Chapter 237 – 95: The Engineer Lieutenant Colonel and the Pot Repairer_2
The siege troops must cross the open ground in front of the city walls, a hard and open area where they are completely exposed to the long-range firepower of the defenders, vulnerable to ricocheting cannonballs and the whizzing of bullets, arrows, and darts.
However, when people are pushed to the brink, they can co up with all kinds of thods.
Sebastian Volbon, the engineering lieutenant colonel called to the road engineering headquarters, barely had ti to settle into his seat before he was summoned back to the siege frontline. Cornered by two major generals, Lieutenant Colonel Volbon racked his brains and ca up with an alternative plan: if digging trenches wasn’t possible, then build walls – construct entrenchnts on the ground surface.
In simple terms, this ant constructing corridors between two walls. Although this was far more labor-intensive than digging entrenchnts, it was the only thod available for the ti being.
Upon hearing Volbon’s plan, Layton imdiately gave his approval, “Do it!”
In Rost Layton’s eyes, “It’s better to progress with an idea than to halt in hesitation” – doing sothing was far better than just watching the enemy dig trenches.
Yet, the plan decided on a whim proved to be extrely difficult to implent in practice, leading to nurous engineering challenges.
Firstly, the corridors would be built right under the enemy’s eyes. The enemy might tolerate the Venetians encircling the city from half a kiloter away, but they would never allow them to continue constructing corridors closer to the city.
Digging trenches offered a natural barrier to direct fire, but building walls didn’t – and the efficiency of ramming earth for walls was too slow.
No one had the nerves of steel required to tamp down earth for walls while being bombarded by enemy cannons.
Luckily, Lieutenant Colonel Volbon, in a stroke of inspiration born from urgency, innovated a new thod of wall construction from his experience with dam engineering.
Volbon utilized local resources, weaving dense vines and pliable branches from the island’s forests into roughly cylindrical cages, first filling the cages with large stones, then filling the gaps with smaller ones, and finally packing them tight with mud.
Laying the cages flat on the ground and stacking them layer by layer allowed for the rapid construction of temporary walls.
The length of the cages determined the thickness of the walls: a one-ter-long cage was enough to withstand the fire of muskets and light cannons.
Although such crudely constructed walls were bound to collapse over ti, no one expected them to last forever; as long as they held until the end of the siege, it was sufficient.
To ensure the soldiers could work more safely, Lieutenant Colonel Volbon invented a “moving wall”.
That is, by loading farm carts with mud and pushing them in front of the working area to lock the axle in place to form a temporary shielding wall.
These moving walls were used not only to block enemy cannonballs but also to obscure the enemy’s view while the sappers quickly constructed the corridor behind them.
Once a section of the corridor was completed at the current position, they would push the cart forward and continue work at the next spot.
When William Kidd realized what the Venetians were up to, he imdiately ordered artillery to fire upon the Venetian fortifications extending towards Tachi.
The Venetian fortifications were only about five hundred ters from the city walls, a distance at which even three-pound or four-pound light cannons could achieve near precision.
The four-pound cannons on the triangular bastion fired first. The four-pound iron balls flew over the Venetians’ heads in a parabola, landing far behind the makeshift walls without hitting anything but air and ground.
The gunner imdiately adjusted the wooden wedge under the barrel of the cannon. After reloading, the four-pound cannons roared a second ti.
This ti, the cannonball hit the mud-filled farm cart directly, breaking through the cart’s plank and burying itself deep in the mud.
The cart shook, the axle and spokes groaning under the impact, and one of the wheels’ spokes, unable to withstand the pressure, snapped off.
The farm cart toppled to one side, with the other end sticking up abruptly, and the mud spilled out… But that was all that happened – the Venetians simply dragged the cart away and pushed another one into place. Experience new stories on
The gunner adjusted the angle once again, and this ti the cannonball flew just beneath the cart’s body, theoretically able to kill a few Venetians hidden behind the cart.
However, the enemies seed like bloodless stones, unshaken, continuing the construction of the corridor.
William Kidd, infuriated, punched the earthen wall of the triangular bastion.
After one ranging shot and two effective hits, the skill and luck of the gunner were beyond question. But the Venetians seed… impervious to pain.
William Kidd ordered the use of eight-pound cannons, yet it seed that the previous two hits had exhausted their luck. The eight-pounder’s shots were either too low or too high.
One eight-pound cannonball hit the cart directly, but it didn’t cause much trouble for the Venetians.
Seeing that the Venetians had managed to construct a section of the corridor, William Kidd then ordered the eight-pound cannons to bombard the walls on either side of the finished section of the corridor.
However, shooting at the corridor walls was even less effective because Lieutenant Colonel Volbon had intentionally designed the corridor to zigzag towards the wall like a snake.
Although this increased the workload, it also made it impossible for the cannons on the city walls to fire directly into the corridor.
The eight-pound cannons set up on the triangular bastion could only fire at the corridor walls from a high angle, and all were deflected off the walls.
William Kidd, observing this, went to the eastern side of the city to the demi-lune, where the cannons, though further from the corridor, had a shallower angle of fire.
Indeed, shooting from the demi-lune at the corridor resulted in an even worse hit rate. William Kidd simultaneously regretted wasting gunpowder and prayed that the next shot would hit the corridor wall directly.
Finally, an eight-pound iron ball traced a beautiful arc through the sky and struck the side wall of the corridor hard.
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