Joseph smiled at that.
"Looks like I'll have to write King Carlos a letter of congratulations."
Over the past few years, after successively losing Rotterdam in the Netherlands and Cuxhaven in Hanover, Porto had become the United Kingdom's last major supply port on the European continent.
In other words, if the English Fleet wanted to interfere with the North Atlantic shipping lanes from now on, it could only set out from the homeland. This greatly reduced both its supply efficiency and response speed.
More importantly, the distance British transport ships had to travel to support Gibraltar Fortress had increased more than fourfold.
It would only be a matter of time before the French-Spanish Allied Forces took Gibraltar!
Berthier continued, "Your Highness, the Junot Corps has now been reinforced, including eight newly manufactured 330mm Mortars."
These short-barreled, high-trajectory guns had been specially developed by the Namur Royal Ironworks for attacking fortresses. They could fire shells weighing seventy-two kilograms, lobbing them over curved trajectories to bombard a fortress from above.
Moreover, these cannon could use "Spherical Explosive Shells" filled with Gunpowder, more commonly known as Explosive Shells, to inflict enormous damage on the enemy inside a fortress.
Yes, Explosive Shells of this era were extremely weak because Black Powder detonated too slowly—an ordinary twelve-pound Howitzer firing an Explosive Shell could probably only kill unarmored soldiers within five Meters of the impact point. It was not even as useful as Solid Shot, which could bounce and roll dozens of Meters, crushing a whole crowd if luck was on its side.
But this 330mm Mortar was different. A seventy-two-kilogram shell could hold at least twenty kilograms of Black Powder. Even if it detonated slowly, sheer quantity could bury you alive—its lethal radius exceeded twenty-five Meters.
Apart from the excessive weight of the cannon and