Chapter 22: The Power of Firearms
Immediately afterwards, the other three long perfume bottle cannons in front of the Basilica of the Holy Apostles also spewed out smoke of flame one after another, and began to shoot, the most skilled and highest-paid gunners controlled them, and the cannonballs were slightly oblique, and accurately fired into the front line of the Georgian army, and a shell crossed the past, which could penetrate two or three columns of soldiers at the same time, and every time it hit, a huge cheer broke out in the barricade. Pen × fun × Pavilion www. biquge。 info
After the eagle flag was shattered, David, the builder, rode less than a hundred feet behind, and he looked with embarrassment and some horror at the other side's big gun, and fired cast-iron cannonballs from the walls of the cathedral opposite, and in the blink of an eye it whistled, striking both his flag and the standard-bearer.
Then a barrage of shells came from the barricade on that side, knocking his dense front soldiers to the ground.
This was the first time that the builder, David, felt the horror of firearms.
In the previous battle of Roy, he had despised the arrays of firecrackers of the two small Kurdish states, thinking that they were nothing more than hollow iron rods that could spew out some smoke and make strange noises from the battlefield, but now that he saw the power of the cannon in Gawain's barricade, he felt that this thing was simply a spreader of death and chaos.
"Charge, charge." Soon the builder David saw that the Tarsus Guardian had three guns lined up outside the carriage, each with a basket, gabion, and a wooden pole of earth as a retainer, and he eagerly demanded that his Cuman and Alan cavalry take advantage of their speed and rush over.
At such command, hundreds of Georgian light horsemen pressed their bodies to their saddles, shouted like a whirlwind with spears, and scrambled to leap through the gap opened by the infantry, aiming at the red hand banner hanging from the spire of the Basilica of the Holy Apostles.
However, the gun position in front of the Tarsus fortress did not show any panic, and the gunners still calmly washed their chambers, pushed in the powder packets and projectiles, and lit and fired in the face of the fierce Georgian cavalry. Throughout the Georgian army array, which rushed down the mountain, there were constant groups of soldiers, who were hit at various bullet drop points, and several or even a dozen fell and died, but they still went forward one after another, and the horse's tails erected by the cavalry of their followers pounced on the enemy.
When the Georgian cavalry rushed into a distance of 200 feet, the shooters of the Yefandouni Brigade of the Yefandouni Brigade all stood up, either on their waists or half-kneeling, and put their long firecrackers on forks or horses, overlapping them on top of each other, and the smoke of the twisted arquebuses floated horizontally, and there were many shrimp whisker muzzles filled with shotguns poking out between the carriages behind them, and a new type of large firecracker was erected - it was controlled by three or four people, but its body was larger than the ordinary light long firecracker, and it used small copper guns to fire projectiles. Sen Sen aimed at the Georgian cavalry galloping in front of him.
The Georgian cavalry had rushed to less than a hundred feet in front of the barricade, and they had predetermined that the enemy musketeers had not fired early because of panic, and they all remained very calmly behind the bunkers and fences, even if the artillery roared around them, or the arrows flew sideways, they were indifferent, and the men and the long-fire guns and shrimp whiskers were integrated, showing a calm and terrible like weapons.
"Shoot!" A senior sergeant of the shooting corps after rejecting the horse bent his elbows, raised his fire gun and raised his body slightly, aimed at a Georgian cavalryman with a hideous expression who was almost about to rush to the tip of his nose, decisively pulled the trigger, the dragon head hook machine hung down, the sparks behind the wooden support flashed, his shoulders were slammed down, and his whole body staggered backwards - and then there were deafening shots from his front and back, left and right, and the smoke of gunpowder that exploded, and the vague Georgian cavalry and men and horses behind him neighed and fell. But that was not the end of the matter, as the sergeant had just withdrawn his gun when he saw more Georgian cavalry in the smoke and fog continue to carry their horses bravely over the corpses of their comrades in front of them, and struck at him with spears, many spear blades and pike darts thrown at the horses and wooden fences, making a crackling sound. At the same time, a large number of shrimp whisker cannons erupted from behind the carriage board, filled with shotguns, and struck the bodies of the Georgian cavalry horses in the back queue like a storm, and immediately rolled over and fell to the ground.
Between the trenches and fences, the shooters threw down their long guns, raised their iron forks and halberds that served as brackets with their backhands, and some drew their swords and fought with the incoming cavalry. Then the soldiers of the Yefandouni brigade behind the barricade also began to come out with bows, arrows, axes and guns to reinforce the firing corps on the front line.
In the sound of cannons, guns and shouts, the builder David saw the smoke everywhere, and the swift running of the cavalry, he was a little confused, and the falcon "Mitra" continued to stand firmly on the shoulders of his master, "I must find a commanding height to see how the overall battle is going...... Then he galloped up to the small place, and saw the battle on the eastern and northern slopes of the entire Sanuch Heights, the rectangular fortress position arched against the iconic Cathedral of the Holy Apostles, and was desperately resisting his infantry, A Georgian cavalry detachment, blowing its horn, was following the road flanking the ramparts to the Tarsus camp on the high ground.
Suddenly, from the western flank of the Tarsus barricade, a torrent of fire and bullets shot out, and David shook back from his saddle, and his eyes seemed to be red with the sight: the cavalry was swallowed up by the smoke that blew in, and many of them tumbled and fell from their horses and fell into thorns or dirt pits, and seemed to have suffered considerable losses in an instant.
From the Sanukh camp position, hundreds of infantry armed with huge spears were driven, flanked and flanked by small groups of musketeers. The musketeers defended their weapons with forks, stopping to reload their ammunition and firing a salvo as they accompanied the spear phalanx, and then the spearmen and infantry shouted the slogan "Hallelujah" in unison, and all the spears were leveled down, forming a torrent of iron tips, forcing the Georgian cavalry to not advance.
David saw the cavalry under his command bravely, bravely holding his sword, and rushed into such a spear array, trying to lead everyone to bravely come forward and fight, but in the next second, his head was split by several spear blades, and he fell backwards from his horse and died.
Soon, the firearms and spear tips coming down from the Sanuh Heights, and the continuous side-fire from the barricades, were intertwined, so that the thousands of Georgian cavalry who had rushed forward fell into a death trap, they continued to fall with a wail, and the corpses of men and horses slowly piled up in the area between the stream and the high ground, and the remnants of the cavalry lost the courage to fight again, and turned their heads and fled towards Chakmak Mountain.
On the other front, that is, on the battlefield on the western side, nearly 1,000 archers of the Trabzon peasant army lined up along the rocks and high mons, facing the rising sun, drew their bows with their right hands, and began to shoot violently at the Tarsus brigade formation under them from the side to the left.