and what is the situation in Castle Joan of Arc today.
(End of this chapter)