Chapter 268 The Power Brought by the Improvement of Artillery Technology

Peter assembled his army and set out. He also met General Wojcick who was defending Ancyra. He praised his bravery and performance in Ancyra and ordered him to lead his troops to attack Bosnia. A team of 20,000 people set out from Niš and headed west.

However, just as Peter's army entered Bosnia, King Stefan Ostoya sent people to surrender directly to the camp. Because he, the king, was just a puppet. He was pushed up by the Bosnian nobles and had no power at all. Instead of being a puppet, it would be more comfortable to be a lord or duke under Rome.

"Did he really say that?"

"His Majesty the King said he was willing to be a vassal of the emperor."

This saved a lot of effort. I thought it would be a long war, but I didn't expect the king to surrender first. Although he was just a puppet, he was also useful.

Peter began to advance towards Jajce. They entered the Bosnia region. The local fortresses could not withstand the opponent's catapults and artillery, and surrendered one after another. Some of them were determined to fight to the end, so they directly besieged them.

The Republic of Ragusa also followed Rome's wishes and declared war on Bosnia and Croatia. This city-state has been completely dependent on trade between Rome and the rest of the world. Even most people have converted to Orthodoxy. Their army is small, so they provided some money and food to participate in the war in name only. The Ukrainian Principality was busy developing its franchise and did not have to participate in the war. The Cossack Emirate provided a group of Cossack soldiers to Rome, while keeping an eye on Poland and Lithuania to prevent them from disrupting the situation.

Affected by the war, trade in the Eastern Mediterranean also declined, especially trade in Egypt and the Levant. Now Venice and Rome are killing each other's merchant ships, causing them to have to hang the flags of other countries or go by land, and the trade volume has been cut in half.

Mircea directly issued a plundering license. No matter whether it is his own country or another country, regardless of faith, region, or language, as long as the successful plunder of Venice and Genoa merchant ships is rewarded.

This was another heavy blow to maritime trade, but the Knights Hospitaller of Rhodes also suffered. Most of the trade on their island was conducted by the Venetians, and now it was cut off. The leader of the Knights Hospitaller, Narak, wanted to remain neutral, but the loss of interests made the knights below unwilling to do so. They all had their own businesses on the island, and now they would lose their money if they were cut off.

There are many people like them, who always want the two countries to cease fire so that they can continue to do business. But the will of the supreme ruler is not something they can shake. Mircea is determined to defeat the anti-Roman alliance, even if it means spending the last coin in the treasury.

Among the several armies, Peter has arrived in Jajce, and the king is also planning to surrender, but the nobles who pushed him up directly took control of the city defense and announced that they would never surrender.

This was also within Peter's expectations, so he directly surrounded the place and set up catapults and artillery to attack.

Peter has invested no less than 150,000 gold coins in the firearms project over the years, and finally the artillery technology has been improved again. Before this, the artillery was made by the mud mold method, that is, before making the cannon, a mud mold must be made. The mud mold includes a cylindrical core and an outer mold. The core and the outer mold are combined before casting. Then after the procedures of aligning the mouth, grinding, drilling the fire door, etc., a cannon is completed.

The limitations of this method are getting bigger and bigger, especially in the casting of cannons, the defects are obvious.

Before making the cannon, a mud mold must be made. The mud mold includes a cylindrical core and an outer mold. The core and the outer mold are combined before casting.

Then after the procedures of aligning the mouth, grinding, drilling the fire door, etc., a cannon is completed.

However, it takes a long time to make a usable mud mold.

Because the mud mold needs to wait for it to dry naturally before casting, the larger the mold, the longer it takes to wait.

It can be as short as more than one month, and it is normal to wait for several months when the weather is bad.

Therefore, it often takes several months or even half a year to cast a cannon.

But even if it is cast, the defective rate is very high.

Because the outer mold and the core are made of clay, which has poor air permeability, it is difficult to dry out the inside, and it is often dry outside and wet inside.

During casting, these moisture will evaporate to form moisture, causing a large number of honeycomb holes in the barrel of the cannon, which greatly increases the risk of the cannon exploding when firing. This is a defective product.

With desperate funding, Roman artillery craftsmen found a new cannon casting process, which is the sand mold cannon casting method.

The sand mold cannon casting method was innovated by the British on the basis of the clay mold cannon casting method at the end of the 18th century, which is about four hundred years later.

This method requires casting a solid barrel first, and a barrel model needs to be prepared.

This model can be made of wood and can be reused repeatedly.

In addition, a section mold of the barrel is required. Put the wooden barrel on the mold, and the lower half of the barrel will be embedded in the mold, and the upper half will be exposed. Tree

Take a hollow iron square frame of the same size and place it flat on the section mold. Of course, this square frame can also be made of wood, but it must be strong.

Apply some quartz powder on the wooden barrel to prevent it from sticking to the sand, then fill it with the sieved fine sand, press it firmly, and then scrape the sand on top to make it smooth.

Turn the entire set of molds over, the section mold is on the top, carefully remove the section mold, and the other half of the wooden shell will be revealed.

Apply quartz powder, then cover it with a hollow square frame of the same size, fill it with sand and press it firmly.

Drill a hole above the compacted sand mold, which is the entrance for pouring liquid metal.

Open the mold carefully and take out the wooden gun barrel, so that you can see half of the gun barrel style on each of the two parts of the sand mold.

Carefully make a groove next to the gun barrel model and connect it with the hole just made, so that the metal liquid poured from the hole can flow into the gun barrel model along the groove.

Close the mold, pour in the metal liquid, open the mold after cooling, and scrape the sand to get a solid gun barrel.

Using this method, the pass rate of artillery is greatly improved, reducing costs and increasing the ownership rate of artillery. Now the Roman New Army can take out 300 artillery pieces at a time and put them on the battlefield. This technology tree is not in reality, otherwise there will be super-era punishment.

A large number of stone bullets attacked from all directions, and their power caused heavy losses to the defenders. It seems that the city wall will not last long. At night, the imprisoned king sent people to secretly open the door to let the Roman army in, but they were discovered and executed by the defenders. The king was forced to move to a monastery for custody, and Rome continued its siege of Jajce, but the war had only lasted for a month and a half at this time.