I am the son of the traveler

Chapter 163 Gunpowder Test
After the fall of Shawar, the entire northern part of the Gillis Federation fell into the control of the Macedonians. Both the county governor and the city governor unanimously decided to surrender to this invincible enemy. It is fruitless to continue to resist, because both the Central Federation and the Western Federation are mired in the quagmire of war. Looking at the entire Gillies area, no one can support them.

The demise of the Northern Federation is undoubtedly bad news for the other two Gillis forces. The Western Federation is being attacked by the Duke of Harun and the Kingdom of Mateus, and it is fine. The Central Federation has to deal with the Mateus army. The attack and the response to the threat of the Principality of Harun, and the new threat of the Macedonians behind the buttocks, the troops were suddenly insufficient, so they could only transfer troops from the front line in embarrassment, and sent envoys to negotiate with Shawar, hoping to calm down war.

However, how could "One-Eyed" Antigonus agree to peace? The experienced veteran pretended to agree to the peace, delaying time, while ordering his son Dmitri to lead part of the army to leave Shawar without the messenger's knowledge. Kill to the border of the Central Federation.

While the Central Federation was still surprised by Antigonus's willingness to negotiate peace, the surprise soldiers led by Dmitry had already reached the border, tearing apart the defense line of the Gillis army that was still gathering at the border, driving straight in, and reporting back in the border battle report The capital took down the largest city in the northern part of the Central Federation before, making the defenders in it captives in a daze.

The border war report was sent back to Inalo, the capital of the Central Federation. The members of the new parliament still couldn't believe it completely. They thought that the Macedonians had already agreed to negotiate a peace. How could they send troops to attack them again? However, the northern city of Jakron fell When the bad news came, the only luck left in their hearts was instantly shattered, and they had to accept such a cruel reality.

At the same time, after Jakron was captured by Demetrius, "One-Eyed" Antigonus stopped acting with the Gillis envoy after learning about it, and ordered the envoys in the city to be expelled, and the rest of the army was gathered to go out.

At this point, the attack on the Central Federation broke out in an all-round way.

King Antigonus learned of all this later, when he was still enjoying the sweetness of his newlyweds in the city of Pella.Although he and Helen didn't have much affection, all of this was no longer important after they were officially married. He either stayed with Helen every day or dealt with paperwork submitted by the clerk in the study. Best of all, after all, he is staying in his hometown now, not on the front line where resources are scarce, and he can enjoy treatment that is several times better than that in the military.

After Nikoklides died of illness, his position was also taken over by a highly respected old scholar from Pella University, Chrenides. The choice of this old scholar was not random by Antigonus. He mainly looked at the other party. The credit for leading movable type printing allowed him to hold the honorary position of philosopher while continuing his research.

……

In a blink of an eye, the time jumped to four months later.

In September, autumn has already entered, but the temperature of the land is still high, and the battle on the front line is also in full swing. As Antigonus expected, the army of the Central Federation was under the attack of the First Army and the army of Matthaeus from the north to the south. The capital, Inalo, not far from the southern battlefield, was finally captured by the Mateus army after more than two months of fierce resistance. Commander Mateus was annoyed at the casualties caused by the city's resistance, and immediately ordered the massacre of the city. The whole city turned into a white field.

After the fall of Inalo, the Central Federation was quickly divided by the armies of the two countries. At the same time, the army of the Principality of Harun also conquered most of the territory of the Western Federation.When the country was about to perish, the Western Federation Council in exile made a desperate move and surrendered to the thriving Kingdom of Macedonia, requesting the Macedonian army to enter the arena, and had been suffering for no reason. Letting go of this opportunity, he immediately agreed. While sending envoys to submit a declaration of war to the Principality of Harlan, he led the battle-hardened lions across the border and launched an attack on Harlan's army.

The sudden declaration of war by the Macedonians undoubtedly caught the Haruns off guard. After being attacked, their army near the border was defeated after only holding on for less than two hours. Kingdom of the Virgina Sun Banner.The army of the Principality of Harlan reacted quickly. They knew the strength of the Macedonians and decided not to confront them head-on. While ordering the abandonment of some areas previously occupied, they shrank their troops and fought a protracted war with the Macedonians. Gather troops and prepare to teach "One-Eyed" Antigonus and his First Legion a lesson.

The frontline battlefield was deadlocked like this. Although the Kingdom of Matthaeus joined the war in response to Old Antigonus' call one month after the war broke out, the war did not progress.

After the battle report was sent back to Pella City, there was another topic in the streets and alleys of the whole city. The citizens also began to discuss when the frontline war will end and who will win the final victory in the chat after dinner. ——Since Antigonus personally led his army across the Aegean Sea and landed on the Rhys Peninsula to start the war a year ago, this war has lasted for more than a year and five months. Although the battle reports have been coming from the front line, but The citizens did not feel much joy because of this. They missed their relatives and friends who fought bloody battles on the front line.

In addition to the topic of war, the most talked about by the citizens is that there will be a violent roar outside the city from time to time, which seems to be the beginning of the world. When the roar first appeared, the citizens thought it was thunder before the rain, and they were anxious I hurried back home, but after a long time, there was still no rain at all, so I just wondered for a while and forgot about it.But as the number of times increased, more and more people noticed that something was wrong. Some of them formed a team to follow the sound and walked out of the city, and found that the source of the roar seemed to be inside Pella University. They wanted to go in and check it out immediately. He was stopped by the guards and could only let it go.

No one knew what the roar meant. Oh no, someone did. However, due to the confidentiality regulations established by the king, they could not explain it to others, and even their own family members had to say nothing.

boom -

There was another deafening roar, and the ground shook accordingly. Looking at the blasted stones in the distance and the gradually dissipating gunpowder smoke, a young man reported excitedly to the old man beside him: " Teacher, this time the experiment seems to be successful."

