The European Coalition (2)
Explosive weapons — gunpowder weapons above all — were truly terrifying things. When one went off, it turned everything around it into a wasteland, and morale shattered along with it.
"Keep moving forward!"
"Don't look back!"
They heard things detonating somewhere behind the front line, but they were too terrified to turn and see. Urged on by their commanders, all they could do was keep pressing ahead.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
"So we're firing too, then?"
"Of course we are. Otherwise how do you expect us to get over that wall?"
However much space there was atop a fortress wall, it had its limits. It was only natural — down below, in the distance, the attacking army swarmed in numbers far too great to stop.
No matter how much artillery Qajar poured into them, the enemy kept advancing without pause, and at last the European Coalition opened fire with their own cannons as well.
Ku-boom. Thud. Thud.
One by one, shells slammed into Qajar's fortress walls, and cracks began to spread across them.
KWAZACK!
"Whoa! There's a hole in the gate!"
Some shots punched clean through the wooden gate itself. And sure enough — strong or weak, a cannon was still a cannon.
"We just have to make it to that gap ahead!"
"Let's go!"
Watching the broken gate in the distance as they advanced, hope began to surge in their chests once more.
KWAAANG! Boom!
"GYAAAH!"
For the artillery crews marching behind the infantry, it was pure hell. Yes, they could see the walls crumbling — but the shells bursting around them came far too many.
"Target the gate first!"
"The gate!"
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Seeing that the cannons would be wiped out before the walls ever came down, the commanders ordered their guns to attack the gate instead. Somewhere, a breach had to be opened before the fortress could be taken.
KUBOOM-KWAKWANG!
"Ugh!"
"Nnngh…."
The artillery corps was experiencing hell itself. They had known Daehan sold weapons like these to Qajar — but hearing about them and living through them were worlds apart.
Worse, they hauled their own gunpowder on wagons, and when those took a direct hit, the resulting sympathetic detonation erased horses and men alike from existence.
"AAAAH! I want to live!"
SHWAAAK.
The soldier who fled, begging to live, was run down by a mounted discipline officer and cut down where he stood.
"Desert and you die! Everyone, fire your cannons!"
"Sniff…"
Trapped in a suicidal battle with no escape, the soldiers were being slaughtered wholesale.
"The gate! Bring down the gate!"
"A bounty to the men who break the gate!"
"Ugh."
For all the commanders shrieked themselves hoarse, when a shell came whistling in, they died just like everyone else.
And so, while forty thousand artillerymen fought their desperate bloodbath, the infantry kept pressing forward.
"Head for the broken gate over there!"
"Once we get close, their cannons can't shoot downhill!"
"Hurry, we have to move!"
Once they closed the distance, the enemy would surely shoot back with muskets — but raise shields as they advanced, and sheer numbers would carry the day. Or so they believed. How many men could possibly be standing on the wall before their eyes?
"It's the river!"
"It's fine! We broke the ice yesterday — it's frozen solid, we can cross right on top of it!"
"Thank goodness for that."
In the dead of winter, the Ural River was frozen to its bones, and the men crossed without difficulty.
Along that frozen river stretched Qajar's great rampart. And behind it, the Qajar army — which had spent weeks digging the earth half to death and waiting in silence — began to rise.
"All units — fire!"
"Open fire!"
TATATANG! Tang! TATATANG!
A torrent of bullets poured into the Coalition soldiers who had been trudging forward without a thought in their heads. Qajar's men, who had lain flat in their trenches and hidden so well they were nearly invisible, had fired in one synchronized volley.
Tudududud. THUNK. Thunk.
Countless bullets skipped off the ground, punched through bodies, and swept through the ranks.
"AAAGH!"
"Enemy!"
"They were hiding!"
"Everyone, present your muskets!"
On the far bank of the Ural, the smoke from Qajar's powder hung over the field like a fallen fog, and nothing could be seen through it.
Coalition soldiers took aim into the murk, waiting to shoot anyone frantically reloading for a counterattack.
"What is this? Why is no one there?"
"Aren't they reloading?"
"Did they fire once and run off entirely?"
The smoke thinned bit by bit — and there was nothing there. The allied troops simply stared, dumbfounded.
"Ghosts?"
"This is terrifying… Are there demons here too?"
