4 Chapter 4: The 2-month outline and the production line!
Soon I arrived near the port and began gazing at the ships docking in and flowing out noticing that in just a few days word has spread about my new abydos.. then I got to thinking maybe I should just send for the blacksmith, gunsmith, and boat maker and have them come to the meeting tomorrow! Also, I will be including the guild master of the new alchemist's guild he will be integral to my kingdom's advancement efforts.
Night came and went and soon I was up in the morning getting dressed by Mary more appropriately this time. Focused on my preparations for this meeting with my new core leaders... Oh, and I Invited captain Mehmet and ship captain Atmaca who hasn't been introduced yet, but he is the captain of the first system recruited lanterna. So, everyone in the room this time will be considered my most loyal supporters right now.
A few short hours later our prince headed to the council hall meeting room where his servants were waiting to hear out their lieges' directives. So, our big staff meeting began with no fanfare the prince laid out a few sketches and a somewhat detailed map he had drawn over the last few days. Then he announced his first directive for his followers, he wants the local troops he was granted 1000 yaya infantry and 450 horse archers, and 50 light lance horsemen to be retrained and rearmed within these 2 months while he is healing, he wants as many soldiers as possible armored and armed with weapons produced in his two system fiefs. Then after getting to the bottom of what the blacksmiths here can create, he decided on what the troops will be armed with.
Horse archers will be armored with a light cone-shaped open-face helmet with cheek covers and no mail on these. The body will be under a thick kaftan and a Turkish brigandine cuirass and small pauldrons with archer-styled gauntlets. Plate mailed leg armor and basic steppe riding boots. They will be armed with medium-strength recurve bows with two sets of arrows one will be heavier for dealing damage to armored enemies and another for harassment and killing lightly armored troops. His outline shows he wants to train and arm this group into an elite unit surrounding and backing up the core forces.
The yaya infantry will be trained to have two roles on the battlefield one to hold the enemies at bay leaving anyone attacking stuck there for as long as we need. and the other role is creating a kill zone for mounted knights. this unit will be placed in the core of our armies from the day they are done training. These units will be armed with a longer spear but not quite the length of a pike, similar to normal Greek hoplite spears. The frontline units will overlap into a smaller phalanx and be equipped with buckler shields and a side weapon of a smaller sword or axe. While the ones trained to man the back row will have a larger kite shield to block arrow fire and bash enemies! this back row will be armed with strong recurve bows to take out some heavier knights or footmen rushing toward them, this unit will also have a one-handed sword or axe for melee which is their main function to kill anyone stuck in the brocade of spears and stop anyone from overtaking the formation or flanking the rear or sides of the phalanx.
This new yaya infantry will be the most versatile unit in his army they will have interchangeable formations. so, the back 60 men of every 120-man unit can band together and make a 120 unit of themselves with men holding swords or axe and larger kite shields to fight that way or just become a larger well armored archer unit. while the phalanx frontline of 60 men can join and make a phalanx unit of 120 and fight together that way.
The higher-ups don't have high hopes that this unit will be ready for the battlefield in 2 months. but approve of the tactical application of such a unit if they can indeed be trained to work together! but the training curve will be higher than other simpler units. In other words, this group of 1000 men will probably be one of the only units like this unless we can streamline the training process somehow. But they should be able to field at least 4 units or 480 men somewhat training may be a little risky but the plan doesn't involve any open field battle so these units will not matter as much training-wise as their manpower and discipline.
The armor of these units will be made in our two castles and outsourced from Italian and black sea merchants we may even be able to grab some mail from our fellow Turkish tribes for a better price but the mail would be less uniform, and more smith-to-smith styled mail. But these units will be heavier and not lightly armored specifically the back units will be armored on the head with a short cone helmet with an extra crown plate for reinforcement and an added visor for overhead swing protection with a neck shield and cheek guards and lastly a curved mouth mask.
The body armor will be a thinner kaftan with plate mail over it. Then segmented plate pauldrons then with segmented plate hip and thigh guards. The chest will have a mini buckler shield overtop the plate-mail. The knees will be unarmored because of a larger shield. the boots will be shielded with either mail or segmented plate armor.
The one unit of horse lancers will be upped to 80 members by taking 30 leftover horse archers. this group will be a little rag-tag they will be armored as much as possible in plate-mail and if possible, armor the horses as well. But this takes time they do not have so this may result in a half armored half-light calvary unit not so abnormal in these times but not what our prince is going for.
For the second part of the meeting, we moved to the navy which will be getting a boost in numbers this week. We will be inheriting the Karasid navy or what's left of it after the last crusade against them by the Christian naval league. They are a standing navy of 70 light-class ships broken down into the following:
Dhows: 50
War galley: 15
Baghlah: 5
A description of what these ships are usually used and outfitted for. Baghlah is an Arabic long-distance sailing ship, useful for transporting troops and supplies.
