How Firm A Foundation – Snippet 32
         He turned the weapon, and Rock Point realized the striking face of the hammer wasn’t flat. Instead, it had been hollowed out into something a fraction larger than the ‘cap’ in his hand.”
         “We discovered early on that when one of the caps detonates it tends to spit bits and pieces in all directions,” Mahndrayn said wryly, touching a scar on his cheek which Rock Point hadn’t noticed. “The flash from a regular flintlock can be bad enough; this is worse, almost as bad as the flash from one of the old matchlocks. So we ground out the face of the hammer. This way, it comes down over the top of the nipple, which confines the detonation. It’s actually a lot more pleasant to fire than a flintlock.”
         “And it does the same thing for reducing misfires, and being immune to rain, you were talking about where artillery is concerned, Ahlfryd?” Rock Point asked intently.
         “Exactly, Sir.” Seamount beamed proudly at Mahndrayn. “Urwyn here and his team have just found a way to increase the reliability of our rifles materially. And the conversion’s fairly simple, too.”
         “Very good, Commander,” Rock Point said sincerely, but Seamount raised one hand.
         “He’s not quite finished yet, Sir.”
         “He’s not?” Rock Point looked speculatively at the commander, who looked more flustered than ever.
         “No, he’s not, Sir. And this next bit was entirely his own idea.”
         “Indeed? And what else do you have to show me, Commander?”
         “Well . . . this, Sir.”
         Mahndrayn raised the rifle again and Rock Point suddenly noticed a lever on its side. He’d overlooked when he examined the modified lock mechanism, but now the commander turned it. There was a clicking sound, and the acting high admiral’s eyebrows rose as the breech of the rifle seemed to break apart. A solid chunk of steel, perhaps an inch and a half long, moved smoothly back and down, and he could suddenly see into the rifle’s bore. The rifling grooves were clearly visible against the brightly polished interior, and Mahndrayn looked up at him.
         “One of the things we’ve been thinking about in terms of the new artillery is ways to speed rate of fire, Sir,” he said. “Obviously if we could think of some way to load them from the breech end, instead of having to shove the ammunition down the barrel, it would help a lot. The problem is coming up with a breech mechanism strong enough to stand the shock, quick enough to operate in some practical timeframe, and one that seals tightly enough to prevent flash from leaking out disastrously every time you fire the piece. We haven’t managed to solve those problems for artillery, but thinking about the difficulties involved suggested this to me.”
         “Exactly what is ‘this,’ Commander?” Rock Point asked warily, not quite able to believe what he was seeing. The possibility of breech-loading artillery, far less a breech-loading rifle, was one after which he’d hungered ever since gaining access to Owl’s records, but he’d never imagined he might be seeing one this quickly. Especially without having pushed its development himself.
         “Well,” Mahndrayn said again, “the way it works is like this, Sir.”
         He reached back into his pocket and extracted a peculiar looking rifle cartridge. It was a bit larger than the ones riflemen carried in their cartridge boxes, and there were two oddities about its appearance. For one thing, the paper was a peculiar grayish color, not the tan or cream of a standard cartridge. And for another, it ended in a thick, circular base of some kind of fabric that was actually broader than the cartridge itself.
         “The cartridge’s paper’s been treated with the same compound we use in Shan-wei’s candles, Sir,” Mahndrayn said. “It’s not exactly the same mix, but it’s close. That means the entire cartridge is combustible, and it’s sealed with paraffin to damp-proof it. The paraffin also helps to protect against accidental explosions, but with the new caps, the flash from the lock is more than enough to detonate the charge through the coating. And because the pan doesn’t have to be separately primed, the rifleman doesn’t have to bite off the bullet and charge the weapon with loose powder. Instead, he just slides it into the breech, like this.”
         He inserted the cartridge into the open breech, pushing it as far forward as it would go with his thumb, and Rock Point realized a slight lip had been machined into the rear of the opened barrel. The disk of fabric at the cartridge’s base fitted into the lip, although it was thicker than the recess was deep.
