God of the Battlefield

Huindungi followed at his lord An Hyeon's heels, cold sweat pouring off him.

"Well, the shot landed closer than the target, at least..."

An Hyeon stepped in among the tense naval gunners and came up behind the 9-pounder Field Gun. The bronze front sight at the muzzle was fixed in place, but the rear sight on the breech could be raised and lowered. He lifted it a fraction, bent down, and set his right eye to the notch.

"Do you see why we lay this so much more carefully than a matchlock?"

At their lord's question, Huindungi, Dolswe, and the officers of the navy and the Tiger ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Hunting Army rolled their eyes and hemmed and hawed. The young lord gave a short laugh and began to explain, his voice easy.

"Unlike a matchlock, this field gun ranges much farther. The longer the shot is in the air, the more a tiny error in aim sends it wide of the target and off into nowhere."

He talked as he moved around to the front of the piece. Huindungi watched him fit a gunner's quadrant into the muzzle, lock it, and let the plumb bob drop.

"Sometimes the sights alone aren't enough. What good is a perfect aim if the ground isn't level and the gun is canted?"

"I-is that so?"

"Same as firing a swivel gun from a pitching deck and watching the shot fly off where you never meant it to."

"Ah..."

Huindungi, the naval officers, and even Dolswe—who had begun his service as a loader on the swivel guns—nodded and studied the field piece that threw a shot of some five kilograms.

An Hyeon hung the plumb line from the cascabel, the knob that jutted like a handle from the rear of the barrel.

"Ground where a field gun is sited tends to slope side to side, and fore and aft as well. If you have the time, it's best to cut and tamp the earth level, the way a farmer harrows a paddy, and make a proper battery of it."

"Of course. That would do it."

"But if the field doesn't give you that time, you chock the wheels and make do. Failing even that, you fire once, watch whether the shot falls short or long and how it scatters left or right, and correct your aim by eye. That works too."

Huindungi rounded on the naval officers under his direct command and snarled.

"Hey! Write it down, now! What are you standing there for?"

"F-forgive us! We'll write it down!"

The sailors dug as their lord directed until the gun sat level, left to right and fore to aft.

"A little more to the right. There. That's it."

An Hyeon directed the men until the piece was laid for line, then turned the elevating screw beneath the rear of the barrel until front sight and rear sight sat in line with the target.

"Fire!"

The gun roared. White smoke burst from the muzzle, and something barely visible went shrieking away. Far off, a cloud of dust erupted against the brick wall.

"A—a hit! My lord! A hit!"

Huindungi, the naval officers and men, and Dolswe with them all cried out at the sight.

The gun bellowed again. With a stutter of impacts and a thin screaming of iron, holes punched clean through the dozens of wooden planks set up beyond.

"Hah... this doesn't even compare to a swivel gun."

At the sound of Huindungi clicking his tongue, I smiled.

"This new ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠field gun uses three kinds of shot: round shot, grapeshot, and canister. Round shot can be laid out to a thousand paces—some fifteen hundred meters. Grape reaches about five hundred, canister about three hundred."

I went on, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠letting all of them see the true range and power of each round the 9-pounder threw.

"Round shot is the standard, the one that reaches farthest. But as you all know, if you fire it at men and drop three or four, you've been lucky."

Most of those who had handled a swivel gun nodded.

"So on land we use round shot to harry an enemy at a distance—or to bring a wall down."

"Bring a wall down, my lord?"

"Yes. Exactly that."

Most people imagine that a great huihui trebuchet can batter down a wall of stone or brick. It is not that such engines do no harm at all, but even a large trebuchet rarely delivers the force to actually collapse masonry.

"This field gun, on the other hand, can damage a ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠wall well enough. An iron shot of a mere five kilograms from this piece strikes far harder than a trebuchet heaving a stone of well over a hundred kilograms."

"Then the brick wall you ordered built a few days ago..."

"I wanted to see whether the gun truly had that power, and to show it to you today."

Even the largest trebuchets in human history, flinging rocks of a hundred to a hundred and fifty kilograms, take an age to break a brick wall. The blow of a 5.4-kilogram iron shot, though...

"Well. Even this isn't entirely satisfying."

I scratched my head, looking at the practice wall the field gun had struck several times. Bricks were shattered and split, and cracks ran through the masonry around them, but to bring the wall itself down we would have to fire longer, more precisely, and more relentlessly.

