Cannons

Vitus no longer hesitated. He picked up a small black flag and waved it vigorously toward the open ground inside the city.

With a thunderous boom, a stone shot burst from the muzzle, propelled skyward by tremendous force. It skimmed over the city wall and flew toward the enemy outside, to the garrison's horror.

However, the shot missed the siege cannon and smashed into a supply wagon more than a hundred meters to the right.

That was way off.

"Malaka!" Vitus cursed under his breath. He picked up a small red flag and waved it twice toward the city.

The cannon fired again, but still missed its target. Fortunately, the error was smaller. Vitus hesitated, then picked up a small blue flag and adjusted the position once more...

On the fifth adjustment, a cannonball finally landed within fifty meters of the target. Since the cannon itself was not very accurate, Vitus made no further adjustments.

"That'll do. We've fired enough times. We're bound to hit the target eventually."

He sent a signal with the flags, telling the caravan hands to aim the cannons at the enemy outside the city using the position from the last shot.

In an instant, seven thunderous booms rang out in succession from the open ground inside the city. The scorching stone shots flew beyond the walls. One grazed a draft horse's hind leg, and it lay in a pool of blood, whinnying incessantly. Afraid of meeting the same fate, the remaining draft horses broke free of their tethers and scattered.

The hired gunners were frightened too, but they had no choice. The Mercenary Regiment's mission was to capture Pistoia within half a month, and their only hope lay in the three heavy siege cannons.

If they failed the mission, the duke would withhold the rest of their payment, and the Mercenary Regiment's reputation would take a severe hit.

"Fire! Destroy their walls!" The flag captain urged his men to load gunpowder and stone shot, then lit the fuse.

Hissss—after a thunderous boom, the cannon, with its stout barrel bound in iron rings, fired a heavy twenty-kilogram stone shot that struck the base of the distant city wall.

The other two Bombards were firing as well. A pungent cloud of white smoke hung in the air. The flag captain rose onto his toes, trying to see the results of the latest shots. The next moment, eight more stone shots flew from within the city. Seven missed, while the last took a gunner's head clean off, sending everyone into a panic.

"Keep firing!"

The flag captain urged his men to reload and bombard Pistoia's northern wall. The city's Serpent Cannons kept firing too. Most of their shots fell wide, but every so often a stone shot struck some unlucky gunner, fraying everyone's nerves.

Who knew how much time had passed? The flag captain, who had been chattering nonstop, was killed by a cannonball. The gunners could no longer bear their fear and tried to flee the dangerous area.

Unfortunately for them, the Noose Mercenary Group had organized a blocking squad, which used spears to force the gunners back to their positions.

The bombardment continued for a while longer. At around nine in the morning, the barrels of the three Bombards overheated, and the guns briefly fell silent. The mercenary captain decided to change positions and move to an open area two hundred paces away.

But the mercenaries had little time to celebrate before the city's cannons began firing again. After the first few rounds of trial shots, the defenders once more found the approximate range and resumed bombarding the enemy.

At ten in the morning, only a handful of the hired gunners remained. One Bombard had been hit, and its barrel was webbed with cracks. It was clearly out of commission.

Seeing this, the mercenary captain cursed and swore. He gave up on using heavy cannons to destroy the walls and began urging his mercenaries to dig tunnels and build catapults and siege towers.

Over the next few days, peace returned to Pistoia. Vitus stayed atop the tower, recording his observations in a notebook:

Italy had a typical Mediterranean climate, with plenty of rain in winter. The defenders could shelter indoors from the cold, damp rain, but the attackers had no such comfort.

The camp outside the city was laid out in haphazard fashion. Hemp ropes hung between the tents, with countless sodden clothes draped over them. Rainwater ran downhill and collected in low-lying areas, forming foul-smelling, soft mud bogs.

From a distance, Vitus could imagine the stench: a mixture of rotting straw, wet wool, horse manure, and human waste.

"In Ancient Rome, there were strict rules for selecting and laying out military camps. Soldiers were forbidden to relieve themselves wherever they pleased, and rainwater flowed out through drainage channels, keeping the camp clean and orderly. Since the Middle Ages began, things have only gotten worse in this regard."

Constantinople had a wealth of books. Over the years, Vitus had read military treatises by Flavius, Leo VI, and others, many of which mentioned how to lay out a camp.

"There are two kinds of camps: temporary ones built during field marches, and more elaborate permanent camps. Jixiao Xinshu covers this too. What exactly did it say?"

Vitus gripped his pen and paper, recalling fragments he had once seen online. Militia members occasionally passed by on patrol. They had long since grown used to this strange Greek's behavior and left him alone.

A week later, tired of watching the mercenary camp outside the city, he drew up a sketch and had the carpenters and blacksmiths work together to make gun carriages better suited to field operations, improving the mobility of the Serpent Cannons. Testing showed that they worked quite well.

Day after day, the unending rain slowed the siege to a crawl. Rainwater seeped into the underground tunnels the mercenaries were digging, and they spent most of their effort draining them.

There were no steam engines in this era, so the mercenaries resorted to a primitive, inefficient method: they used wooden buckets to scoop water from the tunnels. The crowd that gathered revealed the tunnels' location. That evening, Vitus found Giulio and told him to have the defenders make preparations.

"There's no need,"

Giulio poured the young man a glass of wine. "I just received word that Florence has hired two Mercenary Regiments and urgently conscripted a batch of militia. My eldest son, Pauli, is among them. They'll be here in just a few days."

Really?

With the siege about to be lifted, Vitus's spirits rose slightly. In his view, Florence was fighting on home ground, after all. There was no way it would lose to Milan's mercenaries, who had traveled a great distance.

On December 5, the mercenaries outside the city began acting strangely. They abandoned their unfinished tunnels and siege engines, gathered their equipment, and polished the rust from their armor and weapons in preparation for the coming battle.

On the city wall, the defending commander let out a long sigh. "Our reinforcements have arrived. Should we go out and meet them?"

Pistoia's militia lacked combat experience and were suited only to defending behind the city walls. Giulio worried they would be no match in open battle and had spent the past few days struggling with the decision.

"Of course we should go out and fight!" Vitus was certain. Once the armies clashed and the battle reached a stalemate, even poorly trained militia could become the key to turning the tide.

"Sir, for the defenders, the most important thing isn't the walls themselves, but the hope in the garrison's hearts. If the reinforcements are defeated and the townspeople lose faith in their rescue, this city won't hold out either."