         “Once he’s inserted the round,” Mahndrayn went on, “he pulls the lever back up, like this” — he demonstrated, and the movable breech block rose back into place, driving firmly home against the fabric base — “which seals the breech again. There’s a heavy mechanical advantage built into the lever, Sir, so that it actually crushes the felt on the end of the cartridge into the recess. That provides a flash-tight seal that’s worked perfectly in every testfiring. And after a round’s been fired, the rifleman simply lowers the breech block again and pushes the next round straight in. The cartridges have stiffened walls to keep them from bending under the pressure, and what’s left of the base from the previous round is shoved into the barrel, where it actually forms a wad for the next round.”
         Rock Point stared at the young naval officer for several seconds, then shook his head slowly.
         “That’s . . . brilliant,” he said with the utmost sincerity.
         “Yes, it is, Sir,” Seamount said proudly. “And while it isn’t quite as simple as changing a flintlock out for one of the new percussion locks, fitting existing rifles with the new breech mechanism will be a lot faster than building new weapons from scratch.”
         “You’ve just doubled or tripled our Marines’ rate of fire, Commander,” Rock Point said. “And I’m no Marine, far less a Soldier, but it would seem to me that being able to load your weapon as quickly lying down as standing up would have to be a huge advantage in combat, as well.”
         “I’d like to think so, Sir,” Mahndrayn said. His usually intense eyes lowered themselves to the floor for a moment, then looked back up at Rock Point, dark and serious. “There are times I feel pretty useless, Sir,” he admitted. “I know what Commodore Seamount and I do is important, but when I think about what other officers face at sea, in combat, I feel . . . well, like a slacker. It doesn’t happen very often, but it does happen. So if this is really going to help, I’m glad.”
         “Commander,” Rock Point rested one hand on Mahndrayn’s shoulder and met those dark and serious eyes straight on, “there’s not a single man in Their Majesties’ uniform — not me, not even Admiral Lock Island and all the other men who died out on the Markovian Sea — who’s done more than you’ve done here with Commodore Seamount. Not one. Believe me when I tell you that.”
         “I . . .” Mahndrayn faltered for a moment, then nodded. “Thank you, Sir.”
         “No, thank you, Commander. You and the Commodore have come through for us again, just as I expected you to. And because you have” — the admiral smiled suddenly, eyes glinting with deviltry — “I’ll be coming up with another little challenge for you . . . as soon as I can think of it.”
Ah! Breech-loading arrives, and with it the potential for all sorts of wonderful Charisian mischief. Looking forward to it!
Well… one side has matchlock smoothbore muskets, and the otherside has cap breachloaders…
It’s not even the Iron Chancellor vs Napolean III, it’s much worse.
Fouling will probably be a huge problem for this design. There will be a lot of wax and unburned material left in the breech and in the barrel after firing. It doesn’t sound like there is anything to jam in this design, but accuracy would become a problem after only a couple of shots. Of course these guys just discovered proper rifling, so I guess they won’t notice it too much, but I am sure there will be other problems as well.
Interesting approach to the breech loader. I wonder how practical it would be IRL…
Breech-loaders by themselves will go a long way towards equalizing Charis’s deficiency in soldiers. Even assuming they don’t make them any faster than they already are, that makes each Charisian soldier equal to at least two or three enemy soldiers, even leaving things like training and tactics aside. The only thing that would be better is a magazine for the rifles, but that’s a lot more difficult than a breech-loading gun.
@2 I suspect that the fouling you mentioned will definitely be an issue. However it is a nice “proof of concept” design and the problems would probably just drive our resident “Q’s” toward the wonderful brass casings and primers (or even rim-fire) that we all know and love. The main point is that the idea has been breached, the genie is out!
If you can actually use the back end of the previous round as a wad that could help clear the barrel each time it is fired. Still fouling would be awful, but as long as the rifle made it through the current engagement the soldier could then clean it. Bet the soldiers have to clean the rifles anyways, being black powder weapons
If I’m reading the description correctly this breech-loading rifle design sounds similar to the old Sharps rifle. (from which comes the term: Sharps-shooter)
@7 – Greg
Out of curiosity, I researched the Sharps rifle, and yes, the description of this weapon and the early-model Sharps rifles are very similar.
Can’t we just skip over to the Springfield 1861???
