Since the Accounting: A Chronicle of the Roman Khanate

Chapter 776 Zhu Wenkui is exhausted

That night, Zhu Wenkui was awakened by a burst of light.

He jumped out of bed, grabbed his clothes, and shouted towards the door, "Andre! John! Where are they? What's going on!"

"We're outside!" came Master Hans's voice from outside the door. "You're finally awake."

"Huh?" Zhu Wenkui didn't react for a moment.

"Should I go in and help?" Andrei whispered from behind the tent flap. "Teachers, you all stay outside and keep watch."

“You’re on duty tonight, so you’re asking me,” Master Hans said irritably. “Always so hesitant, like a veteran of the battlefield.”

"But just now..."

"Ms. Jeanne has been gone for half a day, you can go and help her pack up. Don't say anything."

As Zhu Wenkui was getting dressed, the others whispered a few words to each other at the door. Then, the tent flap was lifted, and Andrei poked his head in.

“We’ve gotten into a fight, Your Highness. The Polish army launched a night attack on us and ran into the Glei people. They’re fighting fiercely right now at the camp gate—oh, would you like us to help you clean up?”

"Never mind this for now, hey, stop looking, stop looking, everyone get out." He waved his hand, shooing people out: "Bring me my armor, I need to go check the situation."

"Yes, Your Highness!" Andrei immediately responded. However, the more Zhu Wenkui tried to stop him from looking, the more curious he became, so he quickly glanced around before lowering the curtain and leaving.

"What do you mean?" John, who was standing guard nearby, asked.

"Sigh, we'll have to clean this up later," Andrei sighed.

"No wonder His Highness can't get up."

"How come Ms. Jeanne is alright?"

"They've had special training since they were little, so they must be different."

The group chattered amongst themselves as they walked away.

Zhu Wenku quickly dressed and stepped out of the small tent. Old Hans followed beside him, giving him a brief explanation of the current battle situation.

"I shouldn't have come here today," Zhu Wenku said with some regret. "And why didn't anyone call me for something so important?"

“Actually, Jeanne was among the first to wake up. Before the messenger brought the specific message, we only saw fire and movement in the distance at the camp gate and were hesitating whether to prepare for war in advance. She didn’t know why she woke up on her own.” Old Hans told him, “I was patrolling near the government office when John called me over. She was already fully prepared and had even brought her horse.”

"I asked her if she wanted me to call you, and she said she had already tried but couldn't get anyone to come up, so she just gave up. She told me to wake up everyone in the team and get them ready for defense. Then she went to the command post."

"I think I vaguely remember... but they definitely didn't call me seriously." Zhu Wenkui himself was a little dizzy: "Hey, there was clearly an operation tonight, I should have been sleeping in the yamen tent."

"Tomorrow's operation is more important; who knew a fight would break out tonight?" Old Hans comforted her. "Ms. Jeanne wanted you to get some rest, so she specially prepared a tent and asked you to go over there."

"And I didn't get much rest either," Zhu Wenkui said, still somewhat unwilling. "She told you not to wake me, so you just ignored her?"

"She said there are people on duty at command post too. Everyone else just needs to follow the rules. If command doesn't give an order to get up, then everyone should rest. Maintaining physical strength for daytime combat is also a military order," Old Hans told him.

"You should try to smooth things over for her," Zhu Wenku said, but he didn't believe it. "She can't possibly say it so gently. I don't think so. She'll definitely say that even if I get up, I'll just be watching Jessica give the orders, so I might as well stay lying down to avoid interfering with the battle—don't you think?"

"Uh—" Old Hans was a little embarrassed, neither admitting nor denying it.

“You arrived rather late, so you probably aren’t very familiar with her personality. I know her all too well…” Zhu Wenku shook his head.

However, he stopped his rant halfway through his sentence when Andrei and John brought over the armor. He asked, "How are the others? Oh, by the way, where's Miss Tang?"

"She worked the night shift yesterday, and then she came to argue with Ms. Jeanne this morning. She must be exhausted." Old Hans recalled for a moment and said, "At lunchtime, Her Highness the Princess was playing with her. But I haven't seen her in the afternoon. She must have gone to rest."