Dolswe, who had been running his hands over the broken face, asked, "My lord, then why not simply build the field gun larger? If the shot were bigger and heavier as well, the power would be that much greater..."

"Of course it would. But then it becomes too heavy, and too clumsy to move."

The piece had been made from copper we had gathered steadily, firearms taken from Zhu Yuanzhang, and precious tin brought up from the far south. A bronze field gun was too dear a thing to spend on sieges alone.

"The new artillery we need from here on has to do three jobs."

The first was the work of a siege gun. When the Yuan took Jiangnan they had pulled down most of the walls, but since the realm fell into chaos those walls had been raised again, and great brick ramparts now stood everywhere. Fuzhou, which we would soon have to take, was problem enough, but I had heard that Zhang Shicheng's seat at Pingjiang was a fortress eight meters high and eleven meters thick, and that rebuilding and reinforcement there had never stopped. To bring iron walls like that down without bleeding ourselves dry, the power of a siege gun was desperately needed. The trouble was that building cannon for sieges alone would be a ruinous waste.

"From now on, efforts to answer the power of our matchlocks will spring up on every side. The spies report that some are already trying to make something like a matchlock out of bronze."

"If they get matchlocks of their own, it will be a serious trouble. No question."

Dolswe, who had done more than most within the Tiger Hunting Army to lead the way in handling matchlock troops, nodded with a grave face.

"If we can use this field gun in a fight on land, we keep the advantage in range and weight of fire. But build a gun too large for the sake of a siege, and it won't move quickly on the field. It will only get in the way."

"That's the truth of it. Even the swivel guns are heavy enough that hauling them about is hard, and a piece as big as this..."

I looked then to Makdong and Huindungi.

"Right now Chen Youliang's navy and Zhu Yuanzhang's are fighting hard on the Yangtze. Chen Youliang mixes fortress-like tower ships with war-junks and mengchong, and I hear he's given Zhu Yuanzhang's fleet a great deal of trouble."

"Just how big are those ships..."

"I hear Zhu Yuanzhang's men are struggling to put the bowl-mouth guns the Yuan navy used, and the heavy iron general-cannons, into service afloat to answer him. Chen Youliang's navy will be doing the same."

The swivel gun was still a useful killer of men. But the larger the enemy's ships grew, the more its power was bound to fall short. The great fleet actions still to come on the Yangtze would demand that I raise the firepower of the navy under me by another step.

"Siege, battle on land, battle on the water—we need the new guns for all of them. But copper and tin aren't so common that we can build a separate piece for each."

Makdong, Huindungi, Dolswe, and the officers nodded as if they understood.

The 9-pounder Field Gun had been made after the bronze twelve-pounder field gun of the nineteenth century, the Napoleon. The barrel was 191 centimeters long, the bore 121 millimeters, the barrel itself 626 kilograms; with the carriage it came to 1.2 tons. The round shot weighed 5.4 kilograms. The grapeshot, ranging to five hundred meters, carried nine iron balls of about six hundred grams each. The canister, ranging to three hundred meters, carried twenty-seven iron balls of about one hundred and ninety grams.

"Round shot can punch through an enemy's hull, sink her, or do her grievous harm. Grape, at the longer range, and canister, in close, will each drive through several men and leave them dead or dying."

"Put a beast like this aboard a warship and we won't have a thing to fear, my lord!"

Huindungi was beaming and carrying on when Makdong, beside him, took out his small slate, wrote something, and held it up.

"M-my brother—no, the Great General—says a gun with wheels this big might be a hard thing to get aboard a ship..."

"Of course it would. When we mount it on a ship, it goes on a separate gun truck."

The barrel of the 9-pounder sat for land service on this two-wheeled carriage. Unship the barrel from that, and aboard a vessel it rode a truck with four small wheels. If we ever had field guns to spare we could keep the two mountings separate, but for a while yet we would not have that luxury.

"For now I'll make artillerymen of the men in the navy who already have experience with the swivel guns. They are to learn how to handle this 9-pounder both on a warship and ashore, and when the time comes they will go ashore and support the Tiger Hunting Army."

"We'll train them properly! Leave it to us, my lord!"

Makdong nodded in silence. Huindungi thumped his chest and grinned. We held the sea outright and stood in a standoff with Zhang Shicheng; had this not been the Fujian campaign, the navy would have been looking a little idle, and it seemed they had felt the awkwardness of it.

"My lord, if I may ask something."

