291. Artillery ranging 2

Chapter 291 – Artillery Ranging 2
The ranging group composed of students from Wise College followed the 1st and 3rd Battalions southward and arrived at Fort Byram on the day of June 10th to set up camp.

In order to be able to create pressure on the Kent family as soon as possible, the artillery of the Arda army soon started shelling.

Two battalions of direct artillery as well as an independent battery lined up more than 20 guns and poured out their firepower directly towards Fort Bailan.

The man in charge of commanding the garrison of Bärland Castle was Sir Valentine, the Knight Commander of the House of Kent, who had received the news of the Aldar army’s southward movement in the north, and had sent a fast horse to send a message to Senter at the first opportunity, so that he could defend Bärland Castle until his Duke responded.

Instead of disbanding after the first Battle of Biddle Castle, the Arda army took over the northern part of Emden in one fell swoop, surprising the upper echelons of the Duke of Kent’s faction.

Fortunately, the high barricades and deep ditches of Bailan Castle blocked their attempt to occupy the whole of Emden, letting the Duke breathe a sigh of relief, if the Kent family lost their own home, it would be the last little bit of face lost – has been occupied by someone half, it’s a loss of face, okay.

Later on, although Alda had a riot, the Alda army stationed in Emden surprisingly did not withdraw back, the top management of Centennial City reassessed the strength of Alda – in addition to the more than 1,000 people who loved to be in Emden, Greiman still had a not insignificant reserve force in the territory.

In May, when the “anti-unauthorized person alliance army” regrouped, the figure of the Gleiman family was missing, and the lords of Sentry City judged accordingly: Gleiman’s remaining troops did not dare to move out easily because of the influence of the previous riots, and he didn’t want to spit out the northern part of Emden, so the 1,000-odd people stationed in Emden also didn’t move.

It was reasonable to say that the spies of the Kent family had only succeeded in provoking a riot and it was quickly quelled, how were they going to hold back the entire stay-behind force of Arda?
In fact, the spies didn’t have to take great risks to organize real riots one after another, they just needed to use the influence of the first riot.

In the streets, alleys, taverns and tea houses, some “processed” fragments based on the facts were released inadvertently, and the rumor spread more and more fiercely.

Once bitten by a snake, ten years afraid of the well rope, to “nip the danger in the bud” as the guiding principle of the town of the lake will immediately go to the wind and fire to check, and organize troops martial law, before checking out, how do you know whether it is true or not?
After more than half a month of careful observation, confirmed that Alda’s army did not have any movement, so the dukedom formulated a plan: in the south of the arrival of mercenaries, snatched at the Gleeman before the hands of the other lords such as Earl Parker, and then hit the force against the Gleeman.

But what shocked the Dukedom was that Gleiman had more cards in his hand than estimated, and was able to spare a hand to stab them in the back after only being tripped up for a month – landing in Fishtail Town, upstream of the River Wise.

Of course, the current Sir Valentine has no time to care about Fishtail Town, his immediate duty is to defend Fort Byram.

This is the place where Lord Duke’s family has been living for generations, if it falls into the hands of the enemy, even if Lord Duke doesn’t blame, he himself will have no face to meet people, he can only die to thank for his sins.

Sir Valentine took part or the first Battle of Biddle Castle, and the Arda army left a deep impression on him.

At the beginning of being appointed to guard Bailan Castle, he still tried to organize his forces to conquer the northern part of Emden, but he was quickly defeated back under the power of the thunder hammers and fire crossbows.

Sir Valentine always believed that he was defeated by the power of the thunder hammer and the fire crossbow – although the Arda army’s fire crossbows rushed forward with bayonets to engage in a physical fight after firing just one round.

After that, the Knight Commander made up his mind that as long as the Aldar army did not take the initiative to start trouble, he would stay in Byron Castle and not make any moves, and that was all he could do with the less than 2,000 men he had on hand, not asking for credit, but not asking for blame.

But for guarding Fort Byron Knight Commander is still very confident, as the Kent family successive generations of the head of the castle, its defense ability in the entire Northwest Bay are among the best.

After successive generations of owners of the expansion, the castle’s outer wall is as high as 12 meters, the top is 10 meters wide, and unlike other walls that are simply wrapped in a layer of masonry on the outside, and the interior is compacted by the soil, the walls of Byram Castle are built entirely of boulders.

The castle was surrounded by a wide moat with several deep ditches.

The Aldar army tried to attack the fortress, but the moat and the ditches prevented the mortars from being deployed close to the fortress, so they had to use 6-pounders and 12-pounders to bombard it, which was not very effective.

Now they were at it again. ……

Nick and his classmates had built a rangefinder instrument and were experimenting with the artillerymen at the gun positions.

A beam is propped up on the ground, can be adjusted in height, each end of the beam to the level of the front of a thin “arm”, from the top, one end of the “arm” is fixed and perpendicular to the beam, the other end of the beam end point as the center of the circle left and right! Rotate.

“Two point one, two point one ……”

The artilleryman first aimed at the distant gates of Fort Byram with the fixed arm on the left side of the beam, which was considered to be on target when both the front and rear ends of the fixed arm coincided with the gates.

“Two points and a line ……”

While chanting, the artilleryman moved to the right side of the crossbeam and gently pivoted the movable arm that could be rotated in an attempt to get its front and rear ends to coincide with the gates as well.

The length of the crossbeam was one meter, the so-called [baseline], and theoretically, by measuring the angle between the movable arm and the crossbeam one would be able to measure the straight line distance between the fixed arm and the target.

But there was a small deviation between reality and theory.

Nearby targets are easier to measure, but as the target gets further and further away, moving one meter to the left or one meter to the right in the direction of the baseline, you can’t see any change in the angle with the naked eye alone.

“With all due respect, sir, this thing of yours ……”

The artilleryman involved in the test smiled bitterly as he tried to speak.

Nick scratched the back of his head and smiled awkwardly as well. He carefully calculated, the tangent value of the whole 89 degree angle is about 57.28996, the baseline of one meter will only be able to measure about 57 meters, and the tangent value of 1000 corresponds to an angle of 89 degrees 56 minutes and 34 seconds, from 57 meters to 1,000 meters, the change of this angle is just too …… too subtle to be observed by the naked eye and the Now this crude rotating arm simply can’t do it.

It’s really true what Count Greiman said when he was teaching the class – a tiny bit lost, a huge mile lost.

Joyce stood right behind him and patted Nick’s shoulder, “Don’t be discouraged, this kind of ranging is theoretically feasible, and I believe that it can definitely be perfected through certain techniques.”

He had brushed up on his knowledge related to trigonometry on the march and was convinced of Nick’s ranging method.

Nick turned his head and said, “Thank you, Mr. Joyce, I think at this stage we can increase the accuracy by lengthening the length of the baseline, 1 meter is in too short, if it is increased to 15 meters, I think it should be accurate enough for the effective range of the artillery at this stage.”

Joyce shook his head, “15 meters, are you sure? It’s too inconvenient to create a beam that long, isn’t it?”

“You can split this rangefinder into left and right parts, and use the same two-point method to make sure they’re on the same straight line.”

“Oh? Let’s give it a try!”

(End of chapter)