Struggle in the Steam Age

The reason why the artillery positions of this group of rebels were set up in the garden near the palace was that when this place was designed, it was considered as a fortress to supplement the blind fire area of ​​the palace and castle.

Therefore, this building was designed with thicker walls than normal buildings, and some reinforced spaces that can be used as fortresses. According to the original design, some light artillery and firearms that cannot cause damage to the fortifications should be arranged to attack from the rear of the enemies who besieged the palace.

As the second prince's supporter, many of those nobles' fathers and grandparents had participated in the design and construction of this city. Therefore, after they mobilized the only heavy artillery unit on hand, they deployed the artillery unit here as soon as possible.

It has to be said that their choice is quite reasonable. With this well-designed building, they have repelled the armed forces from the court, the palace and other strongholds in the city to attack the artillery positions many times.

The open space in the center of this building can be used for a large number of artillery fires at the same time. The reason why only less than ten heavy artillery pieces have been mobilized is because most of the heavy artillery pieces and ammunition are provided by professional artillery units in this non-wartime state. Some of the fortresses controlled in the outer cities of the city were not assigned to various troops.

Traditionally, if the nobles joined the army, they would only join the cavalry or infantry units, because they felt that the artillery units were dirty and tired, and did not meet their noble status. But with the advancement of technology, artillery requires a large number of knowledgeable people like nobles to serve as officers to complete those professional tasks.

This contradiction led to the final result that even among the artillerymen in the Guards, the officers and non-commissioned officers all came from the families of those employees, wealthy businessmen or factory owners. Because only they have received enough education to use those more and more advanced correctly. Artillery that is also more and more complicated to operate.

But in this way, in daily life, this group of artillery officers of the Praetorian Guards has always been rejected by the infantry officers of noble origin. For example, the officers of the infantry and cavalry never allowed artillery officers to enter the officers' club of the Praetorian Guards, and even those noble officers with lower ranks would refuse to salute civilian officers with higher ranks than themselves.

Therefore, after the rebellion of the Imperial Guard broke out, these artillery officers who had benefited from the emperor's reform and were rejected by those noble colleagues naturally chose to stick to their posts and refused to participate in the rebellion, so that the second prince's party could not be as agitating for the ban. Like the infantry of the Guards, he encouraged an artillery unit to join the rebellion.

Facing the artillery guarding various strongholds with artillery, most of the rebels who had been transferred to the palace had nothing to do with them. They could only watch helplessly that the artillery originally assigned to them was useless.

The only good thing for the rebels is that the artillerymen did not bombard the strongholds occupied by the rebels in the city without receiving orders from the palace, considering that there were a large number of innocent people in the city.

In desperation, the rebels could only rely on the few artillery officers who turned to the rebels to command some old heavy artillery found in the city's combat reserve to continuously bombard the palace, and in this way to cast spells for their own side. Those who contribute to the removal of the magic defense of the palace.

But in this way, except for a few professional artillery officers among the personnel operating the artillery. Most of them were ordinary infantrymen of the Imperial Guard who were temporarily called to act as coolies. Under the operation of these non-professionals, the entire shelling scene was extremely chaotic. All kinds of things were placed in a mess.

Although the professional artillery officers are not satisfied with this situation, but at this time, in order to bombard the palace as soon as possible, they don't care so much. Under the command of a few professional artillery officers, they rushed out of the adjacent building to prepare for the artillery reset.

At this moment, the Transcendent standing on the sentry post on the top of the building vaguely seemed to hear the sound of something flying when the two heavy artillery shells exploded on the magic barrier of the palace, but just before he When it's time to confirm. Lawrence's first round of shells has arrived.

Because there are extraordinary powers in this world, extraordinary people will also pay attention to air defense problems when they are on guard. However, because ordinary extraordinary people only use the extraordinary power to perceive those flying extraordinary people for air defense, so they don't feel these ordinary shells flying in their direction at all.

Not to mention that although the flying speed of the mortar shell is much slower than other shells, it does not have such a piercing whistle and the flame formed by rubbing the air during flight. More importantly, the walls of the headquarters of the referee blocked the fire from the muzzle of the cannon the moment it was ejected.

The distance of a few hundred meters is just a few seconds for the artillery shells, and the detailed knowledge of the surroundings by the judges of the previous court also allowed these shells to fall very accurately on the perimeter of the few houses where the artillery positions are located. on the open space.

The mortar shells using the new impact fuze exploded violently after hitting the ground. As the first batch of shells fired, Lawrence chose the expensive but effective alchemy explosive-filled shells in order to pursue the damage effect.

The walls of mortar shells are much thinner than ordinary shells, so the shells can hold more than ten kilograms of explosives that far exceed the charge of ordinary shells. At the same time, the power of these explosives is far better than ordinary similar products.

The violent explosion quickly broke through the shell of the shell, blasting the shell into thousands of fragments of various sizes. At the same time, large groups of flames and shock waves rushed out from the shattered shell casings, covering everything around them. In an instant, disaster enveloped the entire rebel artillery position.

The chaos caused by a group of amateurs immediately showed serious consequences: In order to make it easier to get the shells, these amateurs did not store all the shells in the correct way in a strong temporary ammunition depot in the distance, but just directly Stacked next to each gun emplacement.

To make matters worse, these older guns were not one-piece metal case shells. Instead, the warhead is separated from the propellant and a silk charge is used. At the same time, since a cannonball had just been fired, the silk ammunition packages were taken out of the metal barrels and piled up near the artillery waiting to be loaded.

In an instant, the flames from the explosion of the cannonball ignited the silk charges that were within the explosion range. Then it detonated the shells and ammunition packs piled up around it. The entire artillery position was shrouded in the flame and metal storm produced by the shell explosion.

The deadly shrapnel fragments produced by the explosion of a large number of shells roared towards the heads and bodies of those defenseless and defenseless personnel present. In an instant, those fragments were as small as the tip of a little finger and as large as the size of a child's palm. It penetrated their bodies, shredded muscles, cracked bones, and destroyed everything that stood in their way.

As the saying goes, bullets and shells have priority on the battlefield. The continuous explosions made everyone on the scene try to escape, but running around at this time caused more people to be shredded by the flying shrapnel.

This is how many rebels suddenly fell to the ground in a daze, and never got up again. At the same time, these shrapnel and flames flying around also flew in from the doors and windows towards the inside of the surrounding buildings, killing and wounding more rebels.

Just when these rebels were in a mess because of the chain explosion caused by the shells falling from the same sky, the second round of four mortar shells fell from the sky again and ignited more charges and shells. The flames from those explosions burned the entire rebel artillery position like a furnace.