Chapter 237: International Political Diplomacy
At the critical moment, the Tsarist government's bureaucrats were uncharacteristically efficient for once.
They were all intelligent people and understood the gravity of the consequences. If they lacked even that much judgment, they would have long since been eliminated in the internal struggles of the bureaucratic clique.
With such an enormous demand for weapons and ammunition, it was obviously impossible to produce everything at once; orders had to be placed for manufacturing. Even if Franz had made preparations, he could not possibly have stockpiled hundreds of heavy guns and tens of thousands of tons of shells just sitting there.
If the Russians decided not to buy, who could he sell all those arms to?
The Austrian Army had no use for these cumbersome behemoths. The navy was a pauper and simply had no money to procure so many guns; besides, coastal defense did not require that many artillery pieces.
Once the decision had been made, the Tsarist government immediately sent people to place orders with Austria. Unfortunately, heavy-gun production capacity was insufficient.
In peacetime, the Austrian Army mainly procured 6-pounders and 12-pounders, the most commonly used active-service equipment. Even 24-pound field guns were rarely equipped. In this era, most naval cruisers carried 24-pounders, while capital ships generally mounted only 48-pounders.
Now that they were attacking Constantinople's fortifications, these guns were clearly not powerful enough. What the Russians needed were heavy guns of 68 pounds or above. Such artillery was obviously mostly used as coastal guns, and actual demand was very limited.
(Note: Artillery caliber discrepancies were relatively large in this era. A difference of several millimeters between guns of the same model and batch was commonplace; guns of the same model produced by different arsenals could differ in caliber by more than ten millimeters. Measuring