Chapter 148: Smelling Salts and Morris Square
"boom!"

Thirty steps away, the wooden target was shaking violently, and the flying stone bullets instantly made more than a dozen holes of varying sizes on the wooden target.

While the second gunner at the side was using a cleaning rod to push the trigger back to its original position, Victor immediately took out a stick-shaped tube of smelling salts from his waist.

After slightly wrapping it around the tip of his nose, his expression immediately became clearer.

Turning the spring again, the creaking sound of gears continued.

"boom!"

The target was shot into a sieve and broke in the middle, falling directly to the ground.

"How is it?" Horn stood aside with his hands behind his back, and asked impatiently.

Holding the heavy clockwork gun, Victor picked up the smelling salts he had just been given and said with a smile, "Your Majesty, this thing is much more useful than potion."

This stimulating potion in the form of smelling salts was much more effective than he had imagined. There was no need to drink it and wait for it to take effect. The stimulating smell went straight to his brain.

After sniffing the salts, he even felt like he could fire off another one.

"Cesi, you did a great job." Horn looked at Ceci with satisfaction and said, "You made this solid awakening potion in just three days."

Ceci rubbed her hands together, standing there unconfidently: "I added devil wood, devil wood tree oil."

"What is devilwood oil? How is it made? Would you like to tell me about it?"

Speaking of this, Ceci was no longer sleepy and began to explain in detail.

The so-called devil's wood oil is made by heating devil's wood chips in high-temperature steam.

During this process, the fibers inside will gelatinize. After taking them out, they are pounded into mud, which can be sieved to squeeze out a semi-solid ointment.

After Ceci's explanation, Horn gradually remembered this thing. This kind of tree is more common in the southern mountainous areas and he had seen it in the wild spider forest before.

Carrie had introduced him to it before.

The ancestor of this tree is said to be the famous tree man in the era of the Seven Hills Kingdom.

But later, due to a blight plague, a large number of tree people became sick and died. Their descendants decided to coexist with the blight, and gradually evolved into their current appearance.

To a certain extent, the devil tree is a zombie tree man, but it just can't move.

The devil's wood got its name because it is black inside and out and is known for being waste.

This devil's wood is fine when it is young and can be used as firewood. However, after 3 years of maturity, it will quickly turn black.

The quality of devil wood is very poor and it is not suitable for making furniture. Its brittleness is slightly better than charcoal, but when it is used for burning, it has an indescribable pungent smell.

Most of the time, the devil's wood is used to make powder to repel termites.

According to Sissi, some alchemists would also use devil wood sawdust as a low-end catalyst when their consumption was downgraded, but because its pungent smell would seriously affect meditation, it was called dog shit wood.

"How did you come up with the idea of ​​using anthelmintic medicine as oral medicine?"

"I originally just used the devil wood as a carrier to make a refreshing ointment for application, so that it could be smaller in size and easier to carry." Ceci scratched his head, "But I didn't expect that this ointment would evaporate quickly when it came into contact with the air. In order not to waste it, I gave it to the holy gunners for use, but the feedback was that it was more effective than ordinary refreshing potions, which was beyond my expectation..."

It was Horn who asked Cesi to research the shrinking and refreshing potion, as he really had a need for it at the moment.

After these days, Horn had thirty-three Canned Type I clockwork guns, one Canned Type I large lever, and one Ferdinand Type I clockwork hand cannon.

This had used up all of his orichalcum, and his Ferdinand longbow had been melted down and replaced with a more efficient and portable clockwork hand cannon.

In this way, in Horn's four major legions today, almost every brigade can be allocated a clockwork gun.

Under normal circumstances, Horn would still reorganize the Holy Gunners and assign them to the Holy Armored Division in a ratio of two to one between melee soldiers and ranged soldiers.

For now, the Hussite fort tactics learned by the Holy Armored Division are the most suitable for Horn's current situation.

Hiding in armored vehicles and using clockwork guns and flails to conduct defensive counterattacks is very suitable for the untrained militia.

But this tactic also has its drawbacks, that is, it requires a sufficiently flat ground to be deployed, and there must be enough time to deploy it.

For Horn, this tactic was just like that of the Song Dynasty, with poor mobility and unable to pursue and expand the victory.

