The Kremlin Games(103)
* * *
“Pity about that,” Aleksander Korwin Gosiewski said. In general, Gosiewski was quite pleased with the way things had gone since his forces left Smolensk. He wouldn’t have done what Janusz Radziwiłł had, but since Janusz had opened the way, Gosiewski was fairly sure that he was safe from the political repercussions. And if it increased the size and power of Lithuania within the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, that was all to the good.
“Our eight thousand and three thousand in Rzhev . . .” He felt confident that he could rout the Russians. His force was a modern army, six thousand infantry, two thousand cavalry. “But I would have liked to capture that balloon. I doubt it will return; I suspect the Rus commander has sent it away to keep it out of our hands.”
He nodded to his subordinates. “But it doesn’t matter that much. There is a time for subtlety, gentlemen, and a time for more direct means. This is the latter.”
“Sir!” Colonel Bortnowski said.
“As soon as their balloon is out of sight, Colonel, you will take the German dragoons . . .” Gosiewski continued with a list of units designated to attack the east downriver edge of the wall. “We will hold here until the artillery has produced a breech in their golay golrod. You will then advance. Our situation is simple. Once we get within their outer wall, at any point, they are done and we can roll them up. The Russian soldiers don’t have the stomach for a standup fight. They carry walls with them so they’ll have something to hide behind. Take that away and they’re like sheep among wolves.”
It took another hour to work out all the various details, including a skirmish against the upriver edge of the wall to pull the defenders away from the planned breech point.
Chapter 59
“General, the Poles are moving,” Tim said as he entered the tent.
“What?” the general had been taking a nap. He sat up on his cot. “Their cannon?”
“Not yet, sir.”
“Very well. Give me ten minutes.”
By the time General Izmailov got to the walls, the Russian corridor was acting like a disturbed ant bed. Izmailov didn’t rush. He strolled. Exhibiting no hurry, he listened to reports as he went, stopped and greeted people. And, to an extent, the ant bed calmed. Actions became less frantic and more purposeful. When it was reported that the Polish cannon were moving into position, he quickened his pace and started giving orders.
“Get those guns in place!” The small rifled cannon of the Russians were moved into position, set up and loaded behind sections of wall. Ropes were attached to those wall sections so that they could be quickly moved out of the way.
“We’ll give it to them now, boys,” General Izmailov shouted. “Before they realize what hits them.”
The order was given while the Polish cannon were still out of effective range. Their effective range—not the effective range of the rifled breech-loading Russian guns.
The men on the ropes strained and the walls moved out of the way.
“Aim them! Don’t just point them randomly!”
The gunners took a moment to refine their aim.
“Fire!”
Boomcrack! Boomcrack! Boomcrack!
The small cannons sounded like they couldn’t make up their mind whether they were cannon or rifles. The rounds they fired were small, just under an inch across and three inches long. But they exited the Russian guns in a flat trajectory and hit very close to where their gunners aimed them. Two rounds struck the outer wagon of the Polish gun train. The third missed, but hit a wagon wheel which it shattered. Pointlessly, though, since the exploding powder wagons would have destroyed it a tenth of a second later anyway.
* * *
A Polish gunner lay on the ground, blown off his feet but otherwise uninjured, shaking his head less to clear it than in confusion. The Russian guns were half again out of a cannon’s effective range. But even as he lay there, he heard another boomcrack and the gun carriage of one of the six Polish nine-pound sakers was struck and damaged by another Russian round. The gunner, after due consideration, decided that where he was, was a rather good place to be. Much better than standing up next to the guns.
Aleksander Korwin Gosiewski was not so sanguine. In the midst of disaster, he saw what he wanted to see. The Russians had opened a breech in their wall to allow their cannons to fire. He decided that if he moved fast enough he could exploit the breech. He rapped out orders to Colonel Bortnowski and sent off the messenger. “Attack now. Go for the breech. Charge, curse you! Charge!”
Much against his better judgment, Colonel Bortnowski charged. In a manner of speaking, the charge of a pike unit is rather akin to the charge of a turtle. Slow and steady. Which may win the race and may even win a battle when it’s charging another pike unit. But when charging a wall two hundred fifty yards away and when that wall is manned by troops with rifled chamber-loading AK3’s that can be fired, have the chamber switched, then fired again several times, the charge of a pike unit becomes an organized form of suicide. Eventually, of course, the pikes broke. But not nearly soon enough. Their casualties were much worse than the casualties the Russian cavalry units had suffered just weeks before. Colonel Bortnowski was among the dead. They really should have used the Cossack cavalry, but it was in the wrong place.