Sean soon returned to Xino City from the northwest, and he entertained Horns with a secret banquet.
When old friends meet, good wine is indispensable. With the help of several important subordinates, Sean makes Horns drunk.
Arranging Horns to rest, Adrian Major handed several pieces of secret information to Sean, and Sean's face instantly turned ugly.
While Horns was waiting for the meeting with Sean on behalf of the Crown Prince, another major change occurred in the political situation. Former Imperial Navy Marshal Moko was placed under house arrest, and most of his men defected to the Tulip Party under the leadership of senior generals.
people, and the navy had been neutral before.
The navy, which had changed its master, immediately headed south under the instructions of the Holy City. Their target was Poitou. Also benefiting from the close history of close exchanges between Genoese and naval personnel, someone issued an early warning.
The navy blocked the port of Poitou and shelled the docks and industrial areas. If the navy had not been afraid of a garrison brigade of the National Army stationed in Vichy town, those sailors might have landed.
The Poitou people suffered considerable losses. Sean's shipyard was bombarded by artillery and turned into rubble. The nearby industrial area also suffered heavy damage, with nearly a thousand casualties and direct economic losses of at least three million.
Ironically, the navy's warships were mainly built in Poitou, which was a public humiliation for the Genoese.
The day after Sean learned the bad news, he received an official letter from Genoa. In the following days, many people sent private messages asking Sean to fulfill his oath to defend Genoa.
This bad news directly contributed to Sean's alliance with the crown prince.
If Sean has no intention of acting as a helper to the crown prince, he is actually consistent with the public philosophy of the Tulip Party, even though the Tulip Party says one thing and does another.
The Poitou bombardment incident undoubtedly involved the Genoese people in the civil war. Before, they did not help each other and were trying to make a fortune. In the end, they had to choose one side.
In the Holy City, Salaman was furious. He agreed with the matter of surrendering and wooing the navy, but he encouraged the navy to attack Poitou. As a temporary consul, he knew nothing about it. This was simply a joke.
Although he also hates the cunning and selfishness of the Genoese people, publicly pushing the Genoese people into the position of enemies is not what a mature politician should do.
Because he always believed that the province of Genoa was a weathervane. As long as the Genoese did not openly oppose the Holy City, it would be his greatest victory. What's more, the Tiger of Europe was a force that could not be ignored.
Someone quietly told him that this was led by his deputy Fuchs, and Salaman had a premonition that his authority was being publicly weakened. This incident also led to estrangement and suspicion between Salaman and Fuchs.
In the Port of Poitou, navy warships still sail into the harbor from time to time to conduct shelling.
A dozen people in Poitou Chemical Company work clothes were hiding in a ruins, nervously fiddling with three cannons. General Manager Hammer Bess was among them, and he was shouting vigorously:
"Guys, let those gang of navy villains have a taste of their power and shoot them directly in the butt. Listen up, as long as you hit one shot, I will reward you with a hundred gold louis. Who doesn't like the golden gold coins?
ah?"
Standing next to him was Andrew Johnson, the general manager and chief engineer of Kang Shipbuilding. The shipyard turned into ruins, which would kill him, so he also offered a reward:
"Guys, I'll add another hundred gold louis."
Although these workers are not artillerymen, they work with artillery at the Poitou Chemical Company. Every artillery piece leaving the factory must pass their inspection, and they have fired many more cannons than ordinary artillerymen.
This is a new type of artillery produced by the Poitou Chemical Company.
Thanks to the advancement of new materials and improvements in gunpowder, this steel breech-loading rifled gun, like the new rifles equipped by the National Army, uses fixed ammunition, with primers, propellants and projectiles all contained in brass cartridges.
, huge improvements in range, accuracy and rate of fire.
However, today is the first time that this new type of artillery has been used in actual combat, and a land assault gun is used as a shore artillery.
If the Poitou Chemical Company were not located in the northern part of the industrial zone, it would have become a target of the navy just like the shipyard in front of us.
The workers found an excellent shooting point, using the peninsula on the harbor coastline that juts out of the sea. When the naval warship penetrated deep into the harbor and pointed the muzzle in the direction of Poitou City, they were right behind the warship.
Watching those warships swaggering into the harbor, Johnson's eyes almost burst into flames. These warships that he personally presided over were once his pride, but it was these warships that destroyed his shipyard.
"Prepare...release!"
The huge bore pressure drives the projectile to rotate at high speed in the barrel, and the rifling ensures the stability of its flight.
Unfortunately, the shell missed the deck of a warship and flew past.
The workers quickly adjusted the sights according to the flight trajectory and impact point of the artillery shell. Someone shouted loudly:
"Quick, reload!"
The second shell was fired quickly. This shell hit half a meter above the waterline of the target. Compared with solid shells, the huge kinetic energy of this shell with a fuse shredded the iron armor, and an explosion occurred inside the hull.
Exploded.
"Correct!" Bass and Johnson cheered in unison.
The target was shaking violently on the water, and the huge hole allowed seawater to pour in, and a puff of smoke rose into the sky.
This group of amateur artillerymen still did not give up. The rear-mounted fixed shells allowed them to maintain a level of at least ten rounds per minute, but this was not the highest rate of fire of this new artillery.
The worker gunners shot more and more accurately, and even had the opportunity to spend more time on aiming.
The three warships that penetrated deep into the harbor were shot one after another before they could react. Some sailors cried and jumped into the water to escape. The remaining ships immediately left this terrible harbor.
Even so, the workers changed the positions of the three breech-loading rifled guns and continued to bombard the warship from a long distance away. However, the other party could not reach them because of the limited range of its own artillery.
"Well done, give these sons of bitches a good beating!" Bess was very happy. He proudly said to Johnson, "I want to build a bigger and more powerful cannon."
His short, fat fingers pointed towards the coastline, full of pride:
"I'm going to install fixed shore guns here, here, there. All the villains who dare to get close will get away as far as they can!"
"Who's going to pay for it?" Johnson asked.
Johnson was troubled. It turned out that the ironclad ship he had built, which he was so proud of, was also vulnerable to the new artillery.
Bes pointed at Byrne, Sieyes and others who were coming over, and said with a smile: