On the streets, smoke from the burning flames obscured the view. Captain Maria stopped the nuns' pursuit and sent them back to the previous intersection, skirting the block and continuing on.

Before they could engage the enemy, an unknown mob had set the place on fire and began to loot on a rampage. The poor people who live here have tried to hide behind thin door panels, but the crowded and messy wooden buildings here are too suitable for the spread of flames. The fire quickly engulfed large swaths of homes, and most people fled in terror, towards what they thought was a relatively safe coastal business district.

The main road leading there was quickly clogged up by residents who dragged their families with their homes. More people joined forces to tear down the iron fence and pour into the large garden next to it, from where they headed towards the sea.

Although the city has gradually returned to prosperity over the past few decades, the legacy left by the Roman ancestors to the capital is so great that no one has been able to completely fill the area of this giant city. These legacies have saved a lot of people tonight - because there are still a lot of open spaces, the fires that have been ignited everywhere cannot be brought together as quickly as they did two hundred years ago.

It's just that these open spaces don't theoretically belong to everyone. Poor residents, especially outsiders, are confined to a few unmanaged areas. A lot of the so-called land in the lower city was occupied by the nobles of the city early on, but in fact it did not belong to the people here at all, but became the residences of dignitaries and wealthy merchants. The scale is so large that it can even make people fight a small battle here.

The increasing demand and the accumulation of wealth have attracted many professionals. From the Jiangnan craftsmen brought by Javanese merchants, to the stonemasons from Italy and France, to the Samarkand architects who came along the steppe trade routes, they all showed their skills here, designing villas and gardens of different styles, so that nobles can enjoy the fun of landscapes and idylls without going out of the city. The top-notch mansion is like a small palace, where the art of the East and the West collide and stir in this spacious space, and even attracts many people to come here to study and exchange, and bring new art schools back to the Mediterranean.

But now, people don't have the heart to care about that.

In normal times, these works of art are carefully protected. Although there is only a fence or even a fence, few people dare to go directly into these houses. Now, of course, apparently no one cares about that. Stimulated by danger, the fleeing people had no time to think about the ban and the law, and only thought about running away.

And the nearby mansion is indeed not guarded. Along the way, they broke into several seats, but no one came to effectively stop them. As a result, the fleeing crowds soon ran everywhere, and more places were caught in a tense atmosphere.

After disengaging from the enemy, Captain Maria continued to use the banner of the Queen Mother to gather the scattered inhabitants around her, reassure them, show them the way, and keep them away from the area. At the same time, the nuns were urged to quickly reload their weapons and make all preparations.

"I'll repeat—" she shouted in a loud and hoarse voice, "all the sisters with guns, according to the groups of two, exchange muskets!" Check it out! ”

The nuns immediately cheered up, exchanged weapons, and began to check. After checking it, I returned it again.

"Now, check each other's arquebuses and gunpowder! Then report to your squad leader! Captain Maria shouted again.

The nuns continued to do so, and after some inspection, they reported that the guns were in order, that the inquiring was burning, and that the gunpowder was properly kept and in sufficient quantities. Several squad leaders also quickly replied to her, saying that everyone was ready.

"Then let's continue south." Captain Maria pointed diagonally ahead and said, "This group of enemies is very long, and it seems that they belong to different organizations, and they don't have much cooperation with each other, but they are going to the south together to support. In front of us, the buildings in that area were more formal, and they were not burned by the flames. Teams 4, 5, and 6 are keeping watch downstairs with me. Teams 1, 2, and 3, following Captain Cornelia, grabbed their seats upstairs. We should be able to intercept the enemy's tail from the side. Then, as previously planned, keep a distance from them, keep shooting. Do you understand? ”

"Understood." The nuns replied.

Captain Maria nodded.

However, some people are dissatisfied with her tactics. Opposite her, a young nun with a red logo on her helmet openly expressed her skepticism.

"Her Majesty the Queen Mother asked us to go to the rescue, not to investigate the situation. What we have to do is not to follow the ground as soon as possible, but to find a way to defeat an enemy first and fish them out. She said: "How can you complete the mission by throwing bullets far away and only killing a few people at a time?" ”

Her words aroused the approval of some others. Several nuns followed suit and said they should be more proactive.

"I haven't heard of a battle that can be solved with just a tender gun." Another nun also said, "I feel like you've been avoiding direct combat with them, but we don't need to be so exaggerated. ”

"yes, we've been training for so long, isn't it just to use it?"

"You're a little too conservative."

Others said the same.

Captain Maria was silent for a moment, then replied, "In this case, we should trust the musket in our hands more." ”

In this day and age, firearms are actually not a new thing. Compared with the shock caused to Europe when the Mongols brought it, these developments and innovations today are not too shocking. Although some people still don't like this weapon, the attitude of Europeans towards it is becoming more and more practical, so that they don't really curse it as a demon.

And Captain Maria and others also found that the Orientals, who had a great influence on the military thinking of the Purple Horde, never seemed to pay attention to this. Because in the end, weapons must be reserved for human use. In this case, there should be no fuss about it.

And these nuns are not short of weapons. In everyone's eyes, they are the closest group of people around the Queen Mother, and some people even think that they are actually the adopted daughters of the Queen Mother.

Therefore, people who intend to have a good relationship with the Queen Mother often give them convenience intentionally or unintentionally. And those weapon craftsmen who want to get a heavy weapon also like to give them things: as long as they can be popular, they will definitely be known by the queen mother, who likes martial arts and military affairs. This road is much faster than the normal process on the part of the military department.

After a long time, the warehouse of the Sisters was full of all kinds of weapons for them to choose from. The guys in their hands are theoretically more advanced than the first-line legions.

But having said that, in this era, it is still difficult to say whether the advanced weapons can be transformed into actual combat effectiveness.

Sometimes, "advanced thinking" or even "bells and whistles" is synonymous, and it is difficult to say whether the positive effects will outweigh the side effects. In recent years, everyone's thinking has been very active, and every once in a while, some people have offered all kinds of outrageous firearms, and each of them has blown their works into the sky, as if they can be used to bombard the enemy to the slag.

But judging from the results of the actual test, there are basically few that can be used. Their new design, as long as it doesn't lead to a regression in efficiency, is already a good idea. In fact, most of the brain-opening inventions can only be eaten in the warehouse all the time, and there is almost no practical value.

And the firearm that everyone really likes, and even needs to fight for, is actually the arquebus.

In the early days of the European musket, it was a metal tube with a hole in the tail. Once the gunpowder and projectiles are loaded, the fire rope is inserted into the hole and it is ready to be fired. If it is a relatively small tube that fires a small projectile, then attach a wooden stick to the tail of the tube and fire it under the arm like a knight's old man holding a gun. Man's own strength is enough to resist this thing.

And if the pipe is relatively large and one person can't hold it, you have to make a special shelf and fix it well. As for the launch method, there is actually no difference, let's get a fire rope to light it......

In Chinese, the former was called a "gun" in the early years, because it was indeed the same as the barrel of a gun, which was a large bamboo with gunpowder stuffed into it and used to spray people. Because the power of this weapon was still very limited at that time, some of them were simply tied directly to the head of the gun and used to spray the opponent's face when attacking.

Later, the bamboo pipe gradually became a metal pipe and began to be used alone, so in Seris, people began to call him with the new word "铳". This name was more popular in the Ming Dynasty, but the Purple Horde had been away from the Central Plains for a long time, so in their military terminology, it was still called "gun" as in the Song and Yuan dynasties.

And that kind of large firearm, because in the early years, like trebuchets, was used to fire stone projectiles, so the "cannon" was changed to the side and called "cannon". Generally speaking, as long as a person can't bear it and needs to build a shelf, it is counted in this category.

Of course, this is only a rough division of their own, and many times, the boundaries of guns and guns are really not clear. Moreover, this is also a method of creating terms that is unique to Chinese characters, and other languages may not be able to play like this. In fact, in many languages, these things are indeed the same word.

In recent years, Captain Maria gained the trust of the Queen Mother and began to choose standard weapons for the nuns. However, among the ranged weapons, she chose a musket with an elongated shaft.

This thing is not the same thing as the musket most commonly used in Rome today.

In the early days, muskets were not very popular. The legions preferred to use all the gunpowder on siege cities, and sometimes they didn't even want to use artillery, preferring to concentrate all the gunpowder reserves they had and go straight to the city walls. Relying on this skill, the Purple Horde was often able to quickly break through the defenses of the Dock Fort when it expanded in its early years.