"I knew it! We were arguing for no reason this morning. She did it on purpose, didn't she?" Zhu Wenku said, looking as if he had just realized something.

"What's wrong?" Old Hans and the others asked hurriedly.

"It's nothing, it's not about the fight." Zhu Wenku quickly shook his head: "Forget it, let's talk about it after this battle."

As they were talking, another bright light suddenly appeared outside the camp. Zhu Wenkui hadn't adjusted yet and felt a little dizzy for a moment.

"Are they launching rockets?" he asked, squinting.

"I think so..." Hans and the others didn't quite understand either.

"The fighting is so intense." Zhu Wenkui was puzzled for a moment, but still quickly set off, leading them towards the command post.

Meanwhile, the battle in front of the camp gate had become fierce. Prokop's original plan was to lure the Polish-Lithuanian cavalry over, and then, with the help of reinforcements in the camp, launch a flanking attack to wipe out the overly aggressive troops.

The salvo of rockets that woke Zhu Wenkui up essentially achieved this goal.

After a period of fierce fighting, the enemy began to tire. However, their tank positions were also under immense pressure and began to suffer losses. Where they couldn't break through, the enemy started setting fires, attempting to burn down the tank fortifications. Soon, the entire line was ablaze, even triggering some explosions.

These lights attracted even more enemies, who swarmed towards the area like flying insects, attempting to break through. Seeing this, Prokop believed the time was ripe and signaled to his rear to begin the attack.

The artillery battalion, already prepared, had been observing the tanks from the camp's watchtowers. Upon seeing their waving flags, they conducted test fire at the designated positions.

Behind the camp trenches, rocket gunners at several positions each fired several rockets. The rockets flew over the fortifications and landed in the enemy ranks.

However, the battlefield was too chaotic at the moment. After capturing a wagon fort, the Lithuanian cavalry set it on fire indiscriminately, which ignited the remaining gunpowder inside the wagons. The explosion startled both sides, so no one noticed what was happening here.

The soldiers on the watchtower waved flags to them to confirm that the landing point was correct. Rockets on the ground immediately began a salvo.

The rockets they used were made from bamboo tubes; the large ones were as thick as an arm, and the small ones were as thick as several arrows tied together. The bamboo tubes were filled with gunpowder and had specially made nozzles. They had an iron arrowhead at the front, and some even had smoke-generating and igniting powder packets attached.

In previous training and group formations, the Rockets Dalian team was not really given much attention.

At Guo Kang's request, Zhu Wenku conducted detailed tests on various weapons in an effort to quantify their destructive capabilities as much as possible, providing a reference for future research and development and battlefield command. However, the rockets' performance was not ideal.

Compared to bows and arrows, rockets were even less accurate, without a significant increase in power. Although they made a great commotion and had a much longer range, they had a major problem: their speed was not very fast.

The rocket got its name because early rockets were indeed just arrows, using the arrowhead at the tip to kill; they were a type of kinetic energy weapon. However, because their speed was limited, the armor-piercing capability of rockets was not necessarily higher than that of arrows fired by archers. Especially at close range, they were no match for powerful bows and crossbows, let alone large guns and cannons.

Later, some people tried to mount other things on the rockets, such as a thunderbolt, which gave them an explosive "warhead." However, after experiments by Guo Kang, Zhu Wenkui, and others, the results of these rockets were quite disappointing.

If the explosive portion contains too little gunpowder, the rocket will have little destructive power; if too much is used, the rocket will have difficulty flying far, or even fail to take off. Moreover, the explosive power of black powder is relatively limited, and even with a special outer casing, the resulting fragments have limited lethality against armored soldiers.

To maximize lethality while maintaining range, the propulsion system had to be enlarged, increasing weight and consuming more gunpowder. The result was a process of adding more water to make more flour, and vice versa.

The resulting contraptions were large but unreliable in operation and had limited destructive power, making them essentially useless. Therefore, Guo Kang and his colleagues even concluded that unless they could mass-produce more efficient explosives or propellants, they shouldn't waste time on explosive rockets.

However, besides explosion, arson is one of the most original functions of rockets, and this aspect can be utilized.

