Tyranny of Steel

While Berengar was taking advantage of this era of peace and stability that he had established to implement his agricultural and educational reforms, his enemies were on the move. In the county of Caernarfonshire within Wales, a group of Knights was gathered.

They were covered head to toe in Churburg pattern plate armor and wore a white and green tabard with a red maltese cross emblazoned upon it. These Knights were recently established as one of the new military orders of the Catholic Church. They were known as the Order of the Red Dragon.

The Order of the red dragon made Caernarfonshire their home and began constructing a mighty castle near the coastline. With near-unlimited funding by the Catholic church to raise their forces, the Order of the Red Dragon had spared no expense in building their fortress.

Currently, an exceptionally tall man who stood well over six feet and six inches was standing next to a man of average height; in doing so, he appeared to dwarf him. This tall man was clad in iron plate armor from head to toe, in the style that was popular in the region.

This man was none other than the Grand Master Gwythyr Bowell, he was standing next to a relatively talented blacksmith who was introducing him to the progress he had made to the task he was assigned.

The blacksmith was eager to show off what he had accomplished and led the tall knight into his workshop, where he had two long poles, each of which had a long metal tube at the end. This tube acted as the barrel of the weapon.

It was an exceptionally crude and primitive firearm, but it was a firearm nonetheless. As such, the Grand Master picked up one of the weapons and observed it for a few moments before asking the question on his mind.

"This is the legendary hand cannon?"

The blacksmith nodded his head with an excited expression on his face.

"I purchased one from a trader who claimed he acquired it from a group in Bohemia. Afterward, I reverse engineered it and manufactured a few of them on my own. Would you like to see how it functions?"

The Grand Master had a stoic expression on his sturdy and scarred face. He merely nodded silently, indicating to the blacksmith to present the weapon. After doing so the man grabbed a spare sheet of iron that had the same thickness as a common breastplate and dragged it out to the courtyard.

The blacksmith placed the iron sheet in front of a hay bale before walking away ten steps, where he began the loading procedure of the hand cannon. The loading of a hand cannon was similar to any other muzzleloading firearm. Albeit far less streamlined.

One would load the powder into the small tube at the end of the stick that acted as a barrel with their powder flask, where they would then add the projectile followed by some form of cloth wadding. After doing so they would pack it down with a stick. Yes, a stick, not a ramrod, these weapons had yet to develop a self-contained ramrod, so they used a separate stick to pack down the powder and projectile.

The firing sequence was completely different from later designs, though. Similar to the flintlock and earlier firearm designs, one would put a bit of powder on the pan. However, that is where the similarities ended.

On this weapon, there was no such thing as a trigger, so what the hand-gunner would have to do is hold the stick under their armpit and use their free hand to light the powder with a slow-burning match. That would then ignite the powder in the weapon and send the projectile flying.

As such, this sequence took a significant amount of time, nearly a minute, to do so. The projectile that was used was nothing more than small rock, instead of a lead or iron ball, because of this it did not achieve as much accuracy as the weapon was capable of, not that it was capable of much.

After firing the weapon, the projectile completely missed the target where the blacksmith began to curse under his breath.

"Mother fucker!"

After venting his frustrations, the blacksmith began the reloading process once more, where he missed his target for a second time. It was only after firing a total of three times that the stone projectile hit its target and bust through the iron plate. The moment it did so, the blacksmith began to cheer aloud.

"Haha!"

Witnessing the lackluster performance of the fabled hand cannon that Berengar's forces had used to triumph over the Teutonic Order, the Grand Master immediately felt something was amiss. Even in large numbers, such a pathetic weapon could not possibly turn the tides of war.

Its reload speed was too long, its accuracy was terrible, and its effective range was laughable. As such, he immediately interrogated the blacksmith about his concerns.

"Are you certain that this is a hand cannon?"

The blacksmith could tell the Grand Master was not pleased and as such he nodded his head with a certain expression.

"Yes, this is a hand cannon. Supposedly there are similar designs across all of Europe, but nothing too different. If you field it in large numbers it can be effective even at close range. The largest problem with such a tactic is acquiring the saltpeter necessary to create gunpowder. The Byzantines are able to get it for cheap from India, but unless you can establish a trade route all the way to the Empire, good luck maintaining a large force of hand-gunners."

Hearing this the man was even more uncertain of how his enemy had acquired so many of these weapons and was able to maintain the necessary gunpowder to supply his armies. He had no way of knowing that a large portion of Berengar's supply of saltpeter came from his own nitraries, as for the rest it was now purchased from the Byzantines with the relationship he had set up with the Empire.

At the behest of the Catholic Church, the various military orders were required to begin experimentation with hand cannons but creating something more effective than the current technology would take years, maybe even decades to achieve.

Reflecting upon his orders, Gwythyr sighed in response to the information he had received. Either the reports of Berengar's weapons were inaccurate, or Berengar had a completely different design of firearms altogether. If it were not for the Vatican's support there would be no way for the Order of the Red Dragon to field these primitive hand cannons, let alone something greater.

Gwythyr coldly looked into the blacksmith's eyes and spoke in a stern tone, in doing so intimidating the man who began to shake.

"I want at least a hundred of these built as quickly as you are able. As for the gunpowder, we will use the church's influence to procure it."

The blacksmith slowly nodded his head as he responded to the Grand Master's request.

"I promise you that I will have them done in a few months' worths of time!"

If Grand Master Gwythyr knew the amount of Muskets Berengar could produce within a few months, he would genuinely lose all hope of winning the upcoming Crusade that the Catholic Church had planned for the German Reformation, or the Berengar Heresy as they continued to refer to it as.

With that said, the Grand Master quickly got back to work to oversee the construction of their Order's first castle. As for the production of Hand Cannons, it was not only the Catholic Church interested in researching and developing such weapons.

After Berengar's overwhelming victory against the Bavarians who invaded Austria, all of Europe had begun to spend as many resources as possible on the research and development of handheld firearms.

Even to the more stubborn Kingdoms like France, it had become increasingly apparent that the era of Knights was coming to an end. If they could not adapt to the circumstances they found themselves in, they would no longer maintain their power.

Berengar had inadvertently sparked a new arms race among all of the European powers. The notions of who could build the best handheld firearm and who could field the most of them had begun to consume the minds of the European Monarchs and Feudal Lords as they rushed whatever asinine design they could develop into production in an attempt to have the slightest advantage over their competitors.

Even if Berengar were aware of such a thing, it would be centuries before the people of this world were capable of developing anything remotely similar to what his troops currently fielded. Despite the fact that there were exceptional geniuses in every era, Berengar's technology was too advanced for the early 15th century to compete with.

At most, the European powers might develop something similar to the arquebus a century earlier than in Berengar's previous lifetime. Even then, it would take decades for such technology to be created from scratch. By the time Berengar's rivals developed such weapons, he and his armies might be equipped with technology similar to that of single-shot rolling block weapons, and breach loading rifled cannons.