This tactic also has a major drawback, which is that in this world, the knights can actually destroy the chariot fort by themselves, and even jump over the chariot fort.

Therefore, this tactic can only be used as a transitional tactic, and the classic musket and spear phalanx must be put on the agenda earlier. But Horn did not want to use the Spanish phalanx right away.

The Spanish phalanx required sufficient manpower and a lot of training. Its formation was relatively rigid, resulting in a considerable waste of manpower and firepower.

So Horn prefers the Morris Phalanx in the Dutch War of Independence.

During the Dutch War of Independence, the soldiers were farmers, peddlers, and craftsmen, not professional soldiers.

This resulted in Prince Maurice frequently having to lead a group of losers who had only been trained for a few weeks to fight against Spain's elite troops [the Army of Flanders].

In order to have a good fight with the Spaniards, Prince Maurice came up with this quick version of the musket phalanx.

Unlike the Spanish phalanx, which placed musketeers at the four corners, the Maurice phalanx placed musketeers on both sides or behind the pike phalanx.

At the same time, the size of the large square formation was reduced, from a square formation to a thinner horizontal formation, and the frontal firepower projection was strengthened by retreating shooting and increasing the battle width.

The price is that compared to the large square formation, the defense is greatly reduced, especially the protection against the flank cavalry attack, which is almost non-existent.

The advantages of the Morris Square are lower training time costs, lower equipment investment, and more flexible tactical means.

Compared with the Spanish phalanx that requires a long period of training, Horn thinks it is better to use the Morris phalanx for the time being.

Recently, a small-scale influenza has occurred in the new camp. Horn has a hunch that another batch of Saint's Favorites is about to be born.

After Grampven's wedding is over tomorrow, Horn will have to leave the day after tomorrow. At that time, he will leave the craftsman who made the clockwork gun in the camp.

Once the war begins, with the soldiers from the old camp as musketeers and the soldiers from the new camp as spearmen, if the opponent is infantry, the Morris phalanx will still have a great advantage.

But in order to bring out the firepower advantage of the Morris Phalanx, Horn's clockwork gun had two major problems.

The first problem is that the weight of the entire gun and the caliber of the gun barrel are not small, resulting in only being able to fire scattered bullets and the kinetic energy of the projectile being severely attenuated.

This problem should be solvable by the Duke's blacksmiths. At most it's a matter of cost. The Duke of Kush has accumulated a stockpile of sealed piles for hundreds of years, so he is not afraid of this.

The second is the issue of transmission frequency and number.

After long-term training, all the holy musketeers have basically reduced the amount of mana to around two or three shots, but this is still not enough to complete a battle.

Moreover, their firing frequency is relatively low. It often takes one and a half minutes or even two minutes to fire three rounds. Horn does not pursue being able to shoot from beginning to end, but at least he has to finish shooting within one minute.

This is not a situation where we blindly pursue a long time.

But now, with the smelling salts, most of the time, I can ejaculate three times within a minute. If necessary, I can even pass the ball to someone else and ejaculate three more times.

That's barely enough to deal with a battle.

Even though Ceci, a pharmacist, didn't understand why smelling salts worked, this was the norm in that era.

Since it is useful, let's use it for now.

"Okay, Ceci, to reward your contribution, I appoint you as the president of the Royal Pharmacy Society of the Papal States, and your disciple will be the first member."

The appointment letter was handed to Sisi, who took the hemp paper with a confused look on his face.

"I'll bring you a list of goods in a little while. Don't spread it around. Take a look and see if there's anything on it that can be used as medicine. If you're interested, write me a report."

"understood."

Horn left the shooting range refreshed, walked towards the stable, and led out a short riding horse.

"Jeanne, let's go, let's go to the city to get the alchemical bill."

Calling Jeanne and Sissi, Horn mounted his horse and headed towards Chateau Joan of Arc.

Halfway through the journey, Jeanne looked into the distance and shouted, "Look."

Looking up, I saw a few faint black smoke rising from the direction of Fort Joan of Arc behind a small wood not far away.

Horn frowned slightly.

I heard that yesterday the rioting citizens surrounded the Duke's castle, boycotting the issuance of war bonds and tax commissioners, and did not disperse until sunset.

I don’t know how the Duke handled it, and what the situation in Joan of Arc is like today.

(End of this chapter)