At that time, the various forces here were quite loose, and these dock forts were also the basis for the local nobles to maintain this division and prevent themselves from being annexed. In the past, when the Golden Horde moved south, it also relied on them for defense. But the people of the Purple Horde were born in engineering, and they were very efficient in dismantling the dock fort.

In the land of Eastern Europe, it is difficult to count how many large and small wars have been fought in the past. But few people can really be unified, at most a strong monarch temporarily suppresses the nobles, and there is probably this military factor: even if they lose the battle, the nobles in the dock can hold out for a long time, and it is difficult for the attacker to continue. Other nobles will also intervene in order to prevent one family from becoming dominant, making it difficult to completely eradicate local forces.

However, the density of the fortress and the level of defense of the city were not as good as those in the west. Therefore, as long as the Purple Horde can defeat the enemy in the field, the other party basically has no chance to retract to the fortress and wait for other relatives to save their lives. The division on the ground cannot be sustained.

As for the early muskets, the biggest problem with this thing is not that it is not ineffective or inconvenient to use, but that it is awkward to position.

Although it is also called a "ranged weapon", according to the experience of the Purple Horde, muskets and bows and crossbows are two ecological niches. The latter is a true ranged weapon, used to shoot at a distance of one or two hundred paces, killing and injuring enemies who lack armor.

Here, the other factions often have large numbers of weapons and poorly armoured, but also very cheap soldiers, which are used to fill the line and even wear down the enemy. The serfs forcibly recruited by the local Slavic nobles, the cheap mercenaries hired by the HRE princes, and the poor bandits coaxed by the Ottomans can all be classified into this category.

Arrows thrown from a long distance are very lethal to elite soldiers who can wear heavy armor. But for these people who lack protective gear, it is very fatal, which can cause a large number of casualties in a short period of time, and even directly lead to the collapse of the opponent's morale. This weapon is like a sieve, which can sieve out a large number of unqualified enemies, and the few remaining elites will be easier to deal with without the support of these people. Therefore, since the founding of the state, the Purple Horde has always had a high proportion of bow and arrow equipment.

And the musket, is something else entirely. It has a straight trajectory and poor long-range accuracy, making it unsuitable for long-range shots. At that time, compared to the already well-established strong crossbow, its advantage in power was not obvious enough.

The most important thing is that this thing had to be two-handed to shoot at the time. This means that the bearer has to put down his weapon and shield and leave both hands empty. And this thing can't hit far, which means that after shooting out, the enemy will rush up. Therefore, many people prefer to carry a javelin, which serves as a weapon for striking the armored enemy at a distance of one or twenty paces. Muskets, like all kinds of bombs, can only be given to specialized people to use.

And the turning point of popularization is that someone transplanted the trigger.

The press-type crossbow machine in the Mediterranean world occupies too much space, and it is not suitable for one-handed holding, and it is not suitable for this kind of place. But Seris's trigger-type crossbow, with a change of shape, can be used directly to drive the arquebus. In this way, the musket could be loaded before the battle. When the enemy gets closer, you can shoot with one hand.

In recent years, such small devices have only begun to appear, but they soon became widespread, and the old muskets in the regiments were quickly phased out. In the eyes of the soldiers, after being transformed, this thing is a very useful close-range weapon. Heavy infantry on the front line especially like to carry one.

In their understanding, this thing is a more powerful javelin. As a result, they tend not to carry much ammunition and pellets to avoid getting in the way, and may even carry only the one shot from the gun. When the infantry on both sides was about to charge, they fired a shot at the enemy like a javelin, and then immediately threw it away and entered hand-to-hand combat.

Because it does not pursue long-range fire, and at the same time is convenient to carry and shoot with one hand, the arquebus, which is popular in the legion, has a small barrel and looks like a larger pistol, so that soldiers with swords, shields and two-handed combat weapons can easily fire volleys.

Although the nuns have not been on the battlefield, they have seen a lot and know a little about various weapons. Seeing the weapon chosen by Captain Maria, and then understanding the corresponding tactics she designed, some people naturally have doubts.

(End of chapter)