Steel, Explosives, and Spellcasters

When the road connecting Tachi and Red Sulfur Harbor was finally penetrated, Antonio sent an envoy to the defending army for the last time. Based on "the last of mercy and honor," he demanded that the defenders hand over their weapons and open the city to surrender.

Serviati and Layton jointly guaranteed that no Tanilian would be executed or tried after surrendering.

But when the envoy with a shield shouted towards the city walls, the only response he received was over a dozen lead bullets.

The attitude of William Kidd was made abundantly clear.

Heavy cannons capable of firing thirty-two-pound iron shot were placed on large carts and dragged little by little to the front of the city walls.

Even from a great distance, the Venetian soldiers atop the walls could hear the ruckus of their approach: the castrated oxen and draft horses bellowed as they were whipped; the Venetian drivers shouted as they lashed with their whips; and the squealing cart axles emitted a monotonous, incessant, grating sound.

If the Angel of Death could also sing, then surely this cacophony was the Angel's song to the ears of Tachi's defenders now.

After the heavy artillery arrived at the front lines, the Venetian engineers spent a whole day using lifting machinery to unload the cannons from the carts. They were then positioned on pre-constructed forts and had their angles adjusted.

All light and heavy cannons in the Venetian army were divided into eight groups, each group anchored by the heaviest cannon and complemented by lighter ones.

The Venetian soldiers affectionately called these groups "wolf packs," with each being likened to a lead wolf followed by a brood of cubs.

With the city gates as the dividing point, four groups of cannons were placed on either side of the walls, targeted at the wall's weak spots.

As the Venetian deployed their heavy artillery, the defenders on the city walls tried their best to destroy the enemy's large guns with their lighter ones at hand.

However, these attempts were largely fruitless; the Venetian protected their big guns with wooden fences and earthen barriers, making it hard for the defenders to find a suitable angle for their shots.

Moreover, the Tanilian cannons were vastly outnumbered and continuously suppressed by light artillery positioned at the base of the walls.

The Tanilians could only watch in despair as one after another, cannons were positioned in front of the walls while they desperately reinforced them.

The next morning, as the sun began to shine on the walls of Tachi, a broad barrage of artillery fire kicked off the proceedings.

Before the heavy cannons made their presence felt, the defenders on the city walls were first subjected to a volley of musket fire and light cannons loaded with grapeshot.

Especially the matchlock gunners and cannons on the bastions, being closest, didn't even need to aim.

In the past two days, the Venetians crazily worked, continually raising the height of the bastions with bags of soil. Now, the tips of the bastions were level with the city walls.

The cannons that the Tanilians had deployed on the bastions were now being employed by the Venetians against their own defenders.

Tanilians peering from behind the battlements were struck down on the spot. Iron and lead rounds shattered upon stone, sending shards flying and dust billowing; the soldiers on the walls huddled behind the parapets, not daring to raise their heads.

And most of the defenders had taken cover below the walls; William Kidd was no fool, and it would have been a deadly folly to force his soldiers to remain on the walls under such bombardment.

Therefore, he had the majority of soldiers take shelter in the Armament Cave behind the wall, leaving only a few sentries on the walls to keep watch.

once the defenders on the walls were suppressed, the eight heavy cannons began to roar.

The sound of the cannons was like the dreadful trumpets signaling the apocalypse: iron cannonballs flew out of the barrels and smashed into the city walls, the immense force causing the entire structure to tremble.

The previous two-pounders had left only a few white marks on the walls, but the heavy cannons directly destroyed the volcanic rock covering the outer surface of the walls.

Even if the stone did not crumble, the huge stress caused by the impacts surpassed the limit of the mortar binding the volcanic rocks together.

At the points of impact, the external rocks of the walls fell off, revealing the inner wall made of volcanic concrete. Continue your story on empire

And the firm inner wall, too, was gouged with a vast conical breach by the iron shots.

The Venetian forces outside the walls let out cheers louder than the booming of the cannons.

But for the defenders inside the Armament Cave behind the walls, it was like hell.

The massive noise, the choking dust, and the vibrations transmitted to the Armament Cave every time the walls were hit by artillery made even the most battle-hardened soldiers shiver with dread.

Nothing conveyed the damage to the walls by the cannons more clearly than the Terror of the Tanilians hiding in the Armament Cave; a panicked recruit exclaimed, "The walls are shivering!"

Indeed, the colossal force borne by the cannonballs made the entire city wall tremble, and the defenders felt it as if it were their own bodies.

When the cannons were still firing stone rounds, the walls of old could already be seen tiring. Stone-throwing cannons were like massive hammers, smashing one side of the wall after another, crushing the will of the defenders at the same time.

And now, the cannons unleashing their fury on Tachi were arguably more potent than the stone-throwing cannons. Advances in material and manufacturing techniques allowed cannon-makers to cast lighter, thinner, sturdier cannons with longer barrels.

The stone-throwing cannon's rounds had a weight ratio of twenty to twenty-four parts to one part of gunpowder, whereas the eight thirty-two pounders outside the city could be loaded with sixteen pounds of gunpowder per shot, achieving an astonishing weight ratio of two to one.

Even though iron cannonballs were lighter than stone ones, their penetrating power was incomparably greater.

The city walls that the Tanilians had trusted were now disintegrating before the new era's cannons.

Inside the Armament Cave, Tanilian soldiers praying to "get through today" heard the sentries ring the alarm bell.