There were multiple problems with early breech loaders, and I’ll us the Sharps rifles and carbines as an example. First was the continued use of black powder. Black powder creates immense amounts of fouling, both against the face of the breech mechanism, in the chamber and through the rifling. Remember that the lead bullet is actually of a greater diameter than the bore to ensure engaging the rifling. And the lead bullet leaves behind residue also. It took only thirty rounds to foul a black powder rifle to where it needed its bore cleaned if the bullet was going to make it down the barrel. Then there was the fouling of the firing vent. The Sharps used a percussion cap like the Charisian weapon and the flash travelled down a vent to the chamber. Back blast from the powder will foul the vent, which will need to be cleaned every hundred rounds or so. Then there is the corrosive properties that will wear away the breech and rifling reducing the seal which allows gas to escape reducing velocity, while the worn rifling decreases accuracy. Despite being breech loading, continued use in battle without cleaning will reduce the rate of fire to that of a muzzle loader. Then there is the problem with ammunition. A Soldier can only carry so much weight. The early breech loaders were heavier than the muzzle loaders and ammunition loads were not significantly increased. Without fire discipline, Soldiers with breech loading weapons could expend their ammunition quickly and without effect. Then there is the effect of black powder. Evry shot gives off a cloud of smoke. Hundreds of men firing together created clouds of smoke that obscured the battlefield. Officers often had to hold their fire for a time to allow the clouds to disapate and recover visibility. Contemporary art rarely portrays the truth of the smoke covered battlefield. I recommend watching the artillery prep sequence from the movie “Gettysburg” to get a sense of this phenomenom. There were only a couple dozen cannon firing reduced charge blank rounds, yet the re-enactors representing Pickett’s division were marching forward through a swirl of ground fog. Imagine what the result would be from over one hundred guns firing dozens of full charge rounds. All this reduces the theoretical rate of fire to something much less. If one is reduced to aimed shots, the breechloader is not that superior to a muzzle loader. The real advance was not just the breech loader, but the combination of the magazine fed rapid fire rifle with smokeless powder.
As far as tactics, I would recommend careful study of the wars of the late 19th century. While skirmish tactics look great, they take training, lots of serious training. The reason is that battlefield communications did not keep pace with weapons technology. Until the development of portable, reliable radios, a commander was limited to voice and aural (drums, bugles, whistles, etc) means of communicating with his unit. The more spread out a unit became, the less control a commander had of the battle. The Civil War showed that a single commander could command and control around 400 men by voice and drum or bugle, if they were closed up into column or line. Too many men, and those at the ends of a large formation cannot hear the commander, too few and the unit isn’t effective.
What people don’t know about skirmish tactics is that the skirmishing units never broke down entirely into the skirmish line. Company officers and NCOs could exercise control over a certain length of line, while the rest of the unit was kept in close formation under the commander. The skirmish line was rotated and kept fresh from the reserve and when needed the reserve could reinforce the line. If threatened by cavalry or heavier enemy forces, the skirmish line could fall back on the formed reserve.
As far as taking cover, the experience of war has shown that it is very difficult to keep an attack moving once the troops go to ground. It takes real training and morale for a unit to keep moving from cover to cover rather than going to ground and just conducting a useless firefight with the enemy on the objective. That’s why with the ever increasing mass armies of the late 19th century, small company columns continued to be used. The skirmish line was intended to suppress the enemy long enough for a column to rush forward and overun the defenses. This was the best balance between the effects of increased firepower on the part of the defender and the communications tech available to the attacker. The other part of this was the suppression of enemy’s artillery. Keep in mind again, that all of this is happening while the battlefield could be covered by clkouds of smoke.
The Rifle-Musket, .58, Model of 1861 (the Springfield) was a muzzle loading weapon.
As far as cartridges, keep in mind that brass cartridges, formed from drawn brass didn’t become viable until the 1880’s. Until then, catridges were made from copper, which is much softer. The Spencer rifles and carbines and the Henry rifles used copper cartridges, which couldn’t hold the same size charge as the paper cartridges of the Sharps, Burnside, Merrill and other papaer-cartridge breech loaders or the muzzle loaders. As a result, the Spencer had less range than the Sharps. The other early breech-loaders, like the Springfield “trap door”, the Remington “rolling block”, the Snider conversion of the Enfield and the Peabody-Martini suffered from copper cartridges expanding into the chamber as the weapon got hot, causing extraction porblems and rendering the rifle of carbine useless (this happened to the 7th CAV at Little Big Horn and the South Wales Borderers (24th) at Ishandwana.