They had heard the gunshots but seen no men, and soldiers steeped in fear and superstition began to whisper of spirits.
"Ah! They're lying down!"
"They're prone on the ground! Shoot them, quick!"
"How are we supposed to hit targets like that!?"
As the smoke cleared and things seemed off, they looked closer — and yes, faint shapes of men were visible against the earth itself. But at this distance, how on earth were they supposed to hit marks so small?
"Fire at will!"
"Screw it, who cares."
TATATATANG.
The Coalition soldiers fired anyway. Aiming was beside the point; if a bullet hit, it hit, and if it didn't, so be it.
Tudadadak. THUNK-thunk.
"Ugh!"
"Got one?"
"Barely! That was close."
Qajar's prone soldiers were busy too, scrambling to reload. Their cartridge-based rifles could be loaded lying down, but fishing cartridges out and feeding them in from the ground was still unfamiliar work. Bullets came flying in, a few men took fatal hits, and a fair number were wounded.
Compared to the enemy's losses, though, it was a drop in the bucket.
"Everyone reloaded? Aim and fire! What are you waiting for!"
"Yes sir!"
TATATATANG.
The order for free fire went out across Qajar's lines — see something through the smoke, shoot it. So many men were firing at once that smoke began piling onto the battlefield faster than the wind could carry it away.
"Cough, cough."
"Cough."
TATANG! Tang!
"Ghk."
Still, Qajar's men lying prone had it far better than the European soldiers, whose muzzle-loading rifles forced them to stand to reload.
Beyond that, the riverbank sloped gently upward toward Qajar's walls, giving the men firing from above a decisive advantage over those below.
"Shields forward!"
TUTUTUNG. Tung. TUTUNG.
Even so, by lacing their shields into a moving wall and pushing back, they managed to mount a counterattack of a sort.
Of a sort — and only that.
TUTUNG. Tung. PANG.
"Ghck."
Qajar's cartridge-fed rifles cycled so much faster that the shield wall began, little by little, to be punched through.
"We can't go on like this!"
"What do we do?"
"General! Better to charge! If we can seize that riverbank slope, the advantage is ours!"
With an overwhelming superiority in men, a melee would tilt the field decisively toward the Coalition.
"Very well! Send in the cavalry — order the charge!"
"Yes sir!"
And so the worst order in the history of the European Coalition was given. The cavalry massed at the rear received their instructions: charge, with the infantry following in their wake.
"Are they trying to get us all killed!?"
"Madness!"
"Better to go while the fog's still thick, at least."
A horse was a huge target. If the beast took a bullet, the rider was coming down with it — and dying with it.
"But if we make it across alive, we'll carry back gold by the sackful!"
"Ah, to hell with it! CHARGE!"
"No turning back now!"
The cavalry, unwilling to torture themselves with complicated thoughts, chose to fix their minds only on the rewards of victory. After all, if they ran now, the discipline officers would run them down and kill them. What choice was there?
Dudududu.
"Charge! Follow me!"
"Attack!"
"WAAAAH! The cavalry's coming!"
"After them!"
And so the cavalry began its charge, the earth shuddering beneath them.
Never mind the sight of galloping horses — that rumble of the ground was something Qajar knew all too well.
Born in the saddle, dying in the saddle, as the saying went — the Khazars of Qajar still lived largely on horseback.
"Horses incoming, sir!"
"Fist Potatoes ready!"
"Bring out the blasting powder!"
The horses were fast, yes — but the vibration of hooves drumming in from the distance warned the defenders long before the riders arrived, giving them all the time they needed to prepare. Qajar's men stood holding blasting powder and Fist Potatoes, flicking lighters to life and setting fire to their torches.
Lighters sold for a fortune in Europe were produced here without a second thought.
Dudududu.
"EEHIHIHIHIN!"
The thunder of hooves grew louder and louder, and the screaming of horses rang out toward the waiting defenders.
"NOW! Everyone throw! Throw without pause!"
TSSSST!
The soldiers in the trenches touched flame to their Fist Potatoes and blasting-powder fuses and hurled them with all their strength.
And a moment later —
KWAKWANG! Boom! KUWAAANG! Boom! KUUNG!
The explosions came so thick and fast that the soldiers hunched in their trenches felt their eardrums would burst. Stone and dirt from the thrown charges scattered to the four winds.