Dhows A ship already in use for a thousand years. The Dhow is a trading vessel that can carry troops. War Galleys are larger than normal galleys. Equipped with ballista or catapults.
This new navy will be under the command of a long-time general and experienced admiral, this man is Evrenos Bey he is one of two karasid generals who surrendered during the war and was willing to lead troops under the ottoman banner. The other general will be described later as his role is currently defense.
This fleet will be a big boost toward his campaign speed for one they only have to modify the war galleys and add cannons, and this will make a Lanterna ship which is the core of his naval supremacy strategy. Having more ships equipped with black powder weapons than their enemy spells victory for our prince. They plan to modify the Dhows into cannon-bearing light warships with carved gun ports on the hull and front of the ships leaving the deck sort of cramped. But this modification will only allow 4 or 5 cannons on each side and 1 hopefully larger cannon in the front. They will also raise the height of the ship slightly to allow for more stability and to keep the cannons from getting ruined by seawater and not being able to fire. And to do this they are planning to scrap 5 ships and add the crew of these 5 ships to a marine core that will ride the larger Baghlah and use row boats to get to the shore or go from the deck into a port these both can be done sneakily if you show up friendly first.
The Baghlah will stay as is, but they will add a swivel cannon to the highest parts of the ship for defense shooting these smaller cannon balls into crowds of enemies killing or maiming enemies along the way. The swivel allows the crew to target important enemies with these cannons making the enemy lose morale.
Then they reached the next part of the meeting, discussing defense, trade, and development. This discussion was far more vocal, the prince truly listened to his servants wanting to hear their suggestions because he was not in a position to implement his trading strategy it was just too early, and he doesn't even have one workshop to his name. What was decided was mainly to charge a tariff for passing through the strait and to charge a tax for trade but to bring in more merchants to trade with them. Also, destroy any piracy and focus on protecting merchants and even sell escort convoys to merchants passing through the straits and the Marmara Sea. The convoys will be made up of either finished or unfished war galleys and Dhows.
Then the trade direction for the seven unused system-provided trade convoys was put under the command of Germanus the new merchant. The prince asked him to secure slaves instead of profit for now and the small trade done in the port is enough for these two months no big movements in the trade department are going to be made until the Marmara Sea.
Islands in the Aegean are not under the Italian city-state's control, and Gallipoli is under our prince's banner. But he wants slaves more than any profit because that is usable manpower to put into his plans for workshops and other production lines already running for military production.
He then moved to the spy's directive, and he told him he has control of the tavern and will be given a budget of 50 ducats a month to build his spy network, train, and establish spies in at least bigger cities and port city in the Aegean Sea and in and around Constantinople.
The prince even offered to pay to build taverns or buy taverns in these places to get the network churning out information asap. But Zengin said the men he will train will be able to support themselves and obtain what they want without draining the prince's funds. He promises to at least have a spy of Greek descent in Gallipoli and Demotika (Demotika is the main base of John VI the Byzantine emperor currently leading a civil war against the faction that usurped his regency in Constantinople)
The diplomat was assigned to improve relations with Turkish tribes all over Anatolia, he was directed to travel over Anatolia and either improve relations and trade with these tribes or more importantly persuade or bribe them to relocate to my lands to become Gazi warriors or raiders of enemy lands. He was also ordered to return in 2 months because he may be able to bribe some of the pirates in the system quest to join our side before the battle even begins and by then they should've tracked them down.
The Gunsmiths were ordered to build cannons as many as possible in both fiefs. and the alchemists were ordered to help them by coming up with innovations or improvements in the process while also producing black powder using raw materials imported from the Rus and far east.
The swordsmiths were ordered to help the blacksmiths with weapon making and make improvements when possible. And a small number of experts were gathered from the system blacksmiths and alchemists were called upon as well to help the prince with a side project a weapons development program! these men will be substituted with either slaves or smiths from the surrounding cities they have not put to use.
The prince wants to research a varied list of special weapons including the Zhuge Repeating crossbow for the castle and naval defense. This list would also include the Hwacha (Rocket-propelled arrows) With reload magazines for quicker volleys. then Arrows with Bamboo tips filled with gunpowder and fuse to decimate heavy knights and shielded units.
Also, a lot of the gunpowder is coming from the recruited ships because they refresh used black powder rations daily through the system to be capable of fighting day in and day out without resupply.
Then prince also wants to work on many other innovations and inventions while being idle for these 2 months, but the top of his list is plumbing, paper mill (using a water mill), and printing press. this will allow him to advance academies and propaganda to the next level by having these info packets read in populated areas and letting it spread like a bad STD.