Yep, we just got the Sharps rifle a few years sooner than I expected, mostly because brass casings should be rather difficult to make at Charis’ current tech level. This isn’t a terribly efficient workaround due to fouling as has been pointed out, but it DOES work. And as Merlin wanted, they worked it out themselves!
With this gun the average Charisian infantryman can shoot ACCURATELY 8-12 times faster than his mainland counterpart who uses a matchlock. Charisians could fire in 15 seconds without rushing before, now it’s 5-7 seconds with MUCH less training!
Rock Point clearly knows all about brass cartridges – he knew about breech loading rifles and artillery from OWL just as we suspected, although he’s been careful not to mention them. All it takes is 63% copper, 37% zinc and a nudge in the proper direction to the research boys. He’s got to be DYING to suggest using a metal that doesn’t kick off sparks when dropped, like say – BRASS!
Which makes me wonder if they’ll suddenly overcome the problems with sealing the breech on breech loading artillery by skipping the century of development it took to find the “modern” solutions here on Earth.
Merlin won’t like it, but with so many having access to OWL will conversations with Seijin Merlin suddenly become fewer and further between…and unnecessary? I hope not, seeing the new toys invented is half the fun!
@10 You’re certainly right about the smoke from black powder reducing visibility. So even if a soldier equipped with a Charisian “Sharps” rife can shoot 8-12 times faster than the average mainland soldier carrying a matchlock musket, aimed fire will be a lot slower than that.
Troops will require training to avoid firing off all their ammo quickly without targets they can see. But training soldiers to LOAD their weapons just got much simpler.
So Charis needs nitric acid and gun cotton to get to smokeless powder in a hurry! And for that they need stainless steel. Tools to make tools…
No, knowledge of metalurgy is NOT enough. The industrial capability to create drawn brass cartridges required steam powered engines and high tolerance drawing machines, something Charis is still not near to producing. Weapons production is a complex process, requiring raw materials, industrial plant, including the tools to make the tools, massive power (water, steam, electric), a trained work force and a transportation system able to distribute the products. Then there’s the chemical industry for reliable primers and smokeless powder.
And again, cyclic or theoretical rates of fire are one thing. Rates of fire on the battlefield are something different. And while I covered the smoke covered battlefield, I’ve said nothing about the effect of terrain on range and rate of fire. I doubt that increased range of rifled small arms meant much to the Union and Confederate Soldiers in the blind hell of the Wilderness. Or the 7th CAV facing an enemy using the gulches and gullies of the broken terrain next to the Little Big Horn to approach and penetrate their defensive perimeter.
Just as important is the military logistics capabilities to acquire, store and distribute the weapons and ammunition. The same communications tech limitations on tactics impacted logistics. In the First Balkan War, the Bulgarian Army was using modern (1910 circa) weapons and trying to sustain them with ox carts. Both the Japanese and Russians in 1904-05 and the Germans in 1914 out-ran their supply systems and reached their “culminating point”, the point where an offensive comes to halt through sheer inertia and friction, including the collapse of the supply system. It’s not going to make much difference if the Charisians introduced
What really impresses me is that a character who not only isn’t one of the inner circle, but is actually one step removed (Seamount) from contact with Merlin made this leap. The Commander has promise.
to me this is a tremendous advantage when an army is on defense. Besides the increase in rate of fire you don’t to expose yourself to reload nearly as much
remember, besides Corisande, Charis is fighting a defensive war, they don’t need to physically conquer the Temple
by Charis simply surviving Merlin wins
Merlin only wins if both sides adopt creativity over stagnation.
@18 I don’t see the other sides innovation as a problem. Clyntahn is obviously willing to do whatever it takes to stay in power. After all, God is obviously on his side, whatever he does is right and what are pesky little things like the Proscriptions when it comes to that… I suspect we’ll be seeing Church innovators soon enough as it becomes obvious that Charis is remaining a league or 2 ahead of everyone else technologically due to their infernal inventiveness. However, I also suspect that the church’s innovations will be easier to hide (assassination techniques/technologies anyone?)