"Throw, then duck!"
"Nobody stay standing!"
There was even one absurd accident in which a soldier who had thrown and popped his head back up lost it to a flying stone.
"Keep throwing!"
"Volley!"
KUBOOM Boom KWAKWANG.
Smoke rose once more, and a fog descended over the battlefield. The Coalition army, knowing nothing of what awaited, charged endlessly onward into it.
"Charge!"
"Run! Fall behind and you'll catch a bullet!"
And what greeted them as they plunged into the smoke was a storm of iron balls from Fist Potatoes and the crushing blast-waves of detonating powder.
KWAKWANG! Boom!
"GYAAAH!"
"Ghck!"
"What the—!"
Inside the fog they had so confidently overrun, countless men lay scattered across the ground as corpses.
"Nnngh… where… am I?"
"Cough… cough…"
One man who had been galloping along in high spirits was thrown by an impact that seemed to flip the world upside down, tumbled across the ground, and staggered upright. Blood ran from his ears; his sense of direction gone, he wandered wherever his feet carried him, his mind clearly not his own.
"HEEEEK! What— what is this!?"
"AAAAH!"
The soldiers who witnessed the carnage in the fog fled in abject terror. But for those who lost their bearings in the chaos, the only welcome that waited was the cold kiss of iron balls.
Far away in the command tent, Gustav watched it all unfold, his mouth hanging open.
"Commander! The losses are far too great! Sound the retreat and let us reorganize the front!"
"What? Retreat?"
Gustav, staring blankly, could not make sense of the words. The wall before his eyes, and the men upon it — surely no more than a few thousand at most. A coalition army of four hundred thousand, in retreat?
He was, in all likelihood, about to go down in history as one of history's great fools.
"Aren't the enemies being pushed back little by little? We should crush them in a single overwhelming blow!"
"What on earth are you saying! The enemy hasn't moved an inch!"
Gustav simply could not believe this was reality. True, some infantry and cavalry had made it up the slope — but Qajar's men weren't sitting idle, were they? Every man who showed himself was shot into a sieve. There was no advancing at all.
"We must fall back, reorganize our lines, and secure a route of advance!"
"A route of advance?"
"We should dig the earth ourselves — pile up soil and build our own trenches!"
Looking out again, the aide could see it plainly: the enemy crouched in the earth, poking out just their heads to fire.
"Cowardly dogs!"
"Clever ones, you mean! We must do exactly the same!"
"Fine! Sound the retreat — now!"
If this went on, all four hundred thousand would be ground to paste. The aide was desperate too — if he failed to earn glory here, his own ruin was just as certain. Having finally talked his commander around, he sprinted off to send the withdrawal signal.
PUUUUU. PUUUUUU.
"The retreat horn!"
"Everyone fall back!"
"Run!"
"WAAAAH!"
Fleeing with even more enthusiasm than they'd charged, the Coalition troops left behind them a field littered with the corpses of their comrades. Ahead lay their shattered cannons and the bodies of their artillerymen.
TUTATATATANG.
"AAAGH!"
"GRAAAH!"
"Somebody help me!"
And behind them, Qajar's bullets chased them all the way, welcoming them home.
KUBOOM Thud KUBOOM.
And the cannons atop the walls opened up yet again.
On January 8th, 4049, the European Coalition's first offensive came to an end with eighty thousand casualties out of an army of four hundred thousand. Twenty thousand cavalry had been annihilated outright, and half of the forty-thousand-strong artillery corps had simply vanished.
KUDANG-TANG.
"What is this!?"
"…"
Gustav shot to his feet, his chair tumbling over behind him. He could not believe the casualty report. Out of four hundred thousand, one hundred and twenty thousand were simply gone.
"Do you honestly expect me to accept this!? One hundred and twenty thousand lost in a single battle!? Get out! Go and verify the numbers again!"
Some were genuinely dead, of course — but the true deserters numbered far, far more. Gustav might be a noble, but he trembled like a leaf at the thought that if he went home, his estates would be confiscated — or worse, his head would roll.
Click.
He clamped a cigarette between his lips and raised his lighter — and somehow, the little flame seemed to waver as unsteadily as his own heart.
A moment later, his tent had begun to fill with cigarette smoke once more,
hazing over as dimly as the fate of these men who could not see an inch past their own noses.