Guo Kang once tried to make incendiary agents from white sugar, but later found that in Europe at that time, using white sugar to make weapons was too extravagant.

To conduct the tests, Guo Kang borrowed a lot of people from Zhu Wenkui to help him. At that time, Jessica, as well as Henry, Hans and others whom he had brought along to work, were all sent by Zhu Wenkui to help Guo Kang with the experiments.

However, Guo Kang acquired a whole bunch of incomprehensible alchemical equipment and spent his days and nights tinkering with it, which seemed quite strange to everyone.

Afterwards, Zhu Wenku asked Hans, who said he only remembered Guo Kang being crazy and muttering incoherently every day. In the end, this guy invested a huge amount of expensive materials that even made this Central European nobleman's heart ache, and then suddenly announced that the experiment was a success. He had obtained a powerful potion that could efficiently burn enemies to death. The only drawback was that the alchemical materials were too expensive.

Therefore, Hans advised Zhu Wenkui to keep his distance from Guo Kang, saying that something about the man was off, and he seemed to fit the stereotype of a mad wizard too well...

Jessica, however, remained calm and helped them calculate the costs. He then stated that while the substance was indeed effective, he had a more efficient approach—instead of going to the workshop, he could go to the Galata district, find an Italian merchant, and sell him the sugar needed to make the incendiary at a high price. Then, he could use the gold to directly bribe the enemy's mercenaries. This way, the damage to the enemy would definitely be greater than burning them with sugar.

Of course, if the middleman could be eliminated, simply giving them sugar directly would also work. After all, Europeans have an extraordinary, almost fanatical, love for sugar, far surpassing that of the people of Central China…

But Guo Kang didn't get the candy for free. Everything has a price, and as we all know, things that don't directly cost money are often more expensive.

He obtained all this sugar by currying favor with Theodora, diverting precious research time, and providing her with emotional value. Conversely, given his status and knowledge, there are probably very few "bosses" in the world who can afford to hire him. And his "hourly wage" would likely be astonishing. In this respect, the price he paid for the sugar was indeed considerable.

After realizing the plan was unfeasible, Guo Kang shelved it, along with the materials. Later, Henry, finding the food at the camp too bland, conspired with Hans, Jessica, and others to steal and eat the sugar Guo Kang had stored away. Guo Kang, busy with other projects, forgot about it and thus remained unaware. The entire sugar weapon plan was thus abandoned.

This situation directly reflects the awkward predicament of the rocket artillery. Therefore, for a long time, Zhu Wenkui valued artillery more and paid less attention to these "fancy maneuvers." For a long time, the Dalian rocket force could only perform tasks such as releasing smoke screens at designated locations, setting fire to areas where enemy supplies were located, and throwing sulfurous smoke into infantry groups to create chaos.

However, this battle still gave them a chance to demonstrate their abilities.

Lithuanian cavalry are numerous, but their overall condition is more "steppe-like," with a low rate of armor wear and generally mediocre armor quality. More importantly, in the current situation, even just making a commotion, like a large firework to scare people, is enough.

Therefore, Dalian brought all the rockets they could carry, and before the cannons arrived, they wanted to fire off everything they had—after all, when everyone set up their proper battle formations and began the decisive battle, these little toys wouldn't be of any use...

It was estimated that the impact point would be behind enemy lines, in a location where their second line of troops would assemble and rotate. It would be approximately 400 meters from the launch site. From this position, all their rockets, large and small, could cover the area.

However, due to the rush, they didn't have enough launchers. Fortunately, these things weren't particularly sophisticated machines; they could simply build a mound of dirt and still fire. Therefore, while Father Prokop was trying to lure the enemy over, they had already completed the deployment.

In the first round, they used over three hundred large rockets. Not to mention previous training, they had never used so many at once, not even during the fighting in Egypt. Rockets launched from over a dozen different locations roared past the two sides engaged in combat.

The larger rockets had a much longer range, resulting in a high trajectory. In the black night sky, crimson rays soared high, trailing smoke and drawing a bright trail of fire, even causing some soldiers engaged in fierce combat to stop in surprise.

Immediately afterwards, the rockets turned downwards and crashed to the ground, bursting into a series of flashes and thick smoke.

(End of this chapter)