I would think that the College already has the solutions defined and ready to present at appropriate times: “by the way, we were doing some research and discovered that…”
I also think that they need bagpipes.
Robert: They ALREADY have bagpipes… as in a concerto for bagpipes, banjo, and guitar…. Which is a good thing. No culture can be truly sophisticated and valid without the soaring sound of the pipes on the evening breeze…
However if someone were to come up with the steam calliope and then use that as a cross over to steam engine… that would be a good thing too….
Maybe Clyntahn’s tech guys will stumble on radio for battlefield communications and be destroyed by the Rakurai.
:-)
@20:
If IRRC, during one of the battles in Corisande, there was a line about “… the pipes began to skirl…”.
@21 : But do they also have KILTS soaring on the evening breeze?
@25 Maggie, such a comment needs an accompanying limeric….try to include shaleighleigh in the work. :-)
It is fascinating watching them go through a century of innovation in two or three years. The obvious next two steps are brass cartridges and smokeless powder. I have an idea that it was your own smoke that blinded you more than your enemy’s.
Not all smokeless powders are the same. A number of 19th/early 20th century battleships spontaneously blew up due to problems with amokeless powder.
In a way the war between Charis and the Church furthers Merlin’s goals. Lots of innovation during war. The converse of that is that if Charis wins the war progress will slow down. That would be good for individuals but bad for humanity in the long run.
The church is digging itself into a deep hole. Terror does not work if you are thought to be weak or vulnerable. The church has lost just about every battle it has had with Charis. This is going to get people to thinking. There are a lot of people who would like to kill Clinton or the group of four if they dared.
Sidemark had better upgrade its army to guns quickly. Pikes just won’t hack it. Perhaps Charis could give some help?
Would you believe someone was willing to pay almost 500 bucks for an ARC copy of this book?
I put an Ebay automatic search in place so Ebay emailed me when any ARC was on the site.
Last week I bought one for a buy it now of 25.00 it should be at my house Monday or Tuesday.
I intend to purchase the book when it comes out as I make my living creating intellectual
property and try very hard to honor others IP.
When I’m done with the ARC this week I’ll put it back up on Ebay with a buy it now at the same
price I paid for it. I’m uncomfortable doing this unless I have an understanding witht he purchaser that
the purchaser buys the book through traditional channels to be clean from an IP standpoint.
@28, yes I’d believe it. Money is that it is a tool to get things you want, if you want an ARC and have money…
Too expensive is meaningful only when there is something else you want that you won’t be able to get if you pay for this (always remembering that financial security and a good sized reserve are things most people want and that they are VERY expensive).
There are plenty of people in the world for whom $500 is small change. (There are people for whom multiple millions is small change, but that’s a much smaller group.) If someone paid $500 then the surprising part is that there were more people who wanted ARCs enough to pay such amounts than there were ARCs available for a mere $100 or less, i.e. the surprising part is that someone bid $450+ or whatever and LOST, not that someone was willing to bid $500 to win.
I think the points about problems with Sharps-type rifles are well taken, for land combat. However, in the hands of Charisian marines, I think it’s a different story. Sea battles aren’t fought in a dead calm for one thing. Others will occur. And on land, the church is at least one step, probably more,behind Charisian technology. Yes they can learn and copy Charis’ latest bag of tricks, but only after they lose another one. I think it’s a question how many disasters the church can survive before they lose the support of everyone. The maritime powers can’t be too happy now, after two total defeats.
Five hundred bucks for an ARC of this book? What? Is it a Gutenberg Bible? A Hemingway first edition? Idiotic!
So how many nickles did Weber see out of the eBay ARC? Those things should be printed with disappearing ink if intellectual property rights are to be preserved.
@15 Quite right. Tools to make tools with far gretaer tolerances than is produced now. “Produce” the first one well enough and this leapfrogs the generations of marginal improvement in smaller tolerances. Have Owl produce the parts to that first laythe or whatever to fine enough tolerances and the types of machines you can produce leapfrogs a few generations. The Owl produced parts can be substituted for the one’s Howsmyn’s engineers made.