"Go on. What is it?"

Dolswe had been listening quietly. When he stepped forward I motioned him to speak.

"As this officer understands it, the swivel guns are cast from the pig iron turned out in quantity at Busanpo. If copper and tin are too dear for us to produce field guns easily, why not make them of pig iron as well?"

At Dolswe's question the others nodded as if it had merit.

"As you all know, a pot or a plowshare cast from pig iron shatters readily if it hits the ground or strikes a stone. The metal is so hard by nature that it cannot take a shock. At Busanpo we put it in a kiln and fire it so that it breaks less easily."

"Yes. We know that well."

"A pot or a plowshare is thin, so the work isn't difficult. A swivel gun weighs close to forty kilograms, and its barrel is thicker than a pot's, so you have to keep the fire going for nearly three days before the heat barely reaches the core."

The cast-iron swivel guns my navy used in numbers were pig iron heat-treated until it behaved something like malleable cast iron. Cast iron is so hard that, compared with soft bronze, its tensile strength is poor against the gas pressure of a fired shot, and the risk of bursting is great. And because it is so hard, a burst throws small fragments in every direction; the gunners can easily be killed or maimed. Hold it in a kiln around nine hundred degrees for a long time and the structure binding carbon and iron inside the metal changes. It comes out a little stronger than bronze, and a little softer.

"That is why the swivel guns so rarely burst. And why, even when an accident did happen, no one was killed or badly hurt."

"So that was it. Then why is this field gun..."

"Look at the thickness of this barrel. Far thicker than a swivel gun, isn't it? Fire a swivel gun's metal for three days and the heat reaches the inside. A piece this large—no matter how long you fire the kiln, the heat never reaches the interior, which is the part that matters most."

It was not that we had never tried. No matter what we did, a proper result would not come. The fuel swallowed by a half-finished piece was monstrous, and the size of the work made it hard to run several at once.

"This field gun, cast from nine parts copper and one part tin, is weaker than the swivel gun. But if a great burst does happen, the metal is soft, so it swells or tears in a long split down its length. It doesn't throw fragments, and that makes it comparatively safe."

If one counted only cost against performance, casting in pig iron was an option. Make the piece thicker and heavier and the chance of a burst falls—but then, though you might still mount it on a ship, you could no longer use it freely ashore or in a siege. For the present there was nothing for it but to spend scarce, expensive copper and tin on bronze field guns and pass them from one task to another.

I explained the carriage of the bronze field gun, gleaming gold in the light.

"The swivel guns we have use fifty-six grams of powder at most, and they aren't heavy. So we drive an iron pintle into a timber at the gunwale and mount them there, and ashore a simple wooden frame is enough to fire from."

"But the barrel of the 9-pounder is far too heavy, and it takes a tremendous charge..."

"Yes. To bear that, you need a carriage like this."

It had to be stout enough for a barrel of some six hundred kilograms, and it had to take up the recoil of the shot as it left the gun.

"The tail at the rear of this carriage rests on the ground. When the field gun fires it is thrown backward, and the tail, dragging on the earth, kills that force."

I pointed to the trail running down at a slant behind the carriage.

"And because of this trail and the two wheels, it's easy to shift the gun left and right to lay it. Raise or lower the barrel on the trunnions as an axle, and you can lay the field gun on its target."

"But didn't you say the truck the navy uses has four wheels?"

At Huindungi's sharp question I nodded, satisfied.

"Ashore there's room, and we want horses or oxen to draw the field gun, so we use a carriage like this. A ship's hold is cramped, so the gun has to go on a smaller truck, and that is why the truck has four wheels."

I handed out to the naval officers the manuals I had drawn in advance. On them was a gun truck like a rectangular box, set on small wooden wheels.

"You fit heavy iron rings to the deck and the gunwale and lash the piece fast with rope. Do that, and you can hold the gun even when a heavy sea is running or the waves are striking."

"Then we keep this carriage aboard separately, and..."

"When we fight ashore, we lift the barrel out again, set it on the carriage, and move it that way. Bring up a cart and have horses or oxen draw it."

I went on, step by step, for officers who listened with serious eyes. Even if they would not crew the field gun themselves, a commander who did not understand how the weapon was to be used could not employ it properly. The time was coming when a man who meant to be a general and lead an army would have to understand how to use this field gun to hold the advantage in fire over his enemy.

The age when artillery—god of the battlefield—would rule.