Princes 14 – Child’s Play
Part 1: Shortcomings
It was a beautiful, peaceful morning on the plains northeast of Pisae, Rome’s primary military city. The sun shone overhead through a sky dappled with a few small, puffy white clouds. A gentle breeze blew from the west, its pleasing warmth offering the promise of summer on this excellent spring day. In a copse of trees to one side of the plain, birds were chirping and singing as if in exultation.
Yes, it was a beautiful, peaceful day. Of course it couldn’t last.
The air suddenly crackled with the sound of several small, harsh explosions. The birds in the nearby trees suddenly squawked and leapt into the sky in alarm. A haze of sulphuric smoke drifted across the plain, carried by the spring breeze.
“Well, they’re noisy as hell, I’ll grant them that much,” Caesar said. He wore a dark purple coat, white shirt, and black knee-breeches—the latest fashions for a gentleman, let alone a man of authority. Togas were now only worn on the most formal of occasions, and Caesar had no desire to be seen as old-fashioned. His face was clean-shaven and his hair cut short. Queues had come into fashion lately, but Caesar disdained them as unnecessary vanity.
“With all due respect, Caesar, you can’t discount that factor,” the young man next to him said. “Noise like that can strike fear into the heart of the enemy.”
“Have you ever
been in a battle?” Caesar asked the young man sharply.
“Er, no…” he acknowledged, suddenly embarrassed.
“Hrmph. Well, that makes the observation even more astute.”
Caesar turned to look at the young man and bestowed a thin smile upon him. Li Shang was tall and slender, clean-shaven in the Roman tradition, while its Chinese counterpart was observed by the neat, coal-black queue of hair that hung down his back. He wore a long robe that was traditional among his people. He was also, everyone told Caesar, brilliant. Roman scientists had created, almost by accident, an explosive powder several years ago. A few whimsical scientists had found a way to change the color of the flames given off during the explosion and had thereby developed a spectacular way to celebrate various national and religious holidays. Li Shang, however, had been the one to see the potential military applications.
“Proceed with your demonstration, Li,” Caesar said.
Li nodded to the officer in charge of the musketmen.
“Reload!” the officer shouted.
The immortal leader of Rome turned his icy blue eyes to study the line of men standing a few yards in front of him. There were about fifty men there. They were lowering the stocks of their weapons, muskets they called them, to the ground. He watched as they went through the laborious procedure of reloading the muskets. First they turned to the right and drew up a horn of gunpowder from their belts. They primed the pan with a pinch of gunpowder, then they poured some more down the long barrel. The horn went back to their belts, then the musketmen grabbed a lead ball from a pouch which was also attached to their belts. The ball went into the top of the barrel. Then each man drew a long metal rod from where it was held along the outside of the musket barrel and used it to ram the bullet down. Once loaded, they lifted the weapons back to their shoulders.
“Fire!” their commanding officer shouted.
Once again the crackle of musketry filled the air. A breeze carried the rotten egg smell of the burnt gunpowder back towards Caesar. His nose wrinkled at the foul odour. He could see that the musketmen’s faces were blackened from the powder. Several of them were blinking rapidly, and more than a few took a moment to swig water from canteens. He imagined that their throats must be dry and their eyes watering from the acrid smoke their weapons generated. They looked increasingly uncomfortable, as though they couldn’t wait for the demonstration to end.
It was a perfect time for him to spring his trap.
Caesar raised his left hand to his shoulder and let it fall. Suddenly, from out of the copse of trees where birds had been singing only a few moments before, a group of cavalry, two dozen strong, burst from out of the woods. They shouted a war-cry and charged towards the musketmen. They were armed with sabres, but had no fear of the discharged weapons they faced.
They engendered that very emotion in the musketmen they galloped towards. It didn’t matter that the attack made no sense, that the continent of Rome was at peace and had been for generations, that no enemy could possibly appear like this in the middle of their territory. The horsemen were a threat and they reacted instinctively. They threw down their weapons and ran. Two of them tried to remain and reload their weapons, but as they fumbled with the powder horns and the balls, which were suddenly slippery in their sweat-covered fingers, they realized how hopeless it was. The two stalwart musketmen dropped their weapons and joined their comrades in a panicked retreat.