Going forward every practical engineer will know the first machine was pure luck. They will find out when they try to duplicate it on their own without using improbably accurate machine. All in all, I think we are headed for brass cartriges. The good commander is simply too smart not to develop a working solution to both breach loading naval guns and imperfect infantry rifles in one fell swoop.
You might think that $450 is a lot, but to someone starving in Sub Saharan Africa the list price of the book from Amazon is an unimaginable sum.
It is all a matter of ones perspective.
It just means there is a wealthy fan of the series.
@34 I sorta doubt that the money will be donated to Doctors Without Borders or Oxfam or UNICEF.
It seems to me that DW has speeded up his rate of progress. The percussion caps should be in full scale production in 3-4 months, the new rifles a couple of months after that (my guess).
Unfortunately for the infantry, the breech loaders imply to me the need for foxholes – and for infantry to dig them.
— Bob G
@36 Bob G. Depends on what the other side has in the way of weapons. I don’t see that there will be trench warfare, at any rate. And Charis is still sea-oriented and can only be gotten to by water.
Wow-amazing stuff.
Mike S thanks.
Is one of your points that Charis has some incredible advantages, but only in particular circumstances? So if they get careless as to terrain, or weather, or tactics, they could still lose a big battle.
Which the first battle of the Corisande campaign made quite clear, as Cayleb sent word to his troops that ‘he had a feeling there were more Corisandian forces in the area than they were seeing,’ so they made a forced march to open terrain that favored their rifles. Then they executed the enemy commanders in the first seconds of battle, after which their superiority in shooting speed, distance, and accuracy kicked in.
They’d have lost badly trapped on the narrow road through the woods if attacked by cavalry or musket infantry, which was the Corisandian’s intention and why ‘Cayleb’ intervened. ;)
War is both a science and an art. It is a science in that its technology and parts of its operations (like logistics) can be quantified and studied. It is in art in that the strategic, operational and tactical use of that technology is subject to the strengths and frailities of the human mind and heart. Always remember that war is a dynamic event. There are two sides, both acting and reacting, and that unless one side has total dominance, neither side will fully dictate the flow of events and the outcome. Then there are the concepts of the “fog of war” and “friction”. The “fog of war” comes from the inability to fully know not only everything about an enemy’s technical capabilities but also the human part of the equation, morale, intent, unity within the leadership, etc that impact the planning and execution of any war. The Charisians have already been surprised a couple of times, even with Merlin’s advantages. “Friction” goes like this, “for want of a nail” and so on. Chance plays a major part in war, no matter how much you try to minimize it. A courier is captured or an order misplaced (Antietam), the weather turns bad (any number of battles or campaigns, but in this case, the day before Waterloo), your subordinates have a spat and won’t cooperate (Auerstadt, Tanenburg), you don’t feel well and have an off day (or two or three, Lee at Gettysburg) and so on and so on.
No passive defense ever won a war. And Charis won’t win without at least conducting local offensives at points of its chosing to demonstrate the inability of the Temple to protect itself and its “friends”. There is enormous historical precedent for moving offensively, at the strategic and operational level, to place your self on terrain at a time of your chosing, where an enemy must attack you on the operational and tactical level to restore the situation.
I’m sorry, I love the series, but I just don’t buy the speed with which all these innovations are happening, and more importantly, the speed with which science is turned into technology and then into production. Not in the middle of a war and not with the demands to equip, maintain and sustain the current force in conflict with the desire to modernize and upgrade. Keep in mind the US Army adopted the M1 Garand in 1936. In 1941, parts of the Regular Army, the entire Army National Guard and the Marine Corps were still equipped with the M1903A1. (The M1917 Enfield was the primary weapon of the Philippine Army) The lack of tools and machines for the M1 forced the US to put the M1903A1 back in production and then modify it for faster and cheaper production as the M1903A3. The M1903A3 was still in service at the end of WW2, in 1945, despite the massive numbers of M1 Garands that were produced. The same thing happened to the Germans with the Pz.V (Panther) tank and the Kar/Gew 43 and the MP 43/44 rifles. Just keeping the troops equipped with Kar 98 bolt action rifles in war prevented the Germans from fully dedicating resources to creating the production base for the more advanced small arms.