(Back to 1st person)
I decided to end the meeting early simply because it is too early to discuss Gallipoli more information needed to be collected from their side. But we also do not even know how our army will look, how can a grand strategy be made to account for any and everything without proper information it is asking for defeat and at best a pyrrhic victory at best. I refuse to allow my men to die without offering me a fortress or two!
So, I headed home to draw some outline sketches about the military invention and innovations I think we can implement or at least put into practice fairly quickly. I want the explosive arrow to be a standardized munition for my armies, all archers should have 1-3 of these, and in certain situations up to 5 which could be taxing on our black powder supply.
I do not own an empire I have partial control of a Sanjak whose army I have no say over which is no doubt a great law to stop usurpation of the throne. But that goes out the window when the sultan dies, and his children enter a brutal civil war for the throne destroying the country in the process.
The repeating crossbow is a Chinese crossbow with a top-loading magazine and charging handle for continuous fire but with inaccurate bolts. To make the magazine and exit for the bolts work together properly the bolts do not have feathered guides on the rear. This makes this weapon strictly defensive shooting 10-20 bolts per man down from the walls to the enemy is sanity damaging and these bolts are just as strong if not stronger than some crossbows, so it is deadly in defense.
The hwacha is a Korean design from the 15th century I believe, and I've only ever seen it in videos. But the design is really simple it's like a modern multiple rocket system miniaturized and mounted to the back of a wheelbarrow or some type of wooden frame to move it around. I drew up a design where it can have a large circular base with small vertical grooves 360 degrees around, it and a smaller circular base above with small wheels with metal notches protruding off the wheels to lock the hwacha in place.
Above the two bases, there will be a roman scorpion-style quadpod attached to a metal-fortified wooden structure to house the wheels and wood axel. The actual hwacha will be attached to the bottom base by a hinge to allow for greater mobility in the aiming process greatly improving the accuracy and lethality of this early missile launcher.
Soon I was asleep, and the day came I met the navy and gave them their new directives ordering what ships will be moved where and what will be modified and left to direct the research projects!
One thing I failed to mention is I have been using mounted scouts to find a proper water reservoir to build a water system in Abydos. For one we need plumbing. I could try to use ocean water for the toilets bits and start that while waiting for freshwater elsewhere luckily there are a few rivers nearby, but it is a little hard to go from flat terrain into a gravity plumbing system. but there should be fresh water at a higher elevation we will find it.
But until then I got the ball rolling on a sanitary project that could truly change the Middle Ages and it's such a simple innovation. It is humanure it is a wave I read about but was not that interested in until well now I am very thankful for the idea it is a blessing to me in so many ways so let's talk about the process.
We will show our citizens not just Abydos but spread it across our sanjak, how to make use of a waste clay pot to make their waste useful and not smelly.
We will have our people add soil to the bottoms of their waste pots and do their business then put the cap on and like magic the smell is no more after a few shakes it's like it never happened. Then they will be required under penalty of fine or if constant exile or imprisonment, to in some cases deliver it to the composting section of the settlement or some places probably cities will have a crew collect waste either daily or every other day and take them to the composting bins.
Now humanure is not hard to make and it's pretty simple as long as you can do the process correctly. You must keep the compost at a certain temperature of heat so that the bacterium in the human waste is eliminated so it doesn't harm the plants or those who consume them.
If you follow the process and make sure it's done right, we can have a soil fertilizer ready in a year and start a double composting system to have enough to use and some extra for experiments and such its genius. Also, there will be public restrooms added to more populated areas such as ports, markets, and town halls or councils plus the outside entrance of cities can get busy.
We will collect our sailor's waste as well if possible but must be careful because if I remember correctly fertilizer can be dangerous, but I could be wrong maybe you must do something about it. Maybe If we experiment, we can find out.
But back in my days, we continued to experiment with black powder eventually expanding our retinue of weapons to form an early form grenade. and they are produced out of iron and are made hollow to be filled with black powder and capped with wood and a slower fuse to allow time for them to be aimed and thrown but depending on the situation you can just light the fuse lower to have a faster explosion. then weeks flew by while everyone was working hard to complete my directives I also continued to push on as well.
We also managed to modify the base and barrel of cannons to have them fit on our ships and this was done without losing anything and gaining much including ship stability. We also armored 100% of our troops but not all were armored and trained in a fashion that is considered a finished unit this was the infantry and some of the new heavy lancers. We managed to armor the horse archers and train them to a new level.
All the while half the navy is ready to go. this is pretty good, but we could do more if we had more labor to produce cannons and modify the ships. But this may take a while I believe we have all we can to start our conquest of Gallipoli and there is a week left before we set sail!
(The rest will be revealed and discussed tomorrow thanks for reading)