As they ran, they musketmen suddenly saw, just a few yards away, their salvation: a regiment of pikemen, the blades of their long, wicked weapons held high above their heads. The musketmen gratefully rushed towards the pikemen and disappeared among their ranks and files. As the horsemen grew near, a sergeant barked an order and the pikes descended, pointing straight at the approaching horses. The charging beasts checked their charge and steered away from the bristling array of pikes.
Caesar raised his open hand and the “battle” suddenly stopped. The pikemen raised their weapons then lowed the butts of the pikes to the ground and stood in parade rest. The cavalry slowed to a trot and their lead officer redressed their line. Behind the pikemen, the musketmen milled about, glancing at one another in shame.
“What are you so embarrassed about?” Caesar called to them. The Roman leader had held his ground as the cavalry galloped past; Li Sheng had been too shocked to move. “If you’d stood your ground, you’d be dead to a man.”
“Which is a serious issue with your new weapon, young man,” General Bayonnus, standing beside Caesar, said to Li Sheng.
The General was in advanced middle age. His dark brown hair and moustache were grizzled with grey hairs, but his stomach was flat and trim, showing no sign of the paunch so many other, less active men displayed at his age. His uniform, with its gold shoulder epaulettes, dark purple long-tailed coat, and knee-breeches, was immaculate; his tri-corn hat he held behind his back so he could enjoy the spring sun upon his face. He himself had not seen battle, but he came from a long line of military men and he had made the study of strategy and tactics his life’s work. In the immortal Caesar, he’d found an experienced and willing tutor.
“It’s not the only one,” Caesar said dryly. “They take a damned long time to load. How many shots can a skilled musketman fire inside of a minute?” he asked in the tone of a man who knows the answer to the question he has just asked.
“One, perhaps two,” Li Sheng admitted in a low voice.
“A longbowman can release upwards of ten arrows in that same time,” the General commented.
“And what is the effective range of the weapon?” Caesar asked.
“Approximately one hundred yards,” Li Sheng replied.
“Half that of a longbow,” Bayonnus remarked.
“And in a stiff wind…?” Caesar asked.
Li Sheng coughed uncomfortably. “A little over half that.”
“Hrmph,” Bayonnus grunted. “You daren’t fire until you see the whites of their eyes. And pray to whichever of Rome’s gods you believe in that it’s not raining. I’ve seen how effective gunpowder is when it’s wet. Not very.”
Li Sheng didn’t know what to say. They were right, these military men. And yet he knew he was right as well.
“I do not deny that the musket has… issues,” the young Chinese scientist acknowledged. “But surely you both see the potential…?”
“My dear young man, Caesar and I wouldn’t be spending a pleasant spring day choking back the stinking fumes of your odious weapon if we didn’t see some potential in it!” General Bayonnus said irritably. Seeing the young scientist lower his eyes in shame, and then seeing Caesar casting a reproving look his way, the General decided to take a gentler tack. “Don’t be disheartened. Let’s look at the problem analytically—scientist and strategist together, eh?” He patted Li Sheng on the shoulder in a fatherly manner. “You there!” the General called to one of the musketmen. “Yes, you. Retrieve one of those muskets you dropped and bring it here, my good man.”
The musketman, obviously a soldier used to obeying orders—especially those issued by a general—ran back to where the abandoned muskets lay on the ground. He hastily picked one up and then ran back to where the General, Caesar, and the young scientist were standing.
“Ten-SHUN!” General Bayonnus commanded, and the musket man stood stock still, his eyes staring over the General’s shoulder, the musket held at his side with its stock upon the ground and its barrel pointed towards the sky.