"Go and invite His Majesty the King, and let him come and see." The old man didn't agree immediately, but asked the young man to inform the king, but as he spoke, his originally tense face loosened a lot.

The old man was the newly appointed philosopher Chrenides by Antigonus. Besides his identity as a philosopher, he also had another little-known identity—the president of the Kingdom Research Institute.

The young man—that is, his student, ran out of the door immediately after hearing the order. Krenides looked at the blasted stones in the open space in the distance, and finally showed a little smile on his face , The thing they are going to study this time is called gunpowder by His Majesty the King. It is said that it is a sharp weapon that can change the battlefield. They scoffed at it at first, but after the gunpowder ignited and exploded, their attitude changed 180 degrees.

This kind of sharp weapon that can blow up hard rocks after burning, it is hard for them to imagine what kind of harm it will cause to the human body if the person being blown up is the human body.

About half an hour later, Antigonus walked in with the young student. As soon as Antigonus appeared, Crenides rushed up to meet him and said, "Your Majesty, according to your reminder, the gunpowder we prepared Successfully shattered the stone, you see—"

As he spoke, he pointed to a pile of broken stones lying quietly in the open space in the distance.

Antico looked in the direction he pointed, saw the gravel on the ground and the ground that was obviously blackened by scorching, nodded, and asked, "Can you remember the ratio of the mixture?"

"I wrote it all down." Chrenides replied, because they had also learned mathematics, geometry and the concept of proportion, so there was no situation where they could not understand what Antigonus said.

"Very good." Antico said appreciatively, "You can fill the clay pot with the corresponding proportion of gunpowder later, and then seal the pot mouth, leaving only a small opening for inserting the matchlock."

Speaking of this, he glanced at the young student who had been recording what he said in his notes, and continued: "Then light the match and see how effective it will be."

"I'll get someone to prepare it right away." Krenides agreed. Seeing that the student was still taking notes, he called other people to do the operation.

During the waiting period, Antico found a random place and sat down. He said, "The raw materials for gunpowder are sufficient, so you can try it with confidence."

The raw materials of gunpowder are nothing more than those three: charcoal, nitrate, and sulfur.And "one nitrate, two sulphur, three charcoal" is a mantra that most Chinese can memorize. Charcoal can be obtained easily, and nitrate can be obtained everywhere on the rocky piles along the long coastline (because nitrate is a seabird Fermented feces), although sulfur is a bit tricky, it is not impossible to find places on the vast Oglell Peninsula.

Of course, the production of sulfur is still too little. Once the gunpowder is officially put into the battlefield, the current production must not be enough. Therefore, Antigonus sent many spies to the surrounding countries to find volcanoes, hoping to get a lot of them from the volcanoes. sulfur.

Chrenides did not participate in the collection of gunpowder raw materials. He saw that Antigonus had said so, so he agreed, thinking about whether he could change the proportion of raw materials after this, or increase the amount of gunpowder as much as possible. , making the explosion more powerful.

A few minutes later, a student came over carrying a clay jar full of gunpowder. He first asked Antigonus to check the tightness of the mouth of the jar and the length of the matchlock. Place the clay pot at the bottom of a rockery in the open space outside the house, and pull the match as far as possible to ensure that people have time to stay away from the pot after it is lit.

After all the preparations were completed, the student lit the match, and then ran away from the pot at the fastest speed. Antigonus, who was standing in the house, watched the match with his own eyes. Go, the next second after Mars entered the inside of the pot, a deafening explosion sounded instantly, and the pot exploded at the same time as the explosion sounded, emitting a dazzling flame and a weak shock wave faintly visible to the naked eye. Fragments of the blasted clay pots also flew out like fairies scattered flowers, and one of the fragments even flew into the house, almost hitting the people in the house.

At the same time, black gunpowder smoke from the explosion enveloped most of the open space. Watching the astonishing explosion process, the Macedonians except Antigonus were stunned. Antigonus was immune to it. After the big fireworks (the kind with dozens of holes in all directions to launch fireworks, and the sound of firing is really loud) and the scene where other products using gunpowder as power are ignited, the lively scene is far from Dozens of streets away from this.

Speaking of fireworks, Antigonus was thinking, if he could bring fireworks to this era and use them as weapons, would the Macedonian army equipped with fireworks be able to give the army of the Principality of Harun a huge surprise? The power of the big fireworks in memory It seems to be quite big. Although it can't kill people, it is okay to injure them. What's more, the weapon that can make a loud noise is mainly to scare the enemy, and secondly to kill.In fact, the early gunpowder weapons were also used in this way. The muskets did not bring much damage to the army, but mainly caused them to fear.

Far away.

After waiting for a while, after the gunpowder smoke completely dissipated, Antico personally took someone to check the effect of the explosion just now. To his surprise, the bottom of the rockery had been blasted into a large pothole. The surroundings of the hole were covered with rubble and some fragments of clay pots, and the ground was scorched black by the flames brought by the explosion.

Although the gunpowder smoke has dissipated, there is still an indescribable smell of gunpowder smoke in the air. The power of black powder is undoubtedly the lowest, but when a certain amount of black powder is concentrated and ignited, the power it causes is also Very impressive, Antikro stared at the rockery that had been blown out of holes for a while, but gave up the idea of ​​immediately throwing gunpowder into the battlefield.

"It's still not powerful enough." He shook his head and said to Krenides, "You guys make adjustments and experiments again. I hope to see the power of the gunpowder maximized."

"Yes, Your Majesty." Crenides replied, and he also knew that this experiment was not considered a success. As long as Antigonus was not satisfied, the gunpowder would be unable to be put on the battlefield one day later. More Macedonian soldiers would have lost their lives.

(End of this chapter)