War is both a science and an art. It is a science in that its technology and parts of its operations (like logistics) can be quantified and studied. It is in art in that the strategic, operational and tactical use of that technology is subject to the strengths and frailities of the human mind and heart. Always remember that war is a dynamic event. There are two sides, both acting and reacting, and that unless one side has total dominance, neither side will fully dictate the flow of events and the outcome. Then there are the concepts of the “fog of war” and “friction”. The “fog of war” comes from the inability to fully know not only everything about an enemy’s technical capabilities but also the human part of the equation, morale, intent, unity within the leadership, etc that impact the planning and execution of any war. The Charisians have already been surprised a couple of times, even with Merlin’s advantages. “Friction” goes like this, “for want of a nail” and so on. Chance plays a major part in war, no matter how much you try to minimize it. A courier is captured or an order misplaced (Antietam), the weather turns bad (any number of battles or campaigns, but in this case, the day before Waterloo), your subordinates have a spat and won’t cooperate (Auerstadt, Tanenburg), you don’t feel well and have an off day (or two or three, Lee at Gettysburg) and so on and so on.
No passive defense ever won a war. And Charis won’t win without at least conducting local offensives at points of its chosing to demonstrate the inability of the Temple to protect itself and its “friends”. There is enormous historical precedent for moving offensively, at the strategic and operational level, to place your self on terrain at a time of your chosing, where an enemy must attack you on the operational and tactical level to restore the situation.
I’m sorry, I love the series, but I just don’t buy the speed with which all these innovations are happening, and more importantly, the speed with which science is turned into technology and then into production. Not in the middle of a war and not with the demands to equip, maintain and sustain the current force in conflict with the desire to modernize and upgrade. Keep in mind the US Army adopted the M1 Garand in 1936. In 1941, parts of the Regular Army, the entire Army National Guard and the Marine Corps were still equipped with the M1903A1. (The M1917 Enfield was the primary weapon of the Philippine Army) The lack of tools and machines for the M1 forced the US to put the M1903A1 back in production and then modify it for faster and cheaper production as the M1903A3. The M1903A3 was still in service at the end of WW2, in 1945, despite the massive numbers of M1 Garands that were produced. The same thing happened to the Germans with the Pz.V (Panther) tank and the Kar/Gew 43 and the MP 43/44 rifles. Just keeping the troops equipped with Kar 98 bolt action rifles in war prevented the Germans from fully dedicating resources to creating the production base for the more advanced small arms.
If I’m not mistaken trench warfare has already happend in certain conditions in corisande, when they were fighting for the mountain pass they used earthworks.
@26: As always, PeterZ, your wish is my command:
A kilted young fellow named Dhalee,
Held the girls off with a shaleighleigh,
The breeze played such a flirt
With the hem of his skirt
He was tossed in the nearest Ohld Bhailee!
LOL! Maggie, you are a gem!
@43 Even mimicking the idio, er, odd spelling of names in these books. Was the kilted young fellow a Catalan surrealist?
Perchance, robert. I tried myself and had bailey in mind, but could never get the proper rhythm.
@43 Maggie & @45 robert THANK YOU SOOOOO much! I was drinking when I read Maggie’s limerick and had to sponge off my monitor! Then robert’s comment made me have to do it again!
How I love the comment section. Informative, speculative, and occasionally hilarious. I’ll almost be sorry when the snippets end and we can read the book. But soon we’ll have ‘A Rising Thunder…’ (Ok, snippets start in December. Bleek!)
But I can’t WAIT until Irys’ eyes widen in shock and then narrow in icy determination – somewhere around what would be snippet #72 Then I’ll have that attodrink. ;)
@43 well… I’m Catalan and I asure you we are quite real. We just have periods of inspiration from time to time XD.
Question: what is a shaleighleigh?
Valinor, Officially a shaleighleigh is a walking stick/staff that can also be used as a weapon. I leave it to you to figure out other analogies….
Fellow-Addicts:
The comments are usually fun and often enlightening following after getting my (..and OUR…) fixes here. I thought this particular run of comments particularly enlightening and would especially like to thank Mike S for the effort he put into his very illuminating and lengthy posts – and how he helps to put things in context. I am well aware that well-reasoned and lengthy posts anywhere are a real effort. So…for once…thanks to all my fellow snippet commenting victims and special thanks to Mike.