The barrel was long, nearly as tall as the man himself. Supposedly the longer barrel increased accuracy, but the accuracy of the weapon, as Li Sheng had admitted, wasn’t that great to begin with. And though the General had compared the musket unfavourably to the longbow, he would be the first to acknowledge that the former weapon had one huge advantage over the latter: time. It took years to train a longbowman, for the man to develop the strength to pull the equivalent of a grown man’s weight with two fingers, and then to develop the accuracy required to wield the weapon effectively. These musketmen, the general knew, had only started training with the musket six months ago, and already they were as proficient with the weapon as any man could be.
“It’s easier to use than a longbow, I’ll grant you that,” the General said, staring at the weapon. “But it lacks the range and accuracy. You and your fellow laboratory monkeys will have to come up with solutions to those two problems.”
“Loading as well,” Caesar added. “There has got to be a better way to load the weapon than the cumbersome procedure currently used.”
“Look here,” the General said, tapping his finger upon the pan. “What if you cut a hole there so the ball and powder could be loaded directly, rather than all this business of pouring and ramming down the muzzle?”
Li Sheng blinked. “It would be… challenging.”
“Pah!” the General barked. “You’re a Roman. You
thrive on challenge!’
“What about accuracy, what can be done there?” Caesar asked.
“We can’t make the barrel any longer,” Li Sheng asserted. “It would make the musket unwieldy.”
“So speed it up,” the General said.
“I beg your pardon, sir?” Li Sheng responded.
“Make the ball go faster. That should make it more accurate.”
Li Sheng shook his head. “You want me to cut a hole in the base of the barrel, which will weaken it,” he said in a confused tone, “and then you want me to put a stronger charge in the pan, which could blow it apart?”
“As I said,” the General responded with a smile, “Romans thrive on challenge. Keep telling yourself that until you believe it.” Li Sheng stared at him, then shook his head. “You also need to find a way to counter the cavalry,” the General went on. “They’ll tear your men to pieces while they’re reloading.”
“I think that’s more our territory than Li Sheng’s, General,” Caesar said. The immortal crossed his arms and then thoughtfully raised his right hand to his chin. “Consider this: Legionaries don’t all fight at the same time. Why should the musketmen all fire at the same time?”
“Ah!” General Bayonnus said. “Brilliant! Put the men in two ranks…”
“One rank fires while the other reloads,” Caesar said, “the former protecting the latter.”
“Yes, yes,” Bayonnus replied. “But they still take too long to load. In that time, a cavalry or even an infantry charge could reach the men. They’ll need another way to defend themselves.”
“The musketmen could carry swords,” Li Sheng suggested. “Or knives?”
General Bayonnus shook his head. “Seconds count in a fight. Switching weapons like that could make the difference between life and death. The General stared at the musket, then at the pikes that were still held aloft, glittering in the sun in the distance. He stared back at the musket. “What if…,” he said softly, then paused as the idea took shape. “What if you attached a blade to the end of the musket?”
Both Caesar and the scientist stared at him, wide-eyed. “A… blade?” Li Sheng said.
“Yes, a blade, like the sword you suggested,” the General responded. “The musket’s half the length of a pike, granted, but you could still make it into one.”
“It would… get in the way of the ball,” Li Sheng objected, but hesitantly.
The general shrugged. “So curve it, so it’s out of the way. Or detach it. Or both!”
“Just make it easy to attach the blade,” Caesar said, “so it can be done in an instant.”
“Yes,” Li Sheng said softly, staring at the musket. “Yes, it could work!” He turned and smiled at the General. “It’s a brilliant suggestion sir, and will make the weapon even more versatile. I don’t know about the problems with accuracy and speed, not yet, but the blade… I’ll name it after you, sir, to honour the man who derived the idea.” Li Sheng then bowed towards General Bayonnus.
“Oh, well, really…” the General said, but was secretly pleased by the idea. The
Pax Romanus meant he hadn’t been able to make his name with great battles, but having a weapon named after him would guarantee his immortality. “If you feel you must…” he said with a shrug that did nothing to fool Caesar, who watched the General with detached amusement.
“Well, it’s back to the drawing board for you, Li Sheng,” Caesar said. “Send word to Rome when you have results.”
Hope this gets you back on your